Raw versus Jpeg

[studor13]

Shooting RAW is not for everyone. In fact I think a lot of people shoot RAW and know very little of why they are doing so.

 

I shoot mainly RAW now, but for the first two years when I got into photography I shot only JPEG. Looking back at the several thousands of photos, I can count on one hand where I wished I had shot in RAW. Even then, the images are still usable.

 

Whilst there are numerous good reasons for shooting RAW, the best reason for most people for shooting JPEG is if you are basically a beginner - behind the camera as well as in Photoshop.

 

So, if you consider yourself a beginner, forget all the hype and shoot JPEG. (That's not so say that some pros don't shoot JPEG)<div></div>

[blades]

Great points guys, Great shot Andy..thanks

[peter_lawrence]

Mark,

 

The best advice I can give you is that until you know what works best for you, you should set up your D80 to shoot in

NEF(RAW)+JPEG Fine mode. That way, every time your press the shutter, the D80 will record your image in both

RAW and JPEG (Fine quality) formats SIMULTANEOUSLY! No need to choose one over the other.

 

Then when you have downloaded your RAW and JPEG files onto your computer, you can decided if the JPEG is good

enough to print as is, or if you should manipulate the image (using the RAW file) to get better results.

 

You can set your D80 to shoot in 'NEF(RAW)+JPEG Fine' mode by changing your Image Quality setting on your D80.

This is explained in detail on page 34 of your Nikon D80 User's Manual.

[manuel barrera houston,]

I shoot in raw and can convert hundreds of photos to jpeg in a very short time by creating an action in photoshop, for the driver not the fixer, I am glad that he nails it all the time, especially when there is light combinations and light changes, cloudy to day, to shade, to indoors, to flourscent, etc, two years to discover the beauty of raw seems like a long time. If you want pictures take the photos in jpeg, if you want to create photographs take them in raw.

[pankaj purohit]

What is basic difference in RAW and JPG? If I scan a negative in RAW and same in JPG, after that I will do some posprocessing than what I can or cannot do perfectly in JPG/RAW ....?

 

I too want to know

 

After much experiments I am still unable to find any diffrence.

 

Tell me how can I test the difference....?

[enriquegonzales]

When I travel I can't be bothered carrying a notebook but like to shoot RAW+JPEG. Some SD cards come with a mini USB reader. I go to an internet cafe, or one of a million hostels with free internet, and back my photos up onto two DVDs. I also have an MP3 player as a back up option and I might email my favourites to gmail which allows 20meg files, enough for RAW. Besides a slow burst rate, which means nothing to me, I can't see any advantage to shooting JPEG only.

 

Most of my travelling has been in Asia though so I'm not sure what it costs to burn a DVD in Europe but it'll be cheaper than an SD card.

 

Btw, I wonder if the chap who bags RAW is Ken Rockwell. You only have to google his name to hear what people think of him, but that's another thread altogether.

[wayne_campbell]

As far as the claimed advantage of adjusting the white balance after the fact in Raw, iPhoto allows you to adjust the color temperature and does

it on JPEGS, Photoshop does the same. You can also adjust the sharpness, etc., on JPEGS in both. So what's the difference? Why shoot RAW?

[egoldstein]

For what it's worth...mine is another vote for shooting both. I am not a pro-shooter, but I often will shoot hundreds of shots when I go out and I shoot both, I shoot mostly in Program mode so 9 times out of 10 everything works pretty well and the JPG comes out just fine. For the 10th time that something is wrong, or the colors are not as vivid as I would like or are too vivid for my tastes, or there is a spot of sun in an otherwize shaded picture or vice-versa, I love being able to go to that single NEF file, fix it and re-export it, and yes re-apply the tags, etc.

 

Yes, you will want to keep more memory cards on hand during the trip but memory cards are cheap.

 

The only disadvantage I have found to shooting both is that you need to manually sort out the NEF and JPG files when moving them to you computer. I find this to be more than outweighed by the flexibility of just using the JPGs when I can and fixing the NEF when I need to.

[jgriffin]

once i tried raw i never went back to jpeg.

 

 

my camera allows to take both formats simultaneously. raw is time consuming for certain. i would definitely think about purchasing something like an Epson photofine portable storage device for traveling. Then you will be worry free.

 

 

RAW allows you to post process your photo before making it a jpeg. It is non destructive. Editing jpegs will result in a lower resolution image from what i understand. If this is any concern to you.

[russ_konrad]

<b>"...How about the times ,when there wasnt Photoshop??? Did people took nice pictures???..."</b>

<p>

Yes - the lab color corrected and corrected exposure if necessary when they printed the images.

[john_markanich]

Wayne, the difference shows up first in the Histogram. When you first open a properly exposed JPEG the Histogram is a nice full 'mountain' of information hopefully with no spikes at either end. After adjusting levels, contrast and/or color balance -but before resaving- the refreshed Hisrogram looks like a pocket comb laying on its back. If you are planning on printing the image to anything larger than 4X6 those gaps in the Histogram will be filled in by the whatever software you're using and appear as flat, posterized areas without any gradual tonal transition. Not pretty. If you are only shooting for the Web or review on a Monitor you may never notice the posterization.

[conraderb]

Mark - you probably want to try shooting only JPG for a day, then ONLY raw for a day, and compare using a good raw converter. I think that your camera should come with some software to deal with raw...??

 

Here's the deal. If you are a serious shooter, raw gives you a TON of flexibility that simply isn't there when you are shooting. It comes at the expense of larger files and more time at the computer. As a pro, this tradeoff is 100% worth it, and I haven't shot JPG since trying show.

 

You might find raw useful or just too complicated. Try both for a day and see how you like them.

[rroberto]

When I shot Nikon (D-70) I found it best to shoot in both RAW and Jpeg. Look at the results side by side. The Jpeg files

are very

compressed as opposed to RAW files. Getting a true black or true white is next to impossible with Jpeg format.

 

As to the "cheating" aspect, I look upon post-processing as doing in minutes on a computer what I used take

hours to do in a

dark room.

 

Yes, The RAW-Jpeg format will eat up memory on a card, but extra memory cards are cheap as compared to loss of

being able to

produce the image you want. If you spend several thousand dollars to get to and from your destination, what's an extra

$50 for another

memory card?

[dennis_oconnor4]

Just to add a

different view point

on re- formatting

the card in the

camera after you

offload the

images... This is

an unnecessary

step... Now, it may

not do any harm, but

it is not doing any

good...

 

The only thing that

is changed on the

card when you

'erase' the images

after download is

that the file

directory is reset

to show the card as

empty... The image

storage areas of the

card are unchanged

and still contains

the 1s and 0s of

your picture data...

That data will be

overwritten when you

use the card in the

camera again... That

data will be

overwritten if you

reformat leaving 1s

and 0s on the card

... There is nothing

to be gained by

reformatting a known

good card...

 

The best analogy I

can use is the C:

drive on your

computer... You

certainly don't

'reformat' that

every time you erase

some pictures!

 

denny

[cherubinphotography]

Shoot Raw. I took a two month, 10 country tour of Europe two years ago. All images were shot in jpeg and now wish I had shot RAW. I was inexperienced and didn't know any better. Take the advice here and shoot RAW. You can get nice images in jpeg but you will see artifacts and other annoyances and wish you had shot RAW.

So where are ya going?

[ilkka_nissila]

Formatting is a great deal faster than deleting the files, that's why people do it. Also, doing it in the camera makes sure the card bookkeeping structures are compatible with the particular camera. It is commonly reported that if you format in the PC, the card may not work in a particular camera.

[pankaj purohit]

Please tell me a test to do, so I can judge the difference

 

Tell, what filter, adjust or anything else I would apply on both file and will find a difference.........?

 

PP

[cd]

If you have no workflow experience (Photoshop Capture NX etc..) you are wasting your time shooting & valuable space on your memory card shooting RAW.

[cherubinphotography]

I understand Carlos' thinking but one day you may be proficient with the software and wish you had the RAW files. You can't undo JPEG compression.......

[angkordave]

If you have Lightroom you can shoot in jpeg and make changes to WB etc non destructively then export the

files. Otherwise if you save an original JPEG file; make changes and only save once you will not have significant

deterioration. I have been doing this with Fuji cameras for years. I have experimented with RAW but using an

S5Pro the Jpeg images are so good that RAW is an irrelevance given the size of files.

 

Nikon and Canon users have more need for RAW as the JPEG files are inferior to start with.

 

If you are happy with the JPEGs with your camera and are not photographing professionally then I wouldn�t

waste my time and effort. If you are shooting under difficult high contrast lighting conditions then I would advise

using both JPEG and RAW but not all the time.

 

Don�t get so hung up on the technicalities if you are shooting for fun. If you are planning to sell images or exhibit

them; then RAW format makes a lot of sense.

[bw1664881174]

I shot RAW mostly, but find that disk space is so cheap I now just shoot both (i.e RAW and JPG high) its a setting on my camera.

 

I I find that it does not really effect your shooting speed unless you go for sports.

 

Workflow becomes easier as well.

 

An extra 4G card is not that expensive.

 

Why choose?

[garydem]

first i shoot jpeg all the time. i use a pentax *istD dslr. have tried raw and got no improvement in my pics, though before my little jpeg vs raw test i thought that there would be a difference. there wasn't FOR ME. the reason i concluded was that my pics as shot in the field require almost zero processing. the great rpt great rpt great advantage of raw is the amount and type of post processing the picture taker does in the pc. for me, i do almost zero, my goal in the field is to shoot the pics so that they are good enough to stand on there own without any pp. i am currently pp about 5% of all jpegs i shoot. also, i currently crop in the pc 0% of what i shoot. i do it in the camera, its called composition.

the two great areas that raw absolutely shine in is when you have no time to properly set up the shot. the other is when the lighting is so odd or undetermined that you have no idea what it is and you have to rely on pp to give you the proper color and white balance adjustments. a possible third necessity for post-processing would be that if the camera or scene has something that you have to correct for on virtually every picture.

in other words, it all depends on the quality of pictures you are delivering to the pc. if you consistently shoot pics and they are such that the pc is used for sorting storage and printing, like me, then you can go to the convenience of jpeg.

but, if you find yourself adjusting correcting or fixing the iso, exposure, white balance, color, and cropping THEN you should be using raw. only you know your photographic abilities and what type of pics you are taking. for this reason, the decision to shoot raw or jpegs is yours alone based on your needs.

for me jpegs work, BUT that might not work for others. raw for others could be the way to go.

the ONLY rpt only rpt only time the shot is a jpeg is when it is brought to the computer. it is either discarded or changed(i tend to have small tweaks) on the pc in some way, then it "save as" a tiff. the jpeg is never "save" or "save as" a jpeg ever. the original jpeg is stored in a jpeg folder that is a holdall.

this keeps the as shot quality intact.

 

 

with a raw file you have to convert the file to jpeg or tiff to use it for any other purpose. you cannot print a raw file, for example. with jpegs they can be used immediately as soon as they are downloaded into the pc.

as far as batch processing is concerned, yes it speeds up the raw conversion process, but it eliminates one of the advantages of the raw process. this is the individual care and effort an individual raw pic gets when it is not batch processed. the individual raw file gets the maxium care it needs to give its best picture. with batch processing this is gone, you are not achieving the max from each shot. and this is the reason you are shooting raw in the first place. to me if you are batch processing, you might as well go with jpeg.

yes, i have pe6 and cs2 and can use both.

 

my view. gary

[russ_konrad]

<b>"...you cannot print a raw file..."</b>

<P>

Not correct. I print RAW files from Capture NX all the time.

[tomadakis]

Buy more cards, they are cheap.

Shoot RAW.

Buy Lightroom for adjustments, catalog, creating JPG, etc.

 

You will never regret it.

[marcogarrone]

Mark, you already got a bunch of replies. Mine won't ad much, but go for RAW. I had moreless the same worries you have now, but when I switched to RAW I found it outsmarted JPG. have a nice trip. Marco