RAW vs JPEG
http://live.pirillo.com/ – What format is better for digital camera: RAW or JPEG? Most digital cameras in the "prosumer" to consumer range don’t really save out to a RAW file format, and instead always save in JPEG.
JPEG is a lossy compression format, which means that some data is lost when the image is compressed.
RAW is essentially just that: the raw data is saved to the file without any compression at all, and thus no data loss.
Professionals like using RAW files because they don’t want their camera doing any processing at all, so they can manage the files on their computers as they see fit.
Which one is better? For consumers, JPEG is the way to go: it’s ubiquitous and support for it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. If you’re a professional you’ll probably choose RAW.
What do you think: RAW or JPEG?
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8 Comments
Bryan Wetton
June 14th, 2007
at 1:29am
My new Lumix FZ50 automatically saves a JPG as well when using the RAW format.
Bryan Wetton
June 14th, 2007
at 1:29am
My new Lumix FZ50 automatically saves a JPG as well when using the RAW format.
Mark
June 14th, 2007
at 5:11am
RAW no question about it. Not only do you get more detail, but you have the ability to fix things that you might not have exactly cared about while taking the picture. Never have to worry about getting that correct white balance. RAW captures it all. You can always set the white balance after the fact in a RAW editor. You get more detail and can recover pictures that were either taken to dark or to bright. Yes, the files are bigger. Yes, you can’t just use any ole’ software to view the files….but now lately, it has become so popular, that you’re starting to see RAW support in pretty much every Picture viewer.
Mark
June 14th, 2007
at 5:11am
RAW no question about it. Not only do you get more detail, but you have the ability to fix things that you might not have exactly cared about while taking the picture. Never have to worry about getting that correct white balance. RAW captures it all. You can always set the white balance after the fact in a RAW editor. You get more detail and can recover pictures that were either taken to dark or to bright. Yes, the files are bigger. Yes, you can’t just use any ole’ software to view the files….but now lately, it has become so popular, that you’re starting to see RAW support in pretty much every Picture viewer.
Simon
June 14th, 2007
at 6:31am
I am using RAW with a canon 10D. Transfer the RAW file to PC, convert with PhaseOne to uncompressed JPEG. From there I can resize and compress for the web, picture printing, DVD etc… I always keep the raw and JPG so I can go back 1 year later and re process with a newer version of the converter with added capacity to get me more out of the same picture.
I use faststone resizer to convert all my uncompressed JPEG, resize, add text and much more. Free…
Doing RAW is like keeping your negative. Take more space but with today’s 500Gig HD at 100$, there is no reason not to do it.
John Newton
June 14th, 2007
at 6:53am
There is a place for each format. I use RAW to capture my important images (Canon EOS-10D). All images are saved to my NAS for later processing. I carry a Canon 630D everywhere I go, but it only captures JPG files.
Now, the processing part is the tricky part. If I have a RAW image, no problem. I can use any number of tools that will read the Canon RAW format. Adobe being my first choice, at present. What’s nice about the Adobe products is that they will Pull the data from the RAW file and make a PSD file with which you work. The original is not touched. Nice.
Now, a JPG file has only limited information stored in it. so I have to be pretty careful as to what I do to them. I use PhotoShop CS2 for most of my processing. I will pull the JPG in and save it as a PSD file. Now I can work in layers and do all sorts of stuff to the image, even though it has a lot less information than does the RAW image. When finished I’ll save it as either a JPG or PNG file for use on the web.
So, is RAW better than JPS? For me yes, but not everyone can afford a higher end camera that supports RAW. JPG can be used, but you need to be careful if you plan on doing any sort of editing/processing on them but you can still get some pretty impressive images in the JPG format.
Now, JPG vs PNG hmm… interesting question. I’ve been playing a bit with PNG format and it looks to be an excellent replacement for the GIF format. It does a pretty good job and has a file size comparible with the JPG format. I use both on web pages and users don’t see any difference. PNG fornat does support transparentcy where JPG does not.
Imadoofus123
July 19th, 2007
at 9:28pm
I use raw ’cause it gives me more control. when I use jpg and it doesn’t come out right, I can’t fix it as well because it has a lower dynamic range. besides, I want the picture to look how I want it to look, not how the camera thinks it should look.
Imadoofus123
July 19th, 2007
at 9:28pm
I use raw ’cause it gives me more control. when I use jpg and it doesn’t come out right, I can’t fix it as well because it has a lower dynamic range. besides, I want the picture to look how I want it to look, not how the camera thinks it should look.