any advantages of shooting Portraits in Raw vs Jpg format

[kari v]

<blockquote>

<p>The sample photos I linked to were not heavily edited.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yep, I know, bad wording on my part.</p>

[sun_p]

<p>Hello There!</p>

<p> First of all I want to say a big "Thank You" to all the experts providing so much of information at one place that its so easy for beginners like me to understand things that we struggle with! OVer the last couple of months ever since I joined this forum, I definately see my knowledge increasing quite a bit considering where I was with the automatic Sony point and shoot to a DSLR. I also see a tremendous improvement (although no where close to what all of you would consider mediore also :) ) in my images. Things like perspective, aperture, shutter speed, ISO etc which used to be french to me are a lot clear. Hopefully over the next couple of years, I would be able to learn and grow thanks to all this good advice!</p>

<p> Coming back to this topic. I remember, when I was first tinkering with my DSLR and I was setting up my camera in "P" mode, I had heard from some people that RAW gave better quality (Did not know why then :) ) So I set it to that and then when I took some snaps, it looked great on the Camera LCD, but for some reason when I downloaded the snaps on my windows computer and opened them , the colors where not great! I then tried with JPG and they were quite good. So I set the option to jpg fine and always shot jpg's But now with a little working knowledge and continuous learning, I was tryuing to play around and understand about RAW and now do get a fair idea based on what all of you have suggested! I have set this Friday/Saturday to take some sample pictures in that mode and have also got the Capture nikon nx2 software from a photographer friend so will try to play with that and see the difference between JPG and RAW!</p>

<p> Offcourse, I might have questions thereafter, but I know I can always count on the expert advice of the experienced photographers on this forum!</p>

<p>A very big "Thank You" to all of you!</p>

<p>Cheers,<br>

Sunil</p>

[rarmstrong]

<p>Sunil, remember that the image you are viewing on your camera's LCD is a JPEG thumbnail even if you have the camera set to RAW. I think you are understanding that when you shoot in JPEG, the camera will apply the settings(vibrancy, contrast, white balance, etc) to your image BEFORE you output the image to the computer. When you shoot RAW, the computer gets the unprocessed data from your camera's sensor. The RAW converter in your program reassembles the data into the image...THEN...you do the processing.<br>

Have fun!<br>

Dick</p>

[sun_p]

<p>Hello there!</p>

<p> I was studying a little more on this site about Raw Vs JPG and noticed two important points so had two more questions!<br>

1. I read in another thread that if you open up a JPG and save it, everytime you do it there is loss of quality! - Is that correct? Also, in photoshop lets say if I open a jpg and resize it, set levels, contrast etc then add boundries (like black 1px stroke etc) and then save it, apart from the jpg compression which causes degradation, does correcting, levels, brighness contrast, layers etc "add" to the degrade?<br>

2. Was thinking it should be JPG, but just to confirm, Lets say I shoot RAW and then make edits to in in Capture NX2, there after what format do I finally save it as ? Raw or TIFF? or some other format suitable for web/printing/Pc? MEaning after all the correction etc, and then saving at jpg, would that lead to degradation or is it okay?</p>

<p>I know its more about trying out which I will but just wanted some concrete information for my knowledge, although now with technology improving its very difficult for the eye to make out small differences especially in small images, but its always good to have the basics right so thought of asking all the experts based on there experience what they thought?</p>

<p>Thanks,<br>

Sunil</p>

 

[rarmstrong]

<p>Sunil, my comments to the above question will be limited to my experience with Apple's Aperture 2.1.3 program which I use for post processing. When you import an image into the Aperture library(JPEG or RAW), Aperture saves the original as a master image. You can then manipulate the image any way that you would like and export the manipulated image in whatever format you need, at the size that you want. However, the master image is always saved and you can always return to it. The master image is never degraded in any way. If you convert the RAW image to JPEG and re-size it for web posting(such as here on PN), you will lose some detail and the exported smaller image may appear "degraded" in some ways. But you always have your master image to return to if you need to print it or export it for printing to a commercial service, etc.<br>

I'm sorry that I can't comment specifically about photoshop, but I believe that Lightroom works in the same general way.<br>

I hope that helps,<br>

Dick</p>