Shooting in RAW

chedabob is pretty much spot on, the analogy I use when talking to people about shooting in RAW Vs JPG is to think of a RAW file as the digital equivalent of a film camera negative (just not with the whole reversed colours thing) and a JPG being the processed print.

The scope of image editing that you can perform on a RAW image is much larger, due to the increased information over JPG. for example most image editing software will let you adjust the exposure of a RAW image by up to 2 stops in either direction and the file will still look good. JPG is a lossy compression file, which will introduce artefacts that will be exaggerated with to much editing.

Personally I always shot in raw and that allows me to do some funky editing with regard to the exposure, saturation, colours , etc., while maintaining image quality.

for example the following image would look piss poor if shot in JPG and then edited.


Amongst Winter's Debris, Spring's New Life by rcaw, on Flickr

The editing carried out on that image was a lot of de-saturation then a little of that brushed out and the the saturation of the shoot increased a tiny bit.

and the original shot

2011-03-02 at 15-02-30 by rcaw, on Flickr


And just to mess with ya, I archive all my images after editing into a lossless TIFF format.

it, really depends on what you do, if you want to do a lot of post processing, or unusual post processing then shoot in RAW.

if on the other hand you just want to focus on taking good pics in camera, then yeah JPG is probably the best option.

most cameras that are capable of shooting in raw are also capable of shooting jpg at the same time, so you could feasibly shoot both and leave your options open.

shooting RAW will mean that you wont be able to use the cameras scene settings.

I think it comes down to where you do your processing.

I do mine off the camera so I want the image as unadulterated as possible so I shoot in RAW and then process in Adobe lightroom.

Best thing to do is to take an image in RAW and then switch to JPG and see which one is easier for you to process.

My mate does all kinds of photography and pretty much never bothers with RAW

I think some people over process images. Sure if that is what they want, and they can look great in an art way - the whole art/photography discussion I guess.

Oh dear. BR forums strike again. "I don't really know what I'm talking about, so I'll take a wild stab at it"
Ahem, anyway...


RAW files are a bit bigger. Typically, the JPGs from my camera are around 8megs, and the RAW files are around 12-13.
The main advantage is RAW files contain more dynamic range than the JPG. They also contain more dynamic range than can be displayed on screen.
For example here's an overexposed shot taken in JPG and RAW simultaneously...



Notice how the sky is obliterated. But all is not lost, we can bring down the brightness in JPG, right?
Well, not quite.
Here's what happens when you try to do it with a JPG...

See? All the detail in the really bright areas are lost forever.
But with the RAW file, we can actually achieve this...

Almost all of the "clipped" detail was still in the RAW file, and could be restored after shooting by just turning the exposure down in the RAW converter.

Basically, the RAW file contains the entire range, from dark to light that the camera's sensor can make sense of (which is still not as much as our eyes), whereas a JPG image only contains a limited portion of it.. kinda like this, if it helps you imagine it...


When converting from RAW into a normal image file, you have control over how the extra range is dealt with. You can do all sorts of things from either ignoring it if the shot is fine as is, or compress the range so that it all fits in the final rendered image.

RAW files also describe each primary colour in greater detail than a JPG.
In JPGs, each colour is described by only 8 bits, giving 256 discreet steps from zero to full for each of Red Green and Blue.
In a RAW file, it is common these days to have 16 bits per colour channel, giving much smoother gradients, as it allows 65,536 steps from zero to full intensity for EACH colour.

This colour gradient can be preserved by converting the RAW file into a Tif, instead of a JPG, and if truth be told, that's actually what Photoshop and the like does when you're "editing RAW".
Once the adobe cameraRAW step is over, you are no longer working on the actual RAW file, but a rendered TIF bitmap of it.

There is absolutely NO reason for the raw file to look worse than a JPG "until you've edited it", if you've shot something well, you've shot something well - Well, with some caveats.
Some older RAW converters might not fully understand the information in files from newer cameras, so the exposure etc may be a bit off (or in a worst case scenario may not open them at all).
My Sony RAW files will appear darker in Photoshop CS4 than they do in CS5, for example. But they look fine in Sony's own RAW processing software.

It's worth bearing in mind, as 77ric says, that generic RAW converters will not pay any attention to whatever "scene" setings you had the camera set to. So if you had it set to black and white, for example, or maximum saturation, you will find that it will open as a normally saturated, colour image in almost all RAW software. The only exception being white balance - this is ALWAYS preserved.

Of course, you can also use the manufacturer's own RAW converter. These are usually a little clunker, and FAR slower than the likes of photoshop, but they can keep whatever "scene" settings you had set on the camera. These settings are fully reversible - the RAW file will simply contain what settings you used, which the converter software then duplicates. If you don't like it you can go back to default.

The post processing editing advantage that many speak of doesn't actually come from RAW, it comes from the greater bit depth mentioned earlier. The problem is that JPGs are always, always only 8 bits per channel, and that lack of granularity can show up as grain, or banding when doing heavy post processing.
But you'd have to go a long way for it to become an issue.

Was there anything else you'd like to know?

Simontheintrepid wrote:

I use it like I would Windows Explorer and for large conversion batches, which you can't really do in Photoshop easily

Sorry if I seem condescending, I'm just not sure if you realise this, but I've met a ton of folks who don't.

Adobe cameraRAW can do batch jobs quite beautifully, and elegantly.
Load all the shots into ACR, select them all in the column down the left, and you can now either hit "save image" at the bottom of the image column to save them all as any format, or you can even even synchronise edits and settings between all photos.
Dead handy when I've been shooting a series of shots in similar conditions - I can set the white balance, for example, on all the images at the same time, then export them all as JPGs.

yeehaamcgee wrote:

Simontheintrepid wrote:

I use it like I would Windows Explorer and for large conversion batches, which you can't really do in Photoshop easily

Sorry if I seem condescending, I'm just not sure if you realise this, but I've met a ton of folks who don't.

Well, I can be lazy when it comes to computers. Some things with Photoshop I'm very good with but I haven't really explored the whole thing - I find it all too easy to rely on PS so try to not use post-processing too much. I don't use ACR nor did I really know about it, it sounds very useful - funny the things you learn on a bike forum.

yeehaamcgee very well explained sir.




for you sir and your stellar efforts.

mcgee, your welcome to play around with the images, especially considering it furthers the thread as an example of your information.

I don't pretend to know all there is to know about raw files, photography etc.

But I do know that many cameras have settings to adjust contrast, sharpness and saturation for jpegs. The image you see on the back of the camera may be based on these settings. If you are shooting in jpeg your image may be similar to the camera thumbnail. If you are shooting in RAW, it won't be, so comparing the back of camera image with the unaltered RAW file may leave you unimpressed.

Now, unless you have your RAW files converted to similar contrast, saturation and sharpness settings (difficult to do as the camera may not give you values), before you view them, you may be disappointed with the end result.

As several people have said, consider RAW files in the same way as a film negative, you would not show the negative as your finished product, you blow it up, crop it, adjust contrast, saturation etc. until you were happy with the end result. The RAW file is the start of your post processing.

yeehaamcgee wrote:

Like I said, andrewjoseph, if you use the camera maker's raw converter, it should carry those camera settings across.

Yes, but it does nothing with the info.

from http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

"Saving the Raw file
If you are saving raw files the camera creates a header file which contains all of the camera settings, including (depending on the camera) sharpening level, contrast and saturation settings, colour temperature / white balance, and so on. The image is not changed by these settings, they are simply tagged onto the raw image data."

I can see the info of what the camera was set at, but it is not applied to the RAW file.

Pentax own raw converter is pretty crap, I do it all in lightroom, and it does not use the camera settings. It gives me what the sensor captured, without any enhancements or changes.

yeehaamcgee wrote:

Don't know about Pentax, never used them. Canon and Sony (and Nikon, I believe) raw software apply the settings from.the camera. Adobe does not. In fact, none of the feneric raw converters will. And, most generic converters are based on DCraw.
But anyway, I still maintain that the manufacturer's software will (or should) do it. Otherwise there'd be no point in having those options available when the camera is set to shoot raw.

Yep - you can flip between RAW defaults and the settings applied in-camera when you open in ACR - if like me you apply minimal in-camera processing, it means you do it all in post, but there are times when you might need to work a bit faster, but still want those RAW files to come back to at a later date to play around with.
You can save a camera-preset to do just that.

The only times I shoot JPEG-Fine are at Events, where I control all the light, backgrounds, subjects etc and print on the spot. For everything else it's RAW.

top guide yeehaa!