[Winder]

Almost no professional sports photographer that I know of uses RAW. The JPEG was invented for journalists. I know a guy who guides in Africa 6 months out of the year and works for Zoos here in the US the rest of the year. He shoots 100% JPEG and probably never below ISO 1600 with his 1DIV's. Personally, I don't think the quality of his larger prints are that good, but he sell a lot.

It really depends on what type of professional work you do and what your needs are.

[Brand X]

Why does the article (and the discussion here) ignore the primary reason that jpeg is not as good as RAW? To me, lossy compression limits the useful life of an image. Sure, a large portion of the photographs that any photographer shoots may get looked at once and then either never looked at again or even discarded.

But for the photos that are keepers, isn't having the RAW image file stored better than the jpeg?

The article only briefly addresses the lossy compression issue, and conveniently does not call it such.

With JPEG, isn’t a lot of information discarded permanently?

Yes, and so what. Once you have the JPEG what are you planning to do with the RAW data? If you’re doing this for a living, you will deliver the final image to your client and never again touch the RAW file. If you’re a hobbyist, OK, you may want to reprocess the file as an educational exercise or to try out new techniques. It’s like baking a cake – once you have the cake, what do you need the ingredients for? With digital you can make an infinite number of identical cakes.

Yes and so what?

What a flippant attitude toward the subject!

Um, and photography is not like baking a cake either. Even if it was, when one bakes a cake, the ingredients are converted from their individual components to the composite, finished product, i.e., the cake. So finishing the comparison with, "what do you need the ingredients for?" comes up short.

Without the "ingredients" you don't have the cake.

Without all the RAW data from the original image, you will never have that picture, the way it was at the very instant you snapped the shutter.

I can always pull another jpeg from a RAW file, but once a jpeg has been opened, closed, opened, closed, etc. the original photo is long gone.

Provided the RAW images are stored on a stable storage media, they can be opened and closed an infinite number of times with no loss of the original image information.

We always start with RAW and always end up with a JPEG, . . . .

No, not always. One can pull a tiff or png from a RAW file too, right?

[paulh]

My understanding of jpeg is that it can be opened and viewed an infinite amount of times without IQ loss. It's when the file is opened, edited, and saved that degradation occurs. Is this not correct?

[tuco]

My understanding of jpeg is that it can be opened and viewed an infinite amount of times without IQ loss. It's when the file is opened, edited, and saved that degradation occurs. Is this not correct?

JPEG's can be saved at 100% quality which I assume means no compression. If that is true, then it can be edited/saved/re-edited without degrading if subsequent saves are without compression. But I'm not 100% sure about that. Maybe someone else can elaborate more on that subject. But I don't know if an OOC JPEG is can be set to 100% quality.

[carrrlangas]

My understanding of jpeg is that it can be opened and viewed an infinite amount of times without IQ loss. It's when the file is opened, edited, and saved that degradation occurs. Is this not correct?

that is correct. Even making a copy of the jpeg file will ressult in no degradation (as with any digital file).

[VisualDarkness]

JPEG's can be saved at 100% quality which I assume means no compression. If that is true, then it can be edited/saved/re-edited without degrading if subsequent saves are without compression. But I'm not 100% sure about that. Maybe someone else can elaborate more on that subject. But I don't know if an OOC JPEG is can be set to 100% quality.

Jpeg is pretty much always destructive when saved after making changes. Unlike RAW files Jpeg doesn't save down each picture, it uses mathematical formulas (different curves etc) to check for the most "useless" data so it can bunch it up with nearly similar data. That is why jpeg often creates softness at very hard graphical edges.

[boriscleto]

JPEG's can be saved at 100% quality which I assume means no compression. If that is true, then it can be edited/saved/re-edited without degrading if subsequent saves are without compression. But I'm not 100% sure about that. Maybe someone else can elaborate more on that subject. But I don't know if an OOC JPEG is can be set to 100% quality.

Not true. There is also the fact that JPEG is 8-bit while a RAW is 12 or 14-bit. TIFF file are either 8 or 16-bit?

JPEG Myths and Facts - Page 1

A quality setting of 100 does not degrade an image at all.

False. Saving an image to JPEG format, always introduces some loss in quality, though the loss at a quality setting of 100 is barely detectable by the average naked eye. In addition, using a quality setting of 100 compared to a quality setting of 90-95 or so will result in a considerably higher file size relative to the degree of image loss. If your software doesn't provide a JPEG preview, try saving several copies of an image at 90, 95, and 100 quality and compare file size with image quality. Chances are, there will be no distinguishable difference between the 90 and 100 image, but the difference in size could be significant. Keep in mind, though, that subtle color shifting is one effect of JPEG compression--even at high quality settings--so JPEG should be avoided in situations where precise color matching is important.

[Ikarus]

Today's raw converter software has taken the role of the darkroom of the past. The only point in shooting JPEG is convenience, kinda like dropping your film rolls at Walgreen's for development and printing in the good old days, but if I wanted convenience above all, I would use a point-and-shoot camera.

[tuco]

Not true. There is also the fact that JPEG is 8-bit while a RAW is 12 or 14-bit. TIFF file are either 8 or 16-bit?

JPEG Myths and Facts - Page 1

I thought the question was does a JPEG degrade with edits not its comparison with other formats.

[Ikarus]

I thought the question was does a JPEG degrade with edits

The page linked does answer this question in detail (the short answer is 'yes').

not its comparison with other formats.

One might argue that the title of this thread suggests otherwise.

[boriscleto]

I thought the question was does a JPEG degrade with edits not its comparison with other formats.

A JPEG does degrade with edits. Every time you open, make a change and save it degrades.

JPEGs lose quality every time they are opened and/or saved.

False. Simply opening or displaying a JPEG image does not harm the image in any way. Saving a JPEG repeatedly during the same editing session (without ever closing the image) will not accumulate a loss in quality. Copying and renaming a JPEG will not introduce any loss, but some image editors do recompress JPEGs when the Save As command is used. To avoid more loss you should duplicate and rename JPEGs in a file manager rather than using "Save As JPEG" in an editing program.

JPEGs lose quality every time they are opened, edited and saved.

True. If a JPEG image is opened, edited, and saved again it results in additional image degradation. It is very important to minimize the number of editing sessions between the initial and final version of a JPEG image. If you must perform editing functions in several sessions or in several different programs, you should use an image format that is not lossy (TIFF, BMP, PNG) for the intermediate editing sessions before saving the final version. Repeated saving within the same editing session won't introduce additional damage. It is only when the image is closed, re-opened, edited and saved again.

[tuco]

A JPEG does degrade with edits. Every time you open, make a change and save it degrades.

So when you save at 100% quality it is still applying compression?

[boriscleto]

So when you save at 100% quality it is still applying compression?

Yes. Lossy compression is lossy compression. A setting of 100 only makes for a larger file size when compared to 90 or 95. Repeated opening, editing and saving will still degrade the quality further. Saving within the same editing session does not degrade the image further unless you use save as.

[John Poirier]

Yes. Lossy compression is lossy compression. A setting of 100 only makes for a larger file size when compared to 90 or 95. Repeated opening, editing and saving will still degrade the quality further. Saving within the same editing session does not degrade the image further unless you use save as.

Correct. If you intend to edit in-camera JPEGs, you need to bail out of JPEG to a lossless format such as TIFF (LZW compression if desired) or PSD when you first save the edited file. Otherwise you lose quality.

Most of my work is intended for large high-quality prints in small volumes. Every image gets careful individual editing. For that application, I regard shooting JPEG as a total waste of time.

In some cases JPEG may be appropriate for high-volume applications such as event photography. However, given the speed and large storage capacity of current computers, I view RAW as a better bet. Even batch processing RAW files in software such as Lighroom offers greater potential than JPEGs.

[wildman]

Care to expand on that?

So this is basically a Ken Rockwell "P means Professional" article?

All i was getting at was the logic of the article -

- "I like blond blue-eyed women so I married one and after 40 years of a happy marriage my preference for women has proven to be correct not only for myself but for everyone else."

It says nothing about the potentially huge gap between the needs of a commodity photographer (the so-called "professional") and the creative photographer (the so-called "artist"). The difference between the two in work flow, technique and, most importantly, ultimate purpose can be profound. He says nothing about this difference and it's implications for the suitability of one file format over the other depending upon where you are coming from.

The technical difference between RAW and jpg has been beaten to death ad nauseam and is well understood so I won't go there at this point.