Signature Edits is a website with free raw files for you to practice your editing skills
Jun 5, 2020
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Back in 2017, a website popped up called WeSaturate. Its goal was to become sort of a “Pixabay for raw files” type library where people could share and download raw files to practice on. With many people unable to get out and shoot new stuff right now, it would be a valuable service if it still existed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. WeSaturate closed down earlier this year.
Inspired by WeSaturate and the valuable resource it was for him, Ryan Brietkreutz started up a similar service on Signature Edits. It’s a website where you can download free raw files to practice your editing, as well as a YouTube channel with a bunch of tutorials offering many techniques and examples on ways you can post-process your work in Lightroom and Photoshop.
When it comes to his reasons for starting to offer free raw files for download, Ryan told PetaPixel…
Starting out in photography, it was really hard to learn to edit when I didn’t have a professional camera yet. Because [WeSaturate] was such a valuable resource for me when I needed it, I wanted to create something to help other photographers the way it helped me.
Sticking with a similar goal as WeSaturate, Ryan says that all fo the raw files are completely free to download and use for personal or commercial use without any restrictions, except claiming authorship of the images or using them to set up a competing website – both of which are pretty standard for these sorts of things.
There aren’t thousands of images in the library, and they’re not split up into categories. It’s just a long page of previews with links to download and there is quite a good variety of images of different genres and styles from landscapes to weddings, concerts and street photography.
The files themselves are a mix of mostly Canon CR2 and some Panasonic, Sony and DNG files. If you’re using an older version of Lightroom or Photoshop that can’t understand the formats of some newer cameras, you can convert them to DNG using the Adobe DNG converter.
Head on over to Signature Edits to see and download the raw files, and check out their YouTube channel (which we’ve featured in the past) if you need a hand learning what to do with them.
[via PetaPixel]
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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