Making Your own bracketed exposures from a single raw file

Hi All,

This is probably going to be on of those things that turns out to be
obvious but here we go......

I do a lot of interiors photography, and every so often forget to
bracket an exposure in order to steal the windows from a under-
exposure to add to a correct-exposure.

So what I am trying to find out is why if I make a duplicate of my raw
file, and rename it differently does any change applied to one raw
file take immediate effect on the other, even though they have
different names (I don't use sidecar .xmp files to store camera raw
info)

Is there a workaround for this or do I just have to do it by hand.....
Open the correctly exposed image and save as a psd, then return to the
raw file reduce the exposure and open in photoshop to get my new
"bracketed exposure" psd

Any Help greatly appreciated


Johnny

 

different names (I don't use sidecar .xmp files to store camera raw

What do you use?

AFIK, raws are never changed.

 

Photoshop has two options.....

you either store raw adjustment info in the camera raw database or in
sidecar xmp files

I know the raw files is never changed, but if I duplicate the file and
rename it, how does photoshop "know" it is the same image

 

I had forgotten about the proprietary database. There is also a DNG
option too that I debated when I first started working in ACR.
I found this:

Camera Raw Database - Stores the settings in a Camera Raw database
file in the folder Document and Settings/[user name]/Application Data/
Adobe/CameraRaw (Windows) or Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences
(Mac OS). This database is indexed by file content, so the image
retains camera raw settings even if the camera raw image file is moved
or renamed.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WSD94FB319-761D-4e9a-BC8D-24DF7EBC05B4.html

You may be forced to change your workflow to the sidecar or DNG method.

 

I often develop 2 versions of a RAW file. One with highlight preserved
and the other with shadow/mid preservation and paste the results
together, erasing the unwanted parts of one or the other image to
produce what some people might call a HDR proto.

You cannot then save the results as a RAW or DNG file but 16 bit tiff
will preserve all the file information for other programs to use.
In practice, I often enlarge (printing to canvas or archival paper)
images up to wall poster size.

I have never found saving in 8 bit JPEG produces any *less* quality that
working directly from a RAW file and doing the enlargement from that.
Few wide format or inkjet printers will show any detail outside 8 bit
sRGB anyway.

 

Thats pretty much exactly what I want to do also, although I can't
agree with "Few wide format or inkjet printers will show any detail
outside 8 bit

I know you can't save the results as new RAW file, but have you found
a way to store two different "recipes" of raw settings for the same
file, I have tried duplicating the files and renaming them as raw
files, I have tried converting to a DNG and duplicating the files and
I have tried duplicating the file and then converting it to dng but I
can't make photoshop show view the duplicate (re-named) as a whole new
file.

as I have a very finely tuned workflow I am loath to disturb it... raw
settings are just the very first step, if I have to open the raw file
manually twice while saving in the interim to obtain two different
images from the same raw file I'll just not bother, I'm just
interested to see if there is a workaround

Johnny

 

That is my normal workflow for tone mapping. I got caught up in the
details and didn't even think about that. Thanks.

 

I get all of that... however my workflow is based around establishing
the correct ACR settings for each file.. then they go onto a droplet
to create psd's, which get tweaked then onto another droplet to
generate 16-bitt tiffs, so if I have to manually open some files it
totally disrupts that process.... It's not that much of a pain to do,
but it'd be great if I could find a way to make photoshop think that a
copy of the raw file is an independent raw file which has it's own set
of settings

johnny

 

One of the reasons forensic identification of RAW digital files is
possible is because some of the RAW code is locked under patents or
whatever and the file is permanently 'branded".

PS and other programs use this branding to identify files. Even when you
alter a RAW file and save it as two separate DNG (RAW in drag) files, PS
will still recognize it is the same file. Manual alteration as
previously described by others is the present solution.

 

Is it checksumed or something? If you went in with a hex editor and
monkeyed around would Adobe recognize that?

 

I guess it's all time/effort/cost/return stuff. The OP wants a way to
automate it (don't we all) and it won't happen at this stage of digital
image development.

 

Okay so, it seems like the checksum includes the suffix, so I have a
workaround....

If I just use dng converter on the original file it seems to fool ps
into thinking they are different files as the suffix's are different,

so

example.cr2 and example copy.cr2 doesn't work

example.dng and example copy.dng doesn't work

example.cr2 and example.dng does allow you to assign different raw
setting to the same source file

All that remains for me to maintain my workflow is to call the
example.dng something else, as if the prefix is the same then I will
simply overwrite the first output of my droplet (example.psd) with the
second (also example.psd)

So all is good here

J

 

Well, I suppose it's better than blowing!

 

That's exactly it... If I am shooting a full spherical virtual tour I
can have upwards of a thousand images to process for one job (72
images per view) if I have to trawl though and re-edit raw settings it
can be a pain