 Keith A. Trepanier |
JPEG vs. RAW I am fairly new to digital photography and would like to know if there is a huge difference between the high-quality JPEG and RAW formats? Thanks.
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Damian P. Gadal |
Depends on what you're going to do with the pictures. RAW preserves all the data associated with the shot, whereas JPEG has several different compression modes making the file size smaller, but also throwing out some of the information to accomplish this ... This is the short answer, but I hope it helps.
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Keith A. Trepanier |
Thank you, Damian. That does help. So I guess if I'm going to be manipulating the photo in PS, I should take it in a RAW format.
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Michael Kaplan |
There is actually a great difference between RAW and jpg although for the average person just printing a 4x6 taken out of the camera might not care. The main difference is the fact that you can make changes as if you had made them on the camera at the time of the shot. The raw file contains CCD or CMOS sensor data before any sharpening, white balance, contrast etc are added. Also jpg besides already having all these settings applied also is a lossy format which means that some color data is lost in the compression routine that jpg uses. The higher the compression the small the file because more data is lost. Some cameras also allow you to save to TIF. THis is also a lossless format but has a very large file size. As an example, My 10D has a 6.2MP sensor. I get a ~5.5-6MB RAW image. THe camera shoots in 12 bit color. A 8bit TIF is 18MB and a 16bit TIF is 32MB. Much larger files and more resourses needed to work with them.JPG can be as small as 1MB if higher compressions are used. For the average person though, shooting in the best quality jpg may be sufficient. I personally only shoot RAW. I love the ability to make adjustments without affecting the whole picture like PS would. If my white balance was off, a simple adjustment in the software will make it right. Other adjustments as well can be done and the picture is as if it was shot that way and can then be further manipulated. Also you have more exposure latitude shooting in RAW. You can generally change exposure by 1-1/2 to 2 stops +or- from what the camera originally shot. I also personally prefer to sharpen my photos after the fact as the sharpening routines used by PS and special programs like Photozoom are much better than any cameras internal sharpening. I have a Canon 10D with a 4GB Microdrive and can put about 670 RAW pictures on it. Boy, do I love digital and RAW. There is one disadvantage to RAW though. There is an extra step in the workflow as you need to convert it to TIF preferably or jpg afterwards before editing using programs like C1, the software that came with your camera or PS CS has it included so although it is not difficult at all, it is a bit more time consuming but IMO worth every minute!
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Damian P. Gadal |
Keith: Michael has summed this up perfectly!
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Keith A. Trepanier |
Thank you Michael. I will try to take some photo's in RAW format and see what I can do.
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Tyler Martin |
As a beginner, I would like to ad that I frequently miss getting a perfect shot. Now that I am becoming comfortable with the raw process I can dramatically improve an image. Hopefully I will improve with my picture taking but for now working with raw provides good results when I get the composition right but miss the exposure or white balance.
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Lewis Kemper |
Also if you are interested in learning how to get the most out of Camera Raw in Photoshop CS you can sign up for my Toolbox # 3 class coming up here at BetterPhoto.
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