Confusing myself

Doddy1974

Doddy1974

Messages
663
Name
Cathy
Edit My Images
Yes
I need your help!

At the moment, I shoot in JPEG and RAW. I then upload them, sort them into JPEG and RAW folders. I then edit the photos I feel are my best ones from the RAW folder, and save them as JPEG in a "Best" folder.

I am asking myself...why am I shooting in JPEG too when I don't do anything with these pics, they just sit in a folder.

When I open a RAW file, edit it, then re-save it as a JPEG...am I degrading the image? I want to be able to upload these images to an online printing service, so they need to be in a format that is widely used...or I am understanding this wrong.

I don't feel I am doing any of this right at the moment...
I really don't understand when people discuss "compressing pictures" etc...how do you compress a file?

Sorry for asking such a stupid question!
 
I think you are doing it just right.

If you want best quality, edit the Raw and save as a JPEG. Everything ends up as a JPEG for final output anyway, that's the compressed file. Look at the file sizes of the Raw and JPEG - the JPEG is very much smaller. Uncompressed files are unmanageably huge, and there is no discernable loss of quality with a high grade JPEG.

The thing about shooting JPEGs is that if you set up your camera pre-sets carefully (picture styles, noise reduction etc) and are careful with exposure and white balance at the time of shooting, you can output that directly. No need to even go near a computer, you get the finished result straight out of the camera, and the quality will be just as good as the processed Raw, unless you have done something extra to that in PP, that you can't do in-camera.

The penalty for shooting both JPEG and Raw is very small. JPEGs take up very little extra memory, then you have all options covered.
 
Doddy1974 said:
When I open a RAW file, edit it, then re-save it as a JPEG...am I degrading the image?
Click to expand...
Well only a little bit (you've finished editing it anyway) and only once, provided your app is saving at high enough quality Jpeg.
Your work flow sounds good to me.
Personally I'd keep backups (on external hard drive, stored somewhere else) of the best RAWs too, or backups of everything not chucked away.
 
Thankyou so much for your replies.
It sounds like the majority think I am doing things right...this is reassuring to me!

I save all my images on an external Hard Drive...my laptop wouldn't cope otherwise!

One more question....if I am not doing anything with the JPEG files, why have them?
 
Doddy1974 said:
Thankyou so much for your replies.
It sounds like the majority think I am doing things right...this is reassuring to me!

I save all my images on an external Hard Drive...my laptop wouldn't cope otherwise!

One more question....if I am not doing anything with the JPEG files, why have them?
Click to expand...

The alternative question is, if you are not doing anything with the Raw that you cannot do in-camera and output directly as a high quality JPEG, why bother with the Raw?

A lot of people only shoot JPEG, including me most of the time. I just set the camera up properly, am careful with exposure and white balance, and that's it - job done.

Have you looked into what you can do in-camera? What is it that you are doing to your Raws that the camera cannot do? It just seems to me that covering all your options and shooting Raw and a carefully crafted JPEG at the same time, is the obvious answer to both questions. Memory is so cheap.
 
At the moment it is mainly adjusting the exposure and/or brightness. I know eventually, as I learn more, this will diminish, and I *should* be able to get the shot I am after without having to adjust.

I don't know if this is a problem with me, or the camera, but often, when I upload the image, it looks different than it did on the camera screen. And when this happens, I am so glad I shot in RAW.
Another example is pictures look sharp on camera, but when they are uploaded, they are blurred :(
 
If you're talking about the RAW files, they will not look the same as your Jpegs.
Jpegs have been processed in camera as per your settings, RAW will be data with no processing but, you can do much more with them when editing.
 
Doddy1974 said:
At the moment it is mainly adjusting the exposure and/or brightness. I know eventually, as I learn more, this will diminish, and I *should* be able to get the shot I am after without having to adjust.

I don't know if this is a problem with me, or the camera, but often, when I upload the image, it looks different than it did on the camera screen. And when this happens, I am so glad I shot in RAW.
Another example is pictures look sharp on camera, but when they are uploaded, they are blurred :(
Click to expand...

The image on the LCD is a small JPEG, processed according to the camera pre-sets. It is always tagged to the Raw file, whether you've selected JPEG or not. If you open your Raw in Canon's DPP it will look exactly like the LCD image, because the presets have already been applied to it as a starting point for post processing. You can of course change it to whatever you like, but it's a handy reference. Some other Raw processors also pick up on it.

It looks sharp because it is small!

Have a look and see what you can do by setting up the camera JPEG carefully, and shooting carefully. I'm not saying don't shoot Raw, but if you get it right in camera, you can save a lot of time. And it's good photographic discipline to get it right first time ;)
 
HoppyUK said:
I think you are doing it just right.

If you want best quality, edit the Raw and save as a JPEG. Everything ends up as a JPEG for final output anyway, that's the compressed file. Look at the file sizes of the Raw and JPEG - the JPEG is very much smaller. Uncompressed files are unmanageably huge, and there is no discernable loss of quality with a high grade JPEG.

~ clip ~

The penalty for shooting both JPEG and Raw is very small. JPEGs take up very little extra memory, then you have all options covered.
Click to expand...

Unless you output to TIF for example.

Don't forget jpg only uses 8bit colour depth whereas (Nikon) RAW can be either 12 or 14 bit colour depth.

I agree most on-line printing companies handle jpg and is good enough for most things - but, if you want full to use the full colour gammut of your camera then a jpg won't do that!
 
treeman said:
If I shoot RAW and jpeg I loose a third of my capacity, if you can cope with that carry on as you are. Personally I only shoot RAW and convert the keepers to jpeg.
Click to expand...

I do what he does.

if i ever shoot jpeg only.. i always come to an image that i wish i'd shot raw! sods law.
 
Just shoot raw, you soon learn to process them quickly and can save the original raw so that you always have the original file to go back to should you want to re process it.

The final Jpeg can be saved at the appropriate resolution for its use, ie high for printing or low for posting online.

There is a run down of my PP here from getting the images from the camera to finish, it might help.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=261439
 
HoppyUK said:
A lot of people only shoot JPEG, including me most of the time. I just set the camera up properly, am careful with exposure and white balance, and that's it - job done.
Click to expand...

Me too, although it's rare for me not to improve on my JPEGs in software with subtle and appropriate processing that will never damage data. I shoot Neutral with a just touch of sharpening.

Works for me!

:eek:

Sam
 
iancandler said:
Just shoot raw, you soon learn to process them quickly and can save the original raw so that you always have the original file to go back to should you want to re process it.

The final Jpeg can be saved at the appropriate resolution for its use, ie high for printing or low for posting online.

There is a run down of my PP here from getting the images from the camera to finish, it might help.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=261439
Click to expand...

That is very useful thankyou :)

It seems like a lot of it is personal preferance, and in fact, not right or wrong.
When I have posted a pic on Facebook, it looks very grainy...is this because it was a RAW, and I have converted it to JPG...is the file too big for somewhere like FB to display properly?
When people say they adjust the dpi...how do you do that?
 
Hmm this has got me thinking actually.

I currently just shoot RAW and it writes to a 60Mb/Sec CF card... no problem. I wanted it to write to the SD card slot too again in RAW incase the CF card fails but the fastest SD card I could find was 30MB/sec.

If I get it to write to both cards at the same time it lags quite badly... presumably its too slow writing to the SD card and the buffer.

I never considered writing in JPG but whist peoples thoughts on writing to the CF card in RAW and JPG to the SD just incase the CF card fails?

Im guessing JPG files are about half the size of RAW so should work ok? Anyone else had experience of this?
 
I was doing the same, Raw and JPEG's. However after having my camera since xmas 2009 I found the computer dangerously low on memory. So I now have a system of shooting in Raw. Converting the keepers to JPEG's then saving Raw files and fully edited JPEG files to disc. Then removing the Raw files once I'm happy that the originals are safely recorded. Then filed for safe keeping.

I made the mistake of saving files as TIFF, but the are HUGE 60-80MB each and for my needs totally unnecessary.
 
Doddy1974 said:
I really don't understand when people discuss "compressing pictures" etc...how do you compress a file?
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone answered this directly.
Think of a RAW file as being a compressed TIF file. A TIF file is similar to BITMAP images which you may have dealt with in the past. Each pixel in the image is defined as an X-Y co-ordinate, and given a position in a file. Each pixel then has either an 8 bit (a mixture of 8 time 0 and 1) a 16 bit , or a 24bit value for each of red green and blue (or possibly Cyan Magenta, Yellow) (the more bits, the higher the number of shades of a colour you can mix). Mixing the lights red green and blue gives white.
A semi-suitable analogy for the compression is that the RAW file could be thought of as taking a tennis ball (the TIF image), and sitting on it. It doesn't squash too much (80-60MB down to 26mb), and when you get off it, it pops back to its original shape.
However, a JPEG file, would be more like a coke can. If you squash that, then drag it back out again to its original shape, you will see marks and creases on the outside of the can. These would be artifacts left behind by the compression process. When the computer tries to compress the JPEG, any patterns in the image which are not repeated often, will be lost/converted to a nearby pattern. (simple compression algorithms make up lookup tables. So for example, if you had a file which read: '0456704568', you might have a lookup table which said: A=04 B=56 C=70 D=68, and then the file could be expressed as ABCAD, a 50% compression achieved in the length of the file)
The amount of this conversion is governed by the compression ratio. You can set JPEGS to have a lossless compression ratio, at which point, they would take up almost the same space as a RAW file. However, what would be the point in that? (as RAW files can also contain other information, such as clipping and adjustment values which a JPEG strictly cannot).
So strictly, some argue that JPEGs are just as good as RAW. Yes, if they do not use loss-full compression. Yes, if you only store your RAW as 8-bits, as JPEG standard I believe is 8 bits only.
However, either of these two restrictions either remove the usefulness of using JPEG, or the usability of RAW. The only last useful item of a lossless compression JPG, is that it can be opened on more computers without third-party decoders.
 
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Haven't read properly all of the above, but get the idea that some good advice there.

Since having the 5d2, I prefer to shoot in jpeg, mainly because to save time peeing about with very large files in PS. If I second shoot a wedding or I'm in difficult light I will use Raw however, as it gives a bit more flexiability during prosessing. For more personal stuff, I find shooting jpeg makes you think more about getting it right in camera..WB..crop..etc.

Get use to changing from one format to another and unless you are doing shoots for professional purposes, there is not much wrong with using the jpeg format imho.
 
I do similar to NigelPaul but the other way around, to a degree.

I use my camera for personal stuff, press freelance work, wedding second shooter stuff and in a climbing centre to photograph customers doing the activities, social I suppose.

For personal stuff I shoot RAW as it retains all the information collected by the sensor and I'll take the time to adjust things and alter the image to my taste.

For press freelance I shoot large JPEG, don't have time to do any of the adjustments that shooting RAW would allow me and the JPEGs take up less card space and down/upload quicker.

For wedding stuff I shoot RAW, there's not much of a time crunch on these images and shooting in dark dingey churches often results in underexposed images or a bit of noise which is easier to correct in a RAW file. I convert to JPEG before I pass the files on to the main shooter to edit but don't keep the JPEG files.

For the climbing centre stuff I shoot the smallest JPEG I can. The images have to be burned onto a disc within the hour and they will only ever be viewed onscreen by non photographers so image quality isn't important and neither is resolution/file size.

I never shoot JPEG and RAW together even though I can do so onto two different cards, I just don't see the point. I either want speed or editability, hardly ever both.

Once I've edited an image I save it as a PSD until I want to use it. This would normally either be printing or uploading to a library or my website or blog at which point I'll make a JPEG which I don't alter or resave or even open unnecessarily, do what I'm doing with it and delete it.

I recently went through my computer and deleted all the JPEGs that I had that were duplicates of DNGs or PSDs and it freed up around 50-60gb.
 
Doddy1974 said:
When I have posted a pic on Facebook, it looks very grainy...is this because it was a RAW, and I have converted it to JPG...is the file too big for somewhere like FB to display properly?
When people say they adjust the dpi...how do you do that?
Click to expand...

The reason it appears grainy on Facebook is because you uploaded a full size pic and then let Facebook's resizing software introduce artefacts and nasties into your pic when it resizes.

If you want to post to Facebook you should first resize the pic yourself to 720 pixels on the longest side before uploading to avoid Facebook resizing it.

Some apps, like Lightroom 3.X, do this automatically when you publish to Facebook, but your raw processing software should have a resizing option when you save to jpeg.
 
I shoot raw and small jpeg, the small jpeg goes to a eye-fi sd card and is wirelessly transferred straight to the computer when I am in range, I use these small images for initial viewing and posting on the internet.

When I have an image that I think has potential, I download the raw file and save it for future editing, as personally I like to mess around with some of my images much like I used to do in the darkroom.

Memory is cheap, do whatever suits you personally.
 
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