RAW/JPG - I have to kick this dead horse one more time.

3rdPlanetPhotography

Ok I've read all the threads.... I though I had a understanding and that RAW was the way to go, HOWEVER, I flipped the ole 20d on to RAW a couple days ago and popped off a few. Copied them to my puter and used Digital Photo Professional (came with the camera) and for the life of me I cannot see what I can do in RAW that I can't do in JPG. :dunno

Would some (or many) please give me more information as to what I'm missing. :dunno :dunno :dunno

kc7dji

jthomas

kc7dji wrote:

Ok I've read all the threads.... I though I had a understanding and that RAW was the way to go, HOWEVER, I flipped the ole 20d on to RAW a couple days ago and popped off a few. Copied them to my puter and used Digital Photo Professional (came with the camera) and for the life of me I cannot see what I can do in RAW that I can't do in JPG.

Would some (or many) please give me more information as to what I'm missing.

kc7dji

I really should leave this to the pros, but in my brief (1 month) experience with Rawshooter Essentials (RSE), I find there are a number of improvements I can make to a RAW file before converting to JPG that I can't do later with PS. The main adjustment is increasing exposure on underexposed shots - seems to work almost as well is reshooting the picture at a larger aperture. You can also increase fill light, reduce noise, fix the white balance, etc. And by saving the original RAW file (RSE does this by default), I could come back next year and tweak it differently. Who knows, five years from now we may have much better RAW converters, and we'll have all those old files to go back and redo!

I'm sure the more experienced folks in this forum can add quite a lot to this list.

mercphoto

kc7dji wrote:

Would some (or many) please give me more information as to what I'm missing.

The big things abour RAW is the ability to change the white balance and the exposure to greater degrees than is possible with JPG. The other big thing is the ability to do much more with levels and curves than you can with JPG.

Not that you can't do this with JPG, but to a lesser degree.

If you don't find yourself twiddling with images much, why bother with RAW? I routinely do auto-levels and a round of sharpening on in-camera JPG's, and occasionally do an exposure compensation of half-a-stop, then save back as a JPG. For my type of photography its perfectly acceptable, even as a 20x30 poster.

If I was doing weddings, high-dollar portraits, or fine art, I would rely on RAW much more often.

USAIR

And......

jthomas wrote:

I really should leave this to the pros, but in my brief experience with Rawshooter Essentials (RSE), I find there are a number of improvements I can make to a RAW file before converting to JPG that I can't do later with PS. The main adjustment is increasing exposure on underexposed shots - seems to work almost as well is reshooting the picture at a larger aperture. You can also increase fill light, reduce noise, fix the white balance, etc. And by saving the original RAW file (RSE does this ny default), I could come back next year and tweak it differently. Who knows, five years from now we may have much better RAW converters, and we'll have all those old files to go back and redo!

I'm sure the more experienced folks in this forum can add quite a lot to this list.

Don't forget white balance big plus
You can change the over all color of the image
Have you ever shot photos and they come out with blue cast (shooting in the snow) or way to red
Well in raw these can be fixed very easy

Belive me I am no expert I have all kinds of color problems but it easy for me to see the advantage of shooting raw it's the only way I shoot.
It does take longer to post process but for me on worries ...I not in any big hurry anyway

Hope this helps
Fred

Andy

just having total control is the benefit of raw vs. jpg. personally, becuase i do few images per shoot, i like the control that raw gives me over the finished product. i like to think i can make better decisions than the camera can. raw is great for adjusting whitebalance. raw is excellent if you muff up the exposure - you can easily fix the pic by a stop, sometimes more, in the raw conversion process. raw's excellent for increasing the dynamic range of the shot to the max - by developing multiple exposures of the same raw file, you can extend the range of the pic beyond what the camera can do by itself in a single exposure with jpg.

now - you *can* set your camera's in camera parms to produce nicely colored, well-contrasted, and sharpened pics out of the camera... and so if you nail the exposure and whitebalance, why, you're done! voila, the benefit of jpgs and this makes great sense for event shooters. say you were doing sports - shooting 500, or 1000 images in a session.... you'd be crazy to process 1000 raws. many folks will do these in jpg. the smartest ones will shoot raw+jpg so that for the special shots, they can take the extra time with the raw file and do it up just so....

3rdPlanetPhotography

Thanks for all the great replies. Am I just using the wrong software for RAW? Is there something else out there I need to talke a look at?

ian408

There are reasons to shoot both. As many have said, RAW gives more
control. Shooting JPEGs can be faster.

As long as you get exposure nailed in camera, it's possible RAW won't
give you anything more than what you've already got in a JPEG.

I shoot RAW+JPEG.

Ian

colourbox

kc7dji wrote:

Is there something else out there I need to talke a look at?

Here's a good article
Luminous Landscape RAW article

david_h

kc7dji wrote:

Thanks for all the great replies. Am I just using the wrong software for RAW? Is there something else out there I need to talke a look at?

Hi KC, there are many different RAW converters out there, ranging from free to very expensive.

I don't shoot with Canon, so I have no idea what the included software is like. If like the free Nikon software it's probably not that great.

Someone already mentioned RawShooter Essentials. This is a very nice application and is one of the free ones. You can download it from the Pixmantec website www.pixmantec.com.

Once you see how RAW can let you fine tune your pictures (and save your butt from time to time) you will appreciate why so many photographers use it.

leebase

There is nothing you CAN'T do with jpg that you can do with RAW. Just not _as_ well. And the better you are at getting the desired exposure and white balance up front, the LESS, the advantages of RAW.

Now there is ONE area that MAY be of importance. Very large prints. With RAW converted to 16bit TIFF -- you never have any lossy compression of your file and it's POSSIBLE that in some large prints, this could make a difference.

I was a dedicated JPG shooter who only recently switched to _primarily_ raw. Only because Rawshooter Essentials was released making the work flow easy at a price point accessible to me (free).

C1 was nice, but the inexpensive version was limited to 20 photos in a batch -- and when you shoot hundreds at a time, that was a real deal killer.

Why RAW? I find that with RSE, I can make my photos "pop" easier and faster than I can with jpgs. If it had built in cropping, straightening, my workflow could be completed with just this tool. As it is now -- I adjust exposure, boost saturation, tweak white blance, and sharpen in RSE, and then crop the jpg's.

Lee

colourbox

leebase wrote:

I find that with RSE, I can make my photos "pop" easier and faster than I can with jpgs. If it had built in cropping, straightening, my workflow could be completed with just this tool. As it is now -- I adjust exposure, boost saturation, tweak white blance, and sharpen in RSE, and then crop the jpg's.

Adobe's Camera Raw in Photoshop CS2 has gotten much more productive now that it does batch processing, cropping and straightening (saved nondestructively in metadata!), all pre-conversion.

mercphoto

colourbox wrote:

Adobe's Camera Raw in Photoshop CS2 has gotten much more productive now that it does batch processing, cropping and straightening (saved nondestructively in metadata!), all pre-conversion.

One thing I don't like about ACR is that I can't seem to replicate the colors that I get with EOS Viewer Utility, no matter how much I try. I think the Canon software has a special curves adjustment that matches the characteristics of their sensors that Adobe doesn't have access to. Its all I can figure out.

But if I could replicate the colors in ACR, it would make using RAW a lot easier on me. Today, when I shoot RAW, I use EVU to batch into 16-bit TIFF's, then run them through PS/CS for the remainder of any tweaks I want to apply.

To make matters worse for me, Canon is discontinuing EVU in favor of DPP. I'm still learning DPP, but I can't seem to locate the features of EVU that I use most often in DPP. This would be the four parameter settings that mimmick the in-camera settings.

mercphoto

colourbox wrote:

Adobe's Camera Raw in Photoshop CS2 has gotten much more productive now that it does batch processing

I'm confused. You could always batch ACR via the File Browser and an action. What has changed in specific?

Steve Cavigliano

kc7dji wrote:

Thanks for all the great replies. Am I just using the wrong software for RAW? Is there something else out there I need to talke a look at?

KC,
I don't know about DPP, I never loaded it. I use ACR (Abode RAW for CS) and RSE (Raw Shooter Essentials) and you can do quite a bit more with a RAW file than you can with a jpg file. As mentioned, white balance is a breeze to fix in RAW and recovering detail in shadows or in blown out areas is a major benefit.

Try downloading RSE HERE. It's free and I'm thinking that it works even better than ACR RSE images seem to have much less noise than conversions using ACR. I will post more on this later

Here's an example I have used before to illustrate the difference between RAW and jpg.

As shot jpg with major blowouts in the head and breast area.


After tweaking the exposure and color in ACR and converting to jpg


There's no way that I could have recovered anywhere near this much detail from the jpg image I believe I lowered the exposure by more than a stop, on this image.


Steve

CharlesHB4

Why NOT use RAW?

kc7dji wrote:

Ok I've read all the threads.... I though I had a understanding and that RAW was the way to go, HOWEVER, I flipped the ole 20d on to RAW a couple days ago and popped off a few. Copied them to my puter and used Digital Photo Professional (came with the camera) and for the life of me I cannot see what I can do in RAW that I can't do in JPG.

Would some (or many) please give me more information as to what I'm missing.

kc7dji

I assume that, with a 20D, you are not limited by computer power, memory, printer resolution, or any of those things. This said, why not use RAW? If your photograph is perfectly exposed and you don't want to crop out a small portion of it for enlargement, you can always covert it to JPG. You can never do the opposite, though!

A better compromise, IMHO, would be to save your "perfectly exposed" RAW as an 8-bit/channel .TIF file, though. .TIF beats .JPG because it retains ALL the information (albeit truncated to 8 bits) of the orginial, whereas .JPG only approximates the original. If storage space is a problem, there are several compression algorithms for .TIF files that are lossless.

Finally, if you are in the habit of fixing a picuture, then some time later fixing it some more, etc... etc... etc..., then, if you use .JPG, you will be loosing information on every save. The only way to keep as much accuracy as possible is to start all over with your original every time you want to change something. With .TIF (or any other lossless format) you can always pick up where you left off last time and do some more tweaking without introducing any new compression artifacts.

I still shoot film (the RAWest of the RAW) but only get the negatives developed (at the best lab I can find) and have a contact sheet made. I then scan all the shots with a Cannon FS4000US film scanner. I batch process them all at 2000 dots per inch (vs the scanner's maximum of 4000) and only at 8-bits per channel. This saves a lot of time. When I work with any picture, though, I first convert it from 8 to 16 bits, then do my tweaking, curving, color-tweaking, etc... until I get what I want, then convert back to 8-bit for printing. When I have a photo I really love, but that is not quite properly exposed, I re-scan that one frame at 4000 dots per inch and 16-bits (which makes for a 100+ meg file) and work with that image. At that resolution I can see the individual grains (or dye clouds) in the emulstion, so I know I am not loosing any information.

My only problem is that I am not a great photographer. I love the technology and every now and then I get a half-way decent picture. A good photographer will trump a technical geek (like me) any day ... and there are a lot of great photographers on this site. I envy you all.

Charles

mercphoto

CharlesHB4 wrote:

I assume that, with a 20D, you are not limited by computer power, memory, printer resolution, or any of those things. This said, why not use RAW?

As Andy pointed out, event photographers don't have TIME to shoot raw. On Saturday I shot 1,000 photographs at a kart race. This weekend is a two-day event that should be even bigger. I'm expecting 2,500 photos or more. The conversion time alone (even batched) is wasting too much time.

A better compromise, IMHO, would be to save your "perfectly exposed" RAW as an 8-bit/channel .TIF file, though. .TIF beats .JPG because it retains ALL the information (albeit truncated to 8 bits) of the orginial, whereas .JPG only approximates the original.

Much better off to save as a 16-bit TIFF (as you state, store the 12-bits from the camera, rather than only 8). The big benefit to RAW does NOT come from having no approximate data to manipulate. It comes from a greater bit-depth, which makes adjustments such as levels and curves more accurate. The math involved with image processing is integer based, and having more bits to deal with can make a big difference fast.

CharlesHB4

mercphoto wrote:

As Andy pointed out, event photographers don't have TIME to shoot raw. On Saturday I shot 1,000 photographs at a kart race. This weekend is a two-day event that should be even bigger. I'm expecting 2,500 photos or more. The conversion time alone (even batched) is wasting too much time.

Much better off to save as a 16-bit TIFF (as you state, store the 12-bits from the camera, rather than only 8). The big benefit to RAW does NOT come from having no approximate data to manipulate. It comes from a greater bit-depth, which makes adjustments such as levels and curves more accurate. The math involved with image processing is integer based, and having more bits to deal with can make a big difference fast.

Taking photographs in situations such as you describe in your first paragrah is a special case. Here just capturing the action at all is MUCH more important than capturing it perfectly. Film photographers could never do this -- at least not without having two (or maybe six) camera bodies hanging around their necks! But, as the technology improves (and it certainly will), even this kind of photography will be able to be done using RAW image processing with relative ease, at which time my arguements in favor of RAW will once again apply.

I agree completely with your comments in your second paragraph! The only reasons not to use RAW are when memory is tight or processing time too long. Even with today's technology the price paid in memory usage and time is relatively small compared (IMHO) with the potential benefits. One may only wish that he or she had saved RAW data instead of un-RAW (cooked?) data rarely, but when that happens there is NO recourse. Better safe than sorry! (Using film as I do, of course, DOES allow one to re-scan any given frame in RAW after the fact, but I readily admit that I spend a lot more time and effort just getting any kind of digital file to work with than pure digital users ... there are still a few other benefits to film over digital, but they are really a different topic)

Charles

mercphoto

CharlesHB4 wrote:

Taking photographs in situations such as you describe in your first paragrah is a special case.

True, but you did ask why not ever shoot RAW, so I gave an example. Those who think there is never a reason to shoot JPG confuse me.

I agree completely with your comments in your second paragraph! The only reasons not to use RAW are when memory is tight or processing time too long. Even with today's technology the price paid in memory usage and time is relatively small compared (IMHO) with the potential benefits. One may only wish that he or she had saved RAW data instead of un-RAW (cooked?) data rarely, but when that happens there is NO recourse. Better safe than sorry! (Using film as I do, of course, DOES allow one to re-scan any given frame in RAW after the fact, but I readily admit that I spend a lot more time and effort just getting any kind of digital file to work with than pure digital users ... there are still a few other benefits to film over digital, but they are really a different topic)

You can't "scan to RAW". You can scan to TIFF, but not RAW. And you might think the time penalty is small compared to the benefits. But its not. Economically, it makes no sense for some of us to shoot RAW.

I'm sorry, but I'm tired of debating people who only see the world in black and white, and the "only RAW" camp is an example of that. I use RAW when its needed, I use JPG when its useful, as it should be.

JamesJWeg

I have done kart races in raw only, I was not selling onsite so I didn't need to convert quickly, however, I will say that most likly I will shoot future races in JPG. My soccer game the other day was a fine example of being able to fix a mistake in raw, however, it was a mistake that I should not have made in the first place, and one that I am not likly to repeat.

James.

colourbox

JamesJWeg wrote:

My soccer game the other day was a fine example of being able to fix a mistake in raw, however, it was a mistake that I should not have made in the first place, and one that I am not likly to repeat.

This is a good point. The better shooter you are, the less you need RAW. If you can get the shots you need the first time, and you don't need to recover highlights, and you always have your white balance set right, and have everything lit so you don't have to do significant tonal corrections, then JPEG is quite a reasonable choice. On top of the other reasons like when shooting and processing quickly is a higher priority than technical precision.

I'm not that good yet, and I don't shoot much action, so I like to shoot RAW.

rickyricky

the reason I like raw...
The reason I work 80% in raw is because RAW conversion software makes it easier to modify an image the way I want to modify it prior to importing it into Adobe (if needed).

In addition, I find that RAW software (DPP and Raw Shooter specifically, probably more) is usually designed to cut and paste "recipes" between many various images, something that is also difficult to do under PS, whether you're using ACR or not. If I take 20 similar shots, it's much quicker to adjust them all in RAW with good RAW software, than with Photoshop... At least, for the workflow that I use.

DJ-S1

colourbox wrote:

The better shooter you are, the less you need RAW.

I've never understood this knock on raw. It can help if you don't nail your exposure, but that doesn't mean that is it's sole reason for existence. I guess if you're really good then you shouldn't use Photoshop?

You can fix exposure and white balance in PS, it's just not as easy as in a raw conversion program. Anyone who plays with levels in PS is screwing with the exposure.

binghott

usually, i don't have the luxury of using raw for a couple reasons. i'm in high school so i shoot a lot, sports, friends, activites, performances, and basically anything else i want to, plus i also shoot local bands. in a typical week i shoot around 2000 pictures, my record is 5000 pictures in 5 days. i take so many pictures because my website binghott.com is a small business for me, i make some money from selling prints. i usually try to get pictures online within 24 hours, but right now i'm very backed up so i temporarily lightened the number of pictures i've been taking.

right now i only have a 1gb card, so i could probably fit 100 raw pictures on there, that's not nearly enough for me. converting pictures from raw would take me more time that i don't have and although it would be useful for some instances, it wouldn't normally be that much better. the quality of most of my pictures don't all have to be perfect, they just have to be good enough for people to enjoy.

on the other hand, i do use raw if i'm trying to get the best possible picture. for example, i went to a crafts fair on sunday and took about 20-30 pictures all in raw because i knew i wasn't taking too many and i wanted them to be really good.

for me, it comes down to a battle between quantity, quality, and time.

colourbox

DJ-S1 wrote:

I've never understood this knock on raw. It can help if you don't nail your exposure, but that doesn't mean that is it's sole reason for existence. I guess if you're really good then you shouldn't use Photoshop?

Well, maybe I should have phrased that differently. I certainly didn't mean to imply that was the only reason to use RAW.

Because RAW allows me to fix things that are not so easy to fix in JPEG, I do more fixing. But fixing mistakes is a pain and takes up time, so this motivates me to get the camera set up right in the first place. Shooting in RAW is educating me on where I need to be a better shooter.

My other motivation to use RAW is that I sometimes exhibit enlargements of my work, so I want all the bits I can get, all the color space I can get, and the control that goes along with all that.

The key issue with RAW is whether or not you approve of the camera's interpretations of the sensor data. If it works for you, you don't need RAW, but if you have reasons to try other intepretations of the sensor data, you might want RAW. The key misunderstanding with RAW is when people simply do not realize how many judgements about your photo are made by the camera image processing chip and how much potential flexibility is thrown out at the point it becomes a JPEG. The key related to that is whether you care about that potential flexibility, because if the chip pretty much delivers what you need (meaning you agree with the camera's processing decisions), the value of RAW to you decreases.

DJ-S1

Sorry, I used a small piece of your reply out of context to point out a pet peeve of mine. There are some people of the following opinion: "I always take well-exposed shots, therefore I have no need to shoot raw." I find that a bit myopic. Glad you didn't take offense, none was intended.

Shay Stephens

Insurance, and why RAW is not evil
When shooting professionally, many photographers go to great lengths to reduce the risk of getting bad results. From equipment backups, bracketing, getting variations of the same photo, overshooting, etc.

RAW adds another layer of insurance for both exposure and white balance, but also opens up some creative avenues with the ability to create different interpretations of the image, noise reduction, and vignette control to name but a few.

These advantages come at a price of course, you need more memory for the camera and computer, larger image archives, longer processing times, etc.

But in no way is using RAW bad or indicative of poor camera skills. Such arguments usually stem from elitist attitudes, lack of enough RAW experience, or simple ignorance (note: not implying stupidity).

RAW is a fantastic tool and added insurance against bad results, and as with all tools, not everyone needs it, must feel compelled to use it, or even recommend it. Some will find value in using it, and others will revel that they don't need it. Wherever you fall, more power to ya

gus

KC...they are chalk & cheese. I could not go back to shooting Jpeg after my short time with the 20D & RAW. I use RawShooter & even this i suspect isnt up to other RAW conversion progs.

Its as simple as choosing you white balance/exposure & saturation that make it all worth while.

Gus

Stan

Humungus wrote:

KC...they are chalk & cheese. I could not go back to shooting Jpeg after my short time with the 20D & RAW. I use RawShooter & even this i suspect isnt up to other RAW conversion progs.

Its as simple as choosing you white balance/exposure & saturation that make it all worth while.

Gus

Gus, play with temperature, exposure and shaddow. Temp play with the WB tool (I) if there is a neutral colour.

Play with the exposure and the shaddow by pressing the alt key to find the blown point/ saturated point. but the rest is all done in ps. Saved as Photoshop lab file if my guru is to be believed