Quote Originally Posted by Anbesol
If something in an image is not solid pitch black or hot paper white, it is detail. It is some form of detail from a scene captured. Contrast detail is the detail in the relationship between pixels.

So "tonal detail" would be examining a single pixel and noticing wether or not it is pitch white/black.

Contrast detail would be examining two pixels and seeing if they differ.

At the core, anyway.

On the latter, the Raw is better, particularly if your intention is to raise the lo tones to a much higher tonal range. But on the former, the difference between raw and jpeg is non-existent. (Jpeg doesn't compress anything to solid black or white.
So 'tonal' is either black or white. No grays. Then 'contrast detail' is what is meant by 'dynamic range' - the intensity range where significant detail can be distiguished (usually 8 or more levels within one stop). - Terry