Anyone go back to JPEG after shooting in RAW?

<p>Awesome help, everyone. I really appreciate it. Bernie, great example. That's a marked difference! I'd love to see more info on this if anyone has a link. I'm in a somewhat unique situation in that the JPEGs I shoot come from my S5s. Right out of camera my JPEGs look a bit like Bernie's RAW example. When I pick up any of my Nikons the images look like Bernie's JPEG example. If Nikons were my primary camera I might be looking at switching to RAW tomorrow.</p>

<p>I'm wondering if what is looking to be true about dynamic range would also be true about posterization and other such issues with smooth, subtle tonal gradations. Do you maintain those advantages when a RAW file is converted as well or do you see a reduction in file quality when converted to JPEG? Again, thanks to everyone for the great information.</p>

<p>A landscape bolted down on a tripod looking for every advantage possible then I'll shoot raw. Everything else jpeg. A little hint. If you don't blow the highlights you won't need to recover them. That's why we have a histogram and bracketing.</p>

<p>However, there is deliberate blowing of highlights (and later recovery) to maximize the amount of information you capture and to minimize noise (exposing to the right). Particularly for weddings, which is what we are talking about, as opposed to landscapes or studio shots, where you have control and time to bracket and analyze the histogram.</p>

<p>Can't bracket a "decisive moment."</p>

<p>Nadine I'm not a wedding photographer but I' hate to depend on raw processing to save my highlights. LR may give a little back but from my experience not enough for comfort.<br>

Marc my attepted decisive moments are shot on B&W film that I develop myself. I have the procesing down and "never" blow the highlights. LOL.</p>

<p>Since switching to RAW about a year ago, I will never go back to shooting JPEG. It gives you the ultimate flexibility as well as being able to shoot in lower light and adjust the exposure in Adobe Bridge (or similar). Also I often use this exposure adjustment to fix up areas that may have been under/over exposed (ie. a blend of 2 or 3 masked photoshop layers, all of the exact same frame but at different exposures configured in Bridge. A kind of manual HDR image, but far more realistic and subtle giving a nice exposure across light and dark. That is something that simply can not be done in JPEG. It means you can capture that decisive moment and not worry *too* much about blown highlights. It may be a little extra work to work with RAW but the benefits for me greatly outweigh the cost.</p>

<p>Michael, when you deliberately blow the highlights, you don't 'save' them in Lightroom. We're not talking about blowing 2 stops or anything. More like 2/3 stop.</p>

<p>Gotcha Nadine. Actually I always push my highlights to the brink and attempt to bring the shadows back a bit if needed. </p>

<p> In cs3, you can batch process a whole series of raw images in a couple of clicks after setting the first image. (starting each series with a wb card is nice) The way you want them batch processed, not Nikon. You might even set an action or two if you find a pattern. I paid good money for that sensor to collect all that information and I dont want much of it thrown away without my input. I'll edit it and then convert to jpeg. Nadine is right, double processing raw for highlight/shadows can be a life saver. No matter how good or careful you are, your camera has a limited range. An extra stop or so can make or break a photo and raw can deliver that. With the recovery(highlight) and shadow sliders it is sweet. Shooting both raw and jpg seems more work to me. But if its ok for your clients who probably dont know any better, then, perhaps you are right. Any extra work and decreased profit isnt necessary. A member at the local club told me after years of fussing in the dark room over miniscle adjustments, he realized he was only doing it for the other club members, the general public never would notice. </p>

<p>I suppose if you work only in JPEG and in JPEG tools then that works for you. For me, I pay the rent with my work so my goals are speed and quality. I can post process a raw file to a final uploaded version to my edtor at a rate of 30 images an hour. My botleneck is in downloading from CF cards to hard drive. Even with a FW reader it's still slow.</p>

<p>Shooting is only part of the overall image. </p>

<p>I dono I shoot Raw + JPEG on my D200 and I love it. Yes its work after the fact, yes there is post process, but you know what, there is Some Post no matter what. So i shoot RAW + Basic JPEG, that way I have the JPEG to be able to go through em on any viewing program and delete junk, but anything worth "framing" i go into the Raw file in PS CS3 do my post then save into a JPEG in a separate folder as "processed" or "the good stuff" :P then if u don't want to waste the space...delete the raw's and jpegs of all the other files... personally I keep em..but thats just me I prefer to have all original files on a seperate dump drive unless something was to happen.</p>

<p>I shot over 4000 pictures in teh Galapagos islands on L-JPEG alone, and did it work out? Yeah. Did I get Great shots? Yeah. Are there some shots which coulda been saved through raw edits that I cant adjust thro just JPEG work in PS CS 3?.... Yeah. So would I do it JPEG alone again?....Probally Not.<br>

<br /> Oh also...Raw produces a larger Pixel image to start with...lets say a Large Jpeg is 10,000px by 7000px (I know its not but i dont remember the exacts....so...lets just say..) When u open a Raw File ....it will be like 12,000px by 8000px .....Larger pictures generally mean more information to work with, and better enlargment capabilities.</p>

<p>After the shoot I did yesterday and the amazing adjustments I was able to make after the shoot, I wouldn't even consider just using jpg only.</p>

<p>Jay, something not discussed is in reference to your lab only printing jpegs. Perhaps look around for another lab. I mostly hand my lab tiff files, from RAW for enlargements, because if you print something around a 24X30 and compare a jpeg to a tiff you will see a considerable differerence in quality.</p>

<p>+1 for Raw and LR.</p>

<blockquote>If you don't blow the highlights you won't need to recover them.</blockquote><p>

 

But that was my point about "correct exposure". The highlights may only be blown in the jpg conversion, but not in the raw sensor data. Which is the more correct exposure? I would say the MOST correct exposure is what the sensor ACTUALLY records.<p>

 

<blockquote>Oh also...Raw produces a larger Pixel image to start with...lets say a Large Jpeg is 10,000px by 7000px (I know its not but i dont remember the exacts....so...lets just say..) When u open a Raw File ....it will be like 12,000px by 8000px</blockquote><p>

 

Sorry, but that's not true. You can convert every pixel into your jpg if you wish.<p>

 

In regards to the 'technical' explanation of what is going on, I will give a short and sweet description: When white balance is done in the raw conversion to jpg, the raw converter / camera will scale the different channels in proportion to the white balance that is desired. Often the red channel pixel value will be scaled by a factor of about 2, and the blue is usually 1.5 or thereabouts. Green stays at unity. So, you can see that a pixel that might register say 200 in the raw sensor data (let's just use 8-bits for simplicity) can be 'doubled' in the conversion to jpg. This will result in a blown value of 255. But the pixel wasn't blown in reality. So, if we do the raw conversion ourselves, we can do the white balance adjustment, still in the correct channel proportions, but without blowing any channel. There are a number of ways of doing this, but the best way is to just pull the exposure slider down in your raw converter and this will reduce the scaling in proportion. But a further point is that different raw converters may not behave in the same way. Lightroom/ACR is much better at scaling back these values than DPP. DPP, in true Canon form, has some other stuff going on behind the scenes that they don't want the consumer to know about and have a chance to decide on its use themselves. Lightroom/ACR seems to apply the scaling on the raw data in a linear fashion and results in a very good output. Hope that helped. Cheers.

<p>Whew, what a strange bunch of replies. You spend thouands on a good camera and lens and then blow it all by shooting JPeg. RAW is the only way to go. And it isn't just for correcting images with errors. RAW gives much, much more control over everything. JPeg has lost information before you even open the image for the first time. I've been in photography since the days of film and drum scanning and RAW is the only way to go - there should be no discussion here if quality is what you are concerned about. I shoot RAW and save my files for print as PSD. At no point in your workflow should you use JPeg (if, as I mentioned, quality is what you are after).</p>

<p>I shoot RAW but use JPEG when I'm practicing sports photography. I need the higher capacity afforded (not to mention the ease my camera's buffer) by shooting in JPEG. Sure there isn't much you can do if you blow the highlights or clip the shadows, but RAW does give you an amazing degree of latitude.<br>

Jesse</p>

<p>For some, RAW is like a negative in the film world and jpeg is one among many possible outputs. For others "Jpeg is all we know, and we're happy; don't confuse us." Finally, some know the benefits of RAW but choose to occasionally or always use a jpeg-only workflow because they know their cameras well enough to directly get the output they prefer from jpeg without the need to post process. I've been in all three of these ways of thinking over the past year, since working seriously with both RAW and jpeg. I'd suggest a simple test. Shoot your favorite subject in RAW and then in jpeg with your in-camera custom settings maximized to your preferences for ISO, exposure, white balance, saturation, contrast and sharpness. (I suggest this rather than RAW + jpeg, which doesn't save your custom settings into the jpeg, in some cameras.) Then do your best post processing possible with the RAW, convert the RAW to highest quality jpeg or TIFF, and look closely at a comparison of the final results from both workflows. You'll have your own answer. It took me a year of working with RAW conversion in both Aperture and in my camera's proprietary RAW conversion software, before I could say that my work from RAW was appreciably better.</p>

<p>I can't really add anything at this point that someone hasn't already said, but for me RAW and LR2 is a great workflow and I don't really see how my workflow would be any different if I shot JPEG, so what't the point?</p>

<p>I do think Howard V. makes an excellent point, shoot both types of files for awhile and work with them, see which gives *you* the best results and more importantly, which type of file makes photography the most enjoyable for you.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>It took me a year of working with RAW conversion in both Aperture and in my camera's proprietary RAW conversion software, before I could say that my work from RAW was appreciably better.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And I think that is the key. It takes time and practice to get an image from RAW to be appreciably better than a JPEG iamge straight from the camera. To paraphrase a poster in another forum 'you don't use RAW to get the same as JPEG, you use RAW to do it differently'. Now most of the time even my lowly 30D seems to do a pretty good job of coping with lighting situations so I find there are few pictures where I need to play around with complex PS manipulations.<br>

So I am (so far) in the camp that shoot RAW+JPEG and by and large am happy with the JPEG, but I revert to the RAW file for those that I want to 'improve' by pulling details out of shadows or highlights. I have some photos of grizzlies in Canada where even on JPEG I am surprised at the detail I can pull out of highlights on the fur that were seemingly blown - but I regret not taking RAW because if I had, I might have been able to go further (and now, I will never know).</p>

<p>Picasa 3.0 supports the RAW out of my D300, the earlier versions of Picasa 2 did not, and left me with big black squares in the preview window.<br>

My workflow, personally, is to shoot in RAW+JPG, remove my throwaways in picasa, then save the raw images to a different work area for use with the nikon tools. I basically have My Pictures\raw\<folder>\xyz.raw and My Pictures\<folder>\xyz.jpg</p>

 

<p>I am thinking of following those who recommend RAW + JPEG. I do find that there is more scope to recover a decent photograph from RAW if there is excessive contrast, colour cast etc, but if I also had JPEGs it would enable me to get cheap "proofs" printed easily at my usual photo shop or on the spot when away. However, rather than give the shop my CF card I would like to copy the JPEGs quickly and easily onto a memory stick and give that to the shop, but my D300 and D700 save the RAW + JPEG to the same CF card. Can someone please give me a link to a simple instruction how to get just the JPEGs onto a memory stick via my PC or laptop? Thanks Philip.</p>

<p>I think that RAW processing only adds an extra 15-20% to my postprocess time per wedding. For me, that's a very small cost for not having to worry about getting the right white balance and perfect exposure everytime. I'm a very good technical shooter, but I'm not so good that I don't welcome having to not worry about it during a shoot, and taking care of it later.</p>

<p>BUT of course, to each his own. In the end, the final product is all that matters. If someone produces an incredible body of work from a wedding and can do that consistently, HOW they got to that point is of no interest to me.</p>

 

<p>I shoot Raw and process in Adobe Lightroom. I primarily shoot location portraits and weddings. A lot of people seem to think of RAW as an assurance that if they blow it they will have a backup. Frankly, I find that I can vastly improve even a good exposure with RAW processing. At one point I learned a lot about fine black and white printing, and the control of tone, contrast, and selective dodging and burning are things that really make a big difference for even properly exposed images. With a 12, 14, or 16 bit image you can perform these adjustments without the visible artifacts that show up immediately in 8 bit jpegs. Color issues are also handled much better. Jpegs do not handle big adjustments in color balance well, compared to larger files (including tiffs) If you shoot a perfect exposure and you do not plan to make adjustments in tone, contrast, or color you probably will not benefit from shooting RAW. Big adjustments in editing, however, are done much better with raw files. I'm the type that can always find a way to improve things in post. I also have learned to shoot in a way that facilitates effective batch processing. Good batch processing skills can really minimize the time you spend working with RAW files.</p>

<p>It's always a bit surprising people are afraid of RAW as if it were a secret format only readable by aliens, highly skilled experts and expensive/difficult software. Yet just set the camera to RAW, load the images into the free software of the camera manufacturer (this takes no longer than a few seconds) and if you wanted to make no corrections at all, like a camera would, just hit the batch process button and you will find 100 images processed 20 minutes later. If you do make some quick corrections of exposure and contrast, the images will look better than anything you do on a JPEG in Photoshop.</p>