Do You Shoot in the RAW?

Recently, a friend of mine asked me if I shot in RAW or JPEG. You might already see where I am going with this as there is ongoing debate on which mode is better to shoot in.

While it sounds like it might be the final game of the World Series, it really describes the two different ways you can capture photos with a DSLR.  So to simplify this issue, there's really only one basic question you need to answer:

Do you want the camera to process your images or not?

As you read on you will see why this is a key question that you should answer in deciding how you are going to take your photographs.

So what’s the difference between the two?

RAW and JPEG refer to the two different file types your camera can produce. Whenever you use a computer program, it creates a file type that can often only be opened by that program. So it's equal to Microsoft Excel creating XLS files or Microsoftword creating DOC files. All acronyms aside, it's good enough to just to understand that RAW and JPEG are basically two different file types.

RAW files are named in an odd sort of way, since most of us are more used to another definition of "raw". A RAW file is the unedited image data that you digital SLR camera captures every time you take a photo. So you could say that a RAW file is an "uncooked" digital photo in that the camera does not manipulate the image in any way before it is saved on the memory card. A RAW file is a pure capture, or an unprocessed image that you can adjust before you make a print.

Unlike a RAW file, a JPEG is a processed image. All of the processing takes place inside the camera before the camera saves the photo onto a memory card.

Some of the processing that takes place when shooting in JPEG include:

• Color saturation, which is an increase or decrease in the intensity of colors.
• Sharpness, which can make the image either looks crisp or soft.
• Contrast, which affects the range between shadows and highlights.

When you capture digital images as JPEG files, it's as if the camera has developed them first. This comes with a drawback:

The processing that an SLR applies to a JPEG image can't be undone.

This doesn't mean that you can't make further changes to your photo in an image editing program after you take it. It just means that any color or exposure settings applied when the photo was taken can't be altered after the fact.

Another difference between the two mode of shooting is photo compression.

A digital image is made up of millions of tiny dots called pixels and a camera has two options when it comes to the color of these pixels:

1. Leave them the way they were captured by the camera's sensor
2. Adjust ones with similar color so that they are identical

When pixels that are very similar in color are all made identical, this reduces the overall file size of your digital photo. This is the effect of mild compression. Severe compression can drastically reduce the overall quality of the image, producing photos that look unsharp and blocky.

Image compression is applied to every JPEG file in some amount by contrast. In RAW files however, no compression is used which means that all the data in the pictures that are taken are retained.

Now that we know the differences between the two, we can go into the pros and cons of each and why you might want to use one over the other.

Starting with JPEG, I am going to go out on a limb here and say it is by far the easier format to work with. I can’t really say much here it’s just a fact (okay, it’s a well established opinion).

Since JPG is a standard file format on every type of computer (even really old ones), JPEG files can be viewed by anyone. Even if you don't own an image editing program, you can still view your JPEG images by using standard utilities already built into your computer.

Since every JPEG is compressed, it doesn't take up as much space as RAW files. This also means that it takes significantly less time to upload a JPEG to an online gallery to share with friends.

All this ease of use comes with one major drawback that may actually be of no concern to you at all depending on how you answered the question in the beginning.

When set your camera to capture photos as JPEG files, you are basically letting the engineers who put your camera together decide how your final images are going to look. Decisions about the color, tone and clarity of the photo are not under your direct control since it’s all decided for you

If you take a portrait and decide after the fact that you don't like the skin tones or capture a beautiful sunset but the colors don't pop quite as much as you'd like, there's little that you can do about it. The image is pretty much set in stone.

So to sum this drawback up, there is very little flexibility in what you can do edit your pictures after you take them.

As for RAW files, there is actually quite a large list of cons which deters many people away from using it.

First, RAW files are huge: relative to JPEGs, they eat up a lot of memory on your camera's card and on your computer's hard drive.

A RAW file can use up to 4 times as much digital space as a JPEG.

So an example could be a very high-quality JPEG image that might use up 6.4 MB of space while same image captured in the RAW format can take up to 24 MB of space.

These enormous file sizes can impact those who want to work with RAW:

1. You need memory cards with more storage space
2. You need plenty of clear hard drive space
3. It takes extra time to transfer images from memory card to hard drive
4. You need a pretty powerful computer if you want to view and edit these huge files

On the plus side, memory today is very cheap. You could probably buy an 8 GB SD memory card for about $20. You can also get a 500 GB hard drive (which would allow you to store about 25,500 RAW files) for less than $100.

Getting a new computer just so you can edit RAW files is probably the most expensive part, but if you've purchased a new machine any time within the past two to four years, it should be able to handle the load.

Once you've got all the storage space set up though, you're going to need a special program to even see what your RAW photos look like. RAW image files are unique to each camera manufacturer so a RAW file produced by a Canon digital SLR won't be the same as a RAW file produced by a Nikon.

Since each camera produces a slightly different file format for RAW, there are only a handful of programs that can interpret them:

• Adobe Elements
• Nikon Capture
• Adobe Lightroom

So to sum up the cons, RAW files are huge and they require specific software to view and edit.

What's the point of all this then?

You can manipulate any part of your digital image after the photo has been taken which in my opinion is pretty awesome.

If you don’t like the color or exposure you can change it. You can change how sharp or soft your image looks. You can even fix flaws in the image that are created by the lens that you have attached to the camera. You have a lot of flexibility to fix the image into how you want them to look. You can correct mistakes you make at the time of exposure, a big one that can’t be done to JPEG files.

Let's say that you've been fiddling around with your camera's exposure settings, and are suddenly faced with a prime photo opportunity. You don't pay attention to the settings and over-expose a few key frames.

If you were taking photos as JPEGs, those images would be lost in that you cannot correct the overexposure.

But with RAW files, correcting an over or underexposed image is a simple as moving a slider to adjust the way the image looks.

 

Take the following photos for example. The images on the left are with the exposure as I captured them. The images on the right are the exact same photos, but with corrections applied using a RAW image editor (in my case, it was Adobe Lightroom). See the differences in each of them?

 

 

Many professional photographers only shoot RAW files and would never think about using JPEG images. Keep this important fact in mind: photography is their job.

Since it is a full-time job, they can devote the hours it takes to process and edit RAW images so that they have complete control over the photo from start to finish.

They already have special software that allows them to process RAW files, and the computer power to manipulate them. They also understand how levels, curves, color saturation and hue can change their photos and can make small adjustments to each one of these. If all those terms I just listed sound like a foreign language to you, you'll have a lot to learn when it comes to processing RAW images.

In the end, using RAW files is all about control. If you're the sort of person who enjoys developing your own film, then RAW is the way to go. You can make each photo look exactly the way you want it to. On the other hand, if you enjoy taking photos much more than manipulating them after the fact then JPEG will be the better option for you.