j-peg/raw

macvisual

macvisual

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Name
Peter
Edit My Images
No
I still shoot in hi-res j-peg all the time with a 5D Mk1. I've recently downloaded trial version of Lightroom 3 etc...

Seems I can manipulate any j-peg image I shoot in LR3, so what's the benefit (if any) if I shoot in RAW format, I can still play around with a RAW image in LR3. Both the same.......right?


What am I missing....
 
Shoot jpeg and you're missing tons of data! Loads of threads discussing this on here.
 
macvisual said:
I still shoot in hi-res j-peg all the time with a 5D Mk1. I've recently downloaded trial version of Lightroom 3 etc...

Seems I can manipulate any j-peg image I shoot in LR3, so what's the benefit (if any) if I shoot in RAW format, I can still play around with a RAW image in LR3. Both the same.......right?


What am I missing....
Click to expand...

Wrong.. very wrong.

Look at the size of a uncompressed RAW file, look at the size of the JPG.. Where has all that data gone? In the bin, never to be recovered again.

Like buying a whole chicken and only eating the wing.
 
In effect, when your camera produces a jpeg image, it has manipulate the RAW file to do so.

So yes, your camera is kinda cutting out LR3 BUT LR3 let's YOU decide the final outcome rather than you camera.

Whilst a decent camera will take a pretty decent stab at PP, your own eyes and decent software should be able to do a better job ;)

Processing a RAW file in LR3 gives you (and the software a lot more information to play with and will allow you to change a lot more without much (if any) degradation to IQ.

As TCR4x4 said, the file size difference between RAW and JPEG is huge, on my 7D RAW is around 25MB, JPEG is about 10MB.
 
Like buying a whole chicken and only eating the wing.
Click to expand...

I might have to use that in a sig:)
 
macvisual said:
What am I missing....
Click to expand...

If you shoot RAW you can

1. Change exposure for up to 3 steps (depends)
2. Recover blown highlights (depends, but with jpeg you loose them for certain)
3. Pull more details from the shadows
4. Choose ANY white balance
5. Choose any contrast and sharpening settings. With jpeg once sharpening and contrast were applied in camera, you loose a lot of information
6. Choose any noise reduction settings. Again, once camera applied NR, you loos details. And Lightroom is much better at noise reduction than almost any camera out there

And a lot more :)
 
Last edited:
macvisual said:
So best advice for me now, start shooting EVERYTHING in RAW from now on, landscape/sports/portraits etc....?


Thanks for all replies, appreciated!
Click to expand...

If you're prepared to spend time in PP after then yes, if you're confident you can get the images pretty much spot on in camera and/or you need to do something with the images ASAP then shoot JPEG :)
 
The easy option while you're still learning is to shoot both raw and jpeg. That way, you have the camera-produced jpeg as a comparison while you're working on converting the raw image. You'll soon find images in which you can improve on the camera's jpeg conversion.
 
My average hi-res j-peg photo's are around 4 mega-bites, and I took a few shots in RAW tonight which is around 11 mega-bites per shot, this sound right?

So it's better to have more mega-bites as it means more information in RAW format? Would a low iso setting benefit a higher mega-bite's?


Thanks...
 
The fundamental difference between shooting Raw and JPEG is with the JPEG you have to decide how the image will be processed before you take the picture, and with Raw you decide afterwards, in post processing.

If you know what you want, and set the camera accordingly (white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpening, noise reduction etc etc) then there is no benefit to shooting Raw. Many professionals who simply don't have the time to post process, take care to get it right first time and lose nothing outputing direct to JPEG. But if you do want to tweak things later, and decide that you want to eat the chicken leg instead of the wing, you can, because it hasn't been discarded. However, there's still a lot of meat left of a JPEG bird - you can make more changes in something like LightRoom than some folks would have you believe.

Shooting Raw or JPEG used to be a big question because memory cards were both very expensive and low capacity, and Raw takes up a lot of space. Not so now, so shooting both Raw and JPEG seems like a no brainer really - best of both worlds.
 
Thanks for replies, great info!

All I need to do now is learn how to adjust image with a 'RAW' file/photo in Lightroom 3, then save as a j-peg.


All a learning curve...
 
macvisual said:
Thanks for replies, great info!

All I need to do now is learn how to adjust image with a 'RAW' file/photo in Lightroom 3, then save as a j-peg.


All a learning curve...
Click to expand...

Have a look at my website www.photoix.co.uk
Ive done a load of videos on how to use Lightroom to edit RAW files. Ive just realised I havent done a dedicated one on exporting, so Ill do that tomorrow. :bonk:
 
Thanks TCR4x4,

I must get a look at that thanks!

When I import a 'RAW' image into Lightroom 3 it doesn't come up as a grey box (as like your videos), but a white layout, is ths right, then I save image as a j-peg?
 
Not sure what you mean about the white layout. You need to process the image in the develop module then go to File>export and export it as whatever file you like.
You need to process a RAW file, you can't just open it and export it.
 
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