Raw vs Jpeg

RAW vs JPG
The RAW vs JPG format debate has come more to the fore in recent times with the introduction of specialized software for handling RAW images. If you use a digital camera and the camera is a SLR (I use a Nikon D2x) then it most likely can record images in the RAW format. In that case you should shoot images at the highest resolution possible. If you have a small memory card and are worried that you can only record a few RAW images on it, then its time to buy a bigger card! (They don't cost much these days) You can always shrink an image after you have taken it but you cant enlarge a smaller image with introducing pixel distortion. At the very least, you should have your camera record images in Hi-Res JPG format but RAW is even better.

Any kind of JPG written to your camera’s memory card will be processed in some way. JPG’s by their very nature, lose information in an image. If you repeatedly save JPG’s,you’ll lose more and more detail in it and see more pixel distortion appearing. Also, if you've set your camera up to do some image manipulation (e.g. contrast / brightness adjustment) these will also be applied before your camera write the image out to the memory card. In such cases, you could end up with images that have burned out highlights or shadows that are so deep that they contain no detail. Such areas of an images may be irreparable even with the likes of Adobe Photoshop.

With your converted raw files, you have full control over what manipulations will be carried out to produce the final image, using packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro. The better RAW conversion packages also include basic contrast, brightness and colour management controls, so you may not even need a separate image manipulation package. Some even provide tools for compensating for over – or – under-exposed images.

By shooting RAW images, you give yourself complete control over colour and exposure and it’s you, rather than the camera, that decides what adjustments are applied to reproduce the tones and contrast of the original scene. It also lets you maximize the quality of the final image for whatever output you want, whether that’s on a monitor, as in ink jet print or sent to one of the digital photo labs for printing.

RAW images, on the other hand, are simply that – raw. What the camera sees is dumped (without any manipulation what so ever) onto the memory card. RAW images also tend to contain more information and detail and have larger files sizes than similar resolution JPG’s. The problem with RAW files is that they’ve not been the easiest to work with; for example, Window Explorer cannot show RAW files as thumbnail images so, unless you’ve renamed your image files with meaningful names, you wont know that the images are when you came back to them a couple of months later.

Now put what you have learnt to practice with the Raw Convertor >