[Ron Boggs]

I've had dozens of JPEG images published in lots of different publications--front covers, advertising brochures, state parks pamphlets, annual photo issue art stuff included. Publications want large file size, so simply change the edited JPEG into a TIFF in Lightroom and instantly the file size is many times bigger. As an old timer, I spent decades shooting transparency film that had to be perfect as shot in camera and I still do that in the digital era...even bracket white balance at times. Frankly, LIghtroom allows darn near the same amount of editing on JPEG's as RAW. I've never had the time nor inclination to spend on RAW editing...too busy shooting images for publication! So I guess if it's good enough for editors of glossy publications, it's good enough for me! Once had a tiny 2 megapixel point and shoot image sell to an ad agency that pumped it up to 2 feet by 2 feet on the corner of a banner that was distributed to dealers nationwide. Many photogs overthink the RAW/pixels/fringing/PP issues FAR MORE than the actual business interests that purchase and publish images. I suppose if you are planning to make billboard-sized images without using the trick software available to do this, then maybe you will want to be more precise than I typically am?
(The trick software used to be called Genuine Fractals and I've forgotten the new name for it)

[goatsNdonkey]

. . .Furthermore, the K3 ergonimics make it quite easy to mess up the JPEG settings when trying to move the selected AF point. It can happen I end up with some weird settings due to that. In raw I don't care as it is not even taken into account.

But that just me. People will do JPEG only or mix for their own reasons. For me RAW only is just much simpler. I don't have to think about it and I am done.

This is very interesting. Of course, if working with the Raw files has become second nature to you, the shift to getting the right settings for in-camera jpgs could be unsettling and a big hassle, especially in the case you describe where changing a seemingly unrelated setting, like the AF point, would change the internal processing settings yielding something unwanted and unexpected.

The flipside of that example might be the case of the earlier poster who mentioned going back to shooting jpegs, after loosing a sense of what a picture should look like from going down too many wrong turns in the maze of post-processing. A similar muddle, but for opposite reasons... Admittedly that person had not yet reached a point where successful post processing was second nature and the most efficient way to go.

[StephenHampshire]

It is a worflow thing. Depending of your workflow, you may prefer working with one or the other or a mix.

For me and I speak for my workflow, not saying it is universal I work frow RAWs only.

Here is my workflow:
For all I said, basically the picture being taken as RAW or Jpeg is irrelevant to the process. All pictures get the same workflow anyway. But I know that I have more information to work with RAW. I can usually get bette high iso, tweak the white balence or overall rendering more. I can get back the burned highlights or push the shadows.

If I just want the jpeg without thinking I can directly export all of them without doing anything or applying one the profile I created in the past.

To me it is more work, more complication to think RAW or JPEG this time or even to compare RAWs and JPEGs to see if one is better. I just take one format, always raw and I am done with it.

Furthermore, the K3 ergonimics make it quite easy to mess up the JPEG settings when trying to move the selected AF point. It can happen I end up with some weird settings due to that. In raw I don't care as it is not even taken into account.

But that just me. People will do JPEG only or mix for their own reasons. For me RAW only is just much simpler. I don't have to think about it and I am done.

...it's not just me then....far to easy to adjust WB wen trying to move focus points!
I shoot RAW+ my main fear in my specialist area (steam loco photography) s clipping the exhaust. On Wednesday in early morning sun (got up at 02:45, left home at 03:15 2 hour driv, hotography commenced at 06:15!)I was shooting at -1.3 EV to stop the highlights in the exhaust clipping, means the shadows are quite dark, RAW gives me room to bring up shadows and recover some higight detail if I overexpose. In softr light, JPEGS can be absolutely fine.
I enjoy the "darkroom" side of things, always did when I shot film, and do now. I routinely crop to 7/5 ratio (I sell greetings cards and 7" x5" is a popular size) so I am going to do some cropping anyway. probably develop about 10% of RAWs, and use another 5-10% of JPEGs.


As regards bracketing etc, moving trains don't really lend themselves to that. Turning on highlight protection helps a bit on the JPEG front, I also use the "natural" preset

[Nicolas06]

...it's not just me then....far to easy to adjust WB wen trying to move focus points!
I shoot RAW+ my main fear in my specialist area (steam loco photography) s clipping the exhaust. On Wednesday in early morning sun (got up at 02:45, left home at 03:15 2 hour driv, hotography commenced at 06:15!)I was shooting at -1.3 EV to stop the highlights in the exhaust clipping, means the shadows are quite dark, RAW gives me room to bring up shadows and recover some higight detail if I overexpose. In softr light, JPEGS can be absolutely fine.
I enjoy the "darkroom" side of things, always did when I shot film, and do now. I routinely crop to 7/5 ratio (I sell greetings cards and 7" x5" is a popular size) so I am going to do some cropping anyway. probably develop about 10% of RAWs, and use another 5-10% of JPEGs.


As regards bracketing etc, moving trains don't really lend themselves to that. Turning on highlight protection helps a bit on the JPEG front, I also use the "natural" preset

My father has the same issue. It is quite anoying to not have dedicated all time control to select the AF point. Even fully disably the arrow would not work because I want to select the braketing/burst mode behavior at time or the flash settings.

While overall I am quite satisfied with my K3 ergonomics, I am currious of what the joystick some camera have would permit...

[asp1880]

Just curious... how do you manage ro get good jpegs in high-DR situations?
Like a half-shaded, half full-light street in the middle of the summer? or a night scene when underexposing at base ISO is the only thing tha allows you to preserve tge detail in the highlights without the high-ISO DR loss?

For me there are situations where shooting RAW is indispensable, of course since I have little experience in shooting jpegs I'm willing to learn and be corrected if proved wrong :-)

Yes, high contrast scenes are where RAW starts to make a lot of sense.
But the JPEG engine offers some tools too.
You should always expose for the highlights of course.

1. You can enable highlight protection for that extra stop of highlight headroom.
2. You can use shadow protection on mid or max to lift the shadows.
3. You can use the high/low key slider to lift the midtones.
4. You can use the contrast slider to lower contrast - that also helps to manage the scene DR.

In total, all those tricks can lift the shadows around 2.5 stops in camera.
To make it work in camera you need the time to eyeball the scene contrast. And you need
practice with the JPEG engine to set it up before the exposure.

Another life saver is the "save as raw" feature. That thing makes me dare to shoot a lot more
stuff as JPEG than I'd otherwise do.

Yet another life saver is the ability to redevelop the most recent shot again and again
with different JPEG settings, including shadow protection and white balance.

Here's an old JPEG example of mine, where I spot metered to put the clouds at +2, used contrast at 0,
highlight protection on and shadow protection on max with the monochrome image style.



Regards,
--Anders.

---------- Post added 8th Jul 2016 at 22:45 ----------

...it's not just me then....far to easy to adjust WB wen trying to move focus points!
I shoot RAW+ my main fear in my specialist area (steam loco photography) s clipping the exhaust. On Wednesday in early morning sun (got up at 02:45, left home at 03:15 2 hour driv, hotography commenced at 06:15!)I was shooting at -1.3 EV to stop the highlights in the exhaust clipping, means the shadows are quite dark, RAW gives me room to bring up shadows and recover some higight detail if I overexpose. In softr light, JPEGS can be absolutely fine.

You can also bring up the shadows in camera JPEGS with the shadow protection feature.

But in your case (get it right now or wait till next year?) I'd at least shoot RAW+JPEG for insurance.

Love your work, BTW.

Regards,
--Anders.

[kiwi_jono]

Just thought I would give you your 100th like jono But yes you are right -- the image ends up as you want it - it is much more creative.

Thanks and in return!

[GUB]

Thanks and in return!

Yeah but the annoying thing is you got there with half the posts that I have done!! Guess it helps to know what you are talking about

[aleonx3]

I used to take RAW+JPG, but since I almost always process my RAW file (my workflow is set up using SILKYPIX as RAW developer, then import to LR for final minor adjustment plus watermark), and don't see a need to use in-camera JPG engine. If I need a JPG file urgently, I can always convert one while the RAW image is still in the camera.

[goatsNdonkey]

I'm glad I asked about this issue, partly because I think it is something that usually doesn't get talked about, and partly because there seem to be more in-camera controls for jpegs than I (and perhaps some others of us) realized -- at least with certain Pentax dslrs. And of course explanations of how some Pentaxians make use of those controls are very helpful.

[GUB]

I'm glad I asked about this issue, partly because I think it is something that usually doesn't get talked about, and partly because there seem to be more in-camera controls for jpegs than I (and perhaps some others of us) realized -- at least with certain Pentax dslrs. And of course explanations of how some Pentaxians make use of those controls are very helpful.

And also it gets confusing the other way round for Raw. For instance I think that if you set a WB and save in raw then that WB is the default opening value in your editor but you can change it at your whim. Or rather change the colour temp and tint. But it is useful to have it opening approximately right given that you have to shuffle the two sliders.

[Doundounba]

Well, I have to confess to being a JPG shooter myself. I do my processing with GIMP (and focus stacking with Zerene), and I keep it fairly minimal. I'm aware that there's a lot more info in the RAW file, but every time I've tried to parallel process both the RAW and the OOC JPG, the processed OOC JPG has always come out much better. So I mostly shoot JPG only now, but I do see some shots where the shadows get very noisy or there's some banding. I see the "brittleness" in the JPG, and at those times I wish I had a RAW file and the expertise to get the most out of it. But to me it's a question of where you invest your energy (with limited time) to make your craft progress. I may eventually move to RAW development once I feel that is where investing time (and/or money) will make a big difference to my photography.

But the JPEG engine offers some tools too.
You should always expose for the highlights of course.

1. You can enable highlight protection for that extra stop of highlight headroom.
2. You can use shadow protection on mid or max to lift the shadows.
3. You can use the high/low key slider to lift the midtones.
4. You can use the contrast slider to lower contrast - that also helps to manage the scene DR.

In total, all those tricks can lift the shadows around 2.5 stops in camera.
To make it work in camera you need the time to eyeball the scene contrast. And you need
practice with the JPEG engine to set it up before the exposure.

Thanks, this is very useful! But could you provide a few details with respect to terminology? I see two places in the menus where all this lives (I have a K-3), and the terms in there don't quite line-up with your post.

1) About "shadow protection". Camera Menu 2 -> D(ynamic)-Range Settings. There the two submenus are "Highlight Correction" and "Shadow Correction". When you talk above about "shadow protection", you mean this Shadow Correction, right? There are five possible values there (Off, Auto, Low, Mid and High), and I think that's what you're talking about.

2) About "highlight protection". Not sure what you are talking about. It could also be in the same place: Camera Menu 2 -> D(ynamic)-Range Settings -> Highlight Correction. But the only possible values for me are "Auto" or "Off", with a default to Auto. So I don't see anything that I can tweak here. But see the third point for another possible meaning.

3) In the Custom Image settings for your choice of profile. I use Natural, and in there, I can adjust seven different parameters. (If your camera shows only five, use the front wheel to get the expanded options.) They are, in order: Saturation, Hue, High/Low Key Adj, Contrast, Contrast Highlight Adjustment, Contrast Shadow Adjustment, Sharpness. Above, you are talking about using "High/Low Key Adj" to bring up the midtones. This is useful! I did not know that that is what that setting would do. Do you have any advice about what "Contrast Highlight Adjustment" and "Contrast Shadow Adjustment" do? Is that what you mean when you talk about "highlight protection"?

Thanks for any further pointers!

[Rondec]

I would say that if you shoot with settings that pump up sharpness and saturation -- say Bright or Vibrant -- your jpegs will be what they are. If you shoot with a Natural setting, you can add some sharpening or vibrance in post, but it is awfully hard to take it away. White balance issues can be corrected somewhat in post with jpegs, but you definitely have more leeway with RAW. In camera noise reduction is abysmal and should be avoided like the Plague.

[goatsNdonkey]

I think some of the terminology not in the actual camera menus may be in the paper or pdf camera manuals. I just figured out that my K110D has a "Natural" color setting. I had been leaving it on the default color setting, the symbol of which (a sort of colorful sunburst) I thought just stood for the most shades of color possible. Nothing about the symbol for the other setting ( a very faint picture of a linear graph ) said "Natural" to me. The word labels for where to set the "Saturation," "Sharpness," and "Contrast" in the camera menus were self-explanatory, but I didn't know that the sunburst setting, standing for Vivid apparently, was already boosting those values. When I got the camera, the menu settings I was most concerned about adjusting were the ones that allowed me to use manual focus lenses, and, although I did skim through the manual pdf, I missed the explanation of the vivid/natural choice. I had actually thought the little graph meant "monochrome," but when I did try that setting hoping to get Black-and-White it didn't give me that so I put it back on the default colorful sunburst symbol. If they had room in the menu to spell out "Saturation," why didn't they spell out "vivid" and "natural" ??? In any case, better late than never, I'm going natural !

[Nicolas06]

Well, I have to confess to being a JPG shooter myself. I do my processing with GIMP (and focus stacking with Zerene), and I keep it fairly minimal. I'm aware that there's a lot more info in the RAW file, but every time I've tried to parallel process both the RAW and the OOC JPG, the processed OOC JPG has always come out much better.

No offence but I find GIMP not the best for that kind of task. GIMP kind of photoshop competitor and while it nice if mastered for very advanced post processing, I also think it make simple things more complex.

Software like Lightroom or DxO concentrate on photography only. Sure they are optimized for raws but they are first optimized to manage photos in batch, play with perspective, horizon, exposure, contrast, shadow recovery as well as white balance and manipulating colors profiles. It make it far easier to work with.

The raw and jpeg is the same thing, with only raw giving you more margin in corners cases but the tooling specialized for photo editing get the best out of both help a lot.

Moving a few sliders I can get very different rendering that match my mood. After some practice, you can save your prefered rendering and reuse them when similar situation arise.

The post processing is sure to correct issues, but also to customize your photo so they look what you want them too.

A few different renderings... This isn't about if they are inherently supperior but more if they better match I want to express or get.

[mattt]

I am a RAW shooter primarily. I am often called upon to shoot functions that require I share photos immediately. In those cases I am typically shooting smaller file sizes usually 6 Megapixel JPG. I turn highlight protection and shadow correction on, as well as distortion correction and Chromatic aberration. I typically shoot in Vibrant.

The output in many cases such as golf events are played at dinner on an over head projector, or in the case of the company kids Xmas party, printed on 4x6 glossy (Canon Selphy 910) and distributed immediately.

JPG is a tool... Another arrow in the quiver. I use it as conditions demand and are appropriate.

Another note: Getty Sports photographers for the Winter Olympics were shooting JPG files remotely and transmitting immediately as the reporting cycle is so short/tight they have no time to do post on RAW or the data transfer speed. There was a bio/article on the Luge race I can't at the moment locate (but if I do will edit post accordingly).