Originally posted by madison_wi_gal In my
previous thread, I was trying to get an "Explain Like I'm Five" recipe for what SOOC JPG settings would work for my K-3 III, and in the 5 ( so far) pages of dialogue, I learned a lot, but the best thing I learned (I think) is that a RAW image (at least a fairly decently exposed one) can be manipulated in PDCU and the result is ~ the same as if you processed in the camera.
I think.
Since unlike a lot of the responders, I'm not shooting professionally, so I do have the time to shoot in RAW (or RAW+ JPG) and then PDCU the RAW results, and I plan to do that with both cards in.
I still need to learn the K-3 III controls and the features, since even a flagship can't save me if I don't take a little interest in my surroundings and use appropriate settings, but it is fortunate that I can use 2 cards to shoot RAW & JPG, try out some of the JPG settings examples
here and
here but have a RAW backup in case, so I am glad I asked the initial question.
This is so cool.
If you are happy with camera produced jpegs and aren't doing much, if any, post processing (and if you are using the Pentax supplied software, you aren't), then do what works for you.
RAW gives you more headroom for editing, but really, that's it's only advantage since practically all images to be displayed will end up as jpegs anyway.
A number of years ago I did a little test where I opened a RAW file, did some minimal manipulation to it, and saved it as a mid sized JPEG. I then opened that JPEG, did some minor manipulation to it and saved it as a mid sized JPEG. I repeated this half a dozen times and then sent all the files to the printer.
There really wasn't anything to say between the look of the original RAW file and the sixth JPEG file on paper, and I would hope that anyone doing that much opening and saving an image would be saving the file as a TIFF or PSD or some other non lossy format for their future editing.
I do think if one is going to shoot in camera jpegs, they should save as the largest file possible, but if the end use is crackbook being viewed on a phone screen, even that isn't really necessary.
If you are saving images as in camera jpegs, adjust the save settings to as close to what you like as you can and go have fun. This is photography, it's not a religion.