Hi guys, if you are shooting for 'very very nice' photos, not those candid shots type, which format would you use so that you can do post processing? I suppose everyone who reads this must be thinking use raw la. But I wanna ask if it's ok to shoot in jpeg for post processing later. I mean is it ok, or raw is always preferred?
Shoot in RAW OR JPEG?
- Thread starter gohjialong
- Start date
If you are going to do a fair bit of PP, shooting RAW give you a lot more leeway to work with the image.
Shooting in Jpeg will restrict you more in what you can do to the image in PP. And will also result in lower quality when pushed too much in PP.
It is your call really.
For me personally, I shoot RAW + Basic all the time. I can choose to use which version for different purposes.
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Check out this video explaining the differences of editing RAW vs JPEG.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSB2jP7Awbc
Google is your friend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSB2jP7Awbc
Google is your friend
Actually you missed the 2 biggest things RAW gives you more control on. They are:
1. White balance, and
2. Dynamic range (details in shadows and highlights, especially).
Sad to say that I nearly dozed off watching that video. Guess it's because I don't understand it.
Check out this video explaining the differences of editing RAW vs JPEG.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSB2jP7Awbc
Google is your friend
JPG is a lossy compression format. Data and details are deleted during the process of creating the jpg file. Deleted means: lost without any chance to retrieve / recover / undo. A wrong WB setting can result in loss of information for certain colours. No chance to get them back later.
If you are concerned about image quality, and do all sorts of post processing, nothing will beat RAW.
RAW has more dynamic range. Jpeg are 8-bit files. 256 brightness to work with. RAW can come in 16bits. That is 65536 levels to play with instead. Many pple will say that it is alright to boost or drop exposure by 1 stop without noticeable degradation in your image.
Camera takes photo > RAW file
for jpeg, Camera takes photo > applies auto white balance, does sharpening of image, noise reduction, make colours richer,etc
Needless to say, RAW definitely have 1000001 advantages over jpeg. You can apply a more accurate white balance, use better sharpening algorithm and noise reduction for superb results.
Now for the cons.
However, because RAW is unprocessed by nature, some find it too much of a hassle to edit EVERY photo painstakingly. Unless you are fine with unsharpened images and the colour that it produces. Shooting in both Jpeg and RAW is a good solution, or you can always decide when to take RAW and when Jpeg will do fine.
Also, RAW files are huge in nature, taking longer to write than Jpeg. They are much larger and you might need to save them as tiff or jpg before you can upload or use them in certain instances because it is not as widely supported. If you have harddisk storage constrains, you might want to be careful because it will fill up space a few times faster.
Having said that, if you are really keen on taking RAW, i will recommend a software that has a seamless and non-destructive RAW(you can undo ALL your changes) workflow that will benefit you.
Try Adobe lightroom or Aperture (if you are using mac OS) because they have native support for RAW and have a very clear and understandable flow for you to work with
I will recommend photoshop if you want to edit more specific photos, but lightroom does a great job, especially with the option to apply changes to a whole batch of photos at one time, and it is a pure photograph editting software. It also has features to batch convert your photos to jpeg or more popular formats to share on flickr or facebook.
Feel free to pm me if you have any questions
RAW has more dynamic range. Jpeg are 8-bit files. 256 brightness to work with. RAW can come in 16bits. That is 65536 levels to play with instead. Many pple will say that it is alright to boost or drop exposure by 1 stop without noticeable degradation in your image.
Camera takes photo > RAW file
for jpeg, Camera takes photo > applies auto white balance, does sharpening of image, noise reduction, make colours richer,etc
Needless to say, RAW definitely have 1000001 advantages over jpeg. You can apply a more accurate white balance, use better sharpening algorithm and noise reduction for superb results.
Now for the cons.
However, because RAW is unprocessed by nature, some find it too much of a hassle to edit EVERY photo painstakingly. Unless you are fine with unsharpened images and the colour that it produces. Shooting in both Jpeg and RAW is a good solution, or you can always decide when to take RAW and when Jpeg will do fine.
Also, RAW files are huge in nature, taking longer to write than Jpeg. They are much larger and you might need to save them as tiff or jpg before you can upload or use them in certain instances because it is not as widely supported. If you have harddisk storage constrains, you might want to be careful because it will fill up space a few times faster.
Having said that, if you are really keen on taking RAW, i will recommend a software that has a seamless and non-destructive RAW(you can undo ALL your changes) workflow that will benefit you.
Try Adobe lightroom or Aperture (if you are using mac OS) because they have native support for RAW and have a very clear and understandable flow for you to work with
I will recommend photoshop if you want to edit more specific photos, but lightroom does a great job, especially with the option to apply changes to a whole batch of photos at one time, and it is a pure photograph editting software. It also has features to batch convert your photos to jpeg or more popular formats to share on flickr or facebook.
Feel free to pm me if you have any questions
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shooting in RAW gives you the flexibility of working on settings after the photo is taken..
so if you can't pinpoint the White balance in a room, or a hall, just shoot in RAW then don't need to worry and fidle here and there with settings.. by the time you get all the correct settings the sexy girl walk out of the rooom le...
just painting a possible scenario.... many other scenarios might exist...
so if you can't pinpoint the White balance in a room, or a hall, just shoot in RAW then don't need to worry and fidle here and there with settings.. by the time you get all the correct settings the sexy girl walk out of the rooom le...
just painting a possible scenario.... many other scenarios might exist...
Because I'm concerned abt my storage space just like what flashbug mentioned.
after you shoot and PP, then converted to Jpeg then no need worry ma...
if not then COMEX starts tomolo... go buy a 1TB disk...:thumbsup::thumbsup:
:thumbsup: GREAT SUGGESTION. i got a 1TB external WD tower for $149 2 shows back to back up all my photos. Think storage these days really shouldn't be too much of your issue. Go out and shoot more important. haha
Yeah I agree that storage shouldn't restrict your shooting at all. Maybe I'll check out comex for some good storage deals as I don really have a big memory hard disk yet
It depends from photographer to photographer.
There are those who are so good, jpeg can already with a little touch up in PP. There are those who wants absolute control which is what Raw gives.
for me, i take Raw + Jpeg since memory cards are so cheap now plus have the flexibility in case client request the "digital negative".
i am buying a 2TB external hdd during Comex.
There are those who are so good, jpeg can already with a little touch up in PP. There are those who wants absolute control which is what Raw gives.
for me, i take Raw + Jpeg since memory cards are so cheap now plus have the flexibility in case client request the "digital negative".
i am buying a 2TB external hdd during Comex.
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You can either get more storage or just avoid piling up tons of RAW files. Be critical, only keep what is really good and usable. Define your workflow (Lightroom helps here nicely) and avoid pictures that are only 'so-so'..
I thinking of a RAID drive. It will be a more reliable backup.
Nowadays I shoot solely in RAW. As you guys were talking about changing WB in pp, I can't seem to change to a good WB setting in photoshop, unless I use the CameraRAW facility. Maybe I got the wrong technique :dunno:
Nowadays I shoot solely in RAW. As you guys were talking about changing WB in pp, I can't seem to change to a good WB setting in photoshop, unless I use the CameraRAW facility. Maybe I got the wrong technique :dunno:
Sorry, RAID is not a backup. Raid is a measure to increase fault tolerance, here: fault of a single drive. As result the outage of a single drive doesn't affect your work.
Backup is a set of production data stored at a different place and (best case) a different media, enabling you to restore your production data fully or partially at a certain point in time. It's a data set in a 'frozen state'.
Two different technologies for two different things.
Lightroom has a nice way of creating backup sets of the catalog as well as from the imported images from camera.
