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05-03-2022, 12:09 PM - 2 Likes   #61
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I'll add to the fray. As others have mentioned, headroom and flexibility have been mentioned. A significant difference is color. JPEG is an eight-bit color space, which will give you a maximum of 16,777,216 colors. You go to 16-bit color; that number increases to a whopping 281,474,976,710,656 colors. What that gets you is subtlety, a more accurate and believable reproduction of the color. Here is a good, simple article on the subject.

Editing Images In 8-bit vs. 16-bit Color | by Vincent Tabora | High-Definition Pro | Medium

I went from shooting RAW to shooting JPEG when I left photofinishing and shooting professionally, and JPEG was acceptable for casual shots. I recently went back to shooting RAW when I upgraded my camera to a KP and started taking more serious photos again. A point to mention is that I like to edit and manipulate my work in Photoshop; it's enjoyable. I also have worked on my workflow to maximize practicality. I shoot RAW, convert to DNG and save, convert to PSD, do all of my editings there, save a copy, then save a copy as a JPEG, often as a smaller email-sized file for posting on Facebook or the like.

The bottom line is to do what works for your needs, but never forget that you can sometimes take an unexpectedly good photograph that could be improved in post-processing. The extra few minutes could make all the difference.

05-03-2022, 02:18 PM   #62
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The extra bit depth gives smoother gradients in colour changes, so the A3 or A2 print will look so much better than your jpeg printed to this size. The amount of fine adjustments is self evident once you learn how to best use your editing software.
05-03-2022, 04:28 PM - 1 Like   #63
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Many thanks to all who have posted on this thread: There's more truly useful information here than on the next dozen photography blogs.
05-03-2022, 05:18 PM - 4 Likes   #64
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Adding to what people have said above, the RAW allows you to retrieve details that would be lost through processing in the camera to a compressed format. Once the camera has taken out the detail, you can't put it back in. The following represent, respectively, jpeg straight out of camera, the same shot edited from RAW and saved as JPG, and a straight out of camera that was better exposed in its original format (and colours).

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05-03-2022, 05:47 PM - 1 Like   #65
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QuoteOriginally posted by Monobod Quote
The extra bit depth gives smoother gradients in colour changes, so the A3 or A2 print will look so much better than your jpeg printed to this size. The amount of fine adjustments is self evident once you learn how to best use your editing software.
And also to others failing to emphasis that the only difference you will see between 8 bit and floating bit images is from the processing of these images. In editing an 8bit can-not be stretched around to the same degree as a 16bit. But a 16bit image once the editing is finished is can be changed to 8bit (jpg) without any visible degradation of the image.
05-03-2022, 06:45 PM - 2 Likes   #66
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You need RAW files for doing any decent astrophotography stacks.
Here is a stack of 186 30sec RAW files
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05-03-2022, 07:27 PM - 1 Like   #67
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QuoteOriginally posted by HoLun Quote
shot this squrriel back lit, have to bring up the shadow to see anything.
first pic is what it looks like as shot.
second pic after i bring up the shadows with the raw
third shot I exported the original raw to jpg, no adjustments with 100% quality, to simulate in camera jpg, and then bring up the shadows.
the images are post process with the same adjustments in lightroom

colors looks off and detail is lost in the jpg reprocess.
its fine if you don't need to do anything to the image afterward when you take jpg, but if you need to make big adjustments, its gonna look bad, especially when you need to crop.
thats my experience
Thank you for the help understanding Raw files and how they work. I just pulled out an image from a back light photo whilst not as good as yours mine was a butcher bird on my flyscreen at the window. so raw is for bad photographers and jpeg for good photographers no wonder I have never needed raw skills before this.

05-03-2022, 07:33 PM - 1 Like   #68
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I've only recently discovered RAW - and don't pretend to know virtually anything about it! (So the above info has been great!)
However, one thing I've found I can do with it is some cool colour alterations in camera before exporting.
I hit upon an awesome stormy sunset last year - the below photos are all from the same shot, but with the White balance and a few other elements altered in camera in the RAW file.
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05-03-2022, 08:27 PM   #69
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2 Part Answer
First part:
It's mostly to do with graduation of the colour scales.
a 12 bit RAW file will give you a light range of 2 to the power of 12 or 4096 different levels of brightness for each colour channel
a 14 bit RAW file will give you 16384 different levels of brightness
JPG is an 8 bit file format so you get a measly 256 levels.
You can do an awful lot with 256 levels, but if you have a large scene such as a sky shot at 90 degrees or such to the Sun, then you will often get banding due to the limitations. A good JPG algorithm will dither this to minimize the effect but shooting in RAW means never having to deal with it in the first place, and having the option of outputting in JPG later.
Second part:
JPG is a lossy format. The compression engine will throw away data it determines you won't need for the picture. You cannot recover this lost information - it is gone forever.
This means data at the extreme ends of the spectrum will be lost. IE blown out whites, or blocky shadows and blacks. And fine details can be lost to the algorithm too.
RAW still has this information - if you correctly exposed the shot, most if not all of the detail will still be there.
05-04-2022, 02:52 AM - 1 Like   #70
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I think there are two things to remember.

First, a boring photo will not be saved by shooting RAW. It just is a boring photo. RAW only allows tweaks to an image that otherwise is good, but the photographer wants to enhance in some way.

Second, much of the point of processing is to flatten an image so that jpeg is able to handle it. I don't know what other term to use for it. So, you adjust levels up on your shadows bring down the highlights, and add a digital neutral density filter and voila, you have an image that the jpeg container can handle, whereas the original one had too much data at the extremes for it to fit in. The camera jpeg engine allows for some of this sort of thing too, so you can select higher levels of sharpening, shadow adjustment, highlight protection, etc. The issue is simply that I have found the camera's jpeg engine to be quite heavy handed and can produce artifacts and odd results if pushed too much.

I uploaded one more image for comparison purposes.

Sunset (Pre-processing) -- this is the image exported from Lightroom with all of the sliders set to zero. I had deliberately underexposed by a fair amount to try to keep from blowing out the sun. Even so, the sun is blown out a little bit.



Sunset (Post-processing) Here, I bumped the shadows and did some selective sharpening. I could have done a small amount of this if I had shot jpeg, but not nearly this much. When you bump shadows on a jpeg image, you find there actually is very little detail in them -- most of that detail has been thrown away by the jpeg image to save space.



As I said earlier, shooting RAW doesn't change your light or your subject. If it is boring, it is boring (I don't use the word bad, but there are plenty of images that I take that no one except people in my family would be particularly interested in).
05-04-2022, 03:27 AM - 1 Like   #71
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QuoteOriginally posted by DafTekno Quote
then what exactly are you gaining by having a RAW file photo?
It's about having a choice and it's up to you to pick what suits you.

If you happy with and getting all you need from your JPEG images... then carry on with that and enjoy your photography.
05-04-2022, 04:13 AM   #72
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This discussion concentrate on a BASIC photo developing. Yes, it is very important, because basic. And yes, level of possibilities for correction is very limited for JPG instead of RAW.
But big aspect of photography is a art creation. Filters, maskings, layers etc. All what you receive with good photo developing software, and what is almost impossible for jpg fofrmat...
05-04-2022, 07:20 AM   #73
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There are already a lot of explanations, so I keep it short: JPG removes Details from the Image to save space, as RAW does not (destructivily). Means, there might be situations, where you have lost required information in JPG. If you postprocess your images anyway, there is no reason to to use JPG. If you need it, you can transfer it within in the Camera on Demand (or export it using your Tool, off course). At least I do so.
05-04-2022, 12:26 PM   #74
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It depends…

I can’t speak for Pentax, as all my Pentax cameras are film, but I have both Hasselblad and Olympus for digital and use their own software. Hasselblad is amazing - I would always capture RAW+JPEG and unless the JPEG turns out exactly as I wanted it, post-processing the RAW is better. With the Olympus, I only find RAW useful for rescuing shots where the conditions were really hard or I wasn’t paying enough attention (e.g. didn’t fix a white balance problem or, sometimes, when a low light or high contrast image can be made acceptable). The combination of camera and software is important, I think (the Hasselblad software will process Olympus RAW files but is nowhere near as good as with Hasselblad RAW files).
05-04-2022, 01:39 PM   #75
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Ever since I got my first Pentax DSLR, I have shot RAW (first PEF, now DNG), because I wanted the degree of control that it gave me to both correct and enhance images. To me, it's like the difference between between Vinyl and MP3 (via a decent set-up, of course) - MP3 for background music, but Vinyl for an enhanced listening experience. I started with film, enjoyed darkroom work, and to me PP is just a continuation of this (vide Ansel Adams refs above).
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