A good, one page article to read which explains RAW is at Luminous Landscape. If you find the first part a bit too technical (its not too hard really) skip down to the comparison between JPEG and RAW files and the Summary.

Thanks for the link, but I mostly shoot JPG, for my camera doesn't support RAW, I got a crack for the firmwire but it's to slow in recording to card, the bug I shot already flew before I can make the next shot:)

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I shoot RAW always. I often shoot in very challenging lighting conditions with a combination of light sources so the preset White Balance options don't always yield the results I like. I find that it is so much easier to shoot in Auto WB and fine tune the WB later if needed in RAW. It just seems so much easier than trying to color correct a JPEG.

In particularly tricky lighting I will sometimes use a preset WB using a gray card to get an accurate reading, but it's not really very often that I need to do it. In fact I can count how many times I've done that on one hand. Usually it's only when I am doing a lot of shooting under fluorescent lights. The preset WB is definitely not very good for fluorescent on any of the cameras I've used. For me the WB alone is reason enough to shoot RAW.

In general though I just find RAW to be more forgiving. You can make corrections so much easier and with better results than you can a JPEG. Once you get used to the workflow it really doesn't seem to take anymore time than processing JPEG, especially if you can batch edit.

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Thank you for your post Laurie.

It was a very informative post, and I am sure would encourage a lot of members to shoot RAW, if they possess a camera that will shoot RAW. I find the same as you that RAW is much more forgiving - in fact without any presets in the camera - I am finding with the editor I am using that I can do almost anything with it.

You can use color, contrast, (highlights, lights, shadows, darks) sharpen to 100 per cent, (it won't do much good if your shot is really out of focus), and even do split toning to extreme color levels without the least little artifact (dots of color between the pixels - which give your photo an undesirable look, and very bad for printing).

It all depends on taking a photo with a reasonably decent exposure and sharpness. You can still try to get these photos reasonably good (where a JPEG would be hopeless), but may have "noise" in plain dark areas obvious. Some programs will take care of a lot of this too with noise reduction and color luminance smoothing.

Its as one article said. With Jpeg you already have a "fully baked cake". But, with RAW, you do most of the cooking yourself.

Happy shooting.

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Anne I'm interested which editor you are using? I just use Adobe Camera Raw with CS2 at the moment.

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HI Laurie:

I have been using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (beta 2,3 and 4) for the past year, before they put it on sale on March 1st this year. The first addition on sale has some extra touches. I was hoping I could tell you it was $199.00, but that was their introductory offer in March/April. It is now $299.00. That may seem an awful lot when you have forked out for CS2.

It is made for Professional Photographers who need to process a whole lot in a hurry. No brushes or effects, apart from a few presets, such as Grayscale, Antique Grayscale, Cyanotype, etc. I guess there are quite a few. But the important things are there for processing images, more than I can do in Photoshop. The only thing I can suggest right now is get the trial download at Lightroom

Let me know how you get on!

PS The image I posted in the water theme today was a JPEG. I had only just got my Nikon digital camera just before I went to Mexico, and quite a lot were spoiled with using too many presets in the camera - you know, gotta try everything

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Ahh...I had lightroom beta on my windows machine then it crashed and I got a Mac and got the Mac Beta but I traded that Mac up for a G5 and couldn't download the Beta again so I never really got to use it at all.

I can tell you that if you have a student in your family, whether they are in Kindergarten thru college, you can get many programs at up to 1/2 cost through Campustech.com That's how I get all my expensive software, including CS2. Currently Lightroom 1 is available for around $95 at Campustech.com Check it out.

Laurie

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I started shooting in jpeg mode thinking why would I shoot in RAW? What could I do with that format? But after extensive reading on the subject and early experimentation, anything that I may print and frame I now shoot in RAW. Snapshot like photos stay in jpeg mode.

Hi Stix

Sounds like a good system RAW for prints and JPEGS for snapshots. Only trouble is I never know until I see them on the computer which ones I would like to print, so end up shooting practically all RAW. The exception is when I have been away from home, and somebody else would like to see the photos on their computers before I go home, I shoot JPEG. The reason is that nobody in the family, etc. has anything that will handle RAW in their computers.

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Hi Aminus3ers,

I shoot everything in RAW, I enjoy the freedom of slight exposure adjustment , WB adjustment etc. The high amount of information recorded in the RAW file is excellent. I shoot and process in RAW then save in TIFF ready for printing. There is definitely a noticeable difference between jpeg and a TIFF from a RAW file in my opinion. I am not really the most experienced photographer and find RAW more forgiving with mistakes made!!

D

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Hi Dachimas:

First, welcome to the forum! Sorry for my late reply!

With regard to RAW I couldn't agree with you more! RAW also gives a lot of scope for changing the hue/color temperature/sharpness, and even increasing/decreasing the exposure without unwanted artifacts in the photo. You can turn sunsets and sunrises into surreal colors. I also save the ones I want to print as Tiff files - the only drawback there is the file size! They are absolutely huge for big enlargements - so one needs a computer with lots of resources to handle them, or you are continually rebooting just before the computer dies! At least that is what happened to me with my XP computer. It is not such a problem now since I have recently got a new computer with a dual core processor and over 2 gigs of RAM. However, Vista itself consumes quite a lot of memory, if you keep all the visual embellishments enabled. I still cannot handle too many of those large files in Photoshop without having to re-boot!

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This is a great topic!

I shoot everything JPEG. Somebody asked me one time why and I thought, I dunno. So I replied, "cause I don't understand RAW." Which is the truth! I don't understand it! I never experiment with things I can't undertand easily. I get frustrated. When I read somthing on it, study it and then play with it, I don't mind as much but being stupid going into things I don't know - irritates me a quite a bit. That's why I've always shot JPEG!

I'm relatively new to digital. I've been shooting film for about ten years. I enjoy having to make the camera do the work, not the Photoshop. But I've always enjoyed learning how photoshop can open up endless possibilities to one image. So, I guess, with JPEG, I "bake the whole cake" and put icing on it, too. But I'll definately have to start shooting RAW, now, cause a lot of the stuff I shoot, I shoot for print anyway.

Great links, great reasons and experiences! I'm going to have to try shooting RAW now. I guess the only thing that's held me back so far is how much more room RAW takes compared to JPEG. I get so camera happy and already dump to computer a few times during a shoot - I'd very easily more than double it with RAW! I guess it's worth that sacrifice because it sounds like the functionality is much more practical!

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