RAW or JPG

[Martin Brazil]

I have had my camera set to save the images as JPGs at their highest quality compression ratio 1:4 and largest size 3,872 x 2,592 pixels.
A basic question I know but, will I have an improvement in quality if I set the camera to save as RAW files ?

[Frog]

If you use jpeg, every time you save the image there will be a decrease in quality.
If you use raw, you will always have the original to process as you want/need with a greater latitude in fine tuninig.
There has been a recent thread on raw vs. jpeg in this help forum.
Welcome to the forums.

[Martin Brazil]

Thanks very much Frog.
I noticed that even saving a touched up jpeg at highest quality in photoshop it was much smaller than the original. But you say you can touch up the original and keep the original quality with a RAW file. Very interesting. I guess you must lose quality when you finally convert the RAW to jpeg.
How do you work yourself Frog, do you shoot with raw ? Do you store your images in raw ? Do professionals even bother to convert into jpeg when they sell pictures or do they trade them in the raw format ?
I'll have a search for the old thread and see how many further questions that leaves me with. Thanks again Frog.

[Frog]

Here it is Shooting in RAW

[Didache]

Basically it works like this: when a camera takes an image it can do one of two things:

a) it can simply store all the information from the sensor in a completely unprocessed form. This is a RAW file - apparently "Raw" doesn't stand for anything, but in this case you could think of it as the photo in the raw! The advantage of this is that you can do all the processing yourself, including white balance, colour balance, contrast adjustment, and so on. And if you don't like what you make of it, you can start all over again. This makes RAW very powerful in terms of making your picture exactly what you envisioned. The disadvantage (apart from the bigger file size) is that it takes a certain learning curve and amount of work in order to make the picture look its best (in fact, an unprocessed RAW file looks pretty terrible!)

b) it can take the info from the sensor and use its own mini-computer to create a picture "straight from the camera" - the chip will adjust the white balance, colour and contrast, and sharpen the image and then compress it to create a jpeg. The disadvantage is that NONE of these steps are reversible - you may be able to mess with it in photoshop to make it better, but if the camera has settled (for instance) on a certain white balance, there is nothing you can do to reverse it. You are, in other words, reliant on what the camera thinks the picture needs. The advantage is of course that most of the time the camera will do a reasonable job with it.

Taken as a whole, I much prefer RAW for the reasons given above. I only shoot jpeg if I want stuff in a hurry. At one time compressed formats were much more desirable because memory cards were so expensive, but these days there is less need to worry about the size of files for financial reasons alone.

Cheers
Mike

[freygr]

There is a large difference better RAW and JPG.

1) Raw on most camera is 10-12 Bit deep per color (JPG is 8 bits per color)

2) JPG is lossy, RAW is not.

Advantage and Disadvantages of RAW format: 1) greater dynanic range, 2) lossless, 3) White balance and contrast are variables and can be non-destructively changed 4) disadvantages more storage needed.

Advantage and Disadvantages of JPG format: 1) Space saving format 2) lossy file format, 3) any editing is destructive and each save reduces the image quality.

[Canuck935]

Keep in mind if you shoot RAW you need to take the time to PP them to maximize your image quality gains. If you shoot RAW and just batch convert them to JPG you aren't gaining anything and you'll be better off just shooting in JPG to begin with.

[Franglais]

I find that I have to make some technical correction to most of my images. Things like:

- exposure
- contrast
- curves
- colour balance
- saturation
- conversion to black and white with colour filtering (extra green and red, basically)

With RAW I have tremendous control. I can correct the exposure by plus or minus one stop and it looks perfectly natural (plus or minus two stops in some cases).

Try to do the same sort of modifications on a JPG and it quickly looks awful. For me RAW is an indispensable tool to get the image to look right

[Martin Brazil]

Thanks so much guys, now I have a reasonable understanding of the difference between raw and jpeg files. Being even more of an amature with pp I think for the time being I'll stick with the jpeg format. This forum has already given me lots of new things to learn so I think I'll take them one at a time and concentrate on the actual shooting for now.
It was really good of you all to take the time to explain all this. Have a great weekend everyone.
Martin

[Frog]

Let me try to convince you!
Even if you are not proficient with post processing you can open a raw file in jpeg and still have the raw file to work with when you feel comfortable with editing. Also it isn't that difficult. Just open it with whatever editing program you have,(I'm using photoshop elements 6), and start sliding sliders or adjusting white balance to see what you get.
That's pretty much what I do. If you can't get what you want, big deal, no harm, no foul because you still have your original. You don't post raw or print raw. You do what you want with it and then open it in jpeg to post or print.
Then there's tiff which I'm still somewhat confused about but still use it sometimes, but I'll let someone with more knowledge speak to that.
Looked at your gallery and you have some nice photos. Its unfortunate that they'lll degrade over time every time you save them so make sure you always save them with a different name so those originals won't lose any more.

[WesternGuy]

If you are interested in TIF or TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), this link will give you most of the scoop.

WesternGuy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF

[Martin Brazil]

You have me convinced Frog ! I did a little shooting over the weekend and experimented with the RAW format. I also managed to meet up with a photographer friend and she pretty much echoed what you said in your last post. I have not had time to pp any of the images yet but from a common sense point of view it seems that RAW is the way forward.
Thanks for your comments on my gallery Frog and thanks to everyone that took the time to answer.

[Frog]

You are very welcome but the credit goes to many photographers here that I have learned so much from.

[Lori11]

Im glad I read this, I dont have Photoshop, but I am going to try raw anyway. Thanks!

[another view]

I'm a fan of keeping the original RAW file. It's funny (a.k.a. humbling) to see how much your post-processing tastes and skill change over time, so it's good to have the original to go back and do it again later!

Lori, you don't need Photoshop to work with RAW - I for one don't. Your camera should have come with some way to process the RAW file (set the white balance, etc) and then save the image file as a JPEG or TIFF.

From there, open it up in a free program such as IrfanView to re-size, sharpen or anything else. Or, Photoshop Elements which does most of what a photographer would need other than RAW conversion - Elements is under $100.

[Lori11]

Thanks! I already use IrfranView, I will check into Elements too