I subscribe to Digital Photo magazine, not because its necessarily the best, though it must be said that its pretty good. It was more a case that they offered a free Artic Butterfly sensor cleaner for a years subscription to the magazine. Anyway, I'm not trying to plug it especially, but my latest copy for July landed on the mat this morning and I see that once again there is a free guide to using Raw.

This seems to have been a regular sort of thing in recent months, and over the last year I have seen many of the camera mags doing features on the use of Raw mode. Its as though they have finally discovered the benefits of Raw over Jpeg and are keen to push it to their readers. Of course we are largely referring to dSLR users and not compact users. Raw mode is still not common amongst compact cameras and understandably so, as the target market on the whole simply want a point, shoot and print solution.

And yet there are still dSLR users who still don't "Get" using Raw. They don't appreciate the advantages and just see it as a time consuming and uneccesary part of their workflow. I'm not going to enter a debate about its pros and cons. However, in my own case what has made it easier was the ability to select and batch convert large numbers of files at the same time. Adobe Camera Raw using Photoshop Bridge and more recently Lightroom has made the job easier, not to mention created the ability to get more out of my photography

The camera mags too seem to have realised this, and so we now regularly see them pushing its use for more creative photography. If you don't have ACR then there are several other progs that will do it, some of which are free, or some that come with the camera. If you haven't already, you really should check it out.