RAW vs JPEG: Ease of Post Processing

KED

I hate asking basic questions after 300+ posts, but this is bugging me. The accepted wisdom is that PP is so much more flexible with RAW than with JPEG. There is a thread around here that's not more than a day old on that exact theme. I totally get that when it comes to white balance; which is why I shoot RAW in artificial light conditions (indoors, or nighttime sports). But the more I shoot, the more I want to truncate PP; so if I'm shooting outdoors in daylight, what am I giving up shooting large-image jpegs at the highest quality setting assuming (a) for bright sunshine, that WB setting, or (b) for variable conditions, using AWB?

Nikolai

You lose latitude.
Translation: in a hypothetical situation that you managed to get precisely adequate settings according to whatever one single final result you had in your head, jpeg would probably do just fine.
However, if you make any mistake, or simply not precise enough, or decided to try different treatments, or decide to do something different with shadows/highlights - raw is your life saver.
Here's a test you can do for yourself.
Get a nicely exposed raw image of a nicely lit scene full of shadows, highlights, and midtones details. Such an image often has a rich histogram going beyond both ends of a spectrum.
Make a jpeg out of it. the histogram will change slightly, but will be fairly close.
Now, open them both in ACR or LR and adjust exposure slider by 1EV.
You will see that RAW lets you to do it rather graciousely, "emitting" the pixels from "beyond" to fill the gap.
Jpeg will be totally different - the losing end will get nothing.

I always treat the raw file according to its generic name: raw. It's a raw meat/fish/veggie/dough, ehatever your poison is. You can prepare whatever you want out of it. But once it's prepared, there is no way back. That's your jpeg. It surves one purpose and one purpose only. Raw can serve many - but it HAS to be served first.

KED

Nikolai wrote:

You lose latitude.
Translation: in a hypothetical situation that you managed to get precisely adequate settings according to whatever one single final result you had in your head, jpeg would probably do just fine.
However, if you make any mistake, or simply not precise enough, or decided to try different treatments, or decide to do something different with shadows/highlights - raw is your life saver.
Here's a test you can do for yourself.
Get a nicely exposed raw image of a nicely lit scene full of shadows, highlights, and midtones details. Such an image often has a rich histogram going beyond both ends of a spectrum.
Make a jpeg out of it. the histogram will change slightly, but will be fairly close.
Now, open them both in ACR or LR and adjust exposure slider by 1EV.
You will see that RAW lets you to do it rather graciousely, "emitting" the pixels from "beyond" to fill the gap.
Jpeg will be totally different - the losing end will get nothing.

I always treat the raw file according to its generic name: raw. It's a raw meat/fish/veggie/dough, ehatever your poison is. You can prepare whatever you want out of it. But once it's prepared, there is no way back. That's your jpeg. It surves one purpose and one purpose only. Raw can serve many - but it HAS to be served first.

OK so tomorrow, I am shooting sports in what is forecast to be brilliant sunshine, using two bodies, one on a zoom, one on a super-telephoto. Both will be pushed for exposure as required per pre-game test shots. This is sports -- I am unlikely to encounter your ideal situation of both deep highlights AND shadows (that matter in one case or the other anyway). I am happy to experiment and for educational purposes invest additional PP time if necessary; so should I shoot RAW or stay with JPEG under those circumstances in your opinion (which I respect so much that I'm likely to follow)?

Nikolai

KED wrote:

OK so tomorrow, I am shooting sports in what is forecast to be brilliant sunshine, using two bodies, one on a zoom, one on a super-telephoto. Both will be pushed for exposure as required per pre-game test shots. This is sports -- I am unlikely to encounter your ideal situation of both deep highlights AND shadows (that matter in one case or the other anyway). I am happy to experiment and for educational purposes invest additional PP time if necessary; so should I shoot RAW or stay with JPEG under those circumstances in your opinion (which I respect so much that I'm likely to follow)?

Thank you, I'm flattered
Sports is an entirely different agenda. You're shoot by hundreds (if not thousands) and you lucky if you get dozens sold. It's a jpeg world - you're not gonna process them anyway...
So I say: pretune and shoot medium jpeg, it's more than enough for 4x6 or even 8x10.
Are we in agreement?

Nikolai

And just for the record - *I* would still shoot RAW just in case something turns out sour - but that's me, I have the full rawflow (tm) going on..

xris

Brilliant explaination Nikolai. I love your clarity!

Anyway. Hence RAW+JPEG mode -- and huge memory! Throw away all the RAW frames you want -- after the shoot. But, in the event that you get a 'keeper,' or a problematic 'must have,' you'll have the RAW to work with.

KED

Nikolai wrote:

Thank you, I'm flattered
Sports is an entirely different agenda. You're shoot by hundreds (if not thousands) and you lucky if you get dozens sold. It's a jpeg world - you're not gonna process them anyway...
So I say: pretune and shoot medium jpeg, it's more than enough for 4x6 or even 8x10.
Are we in agreement?

I do this for fun not profit, but I do take pride in my work so I do, in fact. PP everything. It's really burdensome and time consuming but I need what ends up posted to be the best that it can be. My last shoot was in top quality large jpegs, and while that allowed me no to worry about WB, I still needed to adjust for exposure, "clarity" in Lr and I found out to late that I would have benefited from sharpening as well.

So I'm still thinking that if I do tomorrow in large jpeg at the highest quality with WB set for bright sun (assuming I get that), and do pre-game exposure comp to push the histo, I can handle everything else in PP no matter what brain damage that entails?

KED

xris wrote:

Brilliant explaination Nikolai. I love your clarity!

Anyway. Hence RAW+JPEG mode -- and huge memory! Throw away all the RAW frames you want -- after the shoot. But, in the event that you get a 'keeper,' or a problematic 'must have,' you'll have the RAW to work with.

<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

I am, I guess, a relatively selective shooter; probably won't shoot more than 300 exposures tomorrow between two bodies & two 8 GB cards in a 60 minute game, so RAW + JPEG may well be an option -- thanks for the thought. In the past that option has just freaked me out when I saw my capacity drop like a rock from >1500 down to <500, but now that I know from experience what my shot count is likely to be, I can explore that option. And, if necessary, get a bigger card.

arodney

KED wrote:

I hate asking basic questions after 300+ posts, but this is bugging me. The accepted wisdom is that PP is so much more flexible with RAW than with JPEG. There is a thread around here that's not more than a day old on that exact theme. I totally get that when it comes to white balance; which is why I shoot RAW in artificial light conditions (indoors, or nighttime sports). But the more I shoot, the more I want to truncate PP; so if I'm shooting outdoors in daylight, what am I giving up shooting large-image jpegs at the highest quality setting assuming (a) for bright sunshine, that WB setting, or (b) for variable conditions, using AWB?

I think one of the best articles addressing Raw and PP as you call it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/33msxz

Its long, but its really an important piece for anyone considering what Raw and/or JPEG bring to the party in terms of control and, as the article talks about, rendering the print.

xris

KED wrote:

And, if necessary, get a bigger card.

Did you notice Andy's link to the 64 gig CF Card announcement?

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=42467&highlight=card

Nikolai

KED wrote:

So I'm still thinking that if I do tomorrow in large jpeg at the highest quality with WB set for bright sun (assuming I get that), and do pre-game exposure comp to push the histo, I can handle everything else in PP no matter what brain damage that entails?

Well, if you know that you gonna shoot <300 frames AND you have enough cards to do raw + jpeg - sure, why not.
However, I *really* don't understand the reason to have in-camera jpeg in addition to raw since, as you said, you ALWAYS process your pictures. Just jpegs for a fast low-quality mass shooting - sure, that's the name of the game. But if you already have raw, why waste cards space for the jpegs that you can easilty re-generate in your computer after the shoot - that gets me... <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >
Anyway, good luck, hope it turns out nice!<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" >

Van Isle

I see how the OP wants to truncate his PP, but to export a JPEG from RAW after adjustments is one step. Unless you need to print on site with minimal PP, that extra step is but one or two clicks of the mouse.

Why lose all the benefits of RAW for that micro-time saving?

RAW enables not only WB adjustment, but better exposure adjustment, better (and output specific) sharpening, and simply more bits of information to work with and then discard if needed.

But if it works for you, rock on!

xris

arodney wrote:

I think one of the best articles addressing Raw and PP as you call it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/33msxz...

Thanks (again!). Very good article.

claudermilk

Van Isle wrote:

Why lose all the benefits of RAW for that micro-time saving?

Exactly. There are several options that allow you to very rapidly process batches of RAW files. I shoot dance, which has similar volume demands as sports and can chew through many, many files quickly. I also have "rawflow" set up (yes, I recall that thread ). The one thing that would really drive me to try to shoot JPEG is if I were to start doing on-site printing (not likely for my situation).

KED

Van Isle wrote:

I see how the OP wants to truncate his PP, but to export a JPEG from RAW after adjustments is one step. Unless you need to print on site with minimal PP, that extra step is but one or two clicks of the mouse.

Why lose all the benefits of RAW for that micro-time saving?

RAW enables not only WB adjustment, but better exposure adjustment, better (and output specific) sharpening, and simply more bits of information to work with and then discard if needed.

But if it works for you, rock on!

Here we are exactly at the point:

(1) If I am in brilliant sunshine, I don't want to have to WB 200 shots, and while I have wimped out of trying it, I'm guessing that there's variability even t o what I am calling "brilliant sunshine";

(2) Even more importantly, what do you mean exactly by "better" exposure adjustment, sharpening, etc.? I'm sure I could go shoot RAW/jpeg side by side and do a comparison, and I promise that I will some day, but I'm in prime time now and am really interested in generating best possible output most efficiently (i.e. least PP time), so some clarification would be much appreciated!

KED

Sorry; duplicate post averted; didn't see the first one go upl.