Why RAW over JPEG?

[pphoto]

First of all, hello to everyone. I'm new and wanted to introduce my self, I'm a 28 year old wedding journalist from PA.

OK,...

All I shoot is the high jpg option. Has anyone found that it is better in any way to shoot the RAW mode?

I've tried both ways and it seems to be the same visually?
What's the difference? Why RAW? Is there more room for correction? Are the images different? Perhaps I wasn't doing something correctly? Help?!

[Stephane]

Well for me just to be able to change the white balance afterward i already a great advantage to .jpg. Olso i use Pekka's linear actions to make sure my images are as sharp as possible and i don't think they work on jpg's for what i know..... I am pretty sure that raw as much more informations to give you the option to do color changes and things like that. I am sure a post will follow shortly about the mathematical reasons.

I have a gallery if you want to see some pictures i took, i haven't updated it in a while but i am going to Maui for 6 days very soon exclusivly for photography and i made sure to bring a little portable 20gig hard drive with me like this i am sure to have enough space to shoot as much as i want only in raw :-)

Www.pbase.com/stephcout

I hope this helps you a little bit.

Good luck!

[Wildman]

I use Canon RAW format all the time because it gives me a lot of flexibility. The additional file size (over JPG) is worthwhile. I generally use the "as shot" option when converting the files, but there are enough pictures saved by changing white balance, sharpness or saturation to make it a good choice.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

pphhoto,

You find endless forum inches devoted to this topic - many of them not very helpful. It can get a bit like the PC vs Mac religious wars. :)

Here's some basic facts:

- If you shoot raw, you are capturing colour data at 12-bit per RGB channel.

- If you shoot in-camera JPG, you are only storing 8-bit of the 12-bits that the sensor can record. So you are throwing a chunk of data away before you start.

- When a JPG is saved, the image data are compressed. This compression is not lossless - more data are thrown away.

- JPG images can be edited without further processing.

- Raw images must be converted (to TIFF, JPG...) before they can be edited.

- When you shoot JPG. settings for white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpness are applied in-camera and cannot be adjusted

- When you shoot raw, settings for white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpness are recorded, but can be changed at time of conversion from raw format. So there is much more flexibility to fix errors.

- Shooting JPG produces much smaller files than raw, so it is quicker to take pictures with JPG.

- Raw images can be converted to linear TIFF. This means no settings other than white balance are applied. The image is very dark and must be adjusted to compensate, but this gives the "cleanest" image data upon which to work in Photoshop (or your favourite editor).

- Whether to edit in 8- or 16-bit is a choice that can be made with raw. The benefits are not clear cut. The additional data in 16-bit images give 4096 levels per colour to work with compared to 256 in 8-bit, but this won't make a difference every time. The chances of posterisation are increased with 8-bit images, but not every image will suffer. Some actions (e.g., conversion to lab mode) are much more destructive to 8-bit data than 16-bit.

- Processing raw images will add to your workflow, but not necessarily to your workload. An automated workflow for raw is perfectly possible. For instance, I always shoot raw with my . This is a summary of my workflow:

- Load CF card to reader
- Start Downloader (some people have managed to get DL to start automatically on XP - I couldn't make it work)
- DL then copies all images from card to hard disk into data related folders, and starts BreezeBrowser
- Review images in BB and discard unwanted shots
- Start Photoshop and PSSB (a PS scripting tool)
- Select script and images for processing
- Executing script and go away while each raw file is sent to YarcPlus for conversion, the converted file passed to Photoshop for processing with a custom action, and saved.

Apart from image review time, this process takes less than 5 minutes of my time.

In theory, shooting raw gives the best possible image quality. In practice, as you have noticed, there is not a difference on every image. In theory, if you never make mistakes, JPG will give acceptable images. In practice, raw gives the best chances of fixing a problem image.

Regards,

[anthony]

>>- When you shoot raw, settings for white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpness are recorded, but can be changed at time of conversion from raw format. So there is much more flexibility to fix errors.

Thank you for the detailed description. At what point in the process do you do the above? Do you do that if you see a problem in BreezeBrowser as a separate issue? How is it done? Do you open the image in PhotoShop and make the adjustments there and then do the rest of the process?

[Roger_Cavanagh]

anthony wrote:
>>- When you shoot raw, settings for white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpness are recorded, but can be changed at time of conversion from raw format. So there is much more flexibility to fix errors.

Thank you for the detailed description. At what point in the process do you do the above? Do you do that if you see a problem in BreezeBrowser as a separate issue? How is it done? Do you open the image in PhotoShop and make the adjustments there and then do the rest of the process?

Anthony,

Generally, speaking I do most of my adjustments in Photoshop. I use my own variation of LinearSharpen 342, and do any further editing on the PSD file that is created by that action. Occasionally, I'll reconvert an image, usually because I want to change the degree of sharpening applied in LSM. My workflow deletes the linear TIFF after LS has done its stuff - I figure its less hassle to reconvert than keep a whole bunch of TIFF files around that may never get touched again.

It depends how fussy I want to be. I can set up the script so that a PSD file, a high quality JPG, a resized JPG for web use and a thumbnail are all created in one stream.

Regards,

[Amazer]

Hi Stephane,

Can I ask you a couple of questions? I use an S45 and am still trying to figure out the relationships between compression/image size/file formats/etc... I'll get there eventually, thanks to the forums (this is the one I like best) I have visited and to people like you and Pekka.

Olso i use Pekka's linear actions to make sure my images are as sharp as possible and i don't think they work on jpg's for what i know..... I am pretty sure that raw as much more informations to give you the option to do color changes and things like that. I am sure a post will follow shortly about the mathematical reasons.


Could you please elaborate on "Pekka's linear actions."
I have seen some of his pictures and they are awesome.

I normally shoot in superfine/max.size but I would like to experiment with RAW on my Canon. Is it true that not all RAWs are created equal?
What is the best RAW-conversion software for the S45 output?
Is it true that the Canon software bundled with the camera sucks?

Thanks
Ian