ANY photographic club has within its ranks members whose experience can be called upon help other members improve their photography.

On this club evening, two members were called upon to help. Ian Cook talked about Photoshop Elements and RAW files, while Matt Webb offered insights into his photography in the studio and further afield at music and sports events.

RAW files are computer files which contain more data than a normal image file. Effectively they bypass the normal in-camera processing to give the photographer more flexibility when working on the image later on a computer.

Ian discussed how to convert RAW files to standard forms, and how to use the editing of the files to recover detail which might otherwise have been lost in the highlights and shadows of a conventional image file.

Ian went on to outline the use of additional software from Google (the “NIK collection”) which can be downloaded and built into Photoshop. Ian showed how this could be used to convert images to monochrome and, in the process, simulate the effect of different monochrome emulsions from the past.