RAW... what's the big deal?

[TexKen]

I recently had my first experience shooting RAW. So I forced my way through ACR for the conversion and it went fine. I was happy with the results. I'm probably convinced that RAW is the way to go for serious shooting assuming a quick workflow isn't required. I just wish I understood better WHY it's better.

Up until this point my (very) basic understanding of RAW was that you could correct things with the RAW file that you simply couldn't once it comes out of the camera as a JPG. I have to admit though, it seems like many of the settings available in ACR, I could have just done in photoshop to the JPG. I'm guessing that I'm wrong on this, but I need someone to explain it or point me to a tutorial that isn't written by a photo-rocket scientist.


ACR has white balance settings; Photoshop has color cast removal that seems to have you do the same thing (highlight something in the picture that should be ****e, black or gray)
ACR has brightness; Photoshop has brightness
ACR has saturation; photoshop has saturation
ACR has fill light; photoshop has brighten shadows
ACR has sharpening; photoshop of course has sharpeningI see that ACR has exposure and Photoshop doesn't and there are a few others, but what's the big deal? Again, I'm sure there is one, I just don't understand it.

Thanks for reading.

[S.Horton]

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/raw-vs-jpeg/
http://photodoto.com/index.php/2006/08/03/raw-vs-jpg-print-shootout/
http://www.slrcamerainfo.com/article.php?filename=Dynamic-Range-and-Clipping

;)

[mbellot]

For me, the main advantage of RAW is white balance. I shoot stage/dance and its amazing how much the background colors can mess with AWB and the audience wouldn't take too kindly if I ran up at the start of each performance with a gray card... :p

AFAIK, "color correction" on an 8 bit JPG can be OK if you're not far off, but I've had entire series of shots that need to go from 6000k to 3600k because of strong blue background lighting.

FWIW - I despise ACR. I've never had good luck with it. DPP provides really nice output, but the work flow is painful at best if you're trying to edit more than a couple photos at a time. I finally settled on Bibble Pro. Its not perfect (mostly stability issues), but I find it works best for me.

RAW is definitely not for everyone, its just another option thats there if you want or need it.

[cdifoto]

Usually it has more do to with the extent to & ease with which you can make changes than the actual changes you can make.

[deadpass]

I don't use ACR, i use lightroom and my workflow take the same amount of time, if not less, with RAW than jpeg

[Chris1le]

I don't use ACR, i use lightroom and my workflow take the same amount of time, if not less, with RAW than jpeg

You do use ACR. ;)

[tim]

With RAW you can work in batches, with JPG you work on images sequentially. WAY slower.

[tzalman]

Read this, it is a better and fuller explanation then anyone has the time to give you here:http://ronbigelow.com/articles/raw/raw.htm

[TexKen]

Thanks everyone... I have some reading to do.

[Turbojacket]

Basically the camera doesn't pre process RAW files when it writes them to your card. JPEGs, by nature, are compressed already when they come out of the camera. This reduces your color information when you go to tweaking on the image in something like Adobe Lightroom. JPEG basically already "assumes" your white balance, throws away color information that you could use to perfect your adjustments in lightroom, and overall limits your editing ability before you even unload the images to your computer. Shooting JPEG=Blah. And PS, Lightroom is a nice tool. I use it for all my processing in RAW, but RAW is all that I shoot.