[WMBP]

Digital imaging is about information - RAW provides the maximum information from the camera. Since you do not modify the RAW file during PP, you can create multiple images from the same "negative".

Right about raw files containing more info.

However, one small detail: The ability to do non-destructive editing and even to create numerous versions of the same image are not advantages of raw. You can do the same things with JPEG. Google's Picasa, which has been available for a couple of years now, I think, has always been a non-destructive editor and it's aimed mainly at jpeg users. And you can certainly duplicate a jpeg file and without data loss. (Data loss comes with the jpeg when you have the file open and use the save as command -- not when you duplicate the file in your computer's desktop.)

Will

[rvannatta]

Digital imaging is about information - RAW provides the maximum information from the camera. Since you do not modify the RAW file during PP, you can create multiple images from the same "negative".

Each PP'ed image can be of varying quality - depending on the criteria the artist has selected. My way of dealing with this addiction of ours - is shoot RAW. Get the most information to work with you can.

PDL

I think the choice is driven by the amount of computer horsepower you have.
after using my istD in JPG for some years (since I bought it), I have recently switched its default to RAW and am quite happy. I've had the K10 around
for a month or two now, but my computer isn't up to handling the Raws from it.

The downside of Raw on the istD is a much longer upload time. Presently on the K10 the downside is I can't (on the computer I want to use) Part of the reason for offering the JPG conversion in the camera is to get the file sizes down to managable sizes. For me that is controlling at the moment.

[SloPhoto]

I have never been terribly impressed by the jpgs out of the k10d.

Most of the issues people have with it involve lack of sharpening. That is not a deal killer to me.

For me, the pentax is a great camera with a few glaring faults. Inconsistent flash exposure and white balance are two of the bigger ones.

White ballance is HUGE to me, and is 99% correctable when using raw. Jpgs make it nearly impossible.

Raw is power, and if you are comfortable in your tool (I use lightroom), it is not much harder than jpg. If you do not like your raw converter, then it can be a royal pain.

[Mechan1k]

After PPing my first set of RAW images ... I am impressed at the amount of flexibility there is when it comes to fixing up photos. And as mentioned ... about the same time needed to PP a JPG image really.

I just took a series of images from the middle of the day outside ... at my Bother-in-law's graduation into the Police force ... I wanted to make sure I got these images ... even though the sun was right above the shadows were shocking .... shooting in RAW on the day allowed me to salvage just about all of my images I took on the day .. and they really made some of my pics come out a lot better than I expected.

I think it's time for more memory cards ... as it looks like I'll be using RAW a little more often (especially with a friend's up-coming wedding and evening reception).

I think I'll just use jpg for quick shots ... and for when lighting is spot on. And RAW for the harder shots I want to make sure i keep.

[attack11]

Right about raw files containing more info.

However, one small detail: The ability to do non-destructive editing and even to create numerous versions of the same image are not advantages of raw. You can do the same things with JPEG. Google's Picasa, which has been available for a couple of years now, I think, has always been a non-destructive editor and it's aimed mainly at jpeg users. And you can certainly duplicate a jpeg file and without data loss. (Data loss comes with the jpeg when you have the file open and use the save as command -- not when you duplicate the file in your computer's desktop.)

Will

that's not non-destructive editing, that's simply making a copy. if you needed 5 different edits you'd need 5 jpegs and only 1 raw.

shoot raw. you'll get full resolution from the camera plus the niceties others have mentioned.

an example of the pros of raw; if you're shooting low light but need a fast shutter and don't have a tripod set the camera to under expose by a stop and then push the raw one stop when pp. can't do that with a jpg.

[PDL]

Right about raw files containing more info.

However, one small detail: The ability to do non-destructive editing and even to create numerous versions of the same image are not advantages of raw. You can do the same things with JPEG. Google's Picasa, which has been available for a couple of years now, I think, has always been a non-destructive editor and it's aimed mainly at jpeg users. And you can certainly duplicate a jpeg file and without data loss. (Data loss comes with the jpeg when you have the file open and use the save as command -- not when you duplicate the file in your computer's desktop.)

Will

Yes you can make copies of the original JPEG and work from those copies. However, the "new" non distructive methods of JPEG editing are not defaults on most editing programs. If you open a JPEG in your favorite editor and save it back to the same file name - or the program does it for you 'save every 10 minute feature' you lose the information. To show this in Windows - just open a JPEG and rotate it, save it and rotate it back. Do that a few times and the JPEG becomes pixel mush. With RAW - that does not happen, since the editing program does not save in RAW - it saves in some other format, DNG, TIFF, PNG, Targa, JPEG or whatever. The output from the editor is by default a second generation image.

Lightroom, and I assume CS3 maybe CS2, will work with a RAW file and not save anything back as an image. Lightroom saves a sidecar file that details the changes made - not the image. You have to explicitly export the image in order to have a "fixed/modified/PP'ed" image, otherwise it is just magic.

As for Picassa - I do not use them (the google end user license agreement is just plain bad - anything you store on their servers, is available for google to use for any purpose google deems reasonable without you being able to say no). Other on-line so called on-line editing services - just bother me. I am a system admin - I can get to any file on the file system that holds our back-end corporate data. I do not trust admins (including myself to some extent) further than I can spit. And I drool a lot - if you get my meaning.

However, the trend in editors is to do non distructive editing - where the original is not modified. That is a good thing, something that should have been done from the outset.

If it comes out of the camera - treat it as if it were a negative. The file format is just that - a file format - the original should be treated as a negative. RAW is a negative - regardless of the brand of camera.

PDL

[egordon99]

Picassa, the editing/file management program, is NOT a web application. It is a standalone application which runs on your PC, nothing is EVER stored anywhere but your local hard drive.

If you chose to use Google's webspace (PicassaWeb?) to display/share your pictures, then you are moving the stuff to Google-ville

Just wanted to clarify, as folks were talking about editing software, and Google provides a nice lightweight photo management application which does some basic non-destructive "editing" on JPGs and some RAW files (I believe the latest version supports K10D's PEF files)

I used to use Picassa, but recently moved up to PSE5. I shoot RAW exclusively now.

As for Picassa - I do not use them (the google end user license agreement is just plain bad - anything you store on their servers, is available for google to use for any purpose google deems reasonable without you being able to say no). Other on-line so called on-line editing services - just bother me. I am a system admin - I can get to any file on the file system that holds our back-end corporate data. I do not trust admins (including myself to some extent) further than I can spit. And I drool a lot - if you get my meaning.

PDL

[WMBP]

Yes you can make copies of the original JPEG and work from those copies. However, the "new" non distructive methods of JPEG editing are not defaults on most editing programs. ...

Non-destructive editing isn't all THAT new. I don't know when the idea first appeared -- probably a long time ago -- but it's available in Aperture and Lightroom for the last couple of years, for sure. I know that Lightroom was only officially released in early 2007, but release came after a public beta period that lasted well over a year, and LR was always non-destructive. Ditto Aperture. It certainly used to be the case in Lightcrafts' Lightzone, although I'm not sure about version 3. I won't speak for CaptureOne, Bibble, SilkyPix, but I would be surprised if they weren't non-destructive, too.

Non-destructive editing has also always been the case in Picasa, which has been out for the last couple of years, too. And non-destructive editing is indeed the default, although to be technical, it's not a question of "defaults". Picasa and Lightroom only work one way -- non-destructively -- so I wouldn't say that's the default, because you can't change it. It's not a default, it's the essence of the program's approach. And Picasa has always been aimed more at consumers editing JPEGs than at raw users.

What Picasa does is exactly like what Lightroom does: For every edit you make to a photo, Picasa stores the instruction for that edit. When you come back to a picture that you have edited, Picasa very quickly reapplies all those edits to the picture based on the saved instructions. Now, Picasa does allow you to save your edits, but even that isn't too destructive, because when you save your edits, Picasa creates an invisible backup of the original file, and that original remains untouched. And Picasa does not require that you save your edits. I generally don't bother, because I don't want to create extra copies of the files on my hard drive.

Finally, at some point, whether in Picasa or Lightroom, you may wish to export a copy. The exported copy of course is a copy, and it includes the edits you've made.

NOTE: Picasa is a desktop application akin to iPhoto. Picasa Web Albums is Google's online photo sharing service, akin, say, to Mac.com. They are totally different things. By the way, Picasa is not available for the Mac OS. But Mac OS users can share their photos online using Picasa Web Albums.

So my point remains: non-destructive editing is not an advantage of raw. In fact, one of the disadvantages of raw originally -- about two years ago -- was that you couldn't really do anything with raw images at all until you converted them to jpeg or tiff. That was back when the phrase "raw converter" entered our vocabulary. But nowadays, there's no raw conversion going on unless you want to export to a non-raw format. I take hundreds of photos a week. I'd say far fewer than 50% of them EVER get saved as jpegs. I view them, evaluate them, edit them, tag them, all in Lightroom, without ever turning them into jpegs. Lightroom does create jpeg preview files, but those are distinct from the actual files themselves and the preview files are made mainly because it makes Lightroom work more efficiently.

It's a minor detail. There are tons of other good reasons to use raw.

Will

[PDL]

Non-destructive editing isn't all THAT new.
<snip>
NOTE: Picasa is a desktop application akin to iPhoto. Picasa Web Albums is Google's online photo sharing service, akin, say, to Mac.com. They are totally different things. By the way, Picasa is not available for the Mac OS. But Mac OS users can share their photos online using Picasa Web Albums.

So my point remains: non-destructive editing is not an advantage of raw. In fact, one of the disadvantages of raw originally -- about two years ago -- was that you couldn't really do anything with raw images at all until you converted them to jpeg or tiff. That was back when the phrase "raw converter" entered our vocabulary. But nowadays, there's no raw conversion going on unless you want to export to a non-raw format.
<snip>
It's a minor detail. There are tons of other good reasons to use raw.

Will

I beg to disagree - All RAW processors are non-distructive, it has been that way since RAW has been available - regardless of manufacture. However, if you edit a JPEG and hit the save button on most software, the original JPEG is overwritten. Now the application or OS may ask if this is OK, but it still does it. Since I have been using RAW (late 2005 - *ist Ds - more in another thread) no "RAW converter", Adobe product or anything else I know of has overwritten a RAW file when the user hits - the save button - even PPL does not save as PEF.

As for the Desktop version of Picassa - I do not use it - so my bad, but I bet google has its fingers in there somewhere getting data out of the application. With some of the rumors and other issues I have run into relating to google's gathering of information about its users ---- do no evil ---- ha - I have some swampland in Florida I could sell you too - if you get my drift.

I disagree that non-distructive editing is not an advantage of RAW. That is one of the reasons that I use RAW, among many. I know that when I get through with all the "tweaks" and it really looks like cr*p, I can go back to the unaltered RAW (unchanged by design and intent) and start over. Then again a polished t*rd is still a t*rd, whether it is RAW or a copy of a JPEG.

PDL

[SloPhoto]

I beg to disagree - All RAW processors are non-distructive, it has been that way since RAW has been available - regardless of manufacture. However, if you edit a JPEG and hit the save button on most software, the original JPEG is overwritten. Now the application or OS may ask if this is OK, but it still does it. Since I have been using RAW (late 2005 - *ist Ds - more in another thread) no "RAW converter", Adobe product or anything else I know of has overwritten a RAW file when the user hits - the save button - even PPL does not save as PEF.

As for the Desktop version of Picassa - I do not use it - so my bad, but I bet google has its fingers in there somewhere getting data out of the application. With some of the rumors and other issues I have run into relating to google's gathering of information about its users ---- do no evil ---- ha - I have some swampland in Florida I could sell you too - if you get my drift.

I disagree that non-distructive editing is not an advantage of RAW. That is one of the reasons that I use RAW, among many. I know that when I get through with all the "tweaks" and it really looks like cr*p, I can go back to the unaltered RAW (unchanged by design and intent) and start over. Then again a polished t*rd is still a t*rd, whether it is RAW or a copy of a JPEG.

PDL

Non destructive editing is HUGE. I just recently looked back on my first batch of raws, several years old.

Lets just say I can edit photos much better now (with experience), and have really improved on my old photos.

[patrickt]

My first foray into raw shooting was with my Olympus C5050Z. I'd read about raw and decided to give it a try. I took a series of pictures with both raw and JPEG. I processed the raw files and looked at the results. There simply wasn't much difference between the JPEGs and the raw files.

A few years later I bought a DSLR. I shot JPEG and after a year or so decided to try some of the new raw converters. This time I saw a big difference.

The difference was that with the C5050Z I restricted my shooting to fairly good lighting. A scene well lit by sunlight will come out fine whatever you use. But, with the DSLR I was taking more shots inside old churches, museums, on the street in the evening, and so forth. Shooting raw gave me more flexibility.

If you're getting the results you want, however, it really doesn't make any difference what camera you're using, what type of files you use, or if you wear boxers or briefs.

Two days ago I hung four 11x14 prints. I was just looking at them and one is a silhouette of a fireworks tower with three workmen on it, one is people sitting in front of the cathedral at sunset, and the third was of a procession of transvestites also at sunset. One was in good sunlight.

[SpecialK]

OK, Will, you convinced me to try Picasa again. I had it once before on a computer with 2 hard drives, and that was an organizational nightmare because the directory tree structure of Picasa did not differentiate the drives...

[WMBP]

OK, Will, you convinced me to try Picasa again. I had it once before on a computer with 2 hard drives, and that was an organizational nightmare because the directory tree structure of Picasa did not differentiate the drives...

Like both Aperture v1 and Lightroom v1, Picasa v1 made some assumptions about where it would find your files that it was pretty inflexible about. But a number of significant improvements were made with version 2, which was released sometime earlier in this year, I believe.

Nowadays, Picasa is actually quite good about handling multiple drives -- better in fact that Lightroom v1.1. I keep most of my photos on two different external drives. But I don't always have these drives mounted (well, usually I don't have them mounted). I also put photos for temporary/quick editing inside the My Pictures folder on my C drive. Now, when I launch Lightroom, if the external drive for my raw files isn't mounted, Lightroom can't find its catalog, and it's not happy. But if I launch Picasa when one or both of the external drives is not mounted, well, it just doesn't show me those photos.

The key here is that Picasa's basic directory is very simple: just a list of folders that you've told it to be aware of, on any drive. But the actual DATA about images is stored not in some big catalog, but distributed here and there inside the individual folders that retain the photos. This means that you can use the Windows desktop to move entire folders around without upsetting Picasa's apple cart (or I'm pretty sure you can -- I believe I've done it). On the other hand, it also means that you should NOT use the Windows desktop to move individual photos around. Once Picasa has indexed a folder, you should let Picasa manage that folder's contents from that point on.

Please note: I'm not selling or recommending Picasa here! I myself spend 90% of my time in Lightroom. Picasa is not a professional tool. Most of its editing features are one-button, quick-fix take-or-leave options. Sharpening in particular is nearly useless. Nevertheless, it's still a useful adjunct to Lightroom. I use it mainly to review jpegs after I've finished processing raw files and exporting to jpeg from Lightroom. This allows me to use Lightroom exclusively for original files (which are 98% raw). When Picasa doesn't suggest any further changes to the file, I feel like I did a good job. Occasionally, Picasa's contrast or color adjustments can fix an image that I've already labored over in Lightroom.

Picasa is especially useful if you use it in conjunction with a Picasa Web Albums account online. But even if you don't, it's a pretty decent photo management app, and the most reasonably priced app on the market. (It's free.)

And if you shoot jpeg and you don't NEED Lightroom or Aperture or Capture One or whatever, well, as I said earlier, Picasa has always been a non-destructive jpeg editor.

Will

[Tom Lusk]

I've never shot in RAW, just JPEG (K100D).

After I upload to my PC, I make copies of the photo files I will be editing in CS2, and don't touch the original files.

I presume that I'm not losing any data this way?

If the original photo is properly exposed, is there anything to be gained by shooting RAW, or is RAW used solely to enable corrections to exposure errors in the original photos?

Tom (technically challenged) Lusk

[WMBP]

I've never shot in RAW, just JPEG (K100D).

After I upload to my PC, I make copies of the photo files I will be editing in CS2, and don't touch the original files.

I presume that I'm not losing any data this way?

Tom,

Jpeg is a file-format that involves "lossy" compression. "Lossy" means that, when you use the SAVE AS command to create a saved copy of your jpeg file, the data is compressed --- and some data is inevitably lost. Upshot is that, if you take the same jpeg file, save a copy, open the copy, save another copy, open copy 2 and save copy 3, etc., fairly soon, you'll start to notice some degradation of the image itself.

However, NO data loss occurs when you simply duplicate the file using the Mac OS Finder or the Windows desktop. So, you don't lose any data when you back up your jpegs.

And if you use a non-destructive editor like Google's Picasa, you don't have to worry about saving copies. When you edit an image in Picasa, it doesn't apply the edits to the image at all. It saves them in a special edits file, applies them to what you see on screen every time you view the image, but it doesn't actually resave the file until you are ready to export. And then it exports from the original, so you're never making a copy of a copy -- you're always making a copy of the original.

(Well, technically, Picasa DOES let you save your changes to the file if you like. But even if you do that, it makes a backup copy of the original file.)

If the original photo is properly exposed, is there anything to be gained by shooting RAW, or is RAW used solely to enable corrections to exposure errors in the original photos?

Raw has a number of advantages.

You should understand that you are always shooting raw, whether you want to or not. Raw is simply what your camera's sensor "sees." All camera sensors -- even those in the cheapest point and shoots -- start with raw data. If you select the "jpeg" option in your camera, what happens is that the camera converts the raw data to jpeg format for you, right in the camera. This involves throwing away a LOT of data. If you save the raw file, you're getting everything that the sensor saw originally. I have a background in languages and I like to think of raw as the original of a poem, and jpeg as a translation. The translation is always flatter, less nuanced than the original. If you don't like one translation, you can go back to the original and start again. On the other hand, if you only have the translation to work with, well, you're kind of stuck.

Now, back to those advantages of raw.

Yes, as you are aware, raw gives you more data to work with if you need to correct the exposure, colors and tones, white balance, etc. This is a non-trivial advantage. Mistakes in exposure occur, um, by mistake, in other words, if the shot is underexposed, well, you probably didn't MEAN to underexpose. And if you saved as jpeg right in the camera, well, that's too bad. You bought the translation and you can't go back to the original for a reality check. Only by shooting and saving the raw data can you guarantee that you'll have a second chance if you want it.

I might add that not all exposure problems are mistakes. I shoot a lot of indoor school sports, in very bad lighting. I expose very carefully -- but the conditions suck to begin with, and good exposures are nearly impossible to obtain. Later, when I'm post-processing my raw files, I can increase the exposure, add a little "clarity" (a Lightroom slider), adjust the tone curve and even remove noise from a high ISO image with better results than I'd get if I were working with an image that was converted to jpeg in camera.

Even if you get the exposure technically right at the time of shooting, you may find that you want to do something interesting later on -- say, convert to grayscale, or apply an effect, or boost the yellow channel, or pull down the midtones, etc. More data means that you can make subtler adjustments.

Another advantage is that it's pretty obviously better to let your powerful computer do the translation from raw to jpeg than to let the camera's very limited firmware do it. The camera's firmware does a pretty good job most of the time, but it should be obvious that your camera can't really compete with a dual core processor with 4GB of memory and raw conversion software from Adobe. Not only that, but it's likely that conversion software will improve in the future. If you keep your raw originals, you'll be able to reconvert them in the future and perhaps end up with better jpegs.

And why would you NOT saw the raw files? There is only one reason: They're bigger than jpegs, by a fair bit. Size does matter. A PEF file if many times bigger than the highest quality jpeg your K100D generates. So if you have a 1 GB card and you want to be able to take a lot of photos, well, saving as jpeg in the camera makes sense, because you'll be able to take four or five times more photos on that one card. And because jpegs are smaller, they fill up your camera's buffer less quickly, too, so if you're shooting in continuous mode, you'll be able to get more shots off shooting jpeg than shooting raw.

But that's it. There is no other advantage to shooting jpeg any more. It USED to be the case that saving the raw files involved a special step where you had to convert on your computer before you could even look at the images. So you had to download the photos, then convert them, then edit converted jpegs. No longer. Now most decent editors -- not just pro-level stuff like Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, PhaseOne's Capture One, Adobe CS3, etc. but even consumer software like Picasa -- reads and displays most raw formats without your having to do a thing at all. So dealing with raw files is ultimately EASIER than dealing with jpeg originals, because it's in no way harder (there's no conscious conversion step) and because raw files are easier to achieve good results with.


It is a simple fact now that most pros shoot raw. Storage is relatively cheap.

But, let me be clear about this. There is nothing wrong with shooting jpeg and for many photographers, it's a perfectly sensible and reasonable choice. You take a risk of wrecking a shot and not being able to recover it, but that is not a crazy risk. I don't wear a crash helmet when I drive in my car -- I put on my seatbelt and my shoulder belt, and that's it. Risk is part of life. And in return for the risk, you can get a lot more images on a card, and a lot more images on your hard disk. I think that's reasonable.

So it's your choice.

Will