I just switched to shooting in RAW, I tend to make a smaller tagged Jpeg for uploading to my blogs and FB pages anyways. Its only been a few days , but the main reason Im switching is the colours , 4000 vs. 256 , plus its you that does the processing of the image not your camera. A nice added bonus is due to the file size difference its making me take better photos, Iused to just click away and not worry about taking 10 pics of the same thing , now I take 2 or 3 better planned shots :)
I've been using raw for ages. Best way to see the difference is take the same photo and blow it up to 100% and then compare the Raw to the Jpeg.. I use Raw like a negative that is the original photo I take. I make all my adjustments on that before converting to Jpeg and find that my images actually come out better this way
If I'm shooting portraits, I'll shoot RAW just to give myself that option during post-processing.
But for events, landscapes, nature, animals, all of that, I shoot JPG. I try to get it right in the camera the first time so I don't spend hours editing later. Besides, if I spend a day shooting wildlife in a state or national park, I can easily chew up 1,000+ JPG's, which would take an insane amount of memory shooting in RAW.
RAW is infinitely superior to JPG, but you need a RAW editor to be able to realise the difference. Your camera should come with some rudimentary software to work with RAW files, but to really see the difference you need something like Adobe's Lightroom, which some people around here might think I have shares in, but sadly I really don't! I do harp on about it a bit, but then, it's worth harping on about.
With a JPG you take the shot and that's it, you're done. If you underexposed it a bit, or overexposed it a bit, too bad. Sure you can nudge up the brightness in Photardshop or similar, but this is a very different thing than changing the exposure settings in a RAW editor. The precise reason why this is so gets into the nitty gritty of digital images, but the simple explanation is: RAW images store more "bits per pixel" than are coded for in JPG (or any other instantly viewable image format). Essentially, a greater range of light values are stored in RAW. So if you need to nudge them up/down you can do so with less loss of information, and a higher quality of image retained.
There really is a world of difference. Depends what you're doing though, and how much you care. If you're doing 365 as a blog and just shooting your kids (I haven't looked at yours Kirsty as I'm in the middle of something :) ) or your job or whatever, then sure, you won't notice a difference, so do JPG and save yourself hassle. If you're doing it as an exercise in photography and actually trying to create specific looks, specific images, actually care about not the content of what ends up on the screen, but the presentation of that content (quite separate concepts) then you really need to ultimately be aiming to working with RAW.
@kjarn Haha. RAW and JPG are formats digital photos are shot in. Some digital cameras such as higher-end point-and-shoots and DSLR's have an option of which format you use.
Basically, shooting in RAW format means that all the information about the photo is recorded the moment the shutter release button is pressed. All values of exposure and white balance are recorded so that you can use a program later (Photoshop, for one) to tweak the image. You can lighten, darken, change the white balance, and tons of more options as if you were still snapping the photo.
Obviously, that takes up nearly 4 times as much memory on the cards and is slower to record, hindering high-speed shooting.
@eyebrows I concur outright, no lengthy explaination needed! Get yourself a copy of LR then edit both jpgs and RAW files and you'll see the difference :-)
Ok. I'll go back to RAW and try again. I have used lightroom but preferred cs4/5 to it but will give that another go.
@eyebrows thanks for that info. Maybe it's me but I couldn't see a difference but I'll give both RAW and jpeg a go as it seems there is a big difference. I do edit my pics and they seemed ok but if I need to do major work they end up all grainy. I'm taking it that won't be quite as bad in RAW. I do try and over expose pictures as I've read it's easier to fix the exposure on them than to brighten a dull one which I agree with but lately been using my histogram so little editing needed
@kirsty1975 yep, being able to do a lot more with them before grain sets in is one of the benefits of RAW. To put a metric to it (and these numbers are sort of coming off the top of my head and might be wrong, plus I've been on the Peroni) a JPG is encoded in 24bit colour, which means 8 bits (precisely what a "bit" is doesn't matter, for this) per channel (red, green, blue) per pixel (individual coloured dot in the image). A RAW image, depending on camera, will store 12 or 14 bits per channel, per pixel.
Now you might think "oh ok 12 is 50% more than 8 that's a nice extra boost" but these are powers we're dealing with - 8 bits per channel per pixel means 256 different shades of red/green/blue. 12bpc means 4,096 different shades of each colour. A huge increase. So you can exhibit vastly more control.
Not to mention the fact that, due to the way all this extra data is stored, you can alter certain parts (highlights, shadows, hues, colours) without having any impact on the rest. You can dynamically create extra contrast, extra sharpness, extra... anything, pretty much.
I'm going to such lengths with this because discovering this was such a revelation to me, and I really like showing other people cool stuff. I'm possibly rambling, though.
Anyway. I've no idea of photoshop's RAW handling abilities, but the stuff Lightroom lets you do has never limited me. I've done moderately complex object removal using its clone tool and paintbrush thing, and all the tonal stuff mentioned. The only time I've needed to use anything else was for composites where I wanted multiple Steves in one image, because it can't do layering or actual paths/cutting.
Of course bear in mind - those 4,096 different shades of red won't be directly evident, because they're having to be downsampled anyway even to be displayed on your monitor, which can only (on a good day, and technically speaking no consumer-grade monitor ever has a good day) display 256 shades no matter what - but you still have the benefit of being able to fiddle without introducing noise. And! Having very powerful noise reduction stuff built in.
@eyebrows Right ok, cool. Understanding it more. I'll put lightroom back on and change to RAW. I do have an image which I messed up so would be good if I can get similar and see how it looks. I'm so glad you went into it for me. Hopefully I'll be posting of me boasting about it next, lol. Thanks so much.
And one last thing, it might take a while to pick up. Some of the controls, especially in noise reduction, seem rather arcane. There's tutorials out there though (not that I bookmarked any, so can't pass them on) which can help guide you through.
RAW is necessary when when fine tuning a photo and editing such things as WB.
RAW has information for every pixel, where as JPEG says this wholle area is 135, and this whole are is Black.
RAW is only necessary if your setting are not correct or when you are editing.
@kjarn :) Me too lol. I shoot in whatever takes the picture ha I think RAW is more for professional use. I personally print out pictures at home and send copies to family members and such. Nothing anyone is going to be going over with a fine tooth comb or anything.
I shoot in both, since I only edit a few of my pictures, and most of the editing is done on my camera. When I download them, I just delete the RAW files, and any I have editing on my camera are automatically saved in JPEG. I don't use PhotoShop but rather Picnik, and it doesn't do RAW (I don't think) so there really isn't any reason for me to have RAW photos on my computer. The only reason I shoot in RAW + JPEG is so I can edit the photos on my camera if necessary.
i only shoot raw because althou i have an excellent camera-- a canon 30d -- i still prefer to be the one making decisions about an image. and yes it does make a difference to have a program like lightroom.. which i could not live without, however, i rarely do much editing on my raw images where as i was always wanting and unable to make those adjustments when i shot in jpg.
I shoot RAW + JPG all the time (unless I'm doing star trails or time lapse where I'm going to take 500-2000 images and make a composite). I like raw because it's a true "digital negative" and preserves the original exposure which I can go back to at any time in the future, plus all the extra data allows for more editing options in the event I need it.
But I also shoot JPG at the same time because sometimes it's nice to quickly have a file to upload to the web or shoot via email or something, plus my wife likes to be able to just grab an image to post to her facebook page or something.
Storage is just too cheap these days not to shoot both.
Ok, I'm seeing a pretty big misconception about RAW here. RAW format is for one thing and one thing only: light.
Shooting and editing in RAW format will NOT increase your sharpness, give you a higher resolution, correct shutter speed problems, or tweak the depth of field. RAW is handy for only one purpose: correcting your mistakes. It is for correcting white balance and exposure, and only those two areas.
If you shoot a properly exposed photo with the correct white balance in JPG, the same photo in RAW will not look any better.
While it is true RAW contains more information, before you can print or upload any photo you must save it as a JPG which means all that extra information is tossed away and you are still left with just a simple, 8-bit JPG. The difference with RAW format is that you have more options for editing with the 12-bit data before you have to toss the rest out. You can always save the RAW for later use, but a JPG is what everyone ends up with.
@jasonbarnette That's true, but the problem is letting the camera determine how to manipulate your raw data and convert to jpg for you. That doesn't mean it will do a bad job and if you have a proper exposure and do everything right it will be just fine. But if you don't have the settings right, or accidentally have the wrong camera settings enabled, didn't set your WB, and all of that, then what the camera converts to JPG for you may not be ideal, and as you know, once that data is compressed and lost, it's gone forever.
In a perfect world, sure, everybody would compose a shot perfectly and it wouldn't require any adjustments at all. But that isn't how the real world works. For example, if I'm snapping random shots of my kids today, in 20 years when I'm putting together a slideshow for their wedding or something I'd much rather be able to go back to the raw data for customizing it for my needs rather than relying on my camera to adjust and throw away the pixels it thinks is most appropriate.
To that end, you can sometimes recover a completely blown shot if you have the raw data while it would be impossible with a jpg right out of the camera. Sure, you can argue that if you didn't take the proper exposure to begin with it wasn't a good picture, but the fact remains, with more data captured you can salvage more photos that otherwise would be completely worthless if already converted to JPG.
Yeah, you have to convert to jpg before using it for print or web, but if you can correct the raw image better than the in-camera rendition you'll still have a better print or web image regardless. The only obstacle is whether or not you want to take the time to manipulate the images after they are shot or not.
@marubozo What you said is a big reason why I started shooting raw. I never did, before this project, simply because I was mostly content with what the camera gave me using the auto settings. However, now I've read the camera manual and want to do the settings myself to "try" to achieve a certain look. When I mess up, which would be everyday till I get the hang of metering, it is nice to have the raw images to give me more leeway with editing my exposure mishaps.
I went to New york and did a 30min trip up in a helipcopter. Luckily I shot RAW, which allowed me to rescue all the shots, as for some reason they were all too dark.
RAW is so much better for PP - just gives you far more options
@eyebrows I want to thank you again for your information. Today I really needed it, everything went wrong.
I ca=hanged my camera to Raw and decided to have a play with light. It was a really dull day so had to have the houselights on which are terrible. I got my lamps down to shine on my subject then played with my camera settings. I was doing moving shots which are blurred due to the low shutter speed I used and didn't look that great. Put shutter speed up - too dark. I used LR to edit and the images are a lot better now and I know I wouldn't have got that with a jpeg. Ok still some blurring but that was meant anyway. Plus I cropped another image and played with the noise which took a while to suss. I'm happy with my end product but I know it could still be better due to some unecessary blurring but now I know what I'm doing I hopefully will get better and going to but some lamps too to hopefully help me out.
Thanks everyone for all your comments and I'm starting to understand it now.
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But for events, landscapes, nature, animals, all of that, I shoot JPG. I try to get it right in the camera the first time so I don't spend hours editing later. Besides, if I spend a day shooting wildlife in a state or national park, I can easily chew up 1,000+ JPG's, which would take an insane amount of memory shooting in RAW.
With a JPG you take the shot and that's it, you're done. If you underexposed it a bit, or overexposed it a bit, too bad. Sure you can nudge up the brightness in Photardshop or similar, but this is a very different thing than changing the exposure settings in a RAW editor. The precise reason why this is so gets into the nitty gritty of digital images, but the simple explanation is: RAW images store more "bits per pixel" than are coded for in JPG (or any other instantly viewable image format). Essentially, a greater range of light values are stored in RAW. So if you need to nudge them up/down you can do so with less loss of information, and a higher quality of image retained.
There really is a world of difference. Depends what you're doing though, and how much you care. If you're doing 365 as a blog and just shooting your kids (I haven't looked at yours Kirsty as I'm in the middle of something :) ) or your job or whatever, then sure, you won't notice a difference, so do JPG and save yourself hassle. If you're doing it as an exercise in photography and actually trying to create specific looks, specific images, actually care about not the content of what ends up on the screen, but the presentation of that content (quite separate concepts) then you really need to ultimately be aiming to working with RAW.
Aaaaand breathe :P
Basically, shooting in RAW format means that all the information about the photo is recorded the moment the shutter release button is pressed. All values of exposure and white balance are recorded so that you can use a program later (Photoshop, for one) to tweak the image. You can lighten, darken, change the white balance, and tons of more options as if you were still snapping the photo.
Obviously, that takes up nearly 4 times as much memory on the cards and is slower to record, hindering high-speed shooting.
@eyebrows thanks for that info. Maybe it's me but I couldn't see a difference but I'll give both RAW and jpeg a go as it seems there is a big difference. I do edit my pics and they seemed ok but if I need to do major work they end up all grainy. I'm taking it that won't be quite as bad in RAW. I do try and over expose pictures as I've read it's easier to fix the exposure on them than to brighten a dull one which I agree with but lately been using my histogram so little editing needed
Now you might think "oh ok 12 is 50% more than 8 that's a nice extra boost" but these are powers we're dealing with - 8 bits per channel per pixel means 256 different shades of red/green/blue. 12bpc means 4,096 different shades of each colour. A huge increase. So you can exhibit vastly more control.
Not to mention the fact that, due to the way all this extra data is stored, you can alter certain parts (highlights, shadows, hues, colours) without having any impact on the rest. You can dynamically create extra contrast, extra sharpness, extra... anything, pretty much.
I'm going to such lengths with this because discovering this was such a revelation to me, and I really like showing other people cool stuff. I'm possibly rambling, though.
Anyway. I've no idea of photoshop's RAW handling abilities, but the stuff Lightroom lets you do has never limited me. I've done moderately complex object removal using its clone tool and paintbrush thing, and all the tonal stuff mentioned. The only time I've needed to use anything else was for composites where I wanted multiple Steves in one image, because it can't do layering or actual paths/cutting.
RAW has information for every pixel, where as JPEG says this wholle area is 135, and this whole are is Black.
RAW is only necessary if your setting are not correct or when you are editing.
But I also shoot JPG at the same time because sometimes it's nice to quickly have a file to upload to the web or shoot via email or something, plus my wife likes to be able to just grab an image to post to her facebook page or something.
Storage is just too cheap these days not to shoot both.
Shooting and editing in RAW format will NOT increase your sharpness, give you a higher resolution, correct shutter speed problems, or tweak the depth of field. RAW is handy for only one purpose: correcting your mistakes. It is for correcting white balance and exposure, and only those two areas.
If you shoot a properly exposed photo with the correct white balance in JPG, the same photo in RAW will not look any better.
While it is true RAW contains more information, before you can print or upload any photo you must save it as a JPG which means all that extra information is tossed away and you are still left with just a simple, 8-bit JPG. The difference with RAW format is that you have more options for editing with the 12-bit data before you have to toss the rest out. You can always save the RAW for later use, but a JPG is what everyone ends up with.
In a perfect world, sure, everybody would compose a shot perfectly and it wouldn't require any adjustments at all. But that isn't how the real world works. For example, if I'm snapping random shots of my kids today, in 20 years when I'm putting together a slideshow for their wedding or something I'd much rather be able to go back to the raw data for customizing it for my needs rather than relying on my camera to adjust and throw away the pixels it thinks is most appropriate.
To that end, you can sometimes recover a completely blown shot if you have the raw data while it would be impossible with a jpg right out of the camera. Sure, you can argue that if you didn't take the proper exposure to begin with it wasn't a good picture, but the fact remains, with more data captured you can salvage more photos that otherwise would be completely worthless if already converted to JPG.
Yeah, you have to convert to jpg before using it for print or web, but if you can correct the raw image better than the in-camera rendition you'll still have a better print or web image regardless. The only obstacle is whether or not you want to take the time to manipulate the images after they are shot or not.
RAW is so much better for PP - just gives you far more options
I ca=hanged my camera to Raw and decided to have a play with light. It was a really dull day so had to have the houselights on which are terrible. I got my lamps down to shine on my subject then played with my camera settings. I was doing moving shots which are blurred due to the low shutter speed I used and didn't look that great. Put shutter speed up - too dark. I used LR to edit and the images are a lot better now and I know I wouldn't have got that with a jpeg. Ok still some blurring but that was meant anyway. Plus I cropped another image and played with the noise which took a while to suss. I'm happy with my end product but I know it could still be better due to some unecessary blurring but now I know what I'm doing I hopefully will get better and going to but some lamps too to hopefully help me out.
Thanks everyone for all your comments and I'm starting to understand it now.