About RAW and JPEG Editing

by Kacie Conaboy   Kacie is the photographer for Kacie Conaboy Photography in the Washington DC area.

JPEG and Raw file formats are pretty much identical at a visual standpoint. But there are serious technical differences that should be noted.

1. Your camera shoots RAW, even if you have it set to JPEG. When you set your camera to JPEG it is just taking the RAW file and converting it to a JPEG in camera. Why allow your camera to decide how to interpret the RAW information for you? When you allow your camera to convert the RAW to a JPEG you are automatically getting an image that doesn't have all the information your camera captured.

2. JPEG uses a Lossy compression. This means when you save a JPEG your computer will automatically disregard certain information in order to make the file smaller. If you are the type of photographer that saves an image once and forgets about it than you won't notice artifacting. If you are the type of photographer that opens an image, saves it, comes back later, opens edits and saves it again, that comes back again and decides you don't like your changes, fixes the image saves it again...ect Than ever time you open the image and save it you are telling your computer to disregard more and more information every time you save it resulting in a lesser ability to fully manipulate the image.

3. Raw images use lossless compression meaning it doesn't disregard any information allowing it to be edited over and over again. The only way to get around the JPEG compression is to always save the original and duplicate the original JPEG file every time you want to make an edit.

If you shoot an image, edit it once than forget it JPEG is fine.

If you shoot an image and want to retain the ability to constantly re-edit it without a lossy compression than RAW is for you.

I'm not saying that RAW is the more "professional" just that technically RAW provides the photographer with more data to allow easier and more comprehensive manipulations without the damaging effects of a lossy compression method. As long as the photographer makes an informed decision about their process than they still retain control over the outcome.

PS. You might not be able to Print a JPEG but it is just as easy to save a copy of the RAW as a TIFF (another lossless compression method) and print that. I find this to be as much "work" as constantly duplicating JPEGs for every edit.

Stan Davis

Exposure Elements