Mark Laubenheimer wrote:
Who the fuck is Ken Rockwell?

just saying.

He's an online comedian. (Think of the Colbert Report, for photography.)

Kevin Connery wrote:

He's an online comedian. (Think of the Colbert Report, for photography.)

I thought he was "Grandpa".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Lewis_%28actor%29

Kevin Connery wrote:
He's an online comedian. (Think of the Colbert Report, for photography.)

Good description.

Mark Laubenheimer wrote:

Who the fuck is Ken Rockwell?

just saying.

Who the fuck is Mark L... shit, I'm not going to spell that out.

just sayin'.

Extrosy wrote:
Assuming that the shot has the proper white balance and is properly exposed and no detail has been lost or clipped, is there any advantage to editing raw?

Presently I shoot Raw + Jpeg, and primarily edit the jpeg files for convenience.  I have the raw available in case there is a problem that cannot be corrected with the jpeg / camera setting.

So I work with jpegs and have the raws as a safety net. 
Any reason to do otherwise?

Assuming the shot looks exactly the way you want it to look as a JPEG there is absolutely no advantage to editing the raw image file, if you're going to make it end up looking like the JPEG. The benefits of working on raw image files as compared to JPEGs (including the non-destructive aspects) are huge, but for most people, those types of advantages are unimportant. If it looks good on print or on a computer screen, then they're happy.

Camera & computer hardware manufacturers are always making fantastic technological advances. Storage media has gotten so cheap and reliable, that space is not a limitation. Photo-retouching software and artists come up with new ideas everyday. MOST OF ALL, your skills as a photographer will always improve as long as you keep learning new things, and don't get stuck in the rut of "I've been doing this for 20 years, Darnit! I'll be darned if I change my ways!"

Should your photography eventually involve very sophisticated retouching techniques, you will eventually want to try out pixel level retouching, and find out that no matter how well you plan your sessions, you will always find flaws in your lighting.

Keeping the raw image files "as a safety net", is a wise choice. You may not be able to go back in time and shoot those images, but having the most complete version of the image available is definitely a smart move.

UltimateAppeal wrote:
Every time you save a JPEG, it adds artifacts to the image (compression artifacts) that deteriorate the quality of the image. If you aren't planning on printing full resolution/size your probably wont notice with 1 or 2 saves. If you ever need to print a full size image, or worse, enlarge the image beyond its original size, you will wish you had edited the RAW and saved that.

I have made 2'x3' prints from images created and edited as jpgs that were shot with a Canon30D. The same loud mouths that screamed about digital producing better quality images than film couldn't tell that my large prints were shot and edited the way they were, any more than they could tell the difference between my images that were digital or film in origin. People talk up this crap, but I'm confident most can't identify any examples/comparisons to back up their claims.

Cuica Cafezinho wrote:

Who the fuck is Mark L... shit, I'm not going to spell that out.

just sayin'.

Mark Laubenheimer shoots RAW. that's who i am.

bmiSTUDIO wrote:

I have made 2'x3' prints from images created and edited as jpgs that were shot with a Canon30D. The same loud mouths that screamed about digital producing better quality images than film couldn't tell that my large prints were shot and edited the way they were, any more than they could tell the difference between my images that were digital or film in origin. People talk up this crap, but I'm confident most can't identify any examples/comparisons to back up their claims.

Printing a 24"x36" shouldn't be a problem with JPEGs, as long as you've done a good job maintaining the shadow areas.

John Allan wrote:
If you're going to use jpegs (I might use jpeg for vacation snapshots, wouldn't consider it for my professional work),
At least immediately save the jpeg to tiff and work on that as your 'negative' and then only use jpeg again for your final output.

Hmmm... I haven't had the need to use the TIFF format in such a long time, I don't think I still have the software that would required I work in the CMYK color range.

Aside from not adding any value to an 8 bit file by converting it into 16 bits (the thousands of missing brightness levels are not magically added to original 8bit file in order to create the new 16 bit file), the TIFF format is ridiculously large (much larger than most raw image file sizes of the same resolution). Most graphic design software can handle all of the popular formats - You are NOT restricted by the software you use.

You may need to convert a 16bit RGB to a CMYK TIFF for some print shops, BUT even PNG (which is also lossless) s so popular that going the TIFF route is an unnecessary burden.

William Kious wrote:
Buying a fancy-pants DSLR and shooting only in jpeg is like driving a Veryon on a go-cart track.

I could never understand that logic either. Why get a such a sophisticated piece of equipment like a modern day Digital SLR, and shoot in JPEG??? Unless your computer needs are embarassing, handling raw image files will not affect your  workflow by much.

Extrosy wrote:
Assuming that the shot has the proper white balance and is properly exposed and no detail has been lost or clipped, is there any advantage to editing raw?

Presently I shoot Raw + Jpeg, and primarily edit the jpeg files for convenience.  I have the raw available in case there is a problem that cannot be corrected with the jpeg / camera setting.

So I work with jpegs and have the raws as a safety net. 
Any reason to do otherwise?

Yes, in-camera sharpening is usually crap, and creates artifacts that need to be edited out that would not normally.

Also, many processes work better in 16 bit, simply for the increased color depth.

AVD AlphaDuctions wrote:

Editing RAW will allow you to recover from at least one more stop over than jpg.  So if you are shooting weddings, it would be silly to not keep the RAW around.  You simply can't reshoot a wedding.  And nobody I know gets every shot perfect at a wedding. It just doesn't happen.

For the rest, when you open a file in CS5 or 6 or whatever, you can directly edit jpg or tiff or first develop a RAW.  CS5 has no special settings.  If you are happy with your results, then you are happy.  More important, if your clients are happy, then you are happy.  Everyone likes to laugh about Ken Rockwell, but Ken Marcus shoots jpg all the time.
Harder to laugh at him.
A lot harder.

Ken Marcus shoots in a studio and effectively manages color balance and exposure on a continuing basis. You should look at one of his jpegs prepped for delivery with all the included information. Not many professionals are anywhere near as skilled and meticulous as Ken. If you are in that situation then jpeg is fine.

Shooting RAW + Jpeg is an excellent plan for most of us when we are shooting something important and expect only occasional operator error the RAW will mitigate. Wedding dresses play havoc with auto exposure. I would not consider shooting a wedding without RAW capture. I would expect to deliver only images manipulated a bit from the in camera jpegs. Memory is too cheap to risk important work to jpeg if you are not managing the capture process meticulously.

KonstantKarma wrote:
Put it this way:  People utilize RAW files for a reason.  And it's not because they have a shitton of disk space they're just trying to fill up. Try it, and you will see why most photographers claim working from RAW files is better. If you don't try it, you'll never understand what you're missing, and will never have to worry about it.

QFT

Extrosy wrote:
So I work with jpegs and have the raws as a safety net. 
Any reason to do otherwise?

Kevin Connery wrote:
He's an online comedian. (Think of the Colbert Report, for photography.)

But not as intentionally funny.

-B-R-U-N-E-S-C-I- wrote:
If you have LR then the amount of work you can do without even touching Photoshop or modifying the RAW file in any way (all adjustment are stored in the catalog and/or sidecar files) is phenomenal.

twoharts wrote:
-snip-

i like the skin tones i get from JPEG better than what i can get from RAW with my 5D MK II.

-snip-

Let's stop and consider what your JPEG really is. It is a RAW file inside your camera. Certain filters are applied based on your camera settings for white balance and contrast (neutral, vivid, faithful. etc) controls. You should be able to reproduce each setting on your computer that you have in your camera.

Your skin tones in JPEG are simply various filters inside you camera that you could duplicate using the RAW image with settings on your computer application. The difference is time in getting the action recorded to mirror those in-camera features. It is not a matter of JPEG versus RAW.

JPEG is just a set of predetermined filters and a compression of the original RAW.

photo212grapher wrote:

Let's stop and consider what your JPEG really is. It is a RAW file inside your camera. Certain filters are applied based on your camera settings for white balance and contrast (neutral, vivid, faithful. etc) controls. You should be able to reproduce each setting on your computer that you have in your camera.

Your skin tones in JPEG are simply various filters inside you camera that you could duplicate using the RAW image with settings on your computer application. The difference is time in getting the action recorded to mirror those in-camera features. It is not a matter of JPEG versus RAW.

JPEG is just a set of predetermined filters and a compression of the original RAW.

and a lossy compression at that!

if you were a musician, would you go into the recording studio and record your album straight to mp3?

i think not.

so why record your photographs straight to JPEG?

photo212grapher wrote:
You should be able to reproduce each setting on your computer that you have in your camera.

twoharts wrote:
one thing about my 5D MK II is that it has a highlight priority mode for JPEG which is really helpful (although it forces you to ISO 200 vs. 100).

The Pentax K-5 has the same mode, and the same forced switch to 200 from 100 minimum ISO.  Not saying it's an equivalent camera, just that it shares that feature.

Innovative Imagery wrote:

The only problem with this statement is that it ignores the the gaps in the data.  When you go from 4096 to 256 bits of data (RAW vs JPEG)  something has to give.

This is wrong. It's not 4096 BITS, it's 4096 shades/levels (which is 12 bits), versus 256 shades/levels (which is 8 bits). If you are going to use the terminology, use it correctly.

The last 12 bit camera I owned was in 2006. Every camera I have bought since has been 14 bits (or 16384 by your measurement).

- - - - -

I take a 14 bit RAW to a 16 bit PSD, and work on that. Rounding errors will accumulate in the low order bits during processing, but they will vanish when I truncate the values and make the 8 bit output file.

For some of my work, I select a narrow band of levels, and expand that to fill the available space. If I did it with JPEG, I'd see hideous banding, because I'd be working with 3 or 4 bits - might work if I wanted a posterised form, but I don't. Because I'm using RAW, however, I get 9 or 10 bits, which even leaves me with some slack before I take it down to 8 bits for JPEG.

JPEG is an output format (that's what it was designed for). Using it as input is inappropriate. Unless, of course, your skills are so good you can use the images straight-out-of-camera (Mr Marcus comes to mind ).

Consumer point-and-shoots record in JPEG because the user is expected to use the images without processing. If you bought a DSLR, so you could process the images after shooting, why restrict your options by throwing away almost half the data (14 bits -> 8 bits, NOT 16384 -> 256)?

Mark Laubenheimer wrote:

Mark Laubenheimer shoots RAW. that's who i am.

Who are you?

Jerry Nemeth wrote:

Who are you?

and?

twoharts wrote:
i use aperture on my JPEGs, same as RAWs. but of course you have more latitude with RAWs.

You're missing the point.

Working from the RAW file is NOT the same as working from a lossily compressed 8-bit representation of it created in a split second by your camera's tiny processor.

While there might not be much visible difference in results if you simply apply the default conversions to the RAW file in LR (or DPP etc.), the flexibility of being able to manipulate the full 14 bits of RAW data really comes into play when you start to apply radical adjustments to the files.

For example, the image on the left is a straight export to JPG of a RAW conversion. I have then used LR to apply a fairly radical filter to both the original RAW file (middle) and the exported JPG (right).

        (original)                        (from RAW)                       (from JPG)

(higher res version here)

As you can see, although neither of the filtered results is very pretty, the one made from the RAW file is a lot more faithful to the original and contains a lot more detail and information than the one made from the JPG.

The same, of course, applies to any changes you make to a JPG. If you're happy using the JPG straight out of the camera then quality isn't very much different to making a JPG from the same RAW conversion on a computer. But if you like playing around with images [insert darkroom analogy here] then it's clearly much better to work from the RAW file.



Ciao
Stefano

www.stefanobrunesci.com

Frozen Instant Imagery wrote:
JPEG is an output format (that's what it was designed for). Using it as input is inappropriate. Unless, of course, your skills are so good you can use the images straight-out-of-camera (Mr Marcus comes to mind ).

Consumer point-and-shoots record in JPEG because the user is expected to use the images without processing. If you bought a DSLR, so you could process the images after shooting, why restrict your options by throwing away almost half the data (14 bits -> 8 bits, NOT 16384 -> 256)?

That's a great point! JPEG was never intended as a starting point for editing.

William Kious wrote:
Buying a fancy-pants DSLR and shooting only in jpeg is like driving a Veryon on a go-cart track.

MnPhoto wrote:
I could never understand that logic either. Why get a such a sophisticated piece of equipment like a modern day Digital SLR, and shoot in JPEG??? Unless your computer needs are embarassing, handling raw image files will not affect your  workflow by much.

Mark Laubenheimer wrote:
if you were a musician, would you go into the recording studio and record your album straight to mp3?
i think not. so why record your photographs straight to JPEG?

Reality check - how many of the images that you see in news media are taken with top end cameras and using JPEG ?

Most of them.

When you take events into account a significant proportion of print sales will be from images that were printed straight from JPEG out of the camera.

There are simple workflow and time reasons for this in addition to their being used to getting a saleable image at capture.

William Kious wrote:
Buying a fancy-pants DSLR and shooting only in jpeg is like driving a Veryon on a go-cart track.

MnPhoto wrote:
I could never understand that logic either. Why get a such a sophisticated piece of equipment like a modern day Digital SLR, and shoot in JPEG??? Unless your computer needs are embarassing, handling raw image files will not affect your  workflow by much.

Mark Laubenheimer wrote:
if you were a musician, would you go into the recording studio and record your album straight to mp3?
i think not. so why record your photographs straight to JPEG?

photoimager wrote:
Reality check - how many of the images that you see in news media are taken with top end cameras and using JPEG ?

Most of them.

When you take events into account a significant proportion of print sales will be from images that were printed straight from JPEG out of the camera.

There are simple workflow and time reasons for this in addition to their being used to getting a saleable image at capture.

Yeah, I did newspaper photography for years (with film).

For one thing, they tend to use cameras with high FPS rates. They get them for sports, but that's what they use for everything else. When you're shooting several frames per second, having to save both RAW and JPEG slows things down.

Also, newspaper reproduction isn't the greatest - although it's a lot better than it used to be.

Newspapers have never been big on retouching anyway - although all big newspapers used to have airbrush artists.

The emphasis is on speed - partly because of frequent deadlines throughout the cycle, but also because photographers tend to handle several assignments per day. One newspaper I worked on had a page deadline every four minutes starting about 6pm and contining (with breaks between editions) until after midnight.

Extrosy wrote:
Assuming that the shot has the proper white balance and is properly exposed and no detail has been lost or clipped, is there any advantage to editing raw?

Presently I shoot Raw + Jpeg, and primarily edit the jpeg files for convenience.  I have the raw available in case there is a problem that cannot be corrected with the jpeg / camera setting.

So I work with jpegs and have the raws as a safety net. 
Any reason to do otherwise?

The big mistake photographers keep making about RAW vs JPEG is about exposure. They only think about it as a safety net in case they are off on exposure. While this is somewhat true what they are missing is the big picture. The reason you get this saving grace is because of all the extra data that is being recorded.

With RAW you are getting greater tonality and details in highlights and shadows. It is like when you where a kid. There was the small box of crayons (JPEG) and the big box of crayons (RAW). The Big box of crayons have the same colors as the small ones but it also has a greater amount color tones as well as grey shades. The big advantage is you are working with greater detail in the tones.

If you have decent computer and a fairly recent version of Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture then working in RAW is actually faster than JPEG with these programs.


crayon by FullMetalPhotographer, on Flickr