Raw Vs Jpeg

Big_Bill

Big_Bill

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Name
William
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Hi Folks,
I had a quick search and found a few threads on this subject but I'm not sure if they helped my understanding or just baffled me further.

Up till now I have been shooting in both Raw and Jpeg format, god knows why because I don't know what to do with the Raw files once I have them :shrug: (apart from tweaking the exposure)

Well, I had resided myself to just shooting in Jpeg, but this morning I decided to download the trial version of Lightroom 2 with a view to putting my mind to it and learning how to take advantage of editing Raw.

Am I milking a dead cow or does working with Raw benefit over Jpeg?
Anyone got any advice or tips?
Anyone point me to a/some decent tutorial(s) for lightroom 2?

Cheers folks
 
From my limited experience (as i'm still new to this) you can edit the RAW file more than a JPEG. The RAW file contains all the data that the camera recorded when the image was taken. A Jpeg is a smaller file and has less Dots per inch which makes it harder to lighten shadows etc etc.

Have a look at Elements7 as well as Lightroom. If you just want to tweak the RAW file to get it spot on then Elements will do the job just frine. If you have the CANON DPP programme that came with the camera that will edit your RAW files too.

I'm not sure what the differences are with LR2 and E7 but worth having a play seeing as they are free for a month.

As for me; i shoot in RAW as i need to edit the image to get it right as i'm still learning the camera. RAW for me is a God send!!!
 
Cheers Andy,
I already use Photoshop CS3 as it's installed on my company laptop but that has always been from Graphic design rather than photo editing.

My understanding was that LR2 is designed for working with the raw file, then CS3 for alterations once you have finished in LR2??
 
RAW is a direct capture of the sensor data without any incamera processing and is a 12 or 14 bit (dependant on camera) image. A jpg is processing incamera, and compressed and made to only 8 bits. If you take both and try and adjust them, the jpg cannot be adjusted as much without a dramatic breakdown in the image. A RAW file can be adjusted considerably more, without any loss or breakdown of the image. If you take one of your RAW and JPG's and open them both in LR and adjust them. Go overboard on the adjustments... you'll see what I mean.

Here's an example I did for an astro forum, the shot isn't great, it was taken from the top of the spinaker tower, through the glass in totally crummy weather.

This is what the JPG would have looked like, roughly...
IMG_9025-2.jpg


And here's my adjusted RAW version..
IMG_9025.jpg
 
Big_Bill said:
Hi Folks,
Well, I had resided myself to just shooting in Jpeg, but this morning I decided to download the trial version of Lightroom 2 with a view to putting my mind to it and learning how to take advantage of editing Raw.

Am I milking a dead cow or does working with Raw benefit over Jpeg?
Anyone got any advice or tips?
Anyone point me to a/some decent tutorial(s) for lightroom 2?
Click to expand...

Think of it like this: JPEG is a digital version of Polaroid - once produced there is very little you can do with it. RAW on the other hand is a digital equivalent of a negative, you can try to pull more from it during the digital development stage.

The common misconception is that novices should stick with Jpegs and Raws are for those who wants to do some tweaking. However, I would argue with that, simply because RAW is more tolerant (to some degree of course) to the mistakes you make than Jpegs. For example you can recover blown highlights (where the brightest parts turned pure white loosing details) to some degree in RAW but practically none in JPEGs. You can alter whitebalance postfactum in RAW without affecting the pixel quality - not so in JPEGs. And the list goes on and on.

In fact I'd be as bold as saying that only a confident pro should be able to shoot in JPEGs only knowing how it will come out (not that pros will actually do it - well apart from Ken Rockwell of course ;-)

On practical side, most of the RAWs are recorded with larger bit depth (12-14 bits per pixel) as opposed to JPEGs 8bits which means they recording more information about your photo than JPEGs. To make it into numbers, each pixel in JPEGs have 256 levels of brightness recorded (by pixel I refer to indivisual channel component R, G or B) and in RAW it will have at least 4096 (12 bits) and up to 16384 (for 14bits). If you think for a moment of your image as a B/W (purely for the purpouse of understanding why those bits are important) then RAW will give you at least 16 times more discernible levels from black to white which will be able to record much smoother tonal variations. If quality of the image has a meaning to you then RAW is the only way to go.

You did mention Lightroom and with the software like this it is increasingly easy to process RAWs. Even with JPEGs you will need some way of managing them, cataloguing, etc. So the use of softwares like LR is unavoidable really.

If you do like LR workflow and want to learn how to use it, I'd recommend Martin Evening book "The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers" which covers thw whole workflow process in LR:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Photo...otographers/dp/0321555619/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
 
Big_Bill said:
Cheers Andy,
My understanding was that LR2 is designed for working with the raw file, then CS3 for alterations once you have finished in LR2??
Click to expand...

Only if you need it and cannot do it in LR. LR2 has a lot of tools for "editing" the image so you might not need PS at all in some cases. With LR2 localised editing (where you can apply development effects only to selected parts of the photo) it reduces the need in PS even more.

I personally only ever go to PS if I need to do serious retouching that involves layers or working on multiple image blending (panoramas, HDR etc)
 
Cheers folks,
Thats been a real help.
I am going to have a hunt for some LR2 tutorials and see how I get on with it.
Thanks again for your help.
 
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