Raw vs Jpeg

oblivion

oblivion

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Richard
Edit My Images
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I understand the concept behind the two and don't require any explanation there. I'm a novice on photoshop but having opened up my saved jpeg files it appears I can change the look of the picture taken till my hearts desire. My question is simply how is this going to be different if I start saving in Raw? How much more can you do that you can't already with a jpeg?
 
Put very simply, when you shoot a jpeg on your camera, decisions about White balance, exposure, sharpness, contrast etc. are permanently written to the jpeg and cannot be undone. Within photo editing software you can to a certain extent adjust the colours and exposure slightly, but you are then degrading further an already lossy saved format.

The beauty of Raw, is that the decisions of white balance, exposure etc. can be changed in the Raw editor at 12 bit or 14 bit level getting the best possible quality from the image. Also, as the Raw format hasn't been processed by the camera, you retain as much detail as the sensor was able to capture at shooting time, and leave you totally in charge of how you want it to look. As you are dealing with an image with a much greater colour depth, the amount of headroom you have for over or under exposure is also greatly increased over jpeg.
 
Thanks for that. It made perfect sense. I had been looking online for a simple answer for the last 2 weeks but every site I found just kept telling me the basics of raw. Very frustrating but you have cleared this up for me so thank-you.
 
Sootchucker said:
Put very simply, when you shoot a jpeg on your camera, decisions about White balance, exposure, sharpness, contrast etc. are permanently written to the jpeg and cannot be undone. Within photo editing software you can to a certain extent adjust the colours and exposure slightly, but you are then degrading further an already lossy saved format.

The beauty of Raw, is that the decisions of white balance, exposure etc. can be changed in the Raw editor at 12 bit or 14 bit level getting the best possible quality from the image. Also, as the Raw format hasn't been processed by the camera, you retain as much detail as the sensor was able to capture at shooting time, and leave you totally in charge of how you want it to look. As you are dealing with an image with a much greater colour depth, the amount of headroom you have for over or under exposure is also greatly increased over jpeg.
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I agree with everything Andrew has said here. Basically, for absolutely the best results, and also for the best chance of recovering from a wrong exposure, use RAW. However ...

There are some downsides, and good enough may be good enough.

To get even better results out of RAW than you could out of a JPEG you have to be able to process the RAW image at least as well as the camera does. This will need some time for learning and practice, and some people may simply not have a talent for the required processing.

If you shoot JPEG but also post process your images, you can increase your flexibility by minimising what the camera does to the image in-camera. For example, I shoot JPEG only and operate with Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation and Noise Reduction all turned down to the minimum, and every auto-helpful this and auto-optimise that turned off. What this won't do is alter the fact that JPEG is only using 8-bit encoding rather than the 12 or more that RAW uses. If you use JPEG that extra information is lost, permanently.

You may well be able to get results that are good enough for your purposes with JPEG. To some extent that may depend on the type of photos, how large you want to view or print them, and how often and by how much you misjudge the exposure, and how much you would like/need to be able to recover from such misjudgements. It may also depend on what processing software you have available and how good you are with it. It can be surprising just how much you can manipulate a JPEG before it falls apart (but with RAW you would be able to manipulate it even more). I think it is down to you to experiment and find whether you are more comfortable/satisfied with using JPEG or RAW and the results you can get from them. Or simply use JPEG and see how far you can get. If you need to go further, get into RAW. If not, don't bother.

Using RAW will slow your camera down and/or shorten the number of shots you can take in a burst. This might or might not matter to you. I take a lot of shots in a relatively short period and the delays I get while RAWs are being cleared out of the buffer makes my camera operate too slowly for my technique, so I will lose shots. So, I use JPEG, and lose some potential for quality and recovery, but for me I gain more by getting an operating speed that lets me work as I want. The quality I get from JPEG is good enough for my purposes (at the moment. That might change over time.)
 
Ive only recently started shooting in RAW and while I have only been using Nikon's own software to edit things the additional edit options give me more control.

Which for me as a beginner are helpful as some poor shots can be improved easier.
 
I switched to RAW this year. Since going digital back in 2007 or whatever, I always shot jpeg, put off by how complicated everyone made RAW sound.

First time I tried it, I was actually surprised by how the images were. They really weren't a whole lot different from the jpegs I was used to. In fact, as a taster, I was shooting RAW and JPEG, so I could make direct comparisons, and in some instances I found the RAW files more vibrant, even if the colours a little flatter.

I wouldn't go back now. The control you have over exposure is a massive plus. Whilst it's still always preferable to get it right in the first place, it's surprising the quality you can sometimes retain when you screw up.

Get the white balance right (I love not having to tinker with this in camera), choose a level of saturation....and once done...in my experience, you're left with an image better than the Jpegs the camera would produce before you've even started processing.

Admittedly though, I'm still learning. It's easy to oversaturate, get the white balance a little off, etc, and generally start with an image that doesn't look natural.....but hey, if you're gonna start learning you may as well start now.
 
Understand bit depth
Understand dynamic range
Understand white balance


Then understand what jpg does to the above and then choose if shooting RAW is for you.
 
One other good reason to use raw is you always have the original every time you make a change to the jpeg file you lose another stage of quality as its a "lossy" format
 
tijuana taxi said:
One other good reason to use raw is you always have the original every time you make a change to the jpeg file you lose another stage of quality as its a "lossy" format
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Very true, but you can minimise the impact of saving changes by keeping the original files as masters, and working off copies. You can always make another working copy if you need to. I shoot raw now, and have done for years, but this worked for me when I was still shooting JPEGs. My Dimage 7i did have raw capability, but you could go and make coffee while it wrote the file to the memory card!
 
Just to clarify (again) it's raw not RAW, the term simply refers to the fact that it's the raw data produced by the camera, it's not a file type the way JPEG or TIFF are.
 
I used to shoot in RAW but nowadays use JPEG virtually all the time.

And almost all my pics from the last 2 years or so are taken in JPEG format.

I NEVER work on my source JPEGs ( the ones out of the camera) but always convert them to TIFF files which are lossless.

I do this because they are edited several times (Neat Image, Serif editing software etc).

And I CAN alter the sharpness, contrast, brightness, saturation, WB in either DPP or my editing software.

In other words JPEGs work for me - if they don't for you then use RAW.

And you DON'T need special software to process RAW files - simply use the supplied software (in my case DPP) to convert them to TIFF or JPEG files and edit them in whatever editing programs you have.

.
 
So if shooting raw do you still bother with camera settings such as iso, dof, WB etc as surely this is pointless?.....logic tells me to still make adjustments as a point of reference but would raw show this?

Only just getting me head around DSLR and trying to understand photoshop is a nightmare!! I'm used to using windows paint for the past 15 years.

Think I'll stick with jpeg for now until I get a little more brave
 
oblivion said:
So if shooting raw do you still bother with camera settings such as iso, dof, WB etc as surely this is pointless?.....logic tells me to still make adjustments as a point of reference but would raw show this?

Only just getting me head around DSLR and trying to understand photoshop is a nightmare!! I'm used to using windows paint for the past 15 years.

Think I'll stick with jpeg for now until I get a little more brave
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DOF isn't to do with raw, but in the other points, in reality, setting an incorrect wb value isn't as much of an issue as with JPEG but for me, i prefer to set it up right for the shoot do I know what I'm seeing on the lcd is pretty much what i'll get when the image is loaded into software.

Just enjoy taking photos and use the technology that's on your camera to help you out :)
 
I have used RAW and Jpeg. Currently using Jpeg as thats what our course instructor has asked for. I like RAW though and then Lightroom!
 
oblivion said:
So if shooting raw do you still bother with camera settings such as iso, dof, WB etc as surely this is pointless?.....logic tells me to still make adjustments as a point of reference but would raw show this?
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You can forget about white balance. Which is great because I always used to forget to change it anyway - I find it a pain. You can still set it in camera and it will retain that information, giving you the choice to use the WB you shot on.

The rest you still have to set. I'm a RAW novice by any standard, but I find you generally have more to play with on lower ISO, as the more you mess PP, the more noise you generate. But the ability to adjust exposure is a huge relief at times. It's not a miracle working, but as above, in times of need....it can come to the rescue.

At the end of the day, you still want to get your images as good as you can get straight out of the camera...using RAW just gives you a bit more tweaking potential.
 
oblivion said:
So if shooting raw do you still bother with camera settings such as iso, dof, WB etc as surely this is pointless?.....logic tells me to still make adjustments as a point of reference but would raw show this?

Only just getting me head around DSLR and trying to understand photoshop is a nightmare!! I'm used to using windows paint for the past 15 years.

Think I'll stick with jpeg for now until I get a little more brave
Click to expand...

You can't change the ISO in post processing, although you can make some adjustments to the exposure. Raw gives you more latitude here, but it's still limited, and it's far better to use the correct ISO in the first place. DOF is determined by the aperture and the sensor size, it has nothing to do with the camera settings and you can change it after you've taken the shot.

WB is different. You can adjust it as much as you like in raw using the pre-sets, white point picker or temperature settings in your software. A lot of us do just leave the camera on Auto WB and adjust it like this afterwards, but you have the option of pre-selecting it or using a custom setting. The biggest advantage I can think of is that it's easy to batch adjust a range of photographs taken in the same conditions if they all start with the same WB setting. You can adjust WB in JPEG too, but I find that it doesn't work as well for me, and the process is clumsy- you have to adjust the three colour channels individually.

Others may well disagree. Just experiment and use what works best for you. You don't have to use Photoshop either, if you're not comfortable with it, but you'll get the hang of it. I did, and I'm not the most "techy" guy around!
 
tijuana taxi said:
One other good reason to use raw is you always have the original every time you make a change to the jpeg file you lose another stage of quality as its a "lossy" format
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Sorry, not quite true. It's the whole save;open;save cycle that can cause problems - simply making changes between opening and saving is just that, making changes. Try it. keep the JPEG quality as high as possible and there's very little degradation with each cycle, although it does add up and will eventually be a problem.
 
Thanks for all your comments on this subject. I understand totally the requirement to change a good picture into a better picture, but for now I will stay with jpeg as I need to establish the fundamental basics of making a better picture just using the DSLR settings the camera comes with. Otherwise I have just spent £600 on a camera just to let the pc software make it look good ! This (for me) defeats the object of spending so much on the camera in the first place. I hope that makes sense and I'm not mocking anyone that uses raw method, but when I can start taking really good pics using the camera I think I will naturally want to move onto using raw to make the "better pics, better". God I sound like my old school teacher telling me to try something again in a different way!
 
oblivion said:
Otherwise I have just spent £600 on a camera just to let the pc software make it look good !
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That makes no sense, by shooting JPG you are just letting the camera software make it look good. Does it matter where the software is?

Shooting JPG to start makes a lot of sense as you have to get more things right in camera but don't mistake it for what you've said above.
 
You do have another option here. Most (all?) DSLRs let you capture a raw image and a JPEG at the same time. Memory cards are pretty cheap. Why not try that, play around with the raw images, and see how they compare with the JPEGs?
 
Whipsnade Zoo last year - we went on a foggy morning which was supposed to lift. . . . and it didn't, nearly binned all the shot's as EVERYTHING was grey and flat

Example (all the shots looked like this):
1042902983_J54df-L-3.jpg


Luckily I shoot everything in RAW, so with probably less than 2 seconds I moved a couple of sliders and rather than bin the shots I ended up with some 'okay' keepers.

1042903364_25pbt-L-3.jpg


One more because it's sooo cute:
1042879323_ENNTy-L-3.jpg


So - any reason to shoot RAW over JPG. . . . . hell yes

.DAVID.
 
David Stallard said:
Whipsnade Zoo last year - we went on a foggy morning which was supposed to lift. . . . and it didn't, nearly binned all the shot's as EVERYTHING was grey and flat

Luckily I shoot everything in RAW, so with probably less than 2 seconds I moved a couple of sliders and rather than bin the shots I ended up with some 'okay' keepers.

So - any reason to shoot RAW over JPG. . . . . hell yes

.DAVID.
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Hmm... I think there are advantages (and disadvantages) to shooting RAW rather than JPG, but I'm not convinced this sort of adjustment is one of them as it seems to me you can get the same effect easily enough starting from a JPEG, using Exposure, Gamma and Curves.

EDIT: In fact, I'm not convinced you need Curves. Perhaps just Exposure and Gamma.

EDIT2: Correction. It seems to me you can get almost the same effect easily enough starting from a JPEG, using Exposure, Gamma and (or perhaps not) Curves. However, the zebras' noses convince me that you have a point. Very instructive.
 
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How are you posting your pics on here? I have some stored in picasa but if I try and use the link to show them here it's on a secure server which I doubt would show up
 
David Stallard said:
Whipsnade Zoo last year - we went on a foggy morning which was supposed to lift. . . . and it didn't, nearly binned all the shot's as EVERYTHING was grey and flat

Example (all the shots looked like this):
1042902983_J54df-L-3.jpg


Luckily I shoot everything in RAW, so with probably less than 2 seconds I moved a couple of sliders and rather than bin the shots I ended up with some 'okay' keepers.

1042903364_25pbt-L-3.jpg


One more because it's sooo cute:
1042879323_ENNTy-L-3.jpg


So - any reason to shoot RAW over JPG. . . . . hell yes

.DAVID.
Click to expand...

TBH you'd get exactly the same result from JPEGs so it doesn't really prove anything.

.
 
Nawty said:
That makes no sense, by shooting JPG you are just letting the camera software make it look good. Does it matter where the software is?
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That's not entirely accurate though. Well, you're leaving out an important element - you. Instead of the camera making the decisions, shooting in raw gives you greater control over your image further down the line.

Think of it like this: shooting JPG is like shooting film, and then taking it to Snappy Snaps and having them do a one hour developing job for you. Shooting raw is like taking your negatives and developing your photos in your own darkroom. Each one suits a purpose, it ultimately comes down to which one you personally want.
 
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petersmart said:
TBH you'd get exactly the same result from JPEGs so it doesn't really prove anything.
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That's what I thought initially, but I'm not convinced of that yet for this particular image, hence my amendment to "almost". One can't post anything of course because David has "No Edits" set, but in the privacy of your own home you might want to start with the dull version and try and match the other one, without blowing the light patches on the muzzles of the parent and child on the left.
 
GardenersHelper said:
but in the privacy of your own home you might want to start with the dull version and try and match the other one, without blowing the light patches on the muzzles of the parent and child on the left.
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You won't be able to repliciate it exactly because you are working with a pretty low res JPEG, which has posterised in the highlights - given a full res file I'm sure you get get as close as not to notice.

I would think that the original picture looks a lot like it does (i.e. flat and muted) partly because it was shot in RAW, you need to apply some PP to give a bit of life to any RAW picture. I would imagine that most people who work with RAW exclusively will have a set of default input settings for curves / saturation / contrast etc. to give a baseline starting point so would never see an example like the one above.
 
irelanst said:
You won't be able to repliciate it exactly because you are working with a pretty low res JPEG, which has posterised in the highlights - given a full res file I'm sure you get get as close as not to notice.
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Not sure about that. I don't think the highlights are blown/posterised in the dull JPEG - it has a long, flat tail at the top. I think it was my PP that blew the highlights.

Thought about it some more and tried again. I now think that Exposure + Curves can do the job for this image.

But that is for this particular image. I believe there will be other cases that can be recovered from RAW but not from JPEG (for example where the in-camera JPEG has, as you suggested, blown/posterised highlights that still have differentiated values in the RAW version).
 
You should always get the picture as best as you can in camera regardless of what format the image is saved in. Where RAW gets a bad rep is when people start saying you don't have to worry about this or that when taking the pictures. Yes, the WB can be easily altered with no loss of quality prior to saving in another format, but that isn't reason not to set the correct WB. If nothing else it's a setting you don't need to change during the conversion. Yes, you can recover detail that may have been lost in an overexposed Jpeg, but again, that doesn't mean you shouldn't get the exposure correct.

And just because you shoot in RAW doesn't mean that every image needs editing, not only because not every image needs converting (unless you are the best Photographer in the World where every image is a keeper ;)), but also because if it looks good and doesn't need editing then it's just a direct convert and save. Most images from digital cameras require some sharpening and cropping at the very least, and if you're doing that, then converting the RAW file is not much more editing, and that is only if it needs more editing.

Why shoot RAW then? For me it is because that is the way to get maximum quality image out of the camera. It allows me to edit, should I need to, with the highest quality starting point which allows for the most versatility for the least degradation of any editing I do. You can edit a Jpeg, but it may have already been sharpened (with no regard for the subject), the colours and WB set, contrast setting applied, a 12bit or 14bit file converted to 8bit and it has also been compressed. Talking of the bit rate, an 8bit image gives adjustment over 256 levels, whereas a 12bit image gives 4096 levels. Yes, it may eventually end up as an 8bit image, but any changes in exposure, colour or WB will give smoother results prior to the change to an 8bit image.

Shoot with whatever you're comfortable with, but know the pluses and minuses for either format.

And don't forget you have RAW + Jpeg. ;) That's what I'm doing for my Canon S95 at the moment to see if there is a benefit to just shooting RAW. :)
 
oblivion said:
Thanks for all your comments on this subject. I understand totally the requirement to change a good picture into a better picture, but for now I will stay with jpeg as I need to establish the fundamental basics of making a better picture just using the DSLR settings the camera comes with. Otherwise I have just spent £600 on a camera just to let the pc software make it look good ! This (for me) defeats the object of spending so much on the camera in the first place. I hope that makes sense and I'm not mocking anyone that uses raw method, but when I can start taking really good pics using the camera I think I will naturally want to move onto using raw to make the "better pics, better". God I sound like my old school teacher telling me to try something again in a different way!
Click to expand...

This doesn't make any sense? Hey shoot and store in which ever format you'd like I really don't care but whether you set the settings right in the camera and then store in JPEG or raw you still need to get the settings right in the camera. You do not have to change every raw image. I've got loads that I use straight out of camera. If it was me, I'd rather have the full negative to keep instead of throwing it away.
 
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