Quit Shooting RAW Now That JPG's Can Open In ACR?

I am one of the strongest advocates of shooting in RAW, primarily because it's the file a buyer wants if he buys your work. On the other hand, I don't sell a lot of shots, and now with the 40D and 12+Mb RAW files and only 150 on a 2Gb card, and the ability of CS3 to open JPG files in ACR, I wonder if it isn't worth it to shoot in JPG again? What do you all think about that? For me, I found it much easier to adjust colors and lightness in ACR with it's nice sliders and everything right handy, than to edit a jpg using menu dropdowns or flyouts. Just took more time. And it sure would be icing on the cake to have a huge buffer again.

Still, I have only opened a jpg in ACR tonight, haven't shot any JPG's in my camera yet, and don't know whether editing the jpg's will add more, less or the same amount of noise as editing a RAW, which has generally been less noise from adjustments. It's something I will be ding tomorrow for sure though.

Also, I just upgraded to CS3, so this may be old stuff to you, but to me it's like someone turned on the lights just now.

There are always trade-offs and this is no exception (jpeg vs raw).

Yes, you can adjust things in ACR and Lightroom in a jpeg file. But you do not have the same amount of adjustment or control, simply because some parameters have already been adjusted by the camera.

Personally I wouldn't be tempted to deviate from RAW because I don't want to lose anything I worked so hard to get in the camera. I can't think of anything that the camera can do better than I when it comes to judgement.

Need more convincing? Read this:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=474927

ummmm...buy a bigger CF card...they are relatively cheap these days.... problem solved.

Editing JPEGS in ACR is simply a convenience. It gains you none of the real benefits of using RAW (i.e. having all the image data to work from - a JPEG has already discarded a lot of data that the camera recorded).

When I upgraded to my d300, I balked at the fact that I was only gonna be able to fit 151 RAW images on a single 4gb CF card.

So I bought more cards and a camera strap that comes with a card-holder.

In addition to all of the same old [valid] reasons we hear, there's one that no one ever really mentions, and yet it's the biggest reason I shoot RAW.

It forces me to work

When I shot JPG, I would often just offload the photos and never deal with them again until it came time to maybe print one or put it up on my photoblog. By shooting RAW AdobeRGB, I'm forced to actually work on them.

In other words, I go through each and every photo and make sure I process/develop it. Even if it's something as simple as adjusting the white balance and fixing the contrast a little, I'm forced to go through every single photo I took and take care of it. I may grumble because it turns even the simplest shoot into an endeavor in post-, but in the long run I know it's making me a better photographer and improving my work ethic. So I keep at it.

canonloader wrote in post #5199610
I am one of the strongest advocates of shooting in RAW, primarily because it's the file a buyer wants if he buys your work.

Please tell me that is just not worded correctly. You don't actually sell RAW images do you. I have never had a customer ask for the RAW file and I have sold alot of images.

I agree with others here, get more CF space. Storage, even for the computer, is so cheap these days it is a non issue. Adobe has given us the illusion that by opening a JPG in ACR we are gaining all of the benefits of shooting RAW (remember I said illusion). That JPG file from your camera has already lost alot of data by being processed in-camera.

This option is certainly a nice one but it is not going to stop me from shooting RAW when the time is appropriate. There are still times when I shoot JPG. In most cases if these files do need any editing it can be accomplished inside of photoshop without the requirement for ACR.

It really boils down to a personal preference. For the average photographer shooting JPG and then having this option in their back pocket will suffice. However, if you want to get the absolute most data available to you in post processing shoot RAW. Only you can really decided what works best for your way of shooting.

RAW gives me more latitude to recover if I make a mistake, even if it's as simple a mistake as white balance. Recovering a JPG doesn't work so well. RAW is the better choice for me.

OK, I have all the space I need, for the next year, maybe two, at least. I have 20Gb of cards, more actually, counting old cards. I know, and mostly agree with all the arguments posted here so far, hell, I've used them all myself in the past.

Now, who has actually opened a camera jpg in ACR and seriously played with it? I admit, I have not done many yet, but it appears I can adjust white balance, exposure, blacks, fill, in short, every slider seems to work exactly as it did on a real cr2 file. The difference is 10Mb. each. Which, as I said, is really a non-issue. My original reason for starting to shoot in RAW, [and I have said, I will never go back] was because I did not like what the camera was doing to the jpg images. Too much blue, not enough red, that sort of thing, and especially less control over white balance without a huge amount of work on a jpg I didn't really have any experience with.

But that was then, this is now, CS3 is now. I can't believe the control I have over a jpg in CS3. I think the biggest problem I have with shooting just as a jpg is the deterioration over time, of the jpg, every time it is opened and saved. Saving it as a tiff or some other lossless file defeats the whole purpose.

I have not sold any original files yet, only prints. But I know a couple of pro's here in my little town who work for one of the papers, and who use "company" Mk3's and are "ordered" to shoot in RAW only. That's what their image people want. I have also been contacted by a big company in NYC who was asking about buying the rights and files to some of my Bald Eagle shots, the first question they asked when they called me was did I have RAW files of them all. Even the one eagle I got into the first POTN book, the info said if I wanted help or to let the editors work on the image to get the best out of it, I needed the RAW. So I'm curious, what customer has not asked for the files?

I routinely open JPEGS in Camera RAW for further editing. I started out as a retoucher before becoming interested in photography and I frequent a number of sites that specialize in retouching to keep up to date with the advances in technology so I'm reasonably aware of the benefits of editing JPEGS in ACR.

While you can edit the parameters you mentioned in ACR, you are somewhat limited in what you can do compared to a RAW file. For example, the WB slider for a JPEG only goes from -100 to 100, so you have much less latitude than you would with a RAW image.

The real advantage of opening a JPEG in ACR lies in the ability to edit the file in 16-bit format; reducing the possiblity of posterization/banding. Also, it enables you to open the file into Photoshop as a Smart Object, where you can apply several filters that don't exist as adjustment layers, on seperate layers that you can always go back and change.(From ACR, press the SHIFT button and the Open Image button changes to the Open Object button).

If you simply open a JPEG directly in Photoshop and add Shadow/Highlights for example, you are editing destructively since S/H is non an adjustment layer. Whereas by adding Shadow/Highlights with a Smart Filter you are editing non-destructively, and you can always revisit the filter if you change your mind about something.

canonloader wrote in post #5201495
snip....

Now, who has actually opened a camera jpg in ACR and seriously played with it? I admit, I have not done many yet, but it appears I can adjust white balance, exposure, blacks, fill, in short, every slider seems to work exactly as it did on a real cr2 file. The difference is 10Mb. each. Which, as I said, is really a non-issue. My original reason for starting to shoot in RAW, [and I have said, I will never go back] was because I did not like what the camera was doing to the jpg images. Too much blue, not enough red, that sort of thing, and especially less control over white balance without a huge amount of work on a jpg I didn't really have any experience with.

A max jpg from my 20D is about 2,754 KB. The exact same shot with the jpg extracted from the 12-bit RAW "negative" is 4,315 KB which is 1.57X larger.
Whatever info is in my from-RAW-jpg is a lot more detailed than what comes right out of the camera. Why throw those extra bits away?
And if you think you can't see the difference in a web sized image, there are some examples on page 2, post #58, that illustrate easily seen information loss in a web jpeg derived from a RAW file & one shot in the camera.
You will see even more detail if you compare large 300ppi prints.

My wedding customers don't care for my RAW files That's ONE customer/genre who does not request those particular files.

RAW has several distinct advantages.

1. You can adjust pretty much every parameter in the image from color temp to hue/saturation to contrast using raw without ever damaging the original image information.

2. More information means more detail caught in the image. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe .jpeg actually tosses away some tonal information in the process? I could be in error on this one, but it was what I was taught. RAW is a lossless file format - jpeg is not.

3. Does not degrade like a jpeg image would with heavy manipulation.

4. RAW allows me more creative control - I can shoot an image, process it for shadow detail, then reopen again, process it for highlight detail, then once more for midtones, then layer all of them in photoshop and mask accordingly. It's really quite nice.

If you do a lot of heavy manipulating of jpeg images you're bound to get a lot of jpeg artifacts - which you might have to spend time clone stamping out.

OK, I'm convinced. thanks Frank, that made it obvious. But I am still going to edit jpg's in ACR, I just love those sliders and it seemed to have added a LOT less noise. I do need more time with it though.

This is something I will be trying soon. My CS3 books just came the other day, and CS3 is only a week old for me, sooo.....

The biggest disadvantage of working with JPEG files is the fact that there is only 8 bits of data so with one bit lost to mathematical rounding in Photoshop the file is now down to 7 bits. Converting the JPEG to 16 bit for processing in PS may reduce the rounding loss but the resultant image will still be subject to more posterization in the gradiant areas than if the image had been processed RAW to 16 bit to JPEG.

I'm a big supporter of RAW and that is the way I shoot

I have to laugh hard when I hear JPG being put down a bit too hard.

Most news PJs shoots RAW+JPG but send their JPGs out to the outlets and only call upon the RAW files if something i terribly wrong with the JPGs. They still keep the RAW files for archival purposes but the main point is that the JPG gets passed on.

Of course for news stuff tweaking things out too much is typically looked down upon and can lead to the authenticity of the pic begin questioned..

The WB change in ACR for JPGs is really good.
Then again fixing JPGs WB issues was doable in PS before ACR opened JPGs (this just made it easier).

One of the strong reasons I saw people use RAW for was highlight recovery.

this just made it easier Eggsakly.

So I have been working at my desk and shooting out my window today, [It's nasty and gray out, but we missed the 8" of snow they called for today]. Anyway, I am pretty darn happy with everything ACR does to the camera shot JPG Large files. I think it may have even cut my workflow some.

These are two shots from a few minutes ago and I can't honestly say I could have made them look any better on a monitor if I had shot them in RAW.

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