Photography is a passion of mine. I love taking pictures of my family, random objects, and just about anything else that catches my eye. Of course, I love the gear and technical nature of digital photography as well. I shoot with a Nikon D5100 and various lenses and filters. The D5100 is a decidedly consumer level camera however it is perfect for my current level of expertise. I think my brain would explode if I had to keep any other setting, detail, or calculation in mind all before fully depressing the shutter release.
Fretting at the amount of time it took to transfer files from my SD card to my computer, I began to research the difference between RAW and JPEG formats and was not surprised to find a TON of conflicting information on the Internets. For example, at Ken Rockwell’s site I read that pro’s only shoot JPEG. His reasoning was that professional photographers usually have the camera settings mostly perfect and didn’t have the time to tweak and adjust in external applications. Images that didn’t immediately make the cut were trashed. Since JPEG was the final format, professionals skipped the RAW to JPEG conversion and shot directly in JPEG, committing the camera settings to the image. Interesting, I thought. However several other sites claimed that true professionals shot RAW and stayed away from JPEG, citing the inability to tweak and edit later. Yet another site warned against saving in RAW due to the proprietary nature of the format and wondered if Nikon or Adobe would be supporting the 2011 version of RAW 20 years down the line.
Ugh. It reminded me of when I go hunting for some obscure audio engineering function or technique. There are quite a few varied opinions floating around the Internet regarding RAW vs. JPEG. Surprisingly some people hate on one format or the other. It all made me feel like I needed to figure it out myself. Frustrated, I decided to perform my own extremely un-scientific ‘real-world test’. My test would determine the ability of external editors to correct a deliberately overexposed RAW and JPEG photo of a bowl of decorations. Here are the RAW and JPEG originals:
1/3Sec @ ⨍3.2, 50MM, ISO 125
Above: RAW, Below: JPG
We can already see that while both images are obviously overexposed, the JPEG image is clearly washed out and lacks as much detail. My next step was to import the images into Lightroom 3 and apply an ‘auto’ preset to them. I experimented on the RAW file first to find the preset which did the most to correct the image. After finding and applying that preset, I imported the JPEG and applied the same preset. Here are the exports from that procedure:
After Lightroom preset
Above: RAW, Below: JPG
Wow. How is it possible that the same preset had such different effects on the images? I actually could not find a preset which made the JPEG look anywhere near OK. Intrigued, I decided to bring the originals into Photoshop to do some adjusting. I’m comfortable with PS in a different way than I am with LR so my workflow was to open each original, launch Levels and hit the ‘Auto’ button. Here are the results (RAW on top):
Photoshop after ‘levels’ auto adjustment
Above: RAW, Below: JPG
Although Lightroom’s preset performed better out of the box, it’s pretty much the same deal. Tweaking the JPEG and RAW files further in Photoshop (using curves, saturation, and toying with the RGB layers for those that are interested) confirmed my growing suspicion that I could only adjust the JPEG so much. I achieved much better, workable results with the RAW format.
It’s clear that you lose the ability to perform meaningful image corrections on an image saved as at the JPEG in the camera. The research and investigation I’ve done indicates that the RAW format saves all the pixel information while JPEG commits whatever camera settings you have chosen (ISO, White Balance, etc...), discarding anything else. Therefore, when working with a comparatively crippled JPEG, the editing application doesn’t have as much information to work with. Although I don’t fully understand that because I have shot some really badly exposed RAW images that just could not be fixed. I suppose there is a point of no return. Leave it to me to find it.
So the verdict is in for me, RAW is the law until I learn something that sways me a different way. I was hoping to be able to benefit from the space savings of JPEG while maintaining an ability to profoundly adjust the images in Lightroom or PShop. However I’ll trade the disk space and CPU hit for the ability to fix my mistakes later.
