why shoot RAW if i have photoshop?

positivenote

hi guys,
just wondering why should i shoot raw formatt if i have photoshop, when i could just shoot in large jpeg formatt? are there any advantages?

melekalikimaka

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

raw gives ya more to work with and recover from balls ups basically

Morrisseeee

Always shoot RAW if you are going to use photoshop or if you intend to make adjustments to your image. RAW contains no formatting so you have total control on what the final image looks like. It retains all the details, like exposure, shadows, lights, color, contrast......whereas shooting in JPEG means the camera has done its own 'rendering/processing' of the image.

positivenote

thanks guys, i'll have a read of that article

Crispin

One advantage is Raw Images don't have the white balance set in camera so you can adjust it in post processing to your liking!

AnCatDubh

if you search the forum here you'll find many discussions which invariably don't come to any particular conclusion

Everybody will have a different opinion. For me; simply it gives better chances of recovery if the camera (ahem.... me) doesn't get the various settings right. RAW being a lossless format means that you can make many adjustments without losing any of the quality while JPG small/medium/or large will lose detail due to the compresion used which essentially is the DNA of JPG format.

But JPG has its place too. It has one major advantage over raw in its compact size thus if you are shooting sports and want to burst, unless you have some damn fine camera equipment which is capable of buffering multiple RAW exposures (perhaps 15MB or more per image) then you'd be better off with JPG. I upgraded camera in recent months and found that i can now shoot continuous JPG until the memory card runs out or a couple of RAW exposures in burst mode. If i want to plan for burst shooting to capture all eventualities, then RAW won't be of much use. This point was brough home in one of Calina's posts which showed a kite surfer going through about 10 or more frames which wouldn't have been achievable with RAW and mere mortal camera equipment.

In truth, many will not know or ever worry about whether they shoot RAW or not. If its available to you then i think you should know what it is and how it effects your personal needs from capturing an event.

CabanSail

Sometimes I agree with Ken .... others I don't.

The RAW vs Jpeg issue is one where I think he is mainly talking through his Donkey.

Memory is cheap, so why take the data & throw it away according to the algorthyms in the camera.

Another point not raised yet is a legal one. If you were to have a dispute over ownership of an image & you are the only one with the RAW file it's like holding a Film Negative. Also if an image were to be used as evidence in Court then having the RAW File could be vital.

Basically ..... shoot RAW unless there is a reason not to do so eg. Lack of memory or speed of storing data, as said above.

Calina

positivenote wrote: »

hi guys,
just wondering why should i shoot raw formatt if i have photoshop, when i could just shoot in large jpeg formatt? are there any advantages?

Well a lot depends on what you are shooting.

Whether I shoot in RAW is not dependent on whether I have Photoshop or not (but I do, for the record; even if you don't, or have Photoshop Elements, the Adobe RAW processor whose name I keep forgetting is available to you).

I don't shoot RAW for high speed sports stuff. If I know I am not going to be doing a lot of continuous shooting, or if I am shooting in specifican conditions where I know I will need to fix - above all else - exposure problems - I will shoot in RAW. Eg, the night shots that I did were all done in RAW, a huge amount of the landscape which I did in Brazil last week were all done in RAW. A hell of a lot of the sports stuff is done in jpg.

You can do a lot of colour and light tweaking with a RAW file. Someone did some shots for me last week and shot them in jpg. The exposure is all over the shop and because they arein jpg I just can't fix them.

Morrisseeee

Interesting point :

Also if an image were to be used as evidence in Court then having the RAW File could be vital.

I thought they only accepted FILM photos/negatives in a legal case !
It got me thinking, I wonder do they accept RAW files, well.....do they ?

Hugh_C

Crispin wrote: »

One advantage is Raw Images don't have the white balance set in camera so you can adjust it in post processing to your liking!

Here's a demonstration of that: the image on the left was captured in RAW using the wrong white balance, the image on the right is a corrected version of that image, done in LightRoom (or whatever other pixel editor). If this had been in JPEG, the correction wouldn't have been as successful.

Paulw

Personally, I always shoot raw. It just gives so many more options when processing, especially when it comes to white balance and exposure.

CabanSail

Morrisseeee wrote: »

Interesting point :
I thought they only accepted FILM photos/negatives in a legal case !
It got me thinking, I wonder do they accept RAW files, well.....do they ?

I was at a talk by John McDonald, who is a Nikon Technical person. He has been acreditted as an Expert Witness for Digital Photography in the UK. He said he can be called to look at images & access if they have been manipulated. He said he can only say on Jpegs that they have been manipulated but cannot say if they haven't. That is because if someone does it really well then there will not be any traces but a poor job leaves evidence. If the evidence is crutcial then they will only accept RAW files.

The Garda Forensic Photographers now shoot Digital. Their images are accepted in courts.

smelltheglove

Ok like a lambv to the slaughter I will say I NEVER shoot in RAW. I have often said I will start to as soon as I use photoshop but I dont use photoshop and cant see myself converting so.....

In my opinion I think I should take a perfect photo first time around thus not needing the raw image. If I mess up a great picture it is my fault. It is not often I mess a picture up so much that I need excessive pp and I think it is more due to the fact that I know I have nothing to fall back on, the click of the shutter release is close curtains on the opportunity of that picture, I can adjust contrast lift the colour slightly I shoulldnt need to do more than that.

On the two occassions I shot RAW I realised that there was nothing in those pictures that I couldnt have done with jpeg so I left it there.

Now having said that I wasnt really too aware on the white balance issue. When shooting gigs and weddings there is a lot of difference of settings so the wb will change, especially with gigs and so I often use auto wb, I may decide to try again sometime soon however as I use paint shop pro which doesnt really do amything different from one to the other I will have to get used to photoshop first.

melekalikimaka

smelltheglove wrote: »

Now having said that I wasnt really too aware on the white balance issue. When shooting gigs and weddings there is a lot of difference of settings so the wb will change, especially with gigs and so I often use auto wb, I may decide to try again sometime soon however as I use paint shop pro which doesnt really do amything different from one to the other I will have to get used to photoshop first.

gig lighting can throw wb off big time,especially if on auto, thats the very reason i started using raw, its the one thing that is next to impossible to rectify post processing!!! Your a brave lass :P

melekalikimaka

CabanSail wrote: »

If the evidence is crutcial then they will only accept RAW files.

i know for a fact jpeg is accepted as my dad is in court alot in his line of work and the evidence for court is usually image based and shot in jpeg

superflyninja

I read this in the arcticle " Raw is very popular for people shooting landscapes with digital cameras, which is not what digital cameras are for. Unfortunately this is becoming popular among amateurs," anybody know why this is?

smelltheglove

I'd also love to know what the story is with people asking for raw files.... I shot a wedding recently and took pics of a few kids there. The parents asked could they have prints and as I was already being paid for a disc of images I agreed I would just e-mail the pics on. Now this wedding was shot in raw and jpeg. I sent on the full jpeg format and received a mail back requesting the RAW file.

I replied by saying that I did not have access to the RAW file immediately, I transfer pics onto a seperate hard drive, and that there was no difference. The picture had not been edited at all nor did it need to be. It had been cropped ever so slightly as I tend to be a little off centre sometimes with my shots which may be due to my weird shaped eyes, I don't know.

Is there people out there saying to normal everyday people to go and request RAW files from photographers???? If an image is perfect why would you need a RAW file?

PS thanks MELE brave I know, but paint shop makes no difference to jpeg or raw s doesnt make a difference unless i go out of my way to photoshop.

PopeBuckfastXVI

From my experience, my camera produces more compressed images on the finest (lowest compression) jpeg setting than I get when I use bibble to process a jpeg from raw. Shooting raw also allows me to do several versions of a single image, I can roll back one adjustment without losing the others etc. Much handier.

I wouldn't say anyone has to shoot raw, I just find I have pp'd better images since I switched.

It's not even a case of 'should have gotten it right on the day' it's a case of the camera doing things that I don't choose, like compression and white balance.

Crispin

Most digital SLR's will allow you to shoot both Jpegs and Raw simultaneously- I usually do this because if i want to share the files quickly I find Jpegs are easier for posting straight to websites, giving to friends/family etc. But if I decide I want to come back to a shot and make a few changes for printing etc. the Raw file with all original information is there for when i have the time to fiddle around with photoshop. Although If you are shooting fast moving subjects ditch this setting in favour of just Jpegs as they can usually be processed by you camera quicker than raw files or Jpeg+raw together so will give you the best fps rate!

melekalikimaka

smelltheglove wrote: »

Is there people out there saying to normal everyday people to go and request RAW files from photographers???? If an image is perfect why would you need a RAW file?

i think its a hand me down from film era, neg posession was sought after if photos were paid for, i suppse if you own the raw you feel more in posession of your images rather than a jpeg...copy as people would see it, I kinda see their point but sure you can always copy the raw so the point is kinda lost when you think bout it

stcstc

the way i look at it is

I want to do my post processing not some japanese software engineer

apart from that the amount of dynamic range is huge in comparison with a jpg

another thing to be aware of is if you shoot JPG then convert to B&W you only have 256 shade of gray basically, where as with using a 16bit raw file you have 65K ISH shades of gray. now that is something worth shooting raw for

Isar

As many people before me has said, if you shoot in jpeg, even though you use photoshop you will have less editing options. And if you shoot in jpeg, its like a compressed file. Lets say you shoot black and white. There wouldn't be as nice passing from the white to the grey to the white.. especially if you print the photograph. It would kind of be going directly from black to white with very sharp edges instead of the smootness you would get if you shoot it in raw.. And if you shoot in jpeg and something in the photograph is completely white, the jpeg will exadurate it and it will look very terrible. As in raw there will be more information in the photograph to work on. Also if you shoot in jpeg, it means that it takes the actual photograph and kinda edit it for you in the camera, while raw gives you a completely fresh photograph. The only bad thing about shooting in raw is that it takes up a hell of a lot more space on your memory card. Because there is so much more information in a raw file than a jpeg file. So if you are having a photoshot with someone and you will be taking like 750 photos like i did on a photoshoot in norway, you would need a enourmous memory card, which would be pretty expensive

positivenote

Kind of slightly off topic but ive just started trying shooting with my canon 30d using RAW and fully manual setting. when i shoot i get a small black spec showing in all the images in the same place, i cant seem to find it on the lens or the sensor when i look for it. i have given both a little clean using a cloth i got with my glasses. Yet, and heres where it gets strange, when i shoot in automatic mode the spec dissapears? can anyone sugest a soloution or a reason why this might be happening?
Thanks

smelltheglove

Is it a dead ixel positive? My last camera had one tinchy one that showed green in j[peg this one has one shows white in jpeg but havent checked in RAW.

OK guys here goes me into the world of photoshop and RAW. You have convinced me. I'm going with it before I change my mind.

I now pledge that for 14 days I will use photoshop alone. Now for the recommendations, will I continue with my cs3 or will I upgrade? ISnt there an updated cs3 and a cs4 now?

melekalikimaka

smelltheglove wrote: »

AW. You have convinced me. I'm going with it before I change my mind.

I now pledge that for 14 days I will use photoshop alone. Now for the recommendations, will I continue with my cs3 or will I upgrade? ISnt there an updated cs3 and a cs4 now?

i upgraded and found that it had very little enhancements for photographers and showed down alot compared to cs3 so i switched back

CabanSail

melekalikimaka wrote: »

i know for a fact jpeg is accepted as my dad is in court alot in his line of work and the evidence for court is usually image based and shot in jpeg

The crunch will come "if" the photographic evidence is brought into question. While both sides of the case accept the photo as being a true representation then all is fine but if one side brings up the posibility of an image having been manipulated then it would get tricky. having said that, the Garda Photographers shoot High Res Jpeg but the Clinical Photographer we had a talk from recently shoots RAW to prove accuracy.

nilhg

smelltheglove wrote: »

OK guys here goes me into the world of photoshop and RAW. You have convinced me. I'm going with it before I change my mind.

I now pledge that for 14 days I will use photoshop alone. Now for the recommendations, will I continue with my cs3 or will I upgrade? ISnt there an updated cs3 and a cs4 now?

Instead of upgrading PS I think you should download the trial of Lightroom, the develop module is the same as ACR but the workflow is simpler, and it will integrate well with your version of CS3.

See how you get on with it for the month and then decide.

CabanSail

I agree with getting LR2 .... Get the Trial version & see how you go with that.

I will have a small present to go along with it for you.

smelltheglove

Well I have cs3 so you guys reckon I should just forget about that for now and go with lr, will download that so. I might go out this evening and take some shots to edit on it.