What if you can't shoot RAW?

[johnnycombermere]

I've seen a lot on this site about the advantages of shooting in RAW format instead of Jpeg. I enjoy post-processing and, given the chance, you can bet I'd shoot in Raw 100% of the time. However . . . my only camera (besides my ipod) is a Fujifilm S4000. Now I'm not complaining, its a sweet camera and besides, it's a Christmas present, but the long and the short of the matter is that it can only shoot in jpeg.
Ok, so I still want to post process my images to get them looking as good as possible, and i've seen a lot of pp tips for RAW files but not much for jpeg. Does anyone have some general tips for pp'ing my jpeg files? Thanks

P.S. I hope this is the right section to ask questions in

[JFSanders]

Yes, you can post process any image. Just be thoughtful of the fact that jpg files are by definition compressed and can be degraded if saved too many times. So my suggestion to you is open a copy of the file in your editing program and when done save the edit as png or tiff. This will enable you to reopen it and continue to edit again.

[johnnycombermere]

Thanks for the advice. It's funny that never occurred to me Also, i should really learn about white balance. I've been relying on levels to make up for my in-camera incompetence lol

[sk66]

I do a lot of my editing on Jpegs.... My camera records to two disks. One is in Raw and one Jpeg-fine. For images properly exposed and minimal post I usually use the jpegs.

And if images aren't properly exposed they usually aren't worth the post.....

[ceremus]

Pay extra attention that your white balance setting is correct for the environment you're shooting in. A big advantage for RAW is that all of the color information is preserved, so if you need to make white balance corrections it's a very simply procedure when working with that format. In JPEG however, a lot of color information is discarded according to JPEG format's compression. So if you have to make WB color corrections to a jpeg, the original hue may not return true due to the missing color data.

[cyber3d]

When I used to shoot JPG and would edit them to finish the pic I would open the original in Photoshop duplicate the layer and hide the original background layer so it never gets touched and do all my post processing on the dupe layer finally saving it as PSD.

If I wanted to send the image as a JPG I would always have the PSD with the original image as my master giving me the best chance of minimizing JPG artifacts. And I have the original (in the hidden layer) in case I wanted to refine or alter the post processing for a totally different result again without further compression loss.

Also............also............darn it. I forgot what else I was going to say...


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[johnnycombermere]

lol, thanks everyone
by the way, i read somewhere that you get more information in your pictures if you overexpose them slightly instead of underexpose them. does anyone know if that's true of jpegs as well?

[Krusty79]

If I couldn't shoot RAW, then I would at least want to use a tripod and bracket my shots.

From my experience, it's easier to brighten an underexposed image than try to recover detail in an overexposed image.

I saw a tutorial on YouTube on PSP, but I think this will apply to other programs. The author had a single jpg and created a duplicate layer, but used the Screen blending mode, I believe. Different blending modes will give you lighter/darker versions of your original jpg. You can then use a layer mask to blend the layers and even out your exposure.

[ArmySoldier777]

Originally Posted by johnnycombermere

lol, thanks everyone
by the way, i read somewhere that you get more information in your pictures if you overexpose them slightly instead of underexpose them. does anyone know if that's true of jpegs as well?

I think that only applies to Raw. And I'm not sure if it's much of a difference either. But I do know what you're talking about, I've seen that said more than a few times when I was learning about the histogram. It was recommended that shooting slightly overexposed saves more data from the scene, and allows you to have more detail in your photo in the shadows. But you'd only want to slightly overexpose, not enough to lose the detail in your highlights when you bring the exposure down.

[ErikUngerPhotography]

Originally Posted by ArmySoldier777

I think that only applies to Raw. And I'm not sure if it's much of a difference either. But I do know what you're talking about, I've seen that said more than a few times when I was learning about the histogram. It was recommended that shooting slightly overexposed saves more data from the scene, and allows you to have more detail in your photo in the shadows. But you'd only want to slightly overexpose, not enough to lose the detail in your highlights when you bring the exposure down.

This is very true. Just don't clip the highlights. It is better bring down highlights that are not clipped than bring up shadows that are near clipped. This is because there will be far more noise in the shadows than if you just slightly overexposed and brought down the highlights. Again though, this mainly applies ro RAW.