Show me the benefits of RAW (with sample file)

[dsenglish]

Here is my attempt at your request. I use Adobe Lightroom 2 and copy .nef and convert them to .dng files. Honestly, I don't know if any of this work is worth it. Sometimes, I find that I do have a better picture in the end. Sometimes.... eh. Honestly, I think I would rather just click and forget about it. Post process takes too much time. But I wont get better with out trying.

I did a slight adjustment to the color temp. Did an Auto adjustment. Then made some color adjustments.. basically trying to make the blues blue and the greens green. The pic out of your D40 did an excellent job and there isn't much difference in what I am posting here. And then did a sharpen and exported as a jpg at 240 dpi. Click the pic to see it full size, which I think allows you to see a bit more of the detail in the process. But honestly, it looks the same.

From Misc shots

I have gigs and gigs of photos as raw and it is with just the basic fear that in 10 years, there will be killer photo software and those pics of my baby girl will all of a sudden be STUNNING. Who knows though... its cheap insurance. Storage is cheap.

Good luck

[FormElement]

Wulf,

I played with both the raw and the jpeg versions and was able to get very similar results on both sides. I should say that I always shoot in RAW, just because I can, and as others have noted, storage is cheap. I just had dinner last night with a very successful photographer friend who does major live theater, almost exclusively, and he shoots a 5DmkII almost all jpeg, for speed and file size, unless a client explicitly requests RAW files. His opinion on the matter is similar to yours.

Here is my "final" version from the RAW processing.


Here is my screen grab from photoshop.


Both are available full size on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/formele...in/photostream

[Dirt_Bike_Ryda]

Whats the age old saying ? "A picture is worth a thousand words"...

FROM:


TO:


Heres a mod on the car in first post


I shoot PURE RAW... nothing but. if i need a JPEG i can tell photoshop to make them for me.. even 1,000 at a go.. making them the same as what they would be if the camera did it for me. I have 30GB worth of memory cards so space isn't an issuse and i have 1.5TB on HDD space.

[MoAKADooRs]

I messed with the RAW file a little

[Mr Guy]

First, yours again for a point of comparison:






As I'm sure you, personally, know Wulf, the thing about RAW vs JPEG is that which is better depends heavily on what was captured in the first place. I'm going to (somewhat) arbitrarily define the quality of the jpeg to be measured by how closely it renders the image to "reality" in the subjective mind of the photographer. Therefore, I'm not going to focus on things like noise reduction, etc, but rather it's ability to be psychic. Perfection, for a jpeg engine, is achieving a "window like" view into reality. The reason for doing that demonstrates why I personally prefer to shoot in RAW+ mode. If a JPEG's perfection is defined by not needing alterations, it's weaknesses are defined by how much recovery can be made for common errors. In other words, if it chooses incorrectly, how well can you fix it? .

With that in mind, I've prepared a few example situations.

First, is simply pushing a single stop. The goal here for me was avoiding blown highlights, unrealistic "haze" on blacks, and color skews. RAW is on top:



The result, for me, is a bit of a wash. On this particular image, there weren't a lot of highlights to protect, the dark area in the wheel well gets a bit hazy, and you start to lose contrast on the dirty hood, but overall it's not significantly different.

However, what if the white balance IS wrong, and you didn't happen to catch it? Say, for example, you're shooting broad daylight shots, turn to your right, see the car, and use your flash to fill without adjusting white balance? To protect the highlights, you wisely decided to expose to the left. Now, you need to correct the temperature cast, and push it a stop. What I did was adjust the color on the RAW, then adjust the jpeg color to match, then pushed both and hand adjusted the curve to protect as much as possible on both. With the JPEG, I had to balance extremely carefully before blowing highlights, over saturating and giving a weird look, losing blacks to haze, and in general just having to walk an extremely narrow line, but I think I did it successfully:



Overall, on this one for effort RAW wins easily, but the JPEG was still able to do it, just with more fudging. I do think I was unable to prevent a certain washed out look to the JPEG, but I think I could fix that given more time and effort.

Finally, what if it was even more wrong than that? What if the exposure is more or less correct, but you want more dynamic range, AND the white balance was even more off. Let's say the greens and blues threw off the sensor and made it think it was a sunny day, but you were actually exposed to a rainy day but shooting into the shadows of some trees?



To me, personally, the RAW wins hands down. I processed these as similarly as I could, but do to the nature of this I had to made trade offs based on my perception of what looked better I had to balance light and dark, how much highlight to protect, how much saturation looked bad to me, etc. I objectively feel the RAW shot has a certainly reality to it while the JPG shot just has a 'processed' feel to it. I'm not sure how to describe it more objectively than that, and I'm not sure how to fix it in the jpeg. Darkening the jpeg just lost too much to the black level, and lost too much detail, so I had to come up with a balance that to me seems over exposed compared to the RAW options.

Without knowing how the scene REALLY looked, those assumptions may be completely right or completely wrong, and it's impossible to tell.

[fletch]

Where you have pushed the exposure the JPEG files have significantly more shadow noise that the RAW files. Things can be done to edit jpegs but they create noise galore.

[Jim Bryant]

AGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH! Not this again. One an do more to fine twink a RAW images that try to do with a JPEG. There's more image info to work with in RAW, less compression of like colors in JPEGS.

[PhotoPhix]

My take on this


Armando

Original



Mine

[k9mom]

I prefer RAW over JPEG only because I prefer to edit in RAW, esp. in CS4's RAW editor (which cannot be used for non-RAW files such as JPEGs). I just find it easier to adjust things like fill light, clarity, vibrance, sharpness, exposure, white balance and more in CS4's RAW editor than in CS4 itself. I do 90% of my PP'ing in either CS4's RAW editor or in Canon's RAW editor, including cropping, rotating, straightening, spot touch ups, etc. It's just easier and the results, superior, IMHO.

Edited in CS4's RAW editor then converted to JPEG. The differences between my edited version and Wulf's are more evident when both are viewed at the 1024x:768 size):



Here is a sample screen shot of CS4's RAW editor: (larger photo available on flickr):

[LindaOH]

I'm new to this whole world of photography and editing. I had looked forward to comparing working on the RAW vs the JPG but had problems downloading the RAW. I ended up with a thumbnail size. So I downloaded the JPG and did some editing in GIMP just for fun.

I selected some of the dark areas and bumped them up lighter in curves before bumping up the overall contrast a bit. Then I went through and burned in the details in the areas I was most interested in avoiding the already dark areas so that I didn't lose them back to black. I especially like the cracks in the dark area of the hood.