All articles copyright 2007 Jeff Coleman
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Raw format or High Quality jpeg?
I was convinced that Raw was the only way to go. Every book and article I read on the subject praised the Raw format. Shooting Raw severely slowed my workflow but I couldn't settle for anything less than the best quality my cameras are capable of producing. One day a fellow photographer informed me that he has done experiments with jpegs and Raw files and couldn't see any difference in the finished files that he provides to his clients. It wasn't long before I conducted my own experiments. I set my camera to record Raw and highest quality jpg at the same time. Then I worked on each with photoshop. At the end I saved each version as a PSD, photoshop's loss less format. I could not see any difference at all between the files. With that said there are certain times when a Raw file can help save an image. If you have extreme contrast in your image Raw will be able to pull more detail out of shadows and highlights.
Besides image quality, many photographer shoot raw because they can batch process images. If 50 images were shot on the wrong white balance, you can fix one of them and then apply those same settings to the rest. I don't trust batch processing. I'm too much of a perfectionist. I know that each frame will be a little different and a batch process job will not produce optimum results.
I shoot my commercial assignments in Raw format and everything else in highest quality jpeg. |
