Every photographer needs this video. Also a huge thank you to Jared for sharing this information for over a decade. I took Jared's advice when I got my first real camera and shooting raw + jpeg saved me when I took photos at my grandmother's 90th birthday. The jpegs turned out awful and I had no idea what to do with the raw files. After my grandmother's death several years later, I was able to go back and find the raw files, and develop one of them into an amazing portrait of her that now hangs in almost all of my relatives homes. It saved the day, and allowed me to capture a great moment with a very special person to us. Thank you Jared!
@@buzzj89 THIS is the BIGGEST reason for RAW. I've saved some photos I didn't know how to edit properly until years later, and I'm so incredibly glad I have them
I think the initial shot actually looked cool. Maybe it could have been dialed down by 0.5 to 1 stop, but the white haze from the overexposed shot seemed to highlight the vastness and dusty atmosphere of the scene. The one after looks fake and overdone.
And as usual I appreciate you clearing this up because now the whole world believe in a JPEG is better than a raw file if a JPEG was better than a raw file why is the camera shooting raw
@@FireImageFM1 no the whole world won't believe that. I too prefer the "overexposed" photo but clearly the point has been made that RAW gives you more leeway.
Just shoot raw+jpg and take both files. Send the jpgs to your grandmother's phone out in the field and use the raw files for you serious stuff. Remember guys, jpg is only 8 bit color.
I did the same, both files types, for many years until a recent trip. Shot large RAW to one card and small RAW to the other. Pulled the small files into my iPad while traveling and made some nice adjustments in LR. What I shared was many times better than years past.
@@wasil3k I understand. Most of my subjects have been in place for centuries. Moving is not an issue. There was a time when my equipment could not keep up with the grandkids.
JPG is an 8bit after a curve is made from the actual bits. So if your sensor/raw is 14bits and it has to store it in 8bits it has to make choices. It goes through a software curve in the camera and that is where you end up. it isn't as if you only have an 8bit "window" Because if that it would be impossible to get 14-15 DR out of one JPG. Which technically YOU CAN by using an extreme curve. I agree though, just shoot RAW+JPG. If the JPG's are fine... perfect. if they need a little nip and tuck? Hello Rawfile.
Photographers covering sporting events or the Olympic Games usually shoot in JPEG because the priority is getting the photos to the agencies as quickly as possible. They can't afford to waste time editing RAW files.
I was just about to point that one out. When I'm shooting 8,000 shots in a day covering motor racing, RAW is pointless. Going to get crushed online anyway. Mind you, when it comes to astrophotography, it's the other way around. I'll RAW that.
@@YourFriendLalo i agree with creedsmack, if the original photographer wanted to go for an overexposure why not tone down the burnt colors and kept it high key instead of underexposing? This is why you don't let others edit YOUR photos.
@ why so then they can't comment about it just because it's not the point of the video? If it's not the point of the video why would Jared include it? Just to shame on his friend? Had it been me instead of Polin and i would have said "you can see with raw photos how i can turn this bright photo into something completely different like a dark scary photo where you can see the dynamic range playing a crucial role on the result, with JPEG you would see distortion, banding and artifacts resulting from this aggressive edit" there was no need for giving an opinion.
You should also post the SOOC JPG (without any of your edits). The ones you have posted are 2 edited jpgs and 1 jpg exported from RAW. 0 SOOC JPG. I guarantee, it's not as bad as you make it out to be. Even your jpg exported from raw "20241206_massia_mara_0218" has haloing around the animals.
I can't wait for JPG XL to be normalized in all camera models from every manufacturer, as well as 16 bit RAW files (hopefully with a good lossless compression across the board.) That would really make all this file management stuff and crummy old formats a lot less of an issue.
That's kind of how I got converted to RAW. I set my camera to RAW+JPG and shot some pictures. I put the jpegs into a separate folder without looking at them, and processed the RAW files until I got them looking the best I could. The processed RAW files looked WAY better, and some of the jpegs were so bad that they couldn't be processed even if I wanted to. I've been 100% RAW ever since. - But they take up so much space. > Storage is cheap. - But it takes so much time. > I like to think my photos are worth it.
I recently shot a concert in RAW and JPEG with Canon 5D Mark III. I can say that the ready JPEG came out much better than the edited RAW files. And I saved much editing time. BTW in many other situations RAW gives more editing flexibility. But til now I just develop RAW in camera or seldom in DPP, to keep the real Canon colours.
Calling BS. If the edits came out worse then you need to work on your editing skills. "Real Canon colours" Also calling BS on that. Nobody's looking at your pictures and asking "are those colours Canon or Nikon?"
Interestingly, in terms of tonality and contrast, I much prefer the edited in-camera JPEG. Given the aggressiveness of the edit and preponderance of blue in the sky, I’m sure there’s some banding there. And I’m a RAW shooter 96% of the time but sometimes it’s about contrast and color and no 3rd party RAW converter quite matches the manufacturer’s rendition-especially if you can get manage to fit the scene into the camera JPEG’s dynamic range so that post-capture edits are minimal.
I agree completely. JPG does not always 'suck'. Very often, the in-camera JPG is very good. I customise my picture profiles and I choose which profiles to use for specific set of conditions. For events and weddings, I mostly shoot both RAW and JPG and very often it needs a lot of work to make the RAW match or even beat the JPG. I use the RAW's mostly as backup for the odd image that I need the flexibility of RAW and where the JPG is horrible. For the rest, the JPG shots save me a ton of time and work.
Outstanding video - outstanding example! I'm a convert to RAW, up until about 5 years ago I never even realized the difference and shot everything in jpeg! Now, I shoot about 95% RAW and only shoot jpeg in non-critical situations. It's made a world of difference, and when I edit those jpeg files, I often find something lacking. You're doing a real service, Jared, thanks!
Great vid Jared, one I'm sharing with my college basic digital photo students. I hear the same arguments (especially from Fuji film simulation shooters ) and my response is the same as yours: Learn to edit. Digital has come so far from 20+ years ago when we HAD to shoot JPEG because card capacity wasn't large enough and processing RAW was in its infancy. I share with my students WHY JPEG is occasionally necessary - namely deadline-oriented shooting - and teach them an editing workflow/sync that outputs JPEG files rapidly that far exceed JPEG in the camera.
I shoot raw and jpeg for all photos. For serious images like landscapes and great travel photos, I work from the Raw. When speed and low budget on a jog is a concern with high volume of photos, I make sure the exposure is very close and work the Jpegs. Raw is for when you need the extra dynamic range and increased colour.
As a Nikon shooter, I actually love how NX Studio handles the NEF files. It presents the image with all the jpeg processing the camera is set to, but then gives controls that match the in-camera settings (eg, Picture Control, with tweaking sliders). With Lightroom (before I ditched it) I felt like the RAW file was presented flat (except for that one second as it was loading!) And saving RAW + jpeg to the card gives the best of both worlds anyway.
Jpeg is the friends and family format. Also, you're edit is completely overkill, imo. It's a great shot, but turning the entire sky dark blue makes it look like its Dusk or a thunderstorm is coming, and making the clouds so prominent takes focus away from the animals and the vastness of the landscape, entirely. A little would have gone a long way here, imo. That's probably also my main reason for not owning any Fro Packs. Most presets are so over the top that they hurt my eyes 🙈 Anyhow, that doesn't take away from how entertaining and informative your videos are. 🙂👍
Keep in mind, this is what Jared prefers. There are only a select few presets in the fropacks that are extremely vibrant and contrasty like his edit. There is a nice variety for everybody from muted presets to extra punchy though (58 total). At 5:17 he shows off a few of the more muted ones for example (c-41, coppertone, wet hot american summer). In the end, they’re starting points and are expected to be tweaked to each photographer’s subjective editing. Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up. Thanks for watching and appreciate the comment
Sure. When you f'd up by "accidentally" taking your camera out of auto-mode, like your friend did, a RAW files will be a life saver most of the time. What about when your friend listened to you and had it in auto mode? Can you share those SooC JPG with us? Don't get me wrong, I aways shoot RAW+JPG. But I am so lazy now-a-days that 80% of the time, the SooC JPG is just fine for me as I don't care to sell/make money off of my photos.
Also, one thing to note. If you are shooting cameras like Fujifilm, Leica or the newer cameras with baked in "looks/luts/recipes" -- what you want is for the camera to process the JPGs. I have tried many times to process my RAW files to match what the specific camera brand's in-body processing engine spits out as JPG, and find it hard or time consuming to get close to those "native" JPGs. So strictly RAW may not always be your best choice in these specific cases.
@@contentm3893 I have been editing RAW for the past decade+ and own some of the best (and current) editing software (Dx0, Capture One, LR CC, and others). I'm pretty sure I know enough about editing RAW to justify the thousands of dollars I had spent on editing software over the years. Thanks though, for your assumption. On that note, I challenge you to edit a RAW file from and camera like the Q3/43 and edit it to look exactly like the JPG the camera spits out. I am sure you can get very close, but when you compare your masterpiece against the native JPG, you will see how difficult it is. Sure, anyone can match the colors for the most part. But the range of shadows, highlights, contrasts/micro-contrasts, etc... those are hard to replicate. Even the software you choose to process your RAW file will give you a different starting point as each have their own unique processing engine. My point is that it is very easy to get close, but extremely hard to get an exact match of native JPG.
@@kualilo It's not difficult to edit RAW files to match in camera JPEGS. The whole point is to have control over the image and that RAW files carry more information. Learn the craft. No professional lets the camera kick out final images like you do. If you can't match in camera jpgs with Raw then just say you can't do it. It's easy.
@@contentm3893 This video was/is about JPG being "sucky". I'm just saying that some people appreciates the "native" JPG that was processed by the camera's processing engine, the way the manufacturer/engineers/color experts had intended to be processed. Heck, even the different editing software handle camera/lens corrections differently than what you see when comparing against native JPGs. Your entire argument was simply, "You suck, learn more." You don't know me, or my skill level. And you certainly don't look or appreciate photos the way I do. I also never said I was a professional (in the sense you think a professional should be). There are many, many, great photographers who never turned or claimed to be professionals. And yes, I will say that I can match RAW to SooC JPG up to a point. Once in a while, I do get close. Obviously, according to you, you can match RAW to the native JPG exactly each time because it is easy (your words) -- which means your tolerances/standards for your JPG version vs the native SooC JPG is lower, or at the very least, different than mine. This is a pointless conversation, so I will leave it here. Hear what I am saying, or don't.
I love having raw files. Nevermind being able to rescue a shot I might have exposed a little wrong, but it shouldn't be understated how critical it can be to have the ability to experiment with the edit and not worry about accidentally permanently changing the photo, or to walk back an editing accident when it happens. I have to disagree about the final edit, but that's only my taste and because of how the sky looks. I think the grass and the animals look great in the edit, but getting there made the sky look unnatural because of how dark it became and where the colors landed. I'm sure it was hard striking a balance between the brightness of the clouds and getting the saturation and richness of the other colors that you wanted, especially from a starting point of dialing exposure back by two and a half stops. The black and white version helps with that a little, but the tone of the sky still seems a bit far on the dark end there too. That's just my armchair photo editing though; I know I can't really say what's possible since I haven't worked with this raw file. I'm glad that you reached an edit that you and hopefully Troy like for his excellent photo. 👍
Years ago I went to a photography seminar where the instructor said that there are two kinds of photographers--those who shoot raw and those who will eventually shoot raw. I was in Africa this year for two weeks and had several shots that were save by shooting raw because my shutter speed was wrong or something else happened (those pesky gremlins). But thankfully those shots were save for my work as a wildlife biologist. I shoot raw on the CF card and jpeg on the sd card which I know can be an issue if for some reason the CF card gets corrupted but didn't have a laptop, just an ipad and processing through that was slow. Great video. And I like both the color and B&W, they both have their +'s and -'s.
I am no pro, but I have been photographing for a good 5 decades. RAW allows you to develop your photo. Jpeg can only be tweaked. The camera doesn’t know your intent. Hell, most of the time I don’t even know my intent when I take the shot. But RAW allows you to develop the image instead of just editing. Agree with your points.
Not gonna lie, apart from the sensor dust the original shot looks pretty cool. Kinda digging the overexposed sky look here. Makes it feel even more vast than the darker edit
Troy is a lucky to have a friend like you, I bet he learned a lot about photography on that safari! Color or BW? I would take this one and go BW if only for the simple reason that the zebras don't change 😀
One thing that we overlook is that over time software gets better at dealing with raw files. I get better JPGS now with my old raw files than I did when they were clicked. The same is not true if you only have the JPG.
@@patrickstonetree1 this is a huge point. You will likely be able to do more with your raws in 10 years than you can now (to what extent, idk, but the jump from mid-2000s to now is nuts)
@DJ-yh8hm I touched up photos from 7 years ago the other day, some gems I got that I didn't appreciate until now. I also re-edited some photos that I edited a bit too much back in the day. A guy commented that he had a pic of his late grandmother that didn't turn out great in the jpeg, went back years later and found the raw, and got something he could hang on his wall.
1:05 on the subject, if don't know how it was here but remember that the full resolution JPEG that is contained in the CR3 container is less quality than if you shoot JPEG (or RAW+JPEG). So there might have been more info if there was a separate .JPG file. Not that I think it could have saved it. When using the Canon camera connect app on Android, which are forbidden from using CR3 files (I guess it's because of Google, last time I checked Lightroom has to work around that) and transfer wirelessly, if you only had the CR3 file it will grab the full resolution JPEG but the file size is smaller than if shoot directly to JPEG in which case it just takes the file. I don't have an R3 but this has been true (I hope) on M50, RP, R8.
Jared, okay you have finally convinced me to give this a try. I have never done much editing, and the JPEGs were just easier, but I am not learning anything. I have been considering the Fro Packs, and think that my Disney World trip coming up in 3 weeks is going to be a good place to try out some RAW shooting and work on some basic editing of these files. Thanks for giving me the kick in the pants I need to take advantage of the quality gear I already own!
Hey Jared, i am ortodontist and I shoot JPEG because little bit lazy to do after works of Raw. Do you really think that posting pictures on Instagram between Jpeg and Raw make any difference. I want to upgrade quality of my cases on Instagram. Also, after watching your videos, I decided to buy canon R5 , I have D5600 nikon which is 24 mp as you know it. Do you also think that investing for this set up, make a huge difference for what I look for, i’m really curious about what is your opinion ? Thx man
Problem with shooting Raw is it just adds another barrier to photography. Another cost to add to the physical equipment. Both in memory storage and processing software.
You're making a problem out of nothing. The complexity of doing everything correct can be overwhelming. Shooting manual, exposure theory, composition, lighting flash, and you're telling me RAW is what's gonna stop someone from becoming a photographer?
@@krisc1684 There are plenty of people that are put off by it. Just as there are people who draw the line at the cost of darkroom equipment when shooting film. You don't need to shoot RAW to enjoy your photography, or the final image. Just as you don't need to buy a medium, or large format camera to be considered a good photographer.
@@wayneclayton5426 "we should stop telling people that RAW is the best way to shoot digitally because 2 photographers I know wouldn't take photos if they had to shoot in RAW"
I've shot about 35,000 photos in the past six years at the world's largest weekly car meet in the world. I shoot JPEG and RAW and many times the dynamic range is too high for satisfactory results with the JPEG files. So I always processed the RAW files.
@@fintonmainz7845 Personally I'd rather shoot at 20fps in RAW than 30fps in JPG. Makes no difference to the buffer in my camera, it's essentially endless even in RAW (lossless compressed as well).
@csc-photo I know professional motor sports photographers who shoot only jpeg. Mainly to get the pictures published quickly. I only shoot raw but I have time.
@@fintonmainz7845 Makes sense / all good, but your comment above was in the context of gear performance, not publishing workflow. Unless I misunderstood something. I mean the great thing is, we have so many options for every use case now.
Care to share a comparison of a properly exposed photo that did not need 'saving' so we can see that when you know how to keep your camera settings as they should be, there is effectively no difference
Let's make a challenge: Jared! Please upload the unedited raw and jpeg files, let us to download and edit ourselves these pics and then make a vote for the best versions! I wonder what we can make of it.
Raw files for edit options when you can. Fine tune your picture style (sharpening, contrast, saturation) and shoot jpegs for speed. News/Editorial work only allows minimal edits.
I actually think your RAW edit looks really flat, and I think the vignetting effect of the jpeg makes it pop. Of course, you can CHOOSE to edit differently with RAW while retaining the details you noted were blown out, which is why you should be shooting at least raw+jpeg...but I like the JPEG edit. Most of the time I do, in fact. I just shoot both and save the RAW for a rainy day if I ever want to do something more serious with it.
Photography is art. I want to edit the pic myself to recreate what I saw when I took it. People like us are very meticulous and studied the program so we can edit without damaging the image. For most a snapshot is Good enough. They can see the difference but they aren’t going to agonize over every shot. Just wired differently.
How would that make any difference? That’s like taking an 8oz glass of water and pouring it into a 16oz glass and magically expecting a full glass. The data just isn’t there to begin with, it will still always be 8bit data
@johnbunani1341 I agree. But I'm interested to know if it makes a difference to the quality of the final image if the same edits are applied to a lossless TIFF version or a lossy JPEG version. On paper, it sounds like it should, but what's the real world like?
Quick question from pretty much a Lightroom newbie…. I shoot RAW and edit using Lightroom on my iPad…. When I export the photo it always saves as a jpeg…. Is this normal?….
You can change it to export as any file type you like 🙂 It will never export as a RAW of course: TIFF is the next closest thing (arguably). Instead of pressing ‘Save copy to device’ press ‘Export as’ and the settings are in there 🙂
You don't even "want" to export it as RAW, RAW isn't even a format it's just the RAW data from your camera (although cameras do process it slightly anyway). After you edit it it's saved as the format you choose: tiff, jpeg or whatever you want. By the way for properly exposed images in normal conditions jpegs or better still heif format will deliver great results. I normally shoot in RAW because I do bird photography which is often shot in pretty extreme conditions of low light and often need wider dynamic range particularly for back lit subjects and the more flexible files are helpful
With the current computer capabilities even at the basic level, the much lower cost of storage and availability of free softwares for editing, is there any reason to shoot jpgs even at the amateur aficionado level? The black and white looks gorgeous. Black and white forever.
Data and information are 2 different things, but usually correlated. You could have something that has more information but uses less data and vice versa. For ex, if I create an 2 color image of a circle 500x500px bmp file, it's using a lot of data, and it's an approximation of a circle (it's not perfect), or I give you an 1000x1000px png file which uses less data but has more information. In fact, I could even give you an SVG file with the tag, radius + position of the center, that uses even less data and has even more information.
Why are we still talking about this is 2024? Shooting JPEG vs. RAW was thing when a 258MB memory card was the biggest you could buy and cost $200 but the last 32GB card I bought cost $10 and even my phone can deal with RAW files. JPEGS are still the files the camera uses for it’s thumbnails and creating the histogram used to judge exposure so their DR difference vs RAW need to be taken into account when setting exposure but if the brightest non-specular “Zone 9” highlights are kept 1/3 stop below clipping in the playback then you will not blow the highlights in the JPEG and have even more ‘headroom’ for fine turning the important Zone9/Zone 10 visual separation which is the only clue to 3D shape in 2D photos on flat white objects which don’t cast any shadow clues to 3D shape. Put the Zone 10 catchlights at 10 or 2 for the best illusion of 3D. Unless needing to shoot at high FPS rates there’s not much addition overhead shooting in RAW + JPEG mode. If exposed as suggest above, with Zone 9 whites exposed 1/3 below clipping then in most cases the highlight of the JPEGs will be exposed as well as the JPEGS. Where RAW is vastly superior during editing is the ability to alter WB and Tint and pull up mid-tone and shadow detail with greater control and finesse because RAW files are stored based on their CIE*Lab green-magenta (TINT) / blue-yellow (WB) / Luminance colorspace coordinates not RGB. Making a WB or TINT adjustment in a JPG requires altering two channels but only one in RAW. In RAW the a and b channels carrying all the color data are separate from the L channel which contains all the image detail which allows changing contrast in the RAW without affecting color rendering as in a RAW file. That was a BIG DEAL back when cameras had color bit depth of 8-bits / 256 tones per channel because shifting contrast or color when editing JPGs would cause ‘stair-step’ banding in subtle gradients like blue skies. But that problem was pretty much eliminated around 2008 when sensors became 10-bit with thousands of tones per channel and now sensor are 14-bit with more tones that the human eye can perceive differences in, both in the RAW and JPEGs. Craftsmanship is all about understanding how to use the tools and JPEG and RAW are both useful so it behooves a photographer who considers craftsmanship as important as artistic expression to understand the pros and cons of both and when each is most appropriate. JPEGs only suck if one does not understand that. The problem isn’t the software, it’s a ‘meatware’ problem 😂
Couldn't agree more, I used to do RAW+JPEG as I do shoots that need turned round quick, but I upload everything when at the desk. So I import the RAWs into Lr Classic, build previews and 'auto' correct every photo and let the Mac chew on that when driving home. Back at the desk, I can cull the images down and it's usually a few seconds per photo if they even need much more adjusting. Other times, running a mask on the subject for example can make a massive difference and means the whole scene didn't have to be over/underexposed to compensate. Doesn't really add much time at all.
I dont understand why we still have no HDR capable “universal” photo compression format, and why we cant export as heif from lightroom mobile (which heif has extended dynamic range capability). Licensing is a bitch. The fact that no social platform will support raw format because of file size is clear, but the major social platform has supported HEIF uploads for a long time now and uploads from iOS (HEIF) has been an upgrade over jpeg uploads. I took tons of photo from my camera, transfer to my phone, edit it, export to jpeg (because there’s no HEIF export) and then when I compare it to my phone’s photo, it got shoved under the rug. Like what the hell 🙄
Finally, something I wholeheartedly agree with. Shame phones can't always do RAW (Camera2 API, level_3), but then we only get "maybe" 2 stops of DR before noise gets nasty with a phone I borrowed for the purpose. Still, that is worlds better than whatever JPG it could ever dream out. I would certainly take advantage of RAW if I get to have a real camera, much more it would probably be a really old one...
I myself had the conclusion 24 MPix is good enough for me and lets my lenses shine from corner to corner. Storage is dirt cheap today. RAW is a no brainer. As physicist I always liked to log all the data in their original quality: Experiments and time are much more compared to the efforts to store them. Analysis can be done later for the data/photo which is very important. In my case: Maybe 5-10 photos per year ;-)
The amount of image data that's literally being discarded during JPG compression is baaaaananas. So ya JPG's are nice when spousey wants kiddo's birthday party photos delivered PRONTO / same day for social apps. They keep the peace 😆 But everything I shoot is at minimum RAW + JPG and most of the time those JPG's never leave my secondary card. Best of both worlds and you have files for every situation. Hey you NEVER know exactly when you're going to grab a killer portfolio shot, or an image that really means something to someone. Or even if you F up your exposure like in this example (it happens to the best of us). So yes you want those images in the absolute highest possible quality.
@@DonaldWMeyers-dwm Not quick enough for my spouse trust me 😆 Referring to SOOC JPG's for casual events etc. But yes RAW is really no different for me on the editing side, agreed.
In terms of the photo’s composition, should the animals be moved slightly higher to the 1/3 mark? It seems to work showing the “vastness” but I wonder if it could be framed slightly better?
can we have a video hearing your thoughts on grain? I personally love the look of grain in my images, not always but sometimes it just fits the vibe of the photo, BUT I have gotten into arguments occasionally with other photographers insisting that I should NEVER use grain, and images should be clean, and so on and so forth, hence I would love to get an input from my afro shooter mr fro knows photo :D
He's expressed that noise is part of digital photography, and some noise is not a deal breaker, and looks better than trying to overcompensate with noise reduction. I agree heavily.
@@s7evenTV oh no worries at all dude I was just letting you know! He's never done a full vid on it, and he could definitely flesh some points out in a 10 min video
@@krisc1684 If you have noise in your image, more often than not, your image is either underexposed or very slightly underexposed. Underexposure will destroy the tonality of an image. For example skin tones get destroyed by underexposure.
@@timothymatthews6458 or because the amount of light vs the motion you wanted to capture required a high ISO. I think this is the far more common situation
I am a RAW shooter and I agree with you, but with the new mirrorless taking so many more shots even dumbed down opening so many RAW images on my IMAC is becoming slow 😢
For the end of the video I prefer the color. Also i shoot RAW and JPEG so if I have an instance where I need to upload fast I can and then later at home edit the raw and upload my style of the image. I've also ran into a time when I was on vacation and someone wanted a photo taken of them and I couldn't edit it so I needed to quickly take the image, transfer it to my phone (via canon app) and airdrop it to their device. If i only shot raw I'd of needed to edit the file which I didn't have the time to do. There's a place for using both but raw is superior
Been doing photography for 16 years now. I have been shooting raw since day one. It still baffles me so called "professional" photographers just shoot jpeg. I swear every raw picture with the auto edit lightroom button looks better than any SOOC jpeg.
So betweeen the two, every time I try to work with a RAW file, I end up with a massive magenta grain on the file that I either can't remove, or to remove the magenta grain, it ruins the photos itself... I am shooting in JPEG+RAW generally(or have started to recently), so I've currently stuck with JPEG The issue may be the camera I have itself, a ZV-E10 I.... I've been running up against its limitations constantly and having to get around them in various ways by improving technique, getting creative with comp, and more glass, but eh. RAW files *probably* are better in aggregate, but at the moment I really can't use them so, it's still JPEG for me for the time being.
I only have an R50 but it only took me a week to enable RAW + jpeg and another to switch to RAW only. As you said. The picture does not get better when you edit jpeg. Every time lossy compression is saved, information is lost.
There's a couple of photography groups I belong to on Facebook. Half the people post unedited jpegs and call them RAW and get upset when I question if they know what raw is, while the other half claim to be experts who only shoot in jpeg and say raw is for beginners who can't take a proper picture.
If you know what you are doing and have a good gear, raws are useless. I have Canon m6ii, shoot jpegs only and get great results. Raws were useful in the beginning of digital photography era.
the black and white looks much better imho. The color edit looks very wrong to me as the edges of the sky are all greyed out unlike the center of the sky. If it was more uniform and lacked the grey vignette around the perimeter, it would have come out far better. I shoot RAW.
Even if you currently don't edit your photos shoot them in RAW anyway. And let me tell you why. When I got serious photographing birds I initially let the camera save the image both as a RAW file and as a JPEG. This because I didn't know how to edit so I wanted at least a decent JPEG from the camera. But then the job of deleting bad images became a big hassle because I always had to delete two files instead of one. So I disabled the saving of RAW files. That turned out to be a big mistake. Because at some point I bought a software (DxO Photolab) that could convert a RAW file into a better JPEG image than the camera itself was capable of, even without editing. And all the good photos that I shot in the meantime but for which I don't have the RAW files can't be shown at their full potential. Now I only shoot at RAW. If I have a good photo I'll edit it to my needs and convert it to JPEG. But only those.
i shoot raw as i am lazy ....you are not going to have the same picture style for a landscape and a dreamy portrait and i can't be bothered to keep changing them i also don't have to keep my eye on white balance ..also i believe most raw editors can be set to read the camera jpeg settings and use them as a starting point so if you just import the raw and export it you get what the camera would have done anyway ..but yes i never understand if folk do any type of editing why they don't shoot raw as it takes no longer
The way I describe it to people is this: all digital images start out as RAW and have to be processed. The difference is, are you going to do the processing or some nameless engineer who loaded your camera with presets going to do the processing? Also, the in camera processing is stuck in time. While PS (and other software) are constantly upgrading their processing engine for better quality. You can go back to a 20 year old RAW and reprocess it. Can't clean up a JPEG.
Depending on what you are after or the "look" (for example, the elusive "Leica Look") you are after, a JPEG straight out of camera may be better than you doing your own processing. I have tested this and spent many hours trying to process my RAW files to match what my Leica Q3/M11-P spits out as JPG and I could never get it exactly right. I come close, but there is always something off. Some people buy/shoot cameras because they appreciate the way images are produced specifically by the cameras they chose. It's the same reasons why some people are now buying digital cameras that are 10+ years old... because of those old sensors/colors/looks.
It's wild to me that people still use primitive JPEGs for serious work. Usually for a mere color profile that can be added in post with a preset. Fuji even uses it like a cult to sell us new cameras just for that one one new preset.
I've been a sports photographer for many years and I always shoot jpeg. There is no way that I have the time going through 2000-5000 images and editing over 100. Raw is great if you're only shooting a lot less images.
I think the initial unedited photo looks better, maybe bring down the exposure 1/2stop and its perfect. The edited version looks Fake and unrealistic to me, However I wasn't there so don't know how the scene looked in real-life
It's a minimalist image, subjects placed in the middle of the frame can work occasionally but most of the time looks boring. You'll create more of a story by putting most of the dead space in the subjects direction of travel or eyesight. Middle of the frame works better of they're heading towards you
The only time I shoot JPEG is when clients want JPEGS only or when I have to quickly upload the photos or when I dont want to edit them. I mean, I will shoot both in RAW & JPEG thanks to Dual recording now. Otherwise, I do prefer to shoot in UNCOMPRESSED RAW for big projects.
For everyday photography in good light and properly exposed images jpegs (or better still heif/heic) will deliver great results however under extreme conditions of low light and/or wide dynamic range the greater flexibility of the camera's RAW data can be helpful in achieving a better result. RAW isn't actually a format it's just what your camera manufacturer records in a fairly lightly processed file: the "RAW" data from your sensor with nearly all the available original data (although a lot of data is often binned anyway)
With you all the way with shooting RAW, it just cannot be matched. BUT, please do not hate me for this. When Canon bought out that stupid IBIS function the first thing I did was try it. WTF, it is useless. waste of time, total trash. However when someone dangles a carrot in front of me, I cannot help myself, I was not happy, their had to be more to it and.. THERE IS! OK I do not want to take up too much time nor space but the rules are: A rock solid tripod, a static scene with landscape being the best, a remote wired or wireless trigger or use the delayed timer function (EOS-R5). That is it. OK, set the cam to shoot in high resolution (IBIS) mode. Take the shot, let the camera do its magicary and then load the shot into Camera Raw. OK, its a big jpg file.. eerrggghhh not good, BUT, do what you need to do to edit the shot, even being a jpg it is still editable with the amount of data present. My process from here will differ a lot to many others so please do what you have to do to get a similar result. My next process it to load the image into Photoshop, RESIZE it to a smaller file, otherwise you may well crash the computer working a file at over 1gb in size. Once resized and you are happy with what you see, I know, it is a jpg but now the magic happens. Save the file or you can just put the file through Topaz De-Noise... ARRRGGGHHH bloody Topaz but please read me out. I do not know how it does it but, use the standard denoise mode, let it render. I will await you "holy s**t" moment. I hated IBIS even more so that all it left was a stupid massive jpg file, but now, I use the IBIS all the time on static shots and even compared with focus stacked images it stands out way beyond with the quality, clarity and balance of shot. It is pretty amazing. Sorry that was so long. PS: I still do and will never not shoot the mighty RAW. 🙂
Have you tried HIF (HEIF) files. I occasionally use the on my Sonys and compared to jpegs they have a lot more latitude in PP. For noncritical work where you are talking a lot of images and don't need to do a lot of post processing they can be useful and surprisingly good
If you want Jpeg... Why not just Shoot Raw, and export the keepers to Jpeg in-camera? Or shoot Raw+Jpeg? Time is precious, Storage is expensive, but Opportunities lost is the most costly.
This is a terrible example of JPG vs RAW because 99% of people will prefer the JPG here. Jared messed up by keeping the RAW image under-exposed. Also HEIF is about to replace JPG and the image quality is a lot better.
Agree, almost. I've been shooting RAW+JPEG for many years and basically only used the JPEGs. But kept the RAWs, just in case. Like with negatives in the film era. Lately, as I'm publishing more photos on the Internet and look at them beforehand, I changed to RAW only and export the JPEGs with a post processing software. The manufacturer of my camera, Nikon, makes this easy with NX Studio and lately with more emphasis on picture controls. I would not want to make a subscription somewhere else for this purpose though.
I only use canon dpp4 to edit and it is extremely limited in how much you can edit a jpeg, i decided to shoot jpeg one day to get the images up on the cricket clubs socials asap and well that was a failure(not really but to my eye it wasn't right)
Yes, even for the casual shooting that I do the RAW workflow is just better and doesn't take any more time. Plus the added bonus of modern noise reduction just makes a real difference. I admit it too: "I shoot RAW" ;-)
RAW+JPG here, sometimes the SOOC jpg is good and I dont need to spend time editing it... also an easy call with the R5ii since large V90 SD cards are $$$ I shoot raw to the CFE slot (where larger cards are reasonable-ish price-wise) and the smaller jpg files go to the SD slot. Having the jpgs also makes the culling process easier since DPP loads them a lot faster than the full sized raws... so I cull based on the jpgs, then edit the raws.
Every photographer needs this video. Also a huge thank you to Jared for sharing this information for over a decade. I took Jared's advice when I got my first real camera and shooting raw + jpeg saved me when I took photos at my grandmother's 90th birthday. The jpegs turned out awful and I had no idea what to do with the raw files. After my grandmother's death several years later, I was able to go back and find the raw files, and develop one of them into an amazing portrait of her that now hangs in almost all of my relatives homes. It saved the day, and allowed me to capture a great moment with a very special person to us. Thank you Jared!
@@buzzj89 THIS is the BIGGEST reason for RAW. I've saved some photos I didn't know how to edit properly until years later, and I'm so incredibly glad I have them
I think the initial shot actually looked cool. Maybe it could have been dialed down by 0.5 to 1 stop, but the white haze from the overexposed shot seemed to highlight the vastness and dusty atmosphere of the scene. The one after looks fake and overdone.
Couldn‘t agree more
@@sebastianreiprich3747 me too.
And as usual I appreciate you clearing this up because now the whole world believe in a JPEG is better than a raw file if a JPEG was better than a raw file why is the camera shooting raw
@@FireImageFM1 no the whole world won't believe that.
I too prefer the "overexposed" photo but clearly the point has been made that RAW gives you more leeway.
I desaturated the image to 9x16 horizontal and desaturated it.
Just shoot raw+jpg and take both files. Send the jpgs to your grandmother's phone out in the field and use the raw files for you serious stuff. Remember guys, jpg is only 8 bit color.
@@CLIFFLIX in some extreme cases, you may not reach the fps you want when shooting both, but agreed most of the time
I did the same, both files types, for many years until a recent trip. Shot large RAW to one card and small RAW to the other. Pulled the small files into my iPad while traveling and made some nice adjustments in LR. What I shared was many times better than years past.
Not possible while shooting wildlife
@@wasil3k I understand. Most of my subjects have been in place for centuries. Moving is not an issue. There was a time when my equipment could not keep up with the grandkids.
JPG is an 8bit after a curve is made from the actual bits. So if your sensor/raw is 14bits and it has to store it in 8bits it has to make choices. It goes through a software curve in the camera and that is where you end up.
it isn't as if you only have an 8bit "window" Because if that it would be impossible to get 14-15 DR out of one JPG. Which technically YOU CAN by using an extreme curve.
I agree though, just shoot RAW+JPG. If the JPG's are fine... perfect. if they need a little nip and tuck? Hello Rawfile.
Photographers covering sporting events or the Olympic Games usually shoot in JPEG because the priority is getting the photos to the agencies as quickly as possible. They can't afford to waste time editing RAW files.
I was just about to point that one out. When I'm shooting 8,000 shots in a day covering motor racing, RAW is pointless. Going to get crushed online anyway.
Mind you, when it comes to astrophotography, it's the other way around. I'll RAW that.
Sorry, but I didn’t like your edit…
Sorry, but I didn’t like your comment…
@@YourFriendLalo i agree with creedsmack, if the original photographer wanted to go for an overexposure why not tone down the burnt colors and kept it high key instead of underexposing? This is why you don't let others edit YOUR photos.
It's not the point of this video
No, it looks like something a beginner could have made
@ why so then they can't comment about it just because it's not the point of the video? If it's not the point of the video why would Jared include it? Just to shame on his friend? Had it been me instead of Polin and i would have said "you can see with raw photos how i can turn this bright photo into something completely different like a dark scary photo where you can see the dynamic range playing a crucial role on the result, with JPEG you would see distortion, banding and artifacts resulting from this aggressive edit"
there was no need for giving an opinion.
Don't forget to check out the FULL RES Exports so you can see the full files. You can clearly see that more data is better than less in this example.
You should also post the SOOC JPG (without any of your edits). The ones you have posted are 2 edited jpgs and 1 jpg exported from RAW. 0 SOOC JPG. I guarantee, it's not as bad as you make it out to be. Even your jpg exported from raw "20241206_massia_mara_0218" has haloing around the animals.
I can't wait for JPG XL to be normalized in all camera models from every manufacturer, as well as 16 bit RAW files (hopefully with a good lossless compression across the board.) That would really make all this file management stuff and crummy old formats a lot less of an issue.
That's kind of how I got converted to RAW. I set my camera to RAW+JPG and shot some pictures. I put the jpegs into a separate folder without looking at them, and processed the RAW files until I got them looking the best I could.
The processed RAW files looked WAY better, and some of the jpegs were so bad that they couldn't be processed even if I wanted to. I've been 100% RAW ever since.
- But they take up so much space.
> Storage is cheap.
- But it takes so much time.
> I like to think my photos are worth it.
Where’s the shirt that says “I use skittles “😂
Front “I shoot raw”
Back “but I use skittles” 😂
I recently shot a concert in RAW and JPEG with Canon 5D Mark III. I can say that the ready JPEG came out much better than the edited RAW files. And I saved much editing time. BTW in many other situations RAW gives more editing flexibility. But til now I just develop RAW in camera or seldom in DPP, to keep the real Canon colours.
Calling BS. If the edits came out worse then you need to work on your editing skills.
"Real Canon colours"
Also calling BS on that. Nobody's looking at your pictures and asking "are those colours Canon or Nikon?"
Interestingly, in terms of tonality and contrast, I much prefer the edited in-camera JPEG. Given the aggressiveness of the edit and preponderance of blue in the sky, I’m sure there’s some banding there. And I’m a RAW shooter 96% of the time but sometimes it’s about contrast and color and no 3rd party RAW converter quite matches the manufacturer’s rendition-especially if you can get manage to fit the scene into the camera JPEG’s dynamic range so that post-capture edits are minimal.
I agree completely. JPG does not always 'suck'. Very often, the in-camera JPG is very good. I customise my picture profiles and I choose which profiles to use for specific set of conditions. For events and weddings, I mostly shoot both RAW and JPG and very often it needs a lot of work to make the RAW match or even beat the JPG. I use the RAW's mostly as backup for the odd image that I need the flexibility of RAW and where the JPG is horrible. For the rest, the JPG shots save me a ton of time and work.
@@surfstream777 Exactly, sometimes JPEG is the right tool for the job. “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” 😁
@ Your answer to me makes the most sense. Love it!
Outstanding video - outstanding example! I'm a convert to RAW, up until about 5 years ago I never even realized the difference and shot everything in jpeg! Now, I shoot about 95% RAW and only shoot jpeg in non-critical situations. It's made a world of difference, and when I edit those jpeg files, I often find something lacking. You're doing a real service, Jared, thanks!
I kind of prefer a brighter version of the image you started with.
Great vid Jared, one I'm sharing with my college basic digital photo students. I hear the same arguments (especially from Fuji film simulation shooters ) and my response is the same as yours: Learn to edit. Digital has come so far from 20+ years ago when we HAD to shoot JPEG because card capacity wasn't large enough and processing RAW was in its infancy. I share with my students WHY JPEG is occasionally necessary - namely deadline-oriented shooting - and teach them an editing workflow/sync that outputs JPEG files rapidly that far exceed JPEG in the camera.
I shoot raw and jpeg for all photos. For serious images like landscapes and great travel photos, I work from the Raw. When speed and low budget on a jog is a concern with high volume of photos, I make sure the exposure is very close and work the Jpegs. Raw is for when you need the extra dynamic range and increased colour.
As a Nikon shooter, I actually love how NX Studio handles the NEF files. It presents the image with all the jpeg processing the camera is set to, but then gives controls that match the in-camera settings (eg, Picture Control, with tweaking sliders). With Lightroom (before I ditched it) I felt like the RAW file was presented flat (except for that one second as it was loading!) And saving RAW + jpeg to the card gives the best of both worlds anyway.
Jpeg is the friends and family format.
Also, you're edit is completely overkill, imo. It's a great shot, but turning the entire sky dark blue makes it look like its Dusk or a thunderstorm is coming, and making the clouds so prominent takes focus away from the animals and the vastness of the landscape, entirely. A little would have gone a long way here, imo.
That's probably also my main reason for not owning any Fro Packs. Most presets are so over the top that they hurt my eyes 🙈
Anyhow, that doesn't take away from how entertaining and informative your videos are. 🙂👍
Keep in mind, this is what Jared prefers. There are only a select few presets in the fropacks that are extremely vibrant and contrasty like his edit. There is a nice variety for everybody from muted presets to extra punchy though (58 total). At 5:17 he shows off a few of the more muted ones for example (c-41, coppertone, wet hot american summer). In the end, they’re starting points and are expected to be tweaked to each photographer’s subjective editing. Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up. Thanks for watching and appreciate the comment
Sure. When you f'd up by "accidentally" taking your camera out of auto-mode, like your friend did, a RAW files will be a life saver most of the time. What about when your friend listened to you and had it in auto mode? Can you share those SooC JPG with us? Don't get me wrong, I aways shoot RAW+JPG. But I am so lazy now-a-days that 80% of the time, the SooC JPG is just fine for me as I don't care to sell/make money off of my photos.
Also, one thing to note. If you are shooting cameras like Fujifilm, Leica or the newer cameras with baked in "looks/luts/recipes" -- what you want is for the camera to process the JPGs. I have tried many times to process my RAW files to match what the specific camera brand's in-body processing engine spits out as JPG, and find it hard or time consuming to get close to those "native" JPGs. So strictly RAW may not always be your best choice in these specific cases.
@@kualilo You have to get better at grading RAW.
@@contentm3893 I have been editing RAW for the past decade+ and own some of the best (and current) editing software (Dx0, Capture One, LR CC, and others). I'm pretty sure I know enough about editing RAW to justify the thousands of dollars I had spent on editing software over the years. Thanks though, for your assumption. On that note, I challenge you to edit a RAW file from and camera like the Q3/43 and edit it to look exactly like the JPG the camera spits out. I am sure you can get very close, but when you compare your masterpiece against the native JPG, you will see how difficult it is. Sure, anyone can match the colors for the most part. But the range of shadows, highlights, contrasts/micro-contrasts, etc... those are hard to replicate. Even the software you choose to process your RAW file will give you a different starting point as each have their own unique processing engine. My point is that it is very easy to get close, but extremely hard to get an exact match of native JPG.
@@kualilo It's not difficult to edit RAW files to match in camera JPEGS. The whole point is to have control over the image and that RAW files carry more information.
Learn the craft. No professional lets the camera kick out final images like you do. If you can't match in camera jpgs with Raw then just say you can't do it. It's easy.
@@contentm3893 This video was/is about JPG being "sucky". I'm just saying that some people appreciates the "native" JPG that was processed by the camera's processing engine, the way the manufacturer/engineers/color experts had intended to be processed. Heck, even the different editing software handle camera/lens corrections differently than what you see when comparing against native JPGs.
Your entire argument was simply, "You suck, learn more." You don't know me, or my skill level. And you certainly don't look or appreciate photos the way I do. I also never said I was a professional (in the sense you think a professional should be). There are many, many, great photographers who never turned or claimed to be professionals. And yes, I will say that I can match RAW to SooC JPG up to a point. Once in a while, I do get close. Obviously, according to you, you can match RAW to the native JPG exactly each time because it is easy (your words) -- which means your tolerances/standards for your JPG version vs the native SooC JPG is lower, or at the very least, different than mine. This is a pointless conversation, so I will leave it here. Hear what I am saying, or don't.
Good to know my OG RAW workflow doesn’t need to change. 🎉
can't wait for heif to be more ubiquitous vs jpeg
I love having raw files. Nevermind being able to rescue a shot I might have exposed a little wrong, but it shouldn't be understated how critical it can be to have the ability to experiment with the edit and not worry about accidentally permanently changing the photo, or to walk back an editing accident when it happens.
I have to disagree about the final edit, but that's only my taste and because of how the sky looks. I think the grass and the animals look great in the edit, but getting there made the sky look unnatural because of how dark it became and where the colors landed. I'm sure it was hard striking a balance between the brightness of the clouds and getting the saturation and richness of the other colors that you wanted, especially from a starting point of dialing exposure back by two and a half stops. The black and white version helps with that a little, but the tone of the sky still seems a bit far on the dark end there too. That's just my armchair photo editing though; I know I can't really say what's possible since I haven't worked with this raw file. I'm glad that you reached an edit that you and hopefully Troy like for his excellent photo. 👍
Years ago I went to a photography seminar where the instructor said that there are two kinds of photographers--those who shoot raw and those who will eventually shoot raw. I was in Africa this year for two weeks and had several shots that were save by shooting raw because my shutter speed was wrong or something else happened (those pesky gremlins). But thankfully those shots were save for my work as a wildlife biologist. I shoot raw on the CF card and jpeg on the sd card which I know can be an issue if for some reason the CF card gets corrupted but didn't have a laptop, just an ipad and processing through that was slow. Great video. And I like both the color and B&W, they both have their +'s and -'s.
everyone know RAW is better than JPEG. the point is that no every photo shoot requires RAW. Raw+jepg is always an option
I am no pro, but I have been photographing for a good 5 decades. RAW allows you to develop your photo. Jpeg can only be tweaked. The camera doesn’t know your intent. Hell, most of the time I don’t even know my intent when I take the shot. But RAW allows you to develop the image instead of just editing. Agree with your points.
Not gonna lie, apart from the sensor dust the original shot looks pretty cool. Kinda digging the overexposed sky look here. Makes it feel even more vast than the darker edit
Given that no highlights were blown and had no motion blur, he did great, he exposed to the right and avoided lots of noise. Darararara...
Has Ken Rockwell seen this video?
Ken will make a follow up video to refute everything said here 😅
Troy is a lucky to have a friend like you, I bet he learned a lot about photography on that safari!
Color or BW? I would take this one and go BW if only for the simple reason that the zebras don't change 😀
One thing that we overlook is that over time software gets better at dealing with raw files. I get better JPGS now with my old raw files than I did when they were clicked. The same is not true if you only have the JPG.
@@patrickstonetree1 this is a huge point. You will likely be able to do more with your raws in 10 years than you can now (to what extent, idk, but the jump from mid-2000s to now is nuts)
@@krisc1684 If you know what the leap was like over the last 20 years it means you're very old.
But also, modern cameras produce much better JPGs than cameras did in the past.
@@krisc1684 People don't edit their photos from 10 years ago. What's the point?
@DJ-yh8hm I touched up photos from 7 years ago the other day, some gems I got that I didn't appreciate until now. I also re-edited some photos that I edited a bit too much back in the day. A guy commented that he had a pic of his late grandmother that didn't turn out great in the jpeg, went back years later and found the raw, and got something he could hang on his wall.
Should there be HEIC included in hybrid cameras now?
1:05 on the subject, if don't know how it was here but remember that the full resolution JPEG that is contained in the CR3 container is less quality than if you shoot JPEG (or RAW+JPEG).
So there might have been more info if there was a separate .JPG file. Not that I think it could have saved it.
When using the Canon camera connect app on Android, which are forbidden from using CR3 files (I guess it's because of Google, last time I checked Lightroom has to work around that) and transfer wirelessly, if you only had the CR3 file it will grab the full resolution JPEG but the file size is smaller than if shoot directly to JPEG in which case it just takes the file.
I don't have an R3 but this has been true (I hope) on M50, RP, R8.
Jared, okay you have finally convinced me to give this a try. I have never done much editing, and the JPEGs were just easier, but I am not learning anything. I have been considering the Fro Packs, and think that my Disney World trip coming up in 3 weeks is going to be a good place to try out some RAW shooting and work on some basic editing of these files. Thanks for giving me the kick in the pants I need to take advantage of the quality gear I already own!
Hey Jared, i am ortodontist and I shoot JPEG because little bit lazy to do after works of Raw. Do you really think that posting pictures on Instagram between Jpeg and Raw make any difference. I want to upgrade quality of my cases on Instagram. Also, after watching your videos, I decided to buy canon R5 , I have D5600 nikon which is 24 mp as you know it. Do you also think that investing for this set up, make a huge difference for what I look for, i’m really curious about what is your opinion ? Thx man
Problem with shooting Raw is it just adds another barrier to photography. Another cost to add to the physical equipment. Both in memory storage and processing software.
You're making a problem out of nothing. The complexity of doing everything correct can be overwhelming. Shooting manual, exposure theory, composition, lighting flash, and you're telling me RAW is what's gonna stop someone from becoming a photographer?
Storage is cheap and you should still have the software, even when you’re shooting JPEG
That’s called getting good 😂
@@krisc1684 There are plenty of people that are put off by it. Just as there are people who draw the line at the cost of darkroom equipment when shooting film. You don't need to shoot RAW to enjoy your photography, or the final image. Just as you don't need to buy a medium, or large format camera to be considered a good photographer.
@@wayneclayton5426 "we should stop telling people that RAW is the best way to shoot digitally because 2 photographers I know wouldn't take photos if they had to shoot in RAW"
I've never shot in anything but JPEGs. Just me doing me...
Well, except for the vignette, the jpg looks better for me.
I've shot about 35,000 photos in the past six years at the world's largest weekly car meet in the world. I shoot JPEG and RAW and many times the dynamic range is too high for satisfactory results with the JPEG files. So I always processed the RAW files.
I seriously do not see a reason not to shoot RAW + JPEG.
For action sports/wildlife you can get more shots in burst mode in the following order.
Jpeg, faster than raw, faster than raw+jpeg
Space/speed. And shooting sports on a deadline, there's no time to process and denoise the images that are shot at 10,000+ ISO.
@@fintonmainz7845 Personally I'd rather shoot at 20fps in RAW than 30fps in JPG. Makes no difference to the buffer in my camera, it's essentially endless even in RAW (lossless compressed as well).
@csc-photo I know professional motor sports photographers who shoot only jpeg. Mainly to get the pictures published quickly.
I only shoot raw but I have time.
@@fintonmainz7845 Makes sense / all good, but your comment above was in the context of gear performance, not publishing workflow. Unless I misunderstood something. I mean the great thing is, we have so many options for every use case now.
Care to share a comparison of a properly exposed photo that did not need 'saving' so we can see that when you know how to keep your camera settings as they should be, there is effectively no difference
I wasn’t in the car with him at the time to get the proper exposed one. But he was 2 stoops off.
Let's make a challenge:
Jared! Please upload the unedited raw and jpeg files, let us to download and edit ourselves these pics and then make a vote for the best versions! I wonder what we can make of it.
Everything true, but if you shoot with correct exposure, Canon Jpegs are amazingly good.
I like the color photo over the B&W, it has more of a Nat Geo vibe.
Raw files for edit options when you can. Fine tune your picture style (sharpening, contrast, saturation) and shoot jpegs for speed. News/Editorial work only allows minimal edits.
I actually think your RAW edit looks really flat, and I think the vignetting effect of the jpeg makes it pop. Of course, you can CHOOSE to edit differently with RAW while retaining the details you noted were blown out, which is why you should be shooting at least raw+jpeg...but I like the JPEG edit. Most of the time I do, in fact. I just shoot both and save the RAW for a rainy day if I ever want to do something more serious with it.
I just cut my hair and I want to tell you how much I love your flippin' fro!!! and the color version is 👌
Photography is art. I want to edit the pic myself to recreate what I saw when I took it. People like us are very meticulous and studied the program so we can edit without damaging the image. For most a snapshot is Good enough. They can see the difference but they aren’t going to agonize over every shot. Just wired differently.
You over edited it
All my mirrorless are raw (serious work). 90% of my iPhone are jpeg (snapshots). I will shoot raw on the phone if I’m taking a “serious” photo
I have a strange feeling that you prefer Raw
I used to enjoy your RAW vs JPEG / I shoot RAW videos way back in the day. You should refresh the series for the modern era.
Does saving the JPEG as a 16bit TIFF and then applying your edits make any difference?
How would that make any difference? That’s like taking an 8oz glass of water and pouring it into a 16oz glass and magically expecting a full glass. The data just isn’t there to begin with, it will still always be 8bit data
@johnbunani1341 I agree. But I'm interested to know if it makes a difference to the quality of the final image if the same edits are applied to a lossless TIFF version or a lossy JPEG version. On paper, it sounds like it should, but what's the real world like?
Quick question from pretty much a Lightroom newbie…. I shoot RAW and edit using Lightroom on my iPad…. When I export the photo it always saves as a jpeg…. Is this normal?….
You can change it to export as any file type you like 🙂 It will never export as a RAW of course: TIFF is the next closest thing (arguably).
Instead of pressing ‘Save copy to device’ press ‘Export as’ and the settings are in there 🙂
You don't even "want" to export it as RAW, RAW isn't even a format it's just the RAW data from your camera (although cameras do process it slightly anyway).
After you edit it it's saved as the format you choose: tiff, jpeg or whatever you want.
By the way for properly exposed images in normal conditions jpegs or better still heif format will deliver great results. I normally shoot in RAW because I do bird photography which is often shot in pretty extreme conditions of low light and often need wider dynamic range particularly for back lit subjects and the more flexible files are helpful
With the current computer capabilities even at the basic level, the much lower cost of storage and availability of free softwares for editing, is there any reason to shoot jpgs even at the amateur aficionado level? The black and white looks gorgeous. Black and white forever.
Data and information are 2 different things, but usually correlated. You could have something that has more information but uses less data and vice versa. For ex, if I create an 2 color image of a circle 500x500px bmp file, it's using a lot of data, and it's an approximation of a circle (it's not perfect), or I give you an 1000x1000px png file which uses less data but has more information. In fact, I could even give you an SVG file with the tag, radius + position of the center, that uses even less data and has even more information.
Why are we still talking about this is 2024? Shooting JPEG vs. RAW was thing when a 258MB memory card was the biggest you could buy and cost $200 but the last 32GB card I bought cost $10 and even my phone can deal with RAW files.
JPEGS are still the files the camera uses for it’s thumbnails and creating the histogram used to judge exposure so their DR difference vs RAW need to be taken into account when setting exposure but if the brightest non-specular “Zone 9” highlights are kept 1/3 stop below clipping in the playback then you will not blow the highlights in the JPEG and have even more ‘headroom’ for fine turning the important Zone9/Zone 10 visual separation which is the only clue to 3D shape in 2D photos on flat white objects which don’t cast any shadow clues to 3D shape. Put the Zone 10 catchlights at 10 or 2 for the best illusion of 3D.
Unless needing to shoot at high FPS rates there’s not much addition overhead shooting in RAW + JPEG mode. If exposed as suggest above, with Zone 9 whites exposed 1/3 below clipping then in most cases the highlight of the JPEGs will be exposed as well as the JPEGS.
Where RAW is vastly superior during editing is the ability to alter WB and Tint and pull up mid-tone and shadow detail with greater control and finesse because RAW files are stored based on their CIE*Lab green-magenta (TINT) / blue-yellow (WB) / Luminance colorspace coordinates not RGB. Making a WB or TINT adjustment in a JPG requires altering two channels but only one in RAW. In RAW the a and b channels carrying all the color data are separate from the L channel which contains all the image detail which allows changing contrast in the RAW without affecting color rendering as in a RAW file.
That was a BIG DEAL back when cameras had color bit depth of 8-bits / 256 tones per channel because shifting contrast or color when editing JPGs would cause ‘stair-step’ banding in subtle gradients like blue skies. But that problem was pretty much eliminated around 2008 when sensors became 10-bit with thousands of tones per channel and now sensor are 14-bit with more tones that the human eye can perceive differences in, both in the RAW and JPEGs.
Craftsmanship is all about understanding how to use the tools and JPEG and RAW are both useful so it behooves a photographer who considers craftsmanship as important as artistic expression to understand the pros and cons of both and when each is most appropriate. JPEGs only suck if one does not understand that. The problem isn’t the software, it’s a ‘meatware’ problem 😂
Couldn't agree more, I used to do RAW+JPEG as I do shoots that need turned round quick, but I upload everything when at the desk. So I import the RAWs into Lr Classic, build previews and 'auto' correct every photo and let the Mac chew on that when driving home. Back at the desk, I can cull the images down and it's usually a few seconds per photo if they even need much more adjusting. Other times, running a mask on the subject for example can make a massive difference and means the whole scene didn't have to be over/underexposed to compensate. Doesn't really add much time at all.
I dont understand why we still have no HDR capable “universal” photo compression format, and why we cant export as heif from lightroom mobile (which heif has extended dynamic range capability). Licensing is a bitch.
The fact that no social platform will support raw format because of file size is clear, but the major social platform has supported HEIF uploads for a long time now and uploads from iOS (HEIF) has been an upgrade over jpeg uploads. I took tons of photo from my camera, transfer to my phone, edit it, export to jpeg (because there’s no HEIF export) and then when I compare it to my phone’s photo, it got shoved under the rug. Like what the hell 🙄
Finally, something I wholeheartedly agree with. Shame phones can't always do RAW (Camera2 API, level_3), but then we only get "maybe" 2 stops of DR before noise gets nasty with a phone I borrowed for the purpose. Still, that is worlds better than whatever JPG it could ever dream out. I would certainly take advantage of RAW if I get to have a real camera, much more it would probably be a really old one...
I myself had the conclusion 24 MPix is good enough for me and lets my lenses shine from corner to corner. Storage is dirt cheap today. RAW is a no brainer. As physicist I always liked to log all the data in their original quality: Experiments and time are much more compared to the efforts to store them. Analysis can be done later for the data/photo which is very important. In my case: Maybe 5-10 photos per year ;-)
The amount of image data that's literally being discarded during JPG compression is baaaaananas. So ya JPG's are nice when spousey wants kiddo's birthday party photos delivered PRONTO / same day for social apps. They keep the peace 😆 But everything I shoot is at minimum RAW + JPG and most of the time those JPG's never leave my secondary card. Best of both worlds and you have files for every situation. Hey you NEVER know exactly when you're going to grab a killer portfolio shot, or an image that really means something to someone. Or even if you F up your exposure like in this example (it happens to the best of us). So yes you want those images in the absolute highest possible quality.
If you know what you're doing, you can turn around a RAW fairly quickly. I've done it before.
@@DonaldWMeyers-dwm Not quick enough for my spouse trust me 😆 Referring to SOOC JPG's for casual events etc. But yes RAW is really no different for me on the editing side, agreed.
In terms of the photo’s composition, should the animals be moved slightly higher to the 1/3 mark? It seems to work showing the “vastness” but I wonder if it could be framed slightly better?
can we have a video hearing your thoughts on grain? I personally love the look of grain in my images, not always but sometimes it just fits the vibe of the photo, BUT I have gotten into arguments occasionally with other photographers insisting that I should NEVER use grain, and images should be clean, and so on and so forth, hence I would love to get an input from my afro shooter mr fro knows photo :D
He's expressed that noise is part of digital photography, and some noise is not a deal breaker, and looks better than trying to overcompensate with noise reduction. I agree heavily.
@@krisc1684 oh, I didn't know, my bad! Also thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it!
@@s7evenTV oh no worries at all dude I was just letting you know! He's never done a full vid on it, and he could definitely flesh some points out in a 10 min video
@@krisc1684 If you have noise in your image, more often than not, your image is either underexposed or very slightly underexposed. Underexposure will destroy the tonality of an image. For example skin tones get destroyed by underexposure.
@@timothymatthews6458 or because the amount of light vs the motion you wanted to capture required a high ISO. I think this is the far more common situation
I am a RAW shooter and I agree with you, but with the new mirrorless taking so many more shots even dumbed down opening so many RAW images on my IMAC is becoming slow 😢
Are there any free programs that can edit raw files decently or are you stuck paying for photoshop?
For the end of the video I prefer the color. Also i shoot RAW and JPEG so if I have an instance where I need to upload fast I can and then later at home edit the raw and upload my style of the image. I've also ran into a time when I was on vacation and someone wanted a photo taken of them and I couldn't edit it so I needed to quickly take the image, transfer it to my phone (via canon app) and airdrop it to their device. If i only shot raw I'd of needed to edit the file which I didn't have the time to do. There's a place for using both but raw is superior
Been doing photography for 16 years now. I have been shooting raw since day one. It still baffles me so called "professional" photographers just shoot jpeg.
I swear every raw picture with the auto edit lightroom button looks better than any SOOC jpeg.
The color version sets the mood. Helps tell the story.
So betweeen the two, every time I try to work with a RAW file, I end up with a massive magenta grain on the file that I either can't remove, or to remove the magenta grain, it ruins the photos itself...
I am shooting in JPEG+RAW generally(or have started to recently), so I've currently stuck with JPEG
The issue may be the camera I have itself, a ZV-E10 I.... I've been running up against its limitations constantly and having to get around them in various ways by improving technique, getting creative with comp, and more glass, but eh.
RAW files *probably* are better in aggregate, but at the moment I really can't use them so, it's still JPEG for me for the time being.
The color is more impactful to me. Thanks for sharing.
I just wish my Nikon would shoot RAW when in video mode. Flippin’ heck.
I only have an R50 but it only took me a week to enable RAW + jpeg and another to switch to RAW only. As you said. The picture does not get better when you edit jpeg. Every time lossy compression is saved, information is lost.
There's a couple of photography groups I belong to on Facebook. Half the people post unedited jpegs and call them RAW and get upset when I question if they know what raw is, while the other half claim to be experts who only shoot in jpeg and say raw is for beginners who can't take a proper picture.
If you know what you are doing and have a good gear, raws are useless. I have Canon m6ii, shoot jpegs only and get great results. Raws were useful in the beginning of digital photography era.
Awesome video. Huge fan. RAW is the way 💪💪. I really like the B/W version.
the black and white looks much better imho. The color edit looks very wrong to me as the edges of the sky are all greyed out unlike the center of the sky. If it was more uniform and lacked the grey vignette around the perimeter, it would have come out far better. I shoot RAW.
Even if you currently don't edit your photos shoot them in RAW anyway. And let me tell you why. When I got serious photographing birds I initially let the camera save the image both as a RAW file and as a JPEG. This because I didn't know how to edit so I wanted at least a decent JPEG from the camera. But then the job of deleting bad images became a big hassle because I always had to delete two files instead of one. So I disabled the saving of RAW files.
That turned out to be a big mistake. Because at some point I bought a software (DxO Photolab) that could convert a RAW file into a better JPEG image than the camera itself was capable of, even without editing. And all the good photos that I shot in the meantime but for which I don't have the RAW files can't be shown at their full potential.
Now I only shoot at RAW. If I have a good photo I'll edit it to my needs and convert it to JPEG. But only those.
i shoot raw as i am lazy ....you are not going to have the same picture style for a landscape and a dreamy portrait and i can't be bothered to keep changing them i also don't have to keep my eye on white balance ..also i believe most raw editors can be set to read the camera jpeg settings and use them as a starting point so if you just import the raw and export it you get what the camera would have done anyway ..but yes i never understand if folk do any type of editing why they don't shoot raw as it takes no longer
The black-and-white is dope!!!!
Yay! Not clickbait! Informative! opinions! Facts! FRO ENERGY!
The way I describe it to people is this: all digital images start out as RAW and have to be processed. The difference is, are you going to do the processing or some nameless engineer who loaded your camera with presets going to do the processing?
Also, the in camera processing is stuck in time. While PS (and other software) are constantly upgrading their processing engine for better quality. You can go back to a 20 year old RAW and reprocess it. Can't clean up a JPEG.
Depending on what you are after or the "look" (for example, the elusive "Leica Look") you are after, a JPEG straight out of camera may be better than you doing your own processing. I have tested this and spent many hours trying to process my RAW files to match what my Leica Q3/M11-P spits out as JPG and I could never get it exactly right. I come close, but there is always something off. Some people buy/shoot cameras because they appreciate the way images are produced specifically by the cameras they chose. It's the same reasons why some people are now buying digital cameras that are 10+ years old... because of those old sensors/colors/looks.
It's wild to me that people still use primitive JPEGs for serious work. Usually for a mere color profile that can be added in post with a preset. Fuji even uses it like a cult to sell us new cameras just for that one one new preset.
I've been a sports photographer for many years and I always shoot jpeg. There is no way that I have the time going through 2000-5000 images and editing over 100. Raw is great if you're only shooting a lot less images.
Thanks for the valuable lesson. I will remember this when I buy my canon.
I think the initial unedited photo looks better, maybe bring down the exposure 1/2stop and its perfect. The edited version looks Fake and unrealistic to me, However I wasn't there so don't know how the scene looked in real-life
It's a minimalist image, subjects placed in the middle of the frame can work occasionally but most of the time looks boring. You'll create more of a story by putting most of the dead space in the subjects direction of travel or eyesight. Middle of the frame works better of they're heading towards you
When in doubt get skittles out, sensor needs cleaning as well big dots in the image..
Can't believe he managed to get this shot of the whale in the clouds. Such a rare sight out there on Safari.
The only time I shoot JPEG is when clients want JPEGS only or when I have to quickly upload the photos or when I dont want to edit them. I mean, I will shoot both in RAW & JPEG thanks to Dual recording now. Otherwise, I do prefer to shoot in UNCOMPRESSED RAW for big projects.
For everyday photography in good light and properly exposed images jpegs (or better still heif/heic) will deliver great results however under extreme conditions of low light and/or wide dynamic range the greater flexibility of the camera's RAW data can be helpful in achieving a better result.
RAW isn't actually a format it's just what your camera manufacturer records in a fairly lightly processed file: the "RAW" data from your sensor with nearly all the available original data (although a lot of data is often binned anyway)
RAW or JPG. Not about better or worse. Simply a matter of context.
I forgot to switch from jpeg to raw last shoot😭. I thought I did too.
Why was it ever in JPEG?
BRB adding this to my contract in hyperlink to where I explain why I don’t deliver unedited images
With you all the way with shooting RAW, it just cannot be matched. BUT, please do not hate me for this. When Canon bought out that stupid IBIS function the first thing I did was try it. WTF, it is useless. waste of time, total trash. However when someone dangles a carrot in front of me, I cannot help myself, I was not happy, their had to be more to it and.. THERE IS! OK I do not want to take up too much time nor space but the rules are: A rock solid tripod, a static scene with landscape being the best, a remote wired or wireless trigger or use the delayed timer function (EOS-R5). That is it. OK, set the cam to shoot in high resolution (IBIS) mode. Take the shot, let the camera do its magicary and then load the shot into Camera Raw. OK, its a big jpg file.. eerrggghhh not good, BUT, do what you need to do to edit the shot, even being a jpg it is still editable with the amount of data present. My process from here will differ a lot to many others so please do what you have to do to get a similar result. My next process it to load the image into Photoshop, RESIZE it to a smaller file, otherwise you may well crash the computer working a file at over 1gb in size. Once resized and you are happy with what you see, I know, it is a jpg but now the magic happens. Save the file or you can just put the file through Topaz De-Noise... ARRRGGGHHH bloody Topaz but please read me out. I do not know how it does it but, use the standard denoise mode, let it render. I will await you "holy s**t" moment. I hated IBIS even more so that all it left was a stupid massive jpg file, but now, I use the IBIS all the time on static shots and even compared with focus stacked images it stands out way beyond with the quality, clarity and balance of shot. It is pretty amazing. Sorry that was so long. PS: I still do and will never not shoot the mighty RAW. 🙂
Have you tried HIF (HEIF) files. I occasionally use the on my Sonys and compared to jpegs they have a lot more latitude in PP. For noncritical work where you are talking a lot of images and don't need to do a lot of post processing they can be useful and surprisingly good
If you want Jpeg... Why not just Shoot Raw, and export the keepers to Jpeg in-camera? Or shoot Raw+Jpeg?
Time is precious, Storage is expensive, but Opportunities lost is the most costly.
This is a terrible example of JPG vs RAW because 99% of people will prefer the JPG here.
Jared messed up by keeping the RAW image under-exposed.
Also HEIF is about to replace JPG and the image quality is a lot better.
Agree, almost. I've been shooting RAW+JPEG for many years and basically only used the JPEGs. But kept the RAWs, just in case. Like with negatives in the film era. Lately, as I'm publishing more photos on the Internet and look at them beforehand, I changed to RAW only and export the JPEGs with a post processing software. The manufacturer of my camera, Nikon, makes this easy with NX Studio and lately with more emphasis on picture controls. I would not want to make a subscription somewhere else for this purpose though.
I only use canon dpp4 to edit and it is extremely limited in how much you can edit a jpeg, i decided to shoot jpeg one day to get the images up on the cricket clubs socials asap and well that was a failure(not really but to my eye it wasn't right)
Yes, even for the casual shooting that I do the RAW workflow is just better and doesn't take any more time. Plus the added bonus of modern noise reduction just makes a real difference. I admit it too: "I shoot RAW" ;-)
RAW+JPG here, sometimes the SOOC jpg is good and I dont need to spend time editing it... also an easy call with the R5ii since large V90 SD cards are $$$ I shoot raw to the CFE slot (where larger cards are reasonable-ish price-wise) and the smaller jpg files go to the SD slot. Having the jpgs also makes the culling process easier since DPP loads them a lot faster than the full sized raws... so I cull based on the jpgs, then edit the raws.