Quick question:

[Jonty355]

What are the advantages to shooting in raw as apposed to the usual jpeg?

And does it affect when you come to edit them in photoshop?

Cheers in advance
Jonty

[AlfaFoxtrot]

There is a whole load of stuff over the internet about RAW vs JPEG. But basically the main advantage is you can do a lot more post processing with them as they contain the 'raw' data, no processing is done in camera it's all on pc. This means that if you have the time to go through a session that's been shot in RAW, it should come out looking better than JPEG's - whether anyone else could tell the difference is another matter :P

[sidaorb]

I've shot Jpeg for about 5 years, began shooting RAW in January after alot of grief from my tog mates. I must admit I love the results and didnt realise just how much is lost by the cameras processor.

[chris.mapey]

Personally I shoot a mix of the two types of files.

Jpeg for "family" shots and suchlike.

RAW for when I'm shooting the shots at a wedding that need to be spot on (ceremony, group shots etc)

I do this as it means a bit of time saved in front of the PC afterwards

Suppose the advice is, think before choosing...

JPEG is great is you are happy with the shot "as taken"

RAW has more latitude for post processing.

Chris

[Simpo Two]

12 pages of bloodletting here: www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=10...

[Jonty355]

So RAW is the way to go then as I tend to do a lot of post processing in photoshop.

Cheers guys, will stick to RAW for more arty shots then that just normal ones.

Thanks
Jon

[RobDickinson]

If you have the space and time theres no reason not to shoot raw.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Simpo Two said:

12 pages of bloodletting here: www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=10...

that was a good one. I still fondly remember my 'TIFF is for retards' rant (or words to that effect).

[LeoZwalf]

RobDickinson said:

If you have the space and time theres no reason not to shoot raw.

I disagree. Even though I'm a bit of a noob at this stuff, I think JPEG has its place. For example I took my camera with me on a lads weekend in Bath a couple of weekends ago. I didn't take it out on the town with us (I like it, but not that much!) but took a few snaps on the journey there and while we were there. As I knew they didn't need to be mega quality and weren't going to be modified or processed, just uploaded (to the likes of Facebook) and emailed round, I saw no point in shooting in RAW. It would have meant I'd have to convert them all to JPEG anyway!

For 'proper' photography, arty shots or those shots you know you'll have to faff with later, then it's RAW all the way, imo.

[Simpo Two]

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

I still fondly remember my 'TIFF is for retards' rant (or words to that effect).

Mm, although labs can't print from RAW so if you want big lossless prints, TIF has a place IMHO as an output format. Plus, if your clients are worried about quality, telling them the files are 55Mb usually stuns them into silence

Edited by Simpo Two on Wednesday 9th April 23:19

[RobDickinson]

So you didnt have the time (or want to) to process. So shoot JPG, as you did.

[LeoZwalf]

RobDickinson said:

So you didnt have the time (or want to) to process. So shoot JPG, as you did.

Gah. Yes. Re-reading the quote I quoted... I am actually agreeing with you aren't I! Now where's that coat of mine?

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Simpo Two said:

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

I still fondly remember my 'TIFF is for retards' rant (or words to that effect).

Mm, although labs can't print from RAW so if you want big lossless prints, TIF has a place IMHO as an output format. Plus, if your clients are worried about quality, telling them the files are 55Mb usually stuns them into silence

Size can be a plus for JPEG I'd agree now my kit produces LARGE RAW files. For example this



full sized is 5616 x 3744 and 14 bits deep.

File format	Depth(bits)	Size (MB)
JPEG (quality 10)	8	3.6
CR2 (RAW)	14	23.2
PNG	16	98.8
TIFF (uncompressed)	16	123.2
TIFF (compressed)	16	157.6

If things carry on like this though, labs are going to have to upgrade their Mac classics, jump out of the 80's and do RAW.

[RobDickinson]

compressed Tiff is larger...?

[Simpo Two]

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

If things carry on like this though, labs are going to have to upgrade their Mac classics, jump out of the 80's and do RAW.

So you mean - shoot RAW, tweak to taste, save as RAW? I think something would be missing - otherwise RAW would effectively be a compressed TIFF and it's not like that.

Just when you need Bacardi he's buggered off to NZ!

[LeoZwalf]

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

full sized is 5616 x 3744 and 14 bits deep.

What camera takes that sort of size and bit rate?

[RobDickinson]

LeoZwalf said:

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

full sized is 5616 x 3744 and 14 bits deep.

What camera takes that sort of size and bit rate?

1DsMkIII, flash bstard

Nothing edits and saves as RAW does it? You always convert to tiff/psd/whatever then work on that.

[Simpo Two]

RobDickinson said:

Nothing edits and saves as RAW does it? You always convert to tiff/psd/whatever then work on that.

PS CS2 allows me to save as 'Photoshop RAW'. I tried that in the early days and the image corrupted. In fact it says 'The Photoshop Raw format does not fully encode the image mode and size, among other things. The image may not befully restored when you re-open the file'.

A quick test with Phil's shot above - it goes from 144Kb to 1.07Mb, and when it opens it's black and white, square and with fine vertical lines over it.

[BlueMR2]

I think of jpeg as what the camera has recorded then edited with the limited processing power it has on board then shrunk for saving space.

Imo RAW is the same that the sensor recorded, but has not been processed at all.

If you get the white balance wrong on jpeg, tough, if you got it wrong on raw then just change the setting before you process it.

Raw allows you to basically do whatever processing the camera can do and more at any time on your computer so gives more flexability with little loss of image quality, just requires more time and effort imo.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Simpo Two said:

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

If things carry on like this though, labs are going to have to upgrade their Mac classics, jump out of the 80's and do RAW.

So you mean - shoot RAW, tweak to taste, save as RAW? I think something would be missing - otherwise RAW would effectively be a compressed TIFF and it's not like that.

True. Levels, sharpening etc would be fine but edits to the image would be an issue. The solution would be for Photoshop to save the actions you took to do the edits and just send the RAW file and edits over. Oh well, not there yet then. Something will have to change though. 150MB a shot. Crazy!

Oh and the table is correct in that the uncompressed TIFF is smaller than the compressed one. It was compressed with TIFF LZW. If you use ZIP it's around 118MB.