Fine jpeg printing loss with b&w conversion

kp-pix

Hi

I have only ever shot in RAW but now that I have a D300 on reserve (swoon) I am going to change my workflow to a combination of JPEG and JPEG/RAW - these 17 hour editing days are ruining my wrinkle free dream appearance :rofl

That being said though, I would rather spend 17 hours a day converting my RAW's than handing off a lovely picture that prints less than average. So far, we have had WYSIWYG image printing quality and I want to keep it that way.

How much detail etc etc do you lose by converting a high jpeg to b&w/sepia at final print? I know you lose quality everytime you even breath on a jpeg - but how bad is it truly with desaturation? enlarged? I can test it myself I suppose, get one printed, but just checking if anyone knew

I just 'know' that somewhere in those JPEG only files I will have some corker that is screaming to be converted :lust:wink:rofl

Thanks in advance (and if it is in here somewhere, sorry, I did search but couldn't find this exact q answered)

OH, I can't delete this. I just saw some wedding images that are straight jpeg and they simply don't have what I want 'anyway'.

All good. If this q isn't a thread essential - can someone delete-vous please when they have time!

Thanks!

MichaelKirk

How much time.....
Just curious how much faster do you think editing a jpeg will be over a RAW image?

Funny thing is I am going the opposite direction - converting from shooting entirely jpegs to a RAW workflow - for the better quality as well as the ability to edit non-destructively....and I shoot mainly sports so looking at 1000 image an event.

My understanding is PP time between and RAW image and jpeg is no different - unless of course you are applying in camera sharpening, NR, etc - which is something I would choose never to do. I have just switched to Lightroom and CS3 so once I learn the new software and get a workflow into place PP time should be faster and easier (for me at least).

Michael

kp-pix wrote:

Hi

I have only ever shot in RAW but now that I have a D300 on reserve (swoon) I am going to change my workflow to a combination of JPEG and JPEG/RAW - these 17 hour editing days are ruining my wrinkle free dream appearance

That being said though, I would rather spend 17 hours a day converting my RAW's than handing off a lovely picture that prints less than average. So far, we have had WYSIWYG image printing quality and I want to keep it that way.

How much detail etc etc do you lose by converting a high jpeg to b&w/sepia at final print? I know you lose quality everytime you even breath on a jpeg - but how bad is it truly with desaturation? enlarged? I can test it myself I suppose, get one printed, but just checking if anyone knew

I just 'know' that somewhere in those JPEG only files I will have some corker that is screaming to be converted wink

Thanks in advance (and if it is in here somewhere, sorry, I did search but couldn't find this exact q answered)

OH, I can't delete this. I just saw some wedding images that are straight jpeg and they simply don't have what I want 'anyway'.

All good. If this q isn't a thread essential - can someone delete-vous please when they have time!

Thanks!

kp-pix

Good points, Michael, very good points. I have never shot in JPG so thank you for demystifying the process for me. I love the quality of RAW but thought there might be a quicker way. Guess there's no such thing in pride of work.

Thank you for answering!

pathfinder

kp-pix,

With Compact Flash so cheap these days, shooting in RAW and fine jpgs is something that I tend to do quite a bit too.

These jpgs can be captured as B&Ws in Canon cameras, and I believe Nikon does this also.

I would suggest that you just shoot a few frames this way and compare the images to B&Ws that your process via RAW yourself. Everyone will tell you that the images from RAW will be better, and that is probably true at the third decimal place. But I remember some frames I shot with the 20D this way when it was first introduce, and I was quite impressed just how good, out of the camera B&W jpgs shot with digital color filters - like an orange or a deep red - could look.

So rather than ask us here - shoot some for yourself, and report back to us here what you find out. I'll bet that you find that for may purposes they will be quite acceptable.

kp-pix

Yep yep agreed and I intend to. It wasn't so much the workflow but the end quality at print. I like to tweak the b&w's and wondered how much you lost at print doing it to a jpg.

But yep, I'll test it myself and see just wondering if anyone knew.

Thanks for answering!

arodney

Shooting Raw's with the right software tools (Lightroom for me) doesn't make it at all slower and in some cases faster than JPEG.

The big issue I have with Raw+JPEG is the two never match. Plus there's the storage on card and disk issue, naming etc. So with something like LR, I can generate JPEGs of any size (or Tiffs for that matter) from one source, the Raw's based on one (or more) metadata instructions and build out identical appearing images. I can control the file names of all iterations. If you look at modern tools, I think you'll be hard pressed to see that a Raw workflow isnt faster, more flexible and obviously results in better data.