Do you shoot in the raw?

A potential client asked me that once and I couldn't help but smile. Thank goodness I don't shoot IN the raw...no one would hire me. But I knew what he meant and yes, usually I do shoot RAW format. I spend WAY too much time editing images anyway, so I try to get it "right" in camera or as close as possible to minimize my editing time. However, there are always images I love that I technically screw up and RAW format gives me the best chance of saving them. Here's what I am talking about.

Um, can you say overexposed? When you blowout the highlights in digital files, you risk having no data there with which to work. With children, I often don't get a chance to chimp (check my LCD to make sure I got what I want) and reshoot if I didn't.

Adobe Camera Raw is where I start with my images. I was able to recover some of the highlights, warm up the image and add some blacks to deepen the image. Not bad, still would have kept it because I like the image, but the hot spots still really bothered me on the right side of her face. Plus the recovery adjustment made the skin look a little flat but adding contrast just made the hot spots hotter.

I am a Photoshop novice so I tried a few things with layers and burning and the healing tool and clone tool, but just couldn't get anything I liked better, so I was going to leave it like this, not thrilled technically, but pretty sure her mom would still like the image.

A few of my normal adjustments in Photoshop, but I also tried a new technique for the highlights I found in an online tutorial and it made me feel a little bit better about presenting it from a technical standpoint.

I thought I would post the link in case it helps anyone else. I actually viewed a few of this guy's tutorials and found them simple and effective enough that I might try them again sometime....and spend even more time in front of the computer ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9CdEBlJ1PI