RAW

[Rand0m411]

Fact is you can edit more in a RAW file than jpg. Use what works for you. Both work.

Also im choosing "tastes great!" over "less filling!".

Im also choosing pepsi over coke. "choice of a new generation".

The egg came before the chicken.

Im still wondering where the beef is...

And after reading this whole thread Im realizing, I could have had a "V8".

 

[Mav]

it's enough. .jpg isn't garbage, but when compared to raw it's basically a honda civic and a bmw.

:thumbdown:

JPEG is like a Z06 Vette. It's minimalist and only what you need, very agile, very efficient, and extremely fast. RAW is like an M5. Yeah it's "more" and "nicer" but once you figure in all of the "extras" you're dragging around that you don't really "need" it's wasteful, slower, inefficient, and quite porky in comparison. :mrgreen:

 

[Mav]

An example of a heavily reworked image using RAW...

Admittedly the original exposure is wrong, but apart from the range being difficult to capture, this shot wasn't even planned... i took it on the way back to the car... i could see the composition, but didn't take the time to get a good exposure as i didn't think it was a keeper....

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f252/angelboy07/DSC_0149.jpg


The result isn't my usual style as its kind of gimmicky, inspired by the film Sleepy Hollow (because it kinda reminded me of that ), but even tho i used all processing techniques possible to avoid blocking, a Jpeg would have struggled with this...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f252/angelboy07/sleepy01.jpg

I have taken many images that would have held up in Jpeg with the editing i used... but this is why i love RAW, you never know if one of the crappy ones may turn into something.

That's cool! :thumbup:

Although as a 'capturer' I would never think to do anything that extreme. Just isn't my style. I would rather drag my ass outta bed at some insane hour to catch that same exact scene at the precise time when the natural light is perfect and the colors are at their peak. When you do that, you'll never need to do anything with your images that can't be done with JPEG. Two totally different approaches to photography. Neither are wrong, just different. Yes, by all means shoot RAW if this is what you plan to do and is your approach.

 

[RebelTasha]

I like to be able to change my pictures from b/w to color sometimes in RAW, I also like the Nostalgia colour you can use in RAW too..
When I don't use JPEG I miss JPEG when I don't use RAW I miss RAW my computer is really too old to use both I already have to stay on top of my files without adding more strain..
What to do...
Here's the original

Nostalgia

 

[asfixiate]

Yeah I never actually said one was the better than the other I was only stating facts that I found when researching the subject.

 

[logan9967]

:thumbdown:

JPEG is like a Z06 Vette. It's minimalist and only what you need, very agile, very efficient, and extremely fast. RAW is like an M5. Yeah it's "more" and "nicer" but once you figure in all of the "extras" you're dragging around that you don't really "need" it's wasteful, slower, inefficient, and quite porky in comparison. :mrgreen:

how dare you trash my analogy!
i was comparing more to gas milage in usage and also with what you get. a civic will get you where you going, and you wont have any problems with it. generally you will be happy and can do little modifications to it and whatnot but its nothing really special. its good. now raw.. the bmw (minimum 5 series thank you) you get the beef, the power, it of course gets you around, and any playing with it you do will look amazingly good. :lmao:

 

[Mav]

ah that's better

Actually most Hondas have huuuuuuuuuuuuuge aftermarket support and there really isn't anything that you can't do with them. LOL

 

[Arch]

I would rather drag my ass outta bed at some insane hour to catch that same exact scene at the precise time when the natural light is perfect and the colors are at their peak. When you do that, you'll never need to do anything with your images that can't be done with JPEG.

Yea, the reason this image turned from a snap shot to a keeper is the fact that it had been raining for a whole day non stop, and when i walked down this path the sun had briefly come out which created this instant mist rising from the tree areas.
It would be very difficult to go back and reshoot... sure you could get the scene with a different kind of light, but not easily how it was that day.

As i say, this is not always how i shoot, this is just an example of how an image fit for the garbage can be saved because it was shot in RAW.

My style of shooting isn't really rescuing bad images. Probably because of my art background, what i try and do is imagine what the image could look like as an end result, then go about creating that image.
This is why i religiously shoot RAW (+jpeg actaully, space isn't an issue for me) because whether the image is exposed well or not, i will still do what i have to, to make the image how i imagined. This also doesn't automaticlly mean alot of editing, but can do.

Anyway at this point i think we both know why we shoot the way we do. The only reason we are here discussing it is to give people without the know how the heads up.

 

[Arch]

- A lot of people say you "cannot" re-save a JPEG without losing quality. False

Well..as you know Jpeg is lossy format, which means even if you re-open it to take out a dust spot and save, the image will have to undergo uncompression followed by recompression. This may not damage the overall quality too much to notice anything, but it is still happening. If you try and change something a little more spread like creating more contrast for example, then you will loose much more data, especially from any shadow and highlight areas.

 

[Mav]

Well..as you know Jpeg is lossy format, which means even if you re-open it to take out a dust spot and save, the image will have to undergo uncompression followed by recompression. This may not damage the overall quality too much to notice anything, but it is still happening. If you try and change something a little more spread like creating more contrast for example, then you will loose much more data, especially from any shadow and highlight areas.

This is why I specifically defined as an added footnote up in post #37 what exactly I consider a drop in quality since I know everybody has different standards.

BTW, when I say "without losing quality" in reference to JPEG adjustments, what I'm actually talking about is quality differences that you can see in actual prints viewed at reasonable differences. Some people define a loss of quality as any difference they can make out when viewing something with their nose touching their screen at 100% (nose into a 3 foot wide print) or even 200% (nose into a 6 foot wide print). This is extremely stringent and ridiculously stringent considering most people don't view photos like that. I usually review photos and adjustments at 50% or less. I only view at 100% if I'm checking focus for the most part. The most extreme example I've seen are those that use special photoshop layer/threshold masks to highlight the smallest of differences. These are invisible period, even in prints, and even on the very best monitor viewed at ridiculously high magnification, which is why they have to use photoshop to "see" any difference. I no longer consider that photography but rather computer geekery or analysis paralysis.

I do most of my post-processing in DxO. DxO never touches the original file, and if I set it to output JPEGs that it processes at 97% quality, I end up with about the same filesize on output that I started off with on the input. Occasionally I need to run the Image Trends Hemi plug-in for fisheye photos, which I get to in Photoshop. I take the modified JPEG photo that was just saved at 97% in DxO, open it in photoshop, run the plug-in correction, save at Quality 10 to another new file, and that also seems to give about the same filesize on output as I gave it on input. With those two steps and with the type of editing that I do, I see "no noticeable loss of quality" even when viewed closely at 100% on my screen which is the far more stringent of tests. Normally I like to sit back a bit more and view at maybe 50% and look at the entire photo at once.

In the occurances when I have seen a noticeable drop in quality, it had nothing to do with JPEG compression itself and everything to do with bad or inappropriate settings in DxO. A good example of that is something like this. I was shooting through a moving bus window so I needed to keep the shutter speed higher, took a loss of light from the window itself, a 2-stop loss from the circular polarizer I was using to neutralize reflections, and the end result was having to shoot at about iso800 on a D80 which is just about its upper limit before things really start to get nasty. The noise itself wasn't too bad, but DxO didn't agree. DxO was identifying all of the fine details on the cliff combined with the high ISO as "noise" when it was really real texture and detail and not noise, and the result on output was very smudgey and flat looking photos. You could see this clearly even at 50% at a normal distance, and it was plainly obvious at 100%. I had to go back and re-process this whole series and turn NR off completely in DxO and then they looked much better. And since DxO never touches the original, it's no problem at all to do that.

Beyond that, there are many other quality limits that I'd be butting up against before ever being able to blame something on JPEG compression. There's the dirty bus window for one. There's the fact that the bus was moving and that in some cases there's just a tiny bit of softness in the photos from motion even if it's not plainly obvious. Then there's the fact that I was shooting with a respectable but non-professional consumer lens, the 18-135DX. It's nice, but just doesn't compare to the professional 17-55DX f/2.8 that I've got now which looks incredible at any focal length and aperture. The 18-135 is nice, but isn't as sharp wide-open, but I couldn't stop down due to conditions. If I did want to stop down I'd have to run iso1600 which would have a far worse impact on quality than JPEG compression ever would. So for all of the photos from that series, RAW just wouldn't have done much for me either due to too many other things in the way first having a far greater impact.

 

[Antithesis]

I don't want to get into this arguement because I use both depending on the situation. But....

If you have to batch process thousands of images, adding in an additional step that takes quite a bit of time is not efficient. If you are technically capable of proper exposure and white balance (i.e. taking a couple of test shots before going for "the shot"), then you can shoot in Jpeg and save yourself hours of conversion time. I shoot in Jpeg almost all the time, because I can get the exposure right on the first shot (sometimes it has to wait until the second), and if I do need to adjust it by a fraction of a stop, Jpeg does that just fine.

If I have a limited chance to get that one shot that I want, I shoot in RAW. If the lighting is poor and I need a little wiggle room, I shoot in RAW. But it's relatively rare as I don't like the additional processing step. When I finally get a d300 and I can shoot in TIFF, my problems will be solved, and I will shoot in that 100% of the time.