Why to shoot in raw mode.

[Gary A.]

I get pretty tired of geeks going on and on that raw is the only way to shoot. I am not always rushed to get images out, but the majority of my shoots require 25-70 images within an hour of shooting. I'm not lazy when it comes to how I shoot, I'm not afraid to edit images and I have excellent computer and photo shop skills when it comes to turning out the images I need. What WayneF has to say is coming from, what is it he shoots? I don't think he has said. I did look at his blog and it goes back to the geek squad, while supplying information about everything is important to many. I just take pictures, and I do it very well. While I am not the most tech savy photographer, it has never stopped me from producing high quality images with every shoot I'm on. All jpegs, I have never been asked to shoot raw files by any clients.

The pro football team I shoot for will be switching to wifi next season, which means I'm shooting and images are going to the web guy to pull what he needs instantly, to cut down on post game time. Would I ever consider sending him raw images? Not a chance. What it does do, puts more pressure on me to get the images as perfect in camera as possible, does that mean I need to shoot raw, no, jpegs will get the job done and not "just" good enough.

The raw/jpeg subject is tired and getting older everyday.

Kinda like shooting slides back in the day.

Before digital I would shoot the first period of a pro hockey game, process the film, scan and transmit to Reuters in Washington, all had to be done as quick as possible, first images out made the papers. Digital is pretty much the same.

Back when I was shooting news, printing from wet negatives was very common for me. For big games at the Rose Bowl, the Forum or Coliseum, we had messengers on motorcycles. Every 20 minutes or so a run would be made from the event to the office/darkroom downtown Los Angeles. Then the photogs manning the darkrooms printed from wet negatives. (We had individual darkrooms.)

Those were the good old days? There are some days I miss that rush, and then other days wonder how we even managed.

Yep. I just remembered ... for the BIG games ... like the Rose Bowl game, we even had people just to load our cameras. So when the camera died at 36 frames, we handed it to our little sherpa friend and they would hand us a new camera, loaded and ready to go. The little sherpa rewound, reloaded and stuck it in the film appropriate envelope. The film envelop had development instructions (like "ONLY AGITATE ONCE") as well as descriptions/caption information of the images. The motorcycle messenger was uniformed and looked like a cop.

WIFI is a dream. All the news photogs I know shoot JPEG because they have to. I had six daily deadline I had to hit. With the internet, there are no deadlines ... it is all Now! That's gotta increase the stress and much more demanding of the photog. Non-WiFi you can shoot a ton and make a lot of mistakes and nobody will know. With WiFi, you probably don't have much time to delete the crap or at least part of the crap ... so the editors don't have to wade through all your dirty underwear.

Gary

 

[imagemaker46]

I get pretty tired of geeks going on and on that raw is the only way to shoot. I am not always rushed to get images out, but the majority of my shoots require 25-70 images within an hour of shooting. I'm not lazy when it comes to how I shoot, I'm not afraid to edit images and I have excellent computer and photo shop skills when it comes to turning out the images I need. What WayneF has to say is coming from, what is it he shoots? I don't think he has said. I did look at his blog and it goes back to the geek squad, while supplying information about everything is important to many. I just take pictures, and I do it very well. While I am not the most tech savy photographer, it has never stopped me from producing high quality images with every shoot I'm on. All jpegs, I have never been asked to shoot raw files by any clients.

The pro football team I shoot for will be switching to wifi next season, which means I'm shooting and images are going to the web guy to pull what he needs instantly, to cut down on post game time. Would I ever consider sending him raw images? Not a chance. What it does do, puts more pressure on me to get the images as perfect in camera as possible, does that mean I need to shoot raw, no, jpegs will get the job done and not "just" good enough.

The raw/jpeg subject is tired and getting older everyday.

Kinda like shooting slides back in the day.

Before digital I would shoot the first period of a pro hockey game, process the film, scan and transmit to Reuters in Washington, all had to be done as quick as possible, first images out made the papers. Digital is pretty much the same.

Back when I was shooting news, printing from wet negatives was very common for me. For big games at the Rose Bowl, the Forum or Coliseum, we had messengers on motorcycles. Every 20 minutes or so a run would be made from the event to the office/darkroom downtown Los Angeles. Then the photogs manning the darkrooms printed from wet negatives. (We had individual darkrooms.)

Those were the good old days? There are some days I miss that rush, and then other days wonder how we even managed.

Yep. I just remembered ... for the BIG games ... like the Rose Bowl game, we even had people just to load our cameras. So when the camera died at 36 frames, we handed it to our little sherpa friend and they would hand us a new camera, loaded and ready to go. The little sherpa rewound, reloaded and stuck it in the film appropriate envelope. The film envelop had development instructions (like "ONLY AGITATE ONCE") as well as descriptions/caption information of the images. The motorcycle messenger was uniformed and looked like a cop.

WIFI is a dream. All the news photogs I know shoot JPEG because they have to. I had six daily deadline I had to hit. With the internet, there are no deadlines ... it is all Now! That's gotta increase the stress and much more demanding of the photog. Non-WiFi you can shoot a ton and make a lot of mistakes and nobody will know. With WiFi, you probably don't have much time to delete the crap or at least all the crap ... so the editors have to wade through all your dirty underwear.

Gary

As much as I don't mind the thought of using the wifi next football season, you are right about being able to edit that crap out. I'm sure the stress level will be a little higher.

 

[Village Idiot]

So what about those who MUST produce an image minutes after it's taken?

That has been addressed, did you read the previous? That handful of us needing immediate results certainly do have issues to address.

You must have your ideas about Good Enough, and I have mine.

I stated my notions about three reasons for resisting Raw:

Probably simply don't know about the Raw advantage,
or are too lazy or too rushed or don't care about getting it right,
or are terrified by the word Edit, no computer skills to attempt anything, etc

I realize there is no hope for the middle line, but there are hopes for the first and third line.

Aside from recovering blown highlights or under exposed shadows to a point, if you can’t edit a JPG as well as you can a RAW file, then you need to go back to the drawing board. With Photo Shop once you open the file past the first Adobe raw editor you can make the exact same edits and once in PS, you can do the same edits past recovering exposure that you can in ACR.

It’s more important to be able to get it right in camera than it is to use RAW as an crutch for fixing your photos in PS.

 

[Ysarex]

Aside from recovering blown highlights or under exposed shadows to a point, if you can’t edit a JPG as well as you can a RAW file, then you need to go back to the drawing board. With Photo Shop once you open the file past the first Adobe raw editor you can make the exact same edits and once in PS, you can do the same edits past recovering exposure that you can in ACR.

No. There is a difference of consequence between editing an 8 bit file with an embedded compression grid as compared to editing a 16 bit file that has never been compressed. You can not do the same edits and you do not get the same results.

It’s more important to be able to get it right in camera than it is to use RAW as an crutch for fixing your photos in PS.

It is always important make a best effort in-camera. Never shoot raw as a crutch but instead shoot raw to extend your capability beyond the limits of the automated JPEG processor in the camera.

Joe

 

[KenC]

I think Joe nailed it. In some cases, I want a lot more contrast than the default conversion to jpg would give. Bending the curve to do this with a 14 bit file (that's my understanding of what raw files actually have) produces much less in the way of artifacts than doing it on an 8-bit jpg.

 

[bribrius]

I think Joe nailed it. In some cases, I want a lot more contrast than the default conversion to jpg would give. Bending the curve to do this with a 14 bit file (that's my understanding of what raw files actually have) produces much less in the way of artifacts than doing it on an 8-bit jpg.

good point. seems you mess with a jpeg too much you get those "artifacts" but I thought that was more a compression issue and resizing over and over?

 

[WayneF]

Aside from recovering blown highlights or under exposed shadows to a point, if you can’t edit a JPG as well as you can a RAW file, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

Simply not true. You must not have any Raw experience? Minor adjustments can work in JPG, but any major shifts suffer seriously. Raw has much more range for edit. Shoot a JPG in Incandescent but as Flash, and then try to fix it? (enough to actually be good).

But there is much more...

With Photo Shop once you open the file past the first Adobe raw editor you can make the exact same edits and once in PS, you can do the same edits past recovering exposure that you can in ACR.

Raw has camera oriented tools, like White Balance and Exposure tools. Photo editors don't.
Photo editors (including Photoshop) have graphic oriented tools, general purpose.
Like PS Color Balance... RGB Color Balance has three adjustments for Shadows, Midtones, Highlghts, possibly meant to be versatile, but what we need is an easy tool that does WB on the whole photo range. Plus it is RGB. How do we do those three RGB, and the three tonal degrees, in the right porportions for WB?
Yes, we can shift to Lab color to have the two necessary sliders (aka WB), but there is still the three: Shadows, Midtones, Highlghts.

Raw offers the actual WB tools, two sliders instead of six,, excellent tools for the specific purpose. Calibrated in degrees K. Plus presets for Daylight, Incandescent, Auto, etc.
Easy, fast, good. Built for the job.
And while Levels White Point is Exposure, Raw calls it Exposure.

Plus Raw is lossless edit, and RGB is not. We are always working from the baseline of the original raw image pixels (we can uncrop for example). Then Raw does any data tonal shifting only the one final time to output RGB.
In RGB (JPG), one edit starts at the previous edits results, needlessly shifting tones back and forth. That's not good. That's the pits.
(OK, Adobe Raw software does also offer opportunity to do lossless edits on JPG, and the Raw tools are better, but JPG is still 8 bits).

These are all pretty big deals for anyone that knows and cares. Not everyone does know or care. But if you care, and have a few extra minutes, you should try Raw. It can change your life.

Sports photogs with a one hour schedule certainly do have a rush issue. Fortunately, they are blessed with most shots being the same field scene, one setup. Wedding has it tougher, indoors in a dark church, outdoors in sunny reception, etc.
Amateur has it worst, in all possible conceivable scenes. Needs more individual attention.

 

[KenC]

I think Joe nailed it. In some cases, I want a lot more contrast than the default conversion to jpg would give. Bending the curve to do this with a 14 bit file (that's my understanding of what raw files actually have) produces much less in the way of artifacts than doing it on an 8-bit jpg.

good point. seems you mess with a jpeg too much you get those "artifacts" but I thought that was more a compression issue and resizing over and over?

Yes, you can trash a jpg by saving at low quality and/or saving many times, but even without doing that, you can get artifacts from 8 bit files. The issue of heavy edits is that "stretching" your data to create more contrast can give you banding. Pixels in an 8 bit file are far more limited in the possible gradations of brightness and color they can represent. If you increase contrast enough, there could be visible differences in brightness/color, with one area having the same values (sort of analogous to rounding error making two numbers look the same, where they would be represented differently with more decimal places) and an adjacent area having the next possible set of values. You see this often in skies that have been darkened and saturated dramatically from the original jpg.

 

[Ysarex]

I think Joe nailed it. In some cases, I want a lot more contrast than the default conversion to jpg would give. Bending the curve to do this with a 14 bit file (that's my understanding of what raw files actually have) produces much less in the way of artifacts than doing it on an 8-bit jpg.

good point. seems you mess with a jpeg too much you get those "artifacts" but I thought that was more a compression issue and resizing over and over?

A lot folks edit JPEGs and do so with reasonable success. I spend a lot of time teaching Photo students how to do that and to cause the least amount of harm in the process.

Editing JPEGs means you're working with an 8 bit file (8 bits per 3 channels is a defining characteristic of JPEG). That is a data set or if you like a data container. It holds a fixed amount of data. A 16 bit file is a larger data container. It likewise holds a fixed amount of data but compared with a JPEG it holds a whole lot more data.

Try this analog: You have to create a mosaic from different colored tiles. Your finished mosaic must include 10,000 tiles to be complete. Your tiles are all 1/8 inch square and you have 50,000 of them extending over a range of 4000 colors. You have multiples of each color but no more than 4000 colors. I have to create the same mosaic with the same size tiles and end up with 10,000 tiles to be complete -- same job. I however have 200,000 tiles extending over a range of 16,000 colors. We have different data set limits and my extra tiles and extra colors means I can do more.

All JPEGs are compressed and must be compressed. Even at highest quality JPEGs are compressed. At 8 bits per channel over three channels (RGB) a photo can reproduce 16,777,216 different colors. Photographic data is very dense. Take a section of your photo and mark off an 8 pixel square area. You have 64 pixels in that square. The odds (64 in 16,777,216) are pretty good that each of those 64 pixels will be a unique color. JPEG does in fact place an 8 pixel grid over your entire photo and it's job is to make sure that those grid squares no longer contain 64 uniquely colored pixels. Given the compression level JPEG may do it's job and return the photo so that those grid squares contain no more than 32 unique pixels (that's high quality) or no more than 24 unique pixels or no more than 16 unique pixels and so forth. This is what allows JPEG to achieve it's compression rates. This is a good thing -- JPEG is very useful when understood and used appropriately.

So when you open a JPEG for editing the compression has been done and it can't be undone. Let's go back to our mosaic. A mosaic works because our eyes blend the content of adjacent tiles to form the whole image. Your mosaic (8 bit) and my mosaic (16 bit) are finished. Yours now has to be compressed. So you have to analyze the color tiles you used to create your mosaic and pull and replace tiles so that when finished there are no more than 256 unique colors in your mosaic. Mine stays untouched. All of our excess tiles are taken away and then our client comes along and says, "Opps! hey we have a problem and these changes have to be made." You go to work changing yours and I'll go to work changing mine.

As you edit a JPEG the compression grid is there and it can't be removed. If you make minor changes you can get away with it because we tend to have more pixels (tiles) than we need and we still have some leeway. But you can only go so far before that compression grid starts to surface out of the photo. That's the artifacts we see when we push a JPEG edit -- the compression grid is rising out of the image.

Finally think of it this way: All image editing is partially destructive. A good analogy here is surgery. You develop a hernia and require an operation. Getting that operation is a really good thing and you really want it and need it, but they're still going to cut you and it will leave a scar. All photo editing is double-edged. The goal is to do maximum good with minimum harm. (You're hoping your hernia surgery can be done with the smallest possible incision). So assume you have a choice to perform a photo edit using method 1 where you do 95% good and 5% harm or method 2 where you do 70% good and 30% harm. That should be an easy choice. Editing JPEGs is choosing method 2.

Joe

 

[WayneF]

All JPEGs are compressed and must be compressed. Even at highest quality JPEGs are compressed.

Very true, and JPG artifacts are indeed one more good reason for Raw editing over photo editors. Basically, JPG compression just approximates (changes color of) the JPG pixels (to be other values more easily compressed - grids of 8x8 pixels made all the same color). There are two types of these artifacts, the other "edge" type is worse. Called lossy compression because the image we get back out of the JPG file is not the same as the RGB data we thought we wrote into the file.

We can and should crank the JPG Quality up higher. But 100% is still JPG.

Here is one look at detecting the artifacts in 100% JPG

What does JPG Quality Losses Mean?

 

[bribrius]

informative. Had a basic understanding of artifacts but never really understood exactly, just knew I didn't like them. Had a little trouble recognizing them as well unless they were obvious.

 

[jake337]

Another Raw/jpeg thread. i shoot jpegs, always have and always will. i have no interest in shooting anything in raw. I have no issues with anyone shooting Raw, that's great if they want to tinker in lightroom or photoshop, i just like to get the images as close to being correct in camera where all I have to make are minor corrections. For the overall uses of my images, Raw is not necessary. it's just a personal choice.

i make my own cakes, pies and cookies from scratch and yes they are better than store bought, but when I take pictures of them I still shoot jpegs.

This right here has winner written all over it!

 

[jake337]

I only shoot Raw. The advantages are simply too great. Raw lets us actually SEE what is needed, and SEE what can be done, and SEE how well it works. As opposed to using some settings done months ago, probably forgotten now, and wishfully hoping something works.

Sorry, but my notion is, those insisting JPG is "good enough", either: Probably simply don't know about the Raw advantage, or are too lazy or too rushed or don't care about getting it right, or are terrified by the word Edit, no computer skills to attempt anything, etc. By Edit, here I only refer to minor exposure and white balance tweaks to make it be correct. It makes such a big difference, assuming we care.

Raw is the easy, fast, good way.

Have you checked out Imagemaker46's portfolio?

 

[photoguy99]

Something usually left out of the discussion is this:

Almost none of this matters if you're reducing the size of the final output. You can trade lateral resolution in for bit depth, any time, and with great success. Edit that JPEG all you want. Artifacts all over the place, ugh. Now reduce it to 640x480 for use on the web. Boom, virtually all the artifacts are gone. Ugly posterization is blended away. Block chunky crap is smoothed right out. Blown highlights are shrunk down to tiny white dots that actually look pretty good. Etc.

Since almost every photograph that is ever seen by anyone other than the photographer is radically reduced in size, it doesn't matter all that much how you do it.

 

[WayneF]

Something usually left out of the discussion is this:

Almost none of this matters if you're reducing the size of the final output. You can trade lateral resolution in for bit depth, any time, and with great success. Edit that JPEG all you want. Artifacts all over the place, ugh. Now reduce it to 640x480 for use on the web. Boom, virtually all the artifacts are gone. Ugly posterization is blended away. Block chunky crap is smoothed right out. Blown highlights are shrunk down to tiny white dots that actually look pretty good. Etc.

Since almost every photograph that is ever seen by anyone other than the photographer is radically reduced in size, it doesn't matter all that much how you do it.

Just another way to say that some people simply don't care about best quality.