Sure, you can use something like GIMP or Photoshop to adjust the pixels in your JPEG. It doesn’t contain any information about the way the light was hitting the sensor when you hit the shutter button.

When your camera records a JPEG photo, the way your camera decided the light should be transformed into pixels is locked into that JPEG. Whether you chose a white balance setting like “daylight”, or “cloudy”, or let the camera guess the light by setting the white balance to “auto”, the camera will do its best to make everything the right color. Here’s an example: The white balance of a picture isn’t a matter of a physical transformation of light, but the the camera decides what color to render pixels in the photo based on its interpretation of the scene. Those physical limits are set in stone as soon as you snap the photo.īut, there are a lot of ways in which your camera interprets the light that hits its sensor that aren’t a matter of physical limitations.

The shutter speed also limits the amount of light hitting the sensor, and effects whether moving objects blur or stay sharp. The lens aperture limits the amount of light that hits the sensor and determines how much of the scene is in focus. In some ways, the camera physically limits or transforms that light. When your digital camera takes a picture, it’s really just recording the light that hits its sensor. What’s RAW and why should I use it? How A Camera Records Light How to install RAW converters for Mac OSX and Windows.Can GIMP handle RAW photos? How GIMP users can take advantage of RAW.Skip to the sections you’re interested using these links, or read the whole post to take it all in. But if you just want to know how to work with RAW files as a GIMP user, this post will be helpful for you too.

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