 - Darren J. Gilcher  Contact Darren J. Gilcher Darren J. Gilcher's Gallery |
RAW vs JPEG Last night I had two identical shots. Same exposures and all. One was RAW and the other was X-fine JPEG. I didn't do any PS editing. I saved the RAW to TIFF and other than it being a huge file, I don't see any difference between the two. The question is, which would I send to mpix. for the largest and best quality print? Does it matter other than for stock photo sites? If your still awake after gorging yourselves on turkey I thank anyone for taking the time to clear it all up for me..Darren
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Brendan Knell |
On RAW and TIFF, they don't do any compression to the photo, thus the large size. On JPEG they do a lot of commpression, but on fine and X-Fine, the do less. On which to send to MPix, it depends on how large you are printing it. If you are only going to do 4x6 to 5x7 then I don't think that there would be much difference between the two. From 8x10 and up, you'd probably be better off sending the TIFF.
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- Darren J. Gilcher Contact Darren J. Gilcher Darren J. Gilcher's Gallery |
Thanks Brendan. I've read where people here have said they wouldn't go back to JPEG after seeing RAW and was just wondering what they were seing unless it was the quality of larger prints. May I'm in the dark about something and all alone too.
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David M |
the difference between raw and jpg "as it comes out of the camera" is not where the big difference is.... the huge advantage of shooting raw is that you can fix the raw photo's exposure, color balance, color saturation MUCH better than on a jpg. You can make a mediocre raw picture into an awesome one. If you don't "post process" the raw file, there isn't any real benefit to shooting raw.
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David M |
oops, I meant white balance where I said color balance...
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- Darren J. Gilcher Contact Darren J. Gilcher Darren J. Gilcher's Gallery |
David, I have a few pictures I took of a sunflower at different exposures and a few were RAW and the rest were jpg. When I open the RAW it doesn't look as nice as the jpg. and I can't get it to look as nice. It seems like the jpg. looks more true to life. Maybe it's me since I have other RAW pix that look just fine. Anyway, I'm on the east coast and going to bed. I'll read anything you may say tomorrow. Thanks for the help.
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Brendan Knell |
The reason that the JPEG may look better is that the camera does a lot of processing to the photo. In RAW it doesn't do any processing. Your 20D can't shoot in TIFF can it? If it can then try using TIFF, because it does do processing to the photo, and it should be about the same quality.
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x |
You do all your work to the RAW, save as JPEG and send it to the lab. The compresion is fine. The reason you shoot RAW is for true Color, WB, and contrast adj. The final print doesnt care if it's TIF or JPEG. Printing anything other than JPEG is a waste of money and time for everyone involved in the process.
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John Rhodes |
Darren, As I understand it, the problem with degradation of a JPEG file occurs after a large number of open and edit sessions. If you take in fine JPEG and intend to do alot of editing, it's probably a good idea to save to TIFF just as you did for your camera RAW shots. Always shoot JPEGG at the highest setting (lowest compression). As for what you send to MPix, I don't think you could see any difference between the TIFF or the fine JPEG. One practical consideration is that a 4 or 5 Meg JEPG will upload much faster that a TIFF 20 meg file. John
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- Darren J. Gilcher Contact Darren J. Gilcher Darren J. Gilcher's Gallery |
Thanks everyone. sorry to get back to you so late. Busy day and it's already bed time. I'll keep working at it
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Stan Lubach |
I agree with everyone who said that sending out a high-quality jpeg image would be fine. I would like to expand on the RAW vs jpg discussion, though. The main advantage of shooting RAW is that what you get is essentially a digital negative. No processing has been done and if later you decide you didn't like some aspect of the exposure, you can change it without degrading the image. Since jpg uses a lossy compression, some information in the shot has been thrown away when the file is saved. When you make a change to a jpg image and save it again as jpg, you've thrown even more info away. Compare this to film, when making a print, what would you rather start with, a negative or another print?
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