JPEG vs RAW

[petersmart]

I used to shoot JPEGs all the time on my 1Ds MkII because I could never see any difference between JPEGs and RAW files.

I would then shrink my JPEGs to about 2-3 MP using Easy Thumbnails set at 90% with no resize and then store these on the cloud and on DVDs and Blu-Rays to make sure I never lost them:

https://www.fookes.com/easy-thumbnails

Using this program there was no loss of quality and I could then turn them into TIFFs to edit them.

The 16 bit TIFFs generated in this way were exactly the same size as a full size JPEG or RAW file.

Since AI Gigapixel made an appearance I am starting to shoot in RAW since it can enlarge my 1D MkIII files to 40MP and it claims that any RAW files converted to TIFF will be 16 bit with increased dynamic range.

But I will still use my original method of compressed JPEGs for storage and save the RAW files on HDDs etc.
.

 

[woof woof]

all good and well having both options but why fill up your memory card and hard drive twice as fast

Because the raw gives you more options if there's a problem and is always there should you want to do something different in the future but the jpeg is right here right now and that may be an advantage too - if the file is ready to go or just about ready to go. So yes, I can see having both as being a good idea.

All that and HDD space being relatively cheap.

 

[mark4183]

Because the raw gives you more options if there's a problem and is always there should you want to do something different in the future but the jpeg is right here right now and that may be an advantage too - if the file is ready to go or just about ready to go. So yes, I can see having both as being a good idea.

All that and HDD space being relatively cheap.

i still dont see the point of using both and filling up twice as fast but hey ho

 

[MarcHT]

Using this program there was no loss of quality and I could then turn them into TIFFs to edit them

JPEG compression and no loss of quality doesn't seems right to me.

The 16 bit TIFFs generated in this way were exactly the same size as a full size JPEG or RAW file.

Same size? Filesize? Same resolution? Even if they look the same after any kind of lossless comrpession there WILL be differences

 

[RichardC27]

RAW all the time. Storage is so cheap now why give up image data and quality that you might need later on? If I want to quickly share a photo i can grab the jpeg preview file from the raw using my phone. On my 80D this file is 1920x1280 in size which is perfect for sharing on Instagram or Facebook.

At a recent FIA World Endurance Championship race at Silverstone a car had a rather spectacular and very smoky breakdown right in front of me. I fired off about 45 frames of the incident, and using the NFC capabilities of my EOS 80D and my phone, grabbed a few of the best images off the camera, did a very, very quick edit in Lightroom mobile on my phone and had the images uploaded to Instagram before the car was craned onto a truck and towed away. And then once I was home I still had a nice set of full resolution raw files I could edit to my hearts content to publish properly.

 

[petersmart]

JPEG compression and no loss of quality doesn't seems right to me.

Same size? Filesize? Same resolution? Even if they look the same after any kind of lossless comrpession there WILL be differences

Well since they look exactly the same what's the difference ? - and all my photos in the last 7-8 years have been produced this way - and no one seems to have noticed it.

All I can say is try it.

And it saves a whole lot of space - I have a Blu -Ray with almost my whole output from my 1Ds MkII on it as well as on HDDs and on the cloud.

 

[MarcHT]

Well since they look exactly the same what's the difference ? - and all my photos in the last 7-8 years have been produced this way - and no one seems to have noticed it.

All I can say is try it.

And it saves a whole lot of space - I have a Blu -Ray with almost my whole output from my 1Ds MkII on it as well as on HDDs and on the cloud.

The difference is if at anytime you need to do any change to them, the results won't be nearly as good as they would with the originals.
And again, the argument of storage price is senseless now, 6TB for 150 quid, and takes way lots less of room than blurays

 

[petersmart]

The difference is if at anytime you need to do any change to them, the results won't be nearly as good as they would with the originals.
And again, the argument of storage price is senseless now, 6TB for 150 quid, and takes way lots less of room than blurays

Over the years I have changed them and now with AI Gigapixel have gone back and converted some to 30-40MP from my 350D shots with excellent results especially after putting them through Easy HDR 3 to bring out the full details from the originals.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/20926615@N05/albums/72157700442514594
.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

The jpeg format itself is a problem.
By that i mean It is highly lossy and loses further data every time you save it with further compression artifacts. Jpeg 2000 did not have that problem but has never caught on, and neither have all the more recent variations.
Raws are actually a variation on Tiffs but containing virtually the whole data capture. It makes sense to convert them to tiffs in your raw processor...at least that is, until you are satisfied with them, when for viewing on other devices you might wish to also convert them to 8 bit jpegs if only for the files size and convenience of other people.

In the normal way I convert my raws to 16bit tiffs and make such adjustments as I need then save and file them as 8 bit LZW compressed tiffs. If I have a thought to upload them on to this or other sites, I also save a reduced version (output sharpened to taste) and 1024 pixels on the long edge, then save them as a jpeg and rename them with the suffix "web".

 

[PhilH04]

Using this program there was no loss of quality and I could then turn them into TIFFs to edit them.

The 16 bit TIFFs generated in this way were exactly the same size as a full size JPEG or RAW file.

There is no free ride... JPEG is a lossy format, shrinking your files using easy-thumbnails is only going to result in more information being discarded, there is no secret formula to recover any of that discarded information... Also no real point in generating a 16bit TIFF from a lossy compressed 8bit format, the information has already gone somewhere in the vast ethernet, lost forever, never to be found.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Over the years I have changed them and now with AI Gigapixel have gone back and converted some to 30-40MP from my 350D shots with excellent results especially after putting them through Easy HDR 3 to bring out the full details from the originals.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/20926615@N05/albums/72157700442514594
.

While programs like gigapixel make a very good job of interpreting and inventing missing pixels when enlarging the file, they never actually add more detail than was in the file to start with.
Working from a jpeg. the loss of data and the compression artefacts always degradine the image compared to the original raw file. What is lost is gone for ever, and what is added as artefacts is permanent. A jpeg is always a less than perfect compromise that is inevitable and unchangeable and written into the algorithm.

The only thing really going for the traditional Jpeg, is that it has been adopted almost universally by other program writers.
There are better alternatives that are lossless have fewer artefacts retain more of the original data but produce smaller and cleaner files. However, even though at least one of them was created by Microsoft they have never overcome the inertia of users and become more than curiosities.
largely this is a question of software copyright, which has blighted every new introduction.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Christ, you must be as old as my brother....!

Deciphering the replies, it would appear that there are plenty of good phtographers, turning out perfectly good work, shooting jpeg for the most part. Teflon Mike hasn't been read properly. He has hit the nail firmly on the head - you buy a camera body with all the computerised technology within it - then go and shoot without using it. That 'gubbins' the technicians and engineers and designers put into the 'black box with a beer bottle on the front' has been eschewed for the sake of 'maintaining control'. If you want to 'maintain control' why do you buy all that automation in the first place? Surely you have wasted your money buying something that you aren't actually using. A bit like the people who buy the latest mobile thingy, but still only use 20% of the capability of the previous one they have given up. I wish I had that amount of money to just throw away on frivolous wastage.

The automation is so sophisticated that 90% of the photographers 'doing it for themselves' cannot do MUCH better in the majority of situations, a little better perhaps, but disproportionate to the time and effort involved. In the 10% of situations where 'doing it for yourself' can make a real difference, you should be able to recognise that scene straight away and just switch the settings to deal with it...that might be a quick roll of the wheel to RAW.

What Mike has said, and most who replied just glossed over, is that the thought that goes into 'making the photograph' before you even look through the viewfinder, can do more than hours in front of a screen could do. Cleaning the area, altering the furniture, placing objects where you want them.....spend more time on that aspect and you will do far better than fiddling with the curves can ever do. BUT, I can erase the litter with photos***e, but the litter is still there. If you pick the litter up, everyone benefits, including your picture.

Most of the Computerised soft and firmware added to a camera is to make the taking of photographs as idiot proof as possible. a majority of it is for beginners and non-photographers who love potted effects and the like.

Things that are helpful to advanced workers, like-
colour balance adjustments.
Flash and exposure compensation.
the various drive settings
Separate shutter, aperture and ISO settings.
Are rarely touched by the beginners.

the vast majority of the menu items in a camera are rarely altered once set. the bottom line is, that the control of exposure can largely left to the camera these days. however the photographer does need to consider the stopping power of the shutter speed and the depth of field produced by the aperture. and the effect that the ISO setting will have on the quality of the images.
All this technical stuff should be second nature to the photographer when he considers his subject and the way he wants to capture his image. Even the most expensive and complex camera can not read a photographers mind. Sound technical knowledge enhances image making and provides the tools for creativity.
The necessary Post processing is often considered before the image is taken.

Being able to "see", and the imagination to select the appropriate viewpoint to enhance an image, save hours of time and thousands of wasted frames.
In my professional days, cleaning up a site and removing discordant objects became second nature, not just because it made "nicer" photographs, but because clients then bought more images.
What you leave out can be just as important as what you leave in.

 

[Cagey75]

In which case you are not doing much altering then. Good jpeg settings would have you 98% there - and that last twiddle can be done on a jpeg!

I find it amusing that photographers spend £5000 on a camera body to produce a 20MB image, that then gets whittled down to 900kb so it can be viewed on a mobile screen thingy of some description. What is the limit for size on the forum here?

I can spend an hour on an image too, just saying I often don't 'need' to! I just enjoy it, and I am more likely to sit here and spend a couple hours processing a bunch of files than simply getting it done as if it were a chore. But I could speed it up a lot if needed. I also never upload anything downsized, full res or nothing [apart from direct to here where there is restrictions]

 

[Cagey75]

View attachment 134386

Please post that in the Nikon and Canon FFML threads

 

[petersmart]

While programs like gigapixel make a very good job of interpreting and inventing missing pixels when enlarging the file, they never actually add more detail than was in the file to start with.

In fact, according to Topaz - THEY DO!

Because the AI has been trained on thousands of images the AI now adds MORE detail than is in the original if the AI concludes that doing so would make the image more realistic.

But at the end of the day all these arguments and comments, though interesting, are really meaningless.

All I am interested in is the image and if I can produce an image which I find pleasing then I am happy.

And if a program can help me do that then I will use it to that end.

I only buy programs which will help me do that and prefer stand alone programs.

So I use Neat Image for noise reduction, Easy HDR 3 Pro because it is an excellent program for editing, and allows layers-like adjustments without bothering with layers, and Serif PhotoPlus X3 which I have had for years and feel very comfortable working with.

And now I can add AI Gigapixel and turn my 10MP RAW files from my Canon 1D MkIII into 40MP TIFF files with no loss of detail and no artifacts - so I can work on them and get far better results than I could working with a 10MP file.
.

 

[chris malcolm]

all good and well having both options but why fill up your memory card and hard drive twice as fast

When I converted myself to serious digital photography over a decade ago I bought two 500MB hard drives with which to archive my photos. Five or six years later I'd filled them up so I bought another two, 1TB this time, for the same price. Five or six years later I'd filled those up, so for the same price again I bought a pair of 4TB drives. Even if my next camera upgrade, as I hope it will, will take me up to 50MP images, it looks like I'm going to struggle to fill those up in four years, especially since each camera body technology upgrade plus my improving skills has enabled me to take fewer photographs in a shoot but more keepers. I might even just for convenience shift my entire archive of photos onto the new 4TB ones, they're so big.

Hard drives are getting bigger so much faster than I'm filling them up that it hardly even seems worth my while bothering to delete the images I don't want, and certainly isn't worth the bother and time of switching between RAW & JPEG at the time of shooting based on my best guess as to which I ought to be using for this shot, and sometimes very annoyingly being wrong.

 

[petersmart]

Well RAW has to be converted to another filetype to be viewed so shooting only in RAW is the best bet, unless you are printing directly onto paper.

And I hope you keep more than 1 copy of your files since the bigger the HDD the more you can lose in 1 go if they ever go t**ts up!
.

 

[petersmart]

The difference is if at anytime you need to do any change to them, the results won't be nearly as good as they would with the originals.
And again, the argument of storage price is senseless now, 6TB for 150 quid, and takes way lots less of room than blurays

But the Blu-Rays I use will last for decades since they are the metallic ablative type and HDDs, whether spinning or SSDs can still lose data.

And the bigger the HDDs the more you can lose when (not if) they fail.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

In fact, according to Topaz - THEY DO!

Because the AI has been trained on thousands of images the AI now adds MORE detail than is in the original if the AI concludes that doing so would make the image more realistic.

But at the end of the day all these arguments and comments, though interesting, are really meaningless.

All I am interested in is the image and if I can produce an image which I find pleasing then I am happy.

And if a program can help me do that then I will use it to that end.

I only buy programs which will help me do that and prefer stand alone programs.

So I use Neat Image for noise reduction, Easy HDR 3 Pro because it is an excellent program for editing, and allows layers-like adjustments without bothering with layers, and Serif PhotoPlus X3 which I have had for years and feel very comfortable working with.

And now I can add AI Gigapixel and turn my 10MP RAW files from my Canon 1D MkIII into 40MP TIFF files with no loss of detail and no artifacts - so I can work on them and get far better results than I could working with a 10MP file.
.

True it adds more detail but it is invented detail. It makes a guess as to what is missing. However though the infill fits, it is as likely to be pure invention.

There is no sense at all in producing a Jpeg, which destroys real detail, then using Gigapixel to create replacement detail.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

But the Blu-Rays I use will last for decades since they are the metallic ablative type and HDDs, whether spinning or SSDs can still lose data.

And the bigger the HDDs the more you can lose when (not if) they fail.

All media fails... That is a given.
An effective back up system must allow sufficient redundancy to allow for this.
Blue ray disks could be part of this system, but they do fail and are comparatively small.

 

[petersmart]

True it adds more detail but it is invented detail. It makes a guess as to what is missing. However though the infill fits, it is as likely to be pure invention.

There is no sense at all in producing a Jpeg, which destroys real detail, then using Gigapixel to create replacement detail.

Why not if the image looks realistic.

It could produce some arguments if used in court cases, especially in America, since one side or another could argue about that very point which is why, I believe, RAW photos are accepted in court but edited JPEGs are not.

But what about different sizes of RAW?

My 1D Mk III can produce different size RAW or JPEG files resulting in smaller images.

In that case I I use a program like AI Gigapixel and create a 40MP file from a full size RAW file and a 40 MP file from a smaller RAW file will they both have the same amount of detail?

If not then the same argument applies to those files as to JPEGs.

But as I said I am only interested in the final image, as most photographers are, so I am quite happy to use whatever is available to get a pleasing image.
.

 

[petersmart]

All media fails... That is a given.
An effective back up system must allow sufficient redundancy to allow for this.
Blue ray disks could be part of this system, but they do fail and are comparatively small.

In fact the metallic Blu-Rays can last for decades or longer, since they do not use dyes like DVDs.

A few years ago I tested DVDs by burning some and putting a checksum on them then putting then in bright sunlight on my windowsill - they all lost data after only a month, but in a folder in darkness lost no data even after years.

The same test on a Blu-Ray exposed for a year produced no degradation what ever.

And I have DVDs and CDs burnt 10 years ago and the data is still intact because they have been kept in folders.

And I have never had a HDD go bad except once when my house was struck by lightning, which blew out several plugs in the house and also blew a computer.

Since the I have followed my mum's advice from many years ago and usually unplug all computers etc before going to bed
.

 

[Mr Perceptive]

In fact the metallic Blu-Rays can last for decades or longer, since they do not use dyes like DVDs.

A few years ago I tested DVDs by burning some and putting a checksum on them then putting then in bright sunlight on my windowsill - they all lost data after only a month, but in a folder in darkness lost no data even after years.

The same test on a Blu-Ray exposed for a year produced no degradation what ever.

And I have DVDs and CDs burnt 10 years ago and the data is still intact because they have been kept in folders.

And I have never had a HDD go bad except once when my house was struck by lightning, which blew out several plugs in the house and also blew a computer.

Since the I have followed my mum's advice from many years ago and usually unplug all computers etc before going to bed
.

I had a hifi amplifier output stage blown up, even though it was unplugged, as the induced voltage/current in the speaker cables helped disperse some of the lightning strike as it travelled down the building (small blcok of flats) on it's way to earth. Being unplugged doesn't mean no data loss!!!

 

[petersmart]

I had a hifi amplifier output stage blown up, even though it was unplugged, as the induced voltage/current in the speaker cables helped disperse some of the lightning strike as it travelled down the building (small blcok of flats) on it's way to earth. Being unplugged doesn't mean no data loss!!!

OMG now I have something else to be paranoid about!
.

 

[jakeblu]

Why not if the image looks realistic.
.

Because it wasn't actually in the scene you photographed. Its guessing at what should be there, which seems a little pointless to me when you could have captured the real data in the first place.

 

[gcgraphs]

OMG now I have something else to be paranoid about!
.

Put the un-plugged HDD in a Faraday cage

GC

 

[petersmart]

Because it wasn't actually in the scene you photographed. Its guessing at what should be there, which seems a little pointless to me when you could have captured the real data in the first place.

But we never capture "real" data anyway - all photos are edited, cropped, enlarged, sharpened in order to get a pleasing, or striking, image.

And at the moment I am working on pictures of a young relative whose pictures I recently took outdoors.

She is very self conscious because of a number of large pimples etc on her face which I am totally removing - should I present her with photos detailing every blemish?

I would certainly not be popular - but she, and her parents, will be very happy with the results.

And every magazine does the same thing - no model ever wants her "real" face on the front of Vogue!

There is no such thing as "real" data - even different sensors and different manufacturers interpret the data differently - just look at the colour charts produced by different manufacturers from RAW files - there are many slight differences.

Reality in photography, like in art, is merely the interpretation of what we are trying to create.

Nothing else really matters - at least, not to me.

 

[Mr Perceptive]

OMG now I have something else to be paranoid about!
.

Put the un-plugged HDD in a Faraday cage

GC

I have a fireproof, water resistant external USB drive as one of the backups for my work software development, which can also be bolted down https://iosafe.com/products-soloG3-overview weighs 7kgs though

 

[MarcHT]

But we never capture "real" data anyway - all photos are edited, cropped, enlarged, sharpened in order to get a pleasing, or striking, image.

I don't think we are speaking about the definition of real here, there a're philosophers that get paid to do it. Anyway, I think you are pushing too much the definition of it to make it fit your argument. I'm pretty sure that most of us here sees way different the alteration of images by cropping, enlarging, editing and what gigapixel does, creating data from nowhere.

 

[Furtim]

In fact the metallic Blu-Rays can last for decades or longer, since they do not use dyes like DVDs.

A few years ago I tested DVDs by burning some and putting a checksum on them then putting then in bright sunlight on my windowsill - they all lost data after only a month, but in a folder in darkness lost no data even after years.

The same test on a Blu-Ray exposed for a year produced no degradation what ever.

And I have DVDs and CDs burnt 10 years ago and the data is still intact because they have been kept in folders.

And I have never had a HDD go bad except once when my house was struck by lightning, which blew out several plugs in the house and also blew a computer.

Since the I have followed my mum's advice from many years ago and usually unplug all computers etc before going to bed
.

I backed up everything to tape, Zip drives, DVD, CD etc in the past. Fat lot of good it does me now though - the tapes are useless - even if the data is still there, I’ve zero chance to find anything to restore it.

A backup isn’t an archive. Just remember that.

 

[juggler]

Editing...
This would have been a worthwhile post.

@Teflon-Mike I do appreciate the amount of time you spend writing posts. But I've never yet made it to the end of one. I expect there's some good stuff in there but you'll get more much more engagement if you took a moment or two to edit your posts for clarity.

.. and I speak as an inveterate witterer, I should know ..

 

[jakeblu]

@Teflon-Mike I do appreciate the amount of time you spend writing posts. But I've never yet made it to the end of one. I expect there's some good stuff in there but you'll get more much more engagement if you took a moment or two to edit your posts for clarity.

.. and I speak as an inveterate witterer, I should know ..

And perhaps reduce the sanctmony a little.

 

[jakeblu]

This is something I find interesting here, it wasn't that long ago film users were saying digital will never match the definition of film. Now it has, and for some surpassed it, I find it strange that many of those film users want to use a format on their digital cameras that is undisputedly a lower IQ re jpg instead of raw.

 

[Cagey75]

And perhaps reduce the sanctmony a little.

That's what I see, an air of uppity without any desire to interact, I don't see anything to appreciate, just because he let his fingers fly way past his brain

 

[petersmart]

I backed up everything to tape, Zip drives, DVD, CD etc in the past. Fat lot of good it does me now though - the tapes are useless - even if the data is still there, I’ve zero chance to find anything to restore it.

A backup isn’t an archive. Just remember that.

Nothing is an archive if it can't be recovered and CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays are likely to last for a while yet but in the end I think the cloud in its various incarnations will be king - at least for a while.

But as long as we can recover our data, whatever its form, and put it on the new format then it will go on.
.

 

[petersmart]

I don't think we are speaking about the definition of real here, there a're philosophers that get paid to do it. Anyway, I think you are pushing too much the definition of it to make it fit your argument. I'm pretty sure that most of us here sees way different the alteration of images by cropping, enlarging, editing and what gigapixel does, creating data from nowhere.

Photographers do create data whenever they clone out, or in, anything on their photos.

I am using the clone tool to get rid of my young relative's facial blemishes and the blur brush to smooth out her complexion.

I'm also using the clone tool to get rid of some bad b/g by replacing it with a better b/g from another part of the pic as many photographers do.

I do appreciate what you mean but to me it just doesn't matter - most of us aren't photo-realistic photographers - we just want to produce the best images we can.
.

 

[petersmart]

This is something I find interesting here, it wasn't that long ago film users were saying digital will never match the definition of film. Now it has, and for some surpassed it, I find it strange that many of those film users want to use a format on their digital cameras that is undisputedly a lower IQ re jpg instead of raw.

What many people don't realise is that a JPEG may be "lossy" but a lot of that loss is simply throwing away REDUNDANT data - data that can be replaced in the final JPEG which is one of the reasons a TIFF file made from a JPEG will be exactly the same size as the RAW file from which the JPEG is made.

Try this test - take a picture of a totally featureless white wall and a brick wall - the JPEG filesize from the white wall will be much smaller than the brick wall filesize since much more of the image is redundant.

That is why JPEGs taken in the camera will all be different sizes depending on the content.

And the end pictures which we see on all websites are virtually all JPEGs.

This argument will continue, I am sure, but here I finish.

THE END.
.

 

[GreenNinja67]

@Teflon-Mike I do appreciate the amount of time you spend writing posts. But I've never yet made it to the end of one. I expect there's some good stuff in there but you'll get more much more engagement if you took a moment or two to edit your posts for clarity.

.. and I speak as an inveterate witterer, I should know ..

He made a one line reply once.

I asked him who he was and what he'd done with Mike.

 

[Furtim]

What many people don't realise is that a JPEG may be "lossy" but a lot of that loss is simply throwing away REDUNDANT data - data that can be replaced in the final JPEG which is one of the reasons a TIFF file made from a JPEG will be exactly the same size as the RAW file from which the JPEG is made.
.

I'm no fan of the RAW only camp, but this statement is untrue - well misleading at best.

An uncompressed TIFF made from a JPG will be approximately the same size as the original uncompressed RAW file from which the JPG is made - TRUE, because a 24Mega pixel image will still contain 24 mega pixels, and in uncompressed format, that's typically 2 bytes per pixel for modern cameras (14 - 16 bit).

However...

The actual values of the pixels within the TIFF made from a JPG will be different, and will contain less variation (or detail).

That said, the JPG compression algorithm, while lossy, is designed to lose detail most where our human eyes are less likely to notice it, and retain it where they are. It's very similar to the MP3 technology, which reduces the detail in the frequencies we struggle to hear so clearly, but retain it in those we do, so as you state, while there is data loss, it does it's best to keep the details we'll notice and throw away the details we won't.

If there was one thing I could encourage it would be for people to actively choose the file format based on their needs for a particular shoot rather than just sticking with one format over the other because some loon with an Afro and narcissistic personality traits told them one was 'better' than the other - which was after all the OPs point in making this post I think.

 

[PhilH04]

If there was one thing I could encourage it would be for people to actively choose the file format based on their needs for a particular shoot rather than just sticking with one format over the other because some loon with an Afro and narcissistic personality traits told them one was 'better' than the other - which was after all the OPs point in making this post I think.

As a serial user of the raw format I would love to disagree, I can't, because this statement sums things up perfectly....