jpeg vs. raw

kbg32 said:
BTW Raid, RAW is great for family as well as "otherwise"
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:)

Of course it is, Keith. I was just thinking about it.
Family photos are very imprtant to me.
I look at family photos every day since my computer screen saver is linked to a file full of family photos. They make me smile.
 
raid said:
:)

Of course it is, Keith. I was just thinking about it.
Family photos are very imprtant to me.
I look at family photos every day since my computer screen saver is linked to a file full of family photos. They make me smile.
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As they should Raid! Me too as well!
 
aleksanderpolo said:
Perhaps someone with more technical knowledge can answer you, I think that tiff already have the exposure, white balance baked in so it is more limited than what you can do with RAW, here's something I found:

http://www.thephoblographer.com/2011/09/26/are-tiffs-and-raws-really-the-same-thing/
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thanks for the link alexanderpolo. but the information there confirms somehow my opinion about tiffs, though.

RichC said:
Yes, Raw has a finite amount of information - but far more than a TIF. As I said, think of a Raw file as a stack of images but a TIF or JPG as a single image. This pile has images that vary in their settings such as colour balance and exposure. And rather than being able only to take one image from this pile, you can combine settings from anywhere in this pile, so you can can create a single photo with any combination of exposure or colour balance that an image in the pile has - this single image is your TIF. (Again, I''ll stress this is extremely oversimplified.)

So, once you create a TIF (or JPG) file from a Raw file, you've lost a lot of information - the TIF file contains just some of the data in the Raw file.

8 and 16 bit with regard to image files refer simply to the number of colours: 8-bit images allow 256 colours per pixel, whereas 16 bit allows 65,536 colours.

A good way of thinking about 8 bit vs 16 bit in this conversation is not as amounts of information but as colour accuracy: 16-bit images are a lot more accurate with regard to colour. That said, in many instances that accuracy isn't needed as the colour in 8-bit images is often very close to that captured by the camera anyway (e.g. because of the limited range of colours in the scene - a landscape may be mostly green) so the extra colours in a 16-bit image may not all be needed or so similar to the 8-bit ones as to be indiscernible.
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hmmm. i must think about that. i think slowly i get it. thanks for your explanation.

just to explain my own thinking so far: i thought, tiff stores for every pixel one value. between 0 and 2^16.
raw files also store a value for every pixel. but e.g. canon just something between 0 and 2^12. of course for every colour pixel(red, blue, 2xgreen) then...

now in tiff the different color pixels are summarized together in one pixel. 3 colors. so all the information of 12bit raw should fit into a 15-bit something. or if you calculate each green pixel for its own all information should fit into a 16- bit file. without loss. so a 12bit raw fits perfectly into a 16bit tiff. i even thought, that's the reason, why e.g. canon chose the uncommon 12bit for its raws. and as long as no information is lost, there should be the same ability for adjustments...

seems like things are more complicated. i should read more about this. anyway i use 16-bit tiff just for my scan files. and the scansoftware offers no rawfiles anyway.
 
My thoughts:

RAW is like undeveloped film. Process the file(s) with the computer using a program like ACR. RAW changes are non-destructive as a sidecar file is used to tell the RAW files that this is what I want the photo to be. Delete the sidecar file & the original RAW file is still intact.

JPEG is like having the camera make the decisions for you, like a Polaroid, the camera processes the photograph for you turning the image from RAW to JPEG.

My workflow is 100% RAW. Adjust exposure and color balance and a few tweaks here and there like toning down the reds on some folks skin, especially during hot summer weather.

Make JPEGS from RAW.

Will make DNG from RAWS for backup.

If a client needs something particular I can always go back to the RAW file.

Works for me.
 
It's funny but the tiff thing passed me by completely. Ever since my 1st digital camera, a Canon S40, I've shot RAW or jpeg or both.
I believe each and everyone should find a system and work flow that gets them to where they want and refine it. This is exactly what I've done since starting with digital and I'm still learning however I've found what works for me, costs me the least amount of time and gets me the best results.
With my limited skills in PS I find it much easier to use RAW and tweak if required in NX2.
When I had my D70 I was always trying to achieve great out of camera results in jpeg and ended up loading the so called custom wedding curve. This transformed jpegs however in tricky situations the WB situation arose as always. I ended up going back to RAW.
I gave the D70 to my Dad and set it back up with that custom curve loaded and set to shoot jpegs. He's always happy with his results however he doesn't shoot a mix of lighting situations as I do on corporate shoots and wedding days.
The time you shoot something and auto WB gets it wrong and it's a jpeg you'll wish you used RAW. It's not a quality issue at all, it's a colour and mainly highlight recovery issue.
 
@Peter...

Raw files don't carry all their information in pixels - the "pixels" you see in a Raw converter are just part of this information that is shown on the "surface".

Forget about 16/12/8 bit. Bits here are a red herring, and are confusing you.

Just think of a Raw file as a pile of images not as a single image. If it helps, think of it as a stack of TIFs - from which you can choose whatever you like from any these images to create a single TIF (this is the TIF file you create from the Raw file).
 
This is an important and "real" consideration....

This is an important and "real" consideration....

Chriscrawfordphoto said:
It has most of the disadvantages of JPEG (inability to adjust white balance or recover blown highlights) with none of the advantages (small file size so you don't fill your memory card too fast).

That said, TIFF is the industry standard as a final image for high-end printing. I convert my RAW files to TIFF, which allows 16bit image and the use of layers in Photoshop, and I save these TIFFs after post processing, as my archive files.
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And on those DSLR's I have owned that could output RAW, TIFF, and Jpeg, I never shot RAW.

Then I shot RAW and PP'd with CS5 for some time.

I quit shooting any RAW 3-4 years ago. I would love, again to have a camera that could out put Jpeg and TIFF. The only reason RAW exists is that it is the native format of digital sensors. It does not get manipulated by the Processing Engine, as near as I have heard it.

So, RAW is different from one camera to the next, with regard to the sensor in the camera. This one of the reasons one must wait for updates to Camera RAW to open RAW files as new models emerge.
 
RichC said:
Just think of a Raw file as a pile of images not as a single image. If it helps, think of it as a stack of TIFs - from which you can choose whatever you like from any these images to create a single TIF (this is the TIF file you create from the Raw file).
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I see what you're getting at but it's not a very good analogy. The RAW file contains the actual data output from the image sensor (maybe partially-processed) plus some additional metadata. In many formats the RAW is actually a non-standard adaptation of TIFF and in some cases it's even in a compressed, lossy format. The RAW isn't really a "stack of TIFs" at all because each of those possible TIFFs is actually only one of many interpretations of a single set of actual data. A bit like a negative can be subject to dodging/burning, colour filtering etc to print various prints. There is, however, only one original negative that has been manipulated in various ways.

Furthermore, at some point your RAW ends up as a bit-mapped pixel pattern on a screen/printer etc and at that point it is, theoretically, possible to have altered white balance, colour balance and quite a few other things from a TIFF. Admittedly, that may be more complex than re-processing the RAW but the principle holds.

One thing that cannot be really be questioned, RAW will always beat a JPEG in terms of ease of re-manipulation. Plain fact: the camera's internal processing of sensor output-to-JPEG discards data. RAW may or may not but it will be less.
 
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that underlines my own thoughts.. i also think now, that 16-bit tiff offers the same possibilities for highlights recovery etc. like raw.

also think, that the analogy isn't really fitting. raw stores a concrete information, and not several different values or a range of values like this analogy would suggest.

the difference of raw and e.g. jpg is indeed just the greater precision of the values (12bit, 16bit vs. 8 bit)

a good analogy may be a cm vs mm scale. measured in mm there would be a lot of details between 9.0 and 10.0. and only 9.9 - 10.0 would be "white" then. so you can recover a lot of highlight details.
transforming it into a cm scale, values will be rounded, and all the details from 9-10 will be lost. now everything betwenn 9-10 is "white". no more details to recover.

another analogy may be to think of a curve with discrete values. the more discrete points there are, the "rounder" and continuous the curve will be. with less points it will become more angular (banding, colour breaks)

as wolves3012 also just stated, i read too now, that e.g. DNG is based on tiff.
 
Peter_wrote: said:
of course. my main point was highlight recovery, expusure shift. and therefor, i think, this is the important part.
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Sorry. I must have misunderstood what you meant by "just". I'm learning that I'm relapsing into week 3 of my holiday cold and my head/mind isn't clear.
 
sorry, my fault of course. quite late here already and anyway my writing is often quite sloppy. and especially in writing in a foreign language, i am really bad.
 
nobbylon said:
In my own case David I have my cameras set up identically and my RAW files are processed as set in camera. AWB, sharp 5, D2X profile 1, etc.
My main change is brightness level to get a punchy print.
95% of my pictures are converted with no change but for the 5% that need some tweaking I'm glad I have options.
Getting the picture is so much easier than having to explain why you didn't!
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Hi,

I'm with you there and glad to have the option of RAW for when it's needed. I reckon I can decide when it's needed and chose it the same way that I chose, now and then, to bracket shots with film or (gasp) use flash...

My worry, or point, was that you shouldn't need it all the time.

Regards, David
 
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