sorry if discussed before... but RAW vs JPEG?

[figment97]

just doin a little research, and i'm not sure i know what RAW is, what it means, and so on.

can anyone help?

thanks in advance.

 

[DVC Jen]

Bryan Peterson has a wonderful way of describing what shooting in raw means - I am gonna give it a try - to explain it like he does - but I am not sure I will do as good of a job.

You are wanting meatloaf for dinner. A jpg is like going to the grocery and buying a ready made meatloaf. You choose what you want for dinner (the meatloaf) but someone else (the camera) chooses all of the spices etc for that meatloaf.

Raw - you want meatloaf - you go to the store and choose your own ground beef, spices - take it home and mix it how YOU want ( tweaking your raw file ). Your meatloaf is made and cooked (saved to a file format you choose - maybe not a lossy file like a jpg is) just as YOU want it.

With a raw file - all of your ingredients are there - it just isn't completely mixed and seasoned to your liking. You have to do it. With a jpg - your "meatloaf" or photo is made by your camera and to a certain degree you are kinda stuck with what you camera gives you.

Hope I haven't confused you more.

 

[Furgus]

You can read this if you want your head to expolde

Understanding RAW. (BTW that site has a lot of wonderful information if you want to look.)



For the record I shoot 100% RAW. No RAW+JPEG, just RAW and PP with Lightroom and Photoshop, because I like to make my own Meatloaf....well not really I hate meatloaf, but you get the idea.

 

[AndrewWG]

I LOVE meatloaf, but I don't cook too much. Maybe that is why I prefer jpg's so far...

Andy

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

I've tried making my own meatloaf, but so far no matter how I play with the recipe or what pots/pans/utinsels I use to make it, no meatloaf I've ever made came out any better than the meatloaf I get from the grocery store....

Seriously, though, I can use RAW+JPEG on my S3 (with the firmware extension) but no amount of playing with settings in RAW processing software has ever gotten me an image I liked better than the equivalent JPEG.

Mind you, I don't have anything but shareware/freeware RAW processing software (RAWTherapee and UFRAW) but I certainly don't want to spend $$$ on software to spend a lot of time at my PC to get the same pics I could be getting straight from my camera....

Are there any tips/tricks to working with RAW that I'm missing? Any good online tutorials you folks have used?

 

[ukcatfan]

I've tried making my own meatloaf, but so far no matter how I play with the recipe or what pots/pans/utinsels I use to make it, no meatloaf I've ever made came out any better than the meatloaf I get from the grocery store....

Seriously, though, I can use RAW+JPEG on my S3 (with the firmware extension) but no amount of playing with settings in RAW processing software has ever gotten me an image I liked better than the equivalent JPEG.

Mind you, I don't have anything but shareware/freeware RAW processing software (RAWTherapee and UFRAW) but I certainly don't want to spend $$$ on software to spend a lot of time at my PC to get the same pics I could be getting straight from my camera....

Are there any tips/tricks to working with RAW that I'm missing? Any good online tutorials you folks have used?

The RAW file for every camera model is a little different from others even if it is the same brand and even an upgrade of a previous model. For example, the *ist line of Pentax DSLRs bave birth to the K100D, but if you were to open a K100D RAW file, and the software thought it was from an *ist, then it would look very rough and you probably could not get it looking better than the JPG. When I first got my K100D, ACR was only beta supporting the RAW files and they looked very green and washed out. It could be tweaked to look a little better, but once the official support version came out, it worked great.

The S3 RAW file is not an officially supported format, so it is unlikely that you are going to find any software that completely supports it. That is likely why you are having less than stellar performance.

Kevin

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

The S3 RAW file is not an officially supported format, so it is unlikely that you are going to find any software that completely supports it. That is likely why you are having less than stellar performance.

I don't know, other S3 users swear up and down that the RAW is better than the JPEG. I've even seen some examples posted where the difference was visible to me, but I've not been able to get a good understanding of what they used or what they did to make it look good....

 

[MarkBarbieri]

A RAW file is one that your camera has not processed. A JPG file is one that your camera has processed. Things that your camera typically does when processing include sharpening, adjusting saturation levels, noise reduction, white balance and probably other things that I'm forgetting.

In addition to processing the file, your camera also compresses the file to make it fit into a JPG. Most RAW files have 4096 different brightness levels for each primary color (red, blue, and green). When your camera converts it to JPG, it reduces that to 256 different brightness levels for each color. They cover the same range, but the JPG has larger differences between each brightness level. Another means of compression is a funky math algorithm that tries to through out information that they don't think the viewer will notice. That's what makes a JPG so much smaller than a RAW file.

The advantages for JPG are that they take up less space, you can view them on almost anything, you don't have to do any processing, your camera can hold more in it's buffer before writing to the memory card, and they write to the memory card faster.

The big advantage to shooting RAW is that you still have all of the original information. If you need or want to do any special processing (change the white balance, saturation, etc), you can do it your way rather than the way the camera picks.

I would recommend that you always shoot RAW unless you have a compelling reason not to. With modern software packages, it's easy to convert RAW to jpgs.

 

[Gary D]

It's gonna use up more card space, but go raw. Open up to convert on Photoshop and you have some many options as to color balance, contrast, exposure, etc. I've had images that were over or under exposed by as much as 3 stops that were usable because I shot in raw and could remedy them. If this was slide film that image would be trash.

 

[RBennett]

I would recommend that you always shoot RAW unless you have a compelling reason not to. With modern software packages, it's easy to convert RAW to jpgs.

So question, do you have to have 2 programs then to basically convert the file to JPG after you've finished post processing? For instance, with my K100D, do I take my RAW files and upload them with one program and do my adjustments and then take another program to convert to JPG? Just trying to learn the process on all of this!!

 

[Gary D]

Uploading and converting are going to be two different things. Are you mac or PC? Not too PC savey, but with a Mac, I just make a folder on the desktop and use a card reader to download the files to the computer. Just drag them into the folder, no programs necessary. Then I open that folder in Photoshop to convert the images. I also have a Nikon program that does that also, but the Photoshop gives me more control if I wish to alter images. Personally, I convert to Tiffs because it's a lossless file. But you will always have the original images in raw after you convert to tiffs or jpegs. Think of this as a "digital negative" I don't know what particular programs you use though.

 

[handicap18]

You don't necessarily have to have two programs, though many people do. Right now I'm using the very basic editing/converting software that came with my Nikon D50. Thus far it is the only one I've found that converts the RAW file to a jpeg without altering it in one way or another. At least on the free to very very inexpensive software side. I'm going to give the 30 day trial for Lightroom a spin as well as the 30 day trial for Nikon Capture NX. Both of these programs are over $100, so I want to make sure its going to do what I want it to do before I fork over the cash.

I also use Photoshop Elements 4, but I'm not real good with that and really just use it for croping and resaving JPEG's. Typically I've found that I only really like to change White Balance and Exposure Compensation. Once I get past that I don't like the way the image turns out. But thats just me, so I'll probably eventually stick with Lightroom or CaptureNX so long as I like the way they work.

 

[ukcatfan]

I don't know, other S3 users swear up and down that the RAW is better than the JPEG. I've even seen some examples posted where the difference was visible to me, but I've not been able to get a good understanding of what they used or what they did to make it look good....

Let me clarify a little. Just because the software does not completely support the file does not mean that you cannot get more out of it. You are just going to have to find out what little things you have to do to it to get a baseline image to start from. In my example of the K100D files in ACR before it was supported, I was able to come up with a pretty good baseline by adjusting the color levels(especially green) and decreasing the contrast. The WB never worked out right either, so I had to adjust it on all images.

Also keep in mind that essentially all the image settings are set to null when you start out at the baseline. A typical JPG is going to have the saturation, contrast, and sharpness increased. I think you can even control those on your JPGs in camera before capture. Your WB is likely to be a little off also with the camera not directly supported by the software. It probably thinks your file is from a G5 or something else similar in the Canon p&s line that offers RAW normally.

I personally start out with a little boost to saturation and contrast as a default setting. I do my noise reduction then sharpening as the very last steps before JPG in a different program, so I have those set to zero in my RAW software. I then look at each image to see if the WB is off, exposure is off, colors look off, saturation correct, etc. (you get the idea) I usually only need about thirty seconds per shot, but spend more time if it needs more work, or was one of my better captures. You can save time by appling the same settings to similar grouped shots and then just spot checking for any minor tweaks. I then IPTC tag them and sort them in different groups depending on if I want to run NR on them. I process those and keep everything as 16-bit TIFF until after sharpening when I convert to JPG and delete the TIFFs. I archive the RAW files as backup.

Kevin

 

[dpuck1998]

I don't know if anyone said this yet or not, but this is what RAW means to me.

I screwed up and missed the shot! With the RAW file I can fix it a LOT better than with a jpg!

 

[Groucho]

So question, do you have to have 2 programs then to basically convert the file to JPG after you've finished post processing? For instance, with my K100D, do I take my RAW files and upload them with one program and do my adjustments and then take another program to convert to JPG? Just trying to learn the process on all of this!!

For your camera, install the Pentax Photo Browser/Laboratory that came with your camera. Also check Pentax's site, I think there's a newer version, but you need to install the CD version first. Point it to a folder full of RAWs and it will convert them to JPGs in however you like. Photo Laboratory is where you do the adjustments, you can set it to queue up the photos so that you make any adjustments that you want then it'll do them all at once when you're done. It really is fairly simple once you get the hang of the user interface and produces good results with a good amount of control.

Lightroom is a lot nicer, but it ain't free.

 

[RBennett]

For your camera, install the Pentax Photo Browser/Laboratory that came with your camera. Also check Pentax's site, I think there's a newer version, but you need to install the CD version first. Point it to a folder full of RAWs and it will convert them to JPGs in however you like. Photo Laboratory is where you do the adjustments, you can set it to queue up the photos so that you make any adjustments that you want then it'll do them all at once when you're done. It really is fairly simple once you get the hang of the user interface and produces good results with a good amount of control.

Lightroom is a lot nicer, but it ain't free.

Tell me about it!!! I installed the software last night and tried to do a little bit with it. I think I will enjoy it more once I get a better pp software like lightroom or elements 5.0. I can't wait to post more pictures!!!

 

[dpuck1998]

Lightroom is a lot nicer, but it ain't free.

if you know where to look

 

[Groucho]

I think Photoshop Elements would probably make a lousy program for RAW processing, as I don't think it's really set up for batch processing very much... with the included software or Lightroom, you can just toss a bunch of RAWs at it and wait a little bit, to find jpgs ready for waiting for you.

RBennett, give the Pentax software a little more time - its user interface is nothing to write home about, but it really does have a fair amount of power and once you figure it out, it works quite well. Unless you're ready to make the move to Lightroom immediately, of course.