jpg versus raw

**Baconzoo** · 08-13-2007, 05:04 PM

Raw = studio
Adobe 1998 = CMYK print
----------------------------------------------------
jpeg = action
sRGB = web

**smalls** · 08-13-2007, 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by yesIsaidyes

Grant, do you shoot alot of JPG?

i doubt it, seeing as how he will almost never accept submitted shots that aren't RAW.

**Gunder** · 08-13-2007, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by yesIsaidyes

Grant, do you shoot alot of JPG?

NEVER EVER.

The only reason to shoot jpeg is if quality does not matter.

Even if you make a perfectly exposed and white ballenced shot in camera, RAW still has a huge benifit in that it has a much broder lattitude wich is key for high contrast subjects I.E. ski shots.

Jpeg Vs. Raw will produce two entirely different results in the above scenario, and in fact the RAW will likely look better...... if not have you ever calibrated your monitor?

**gramps** · 08-13-2007, 08:05 PM

Tri-U, I don't ever shoot in RAW. I tried it a few times and it took a lot more effort in Photoshop, more memory, and the results I got didn't look as good as if I had shot in JPG. Of course I never took the time to learn how to do RAW right, buy additional software, etc. I also rarely sell shots, so I don't really worry about what people want as far as submissions go. I think the JPGs my D50 produces are great quality, they look perfect to me even at 100% on my monitor, and I feel like I can post process them to my satisfaction in photoshop. I'd suggest just sticking with JPEG.

**dipstik** · 08-13-2007, 09:47 PM

Can anyone actually tell the difference between a print of a well shot Jpeg image and a print of a well shot RAW image?

**summit** · 08-13-2007, 09:53 PM

depends on the subject

**cj001f** · 08-13-2007, 09:58 PM

Originally Posted by Summit

depends on the subject

And sometimes whether it's tagged as a jpeg, RAW or a film negative

**dipstik** · 08-13-2007, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by Summit

depends on the subject

So basically no.

**Gunder** · 08-13-2007, 10:33 PM

Originally Posted by dipstik

Can anyone actually tell the difference between a print of a well shot Jpeg image and a print of a well shot RAW image?

YES.

If your shooting in jpeg your relying on the Cameras alogorithem to define the color spectrum gammut and tonal range of the image....

Shooting in RAW allows you to determin the above. Sure you can get okay looking images by shooting raw, but shoot the same image in RAW and process it correctly on a CALIBRATED monitor and the print will be 100x better.... provided that your printer is calibrated and properly profiled.

If your not looking at your images on a CALIBRATED monitor than you really have no legitimate comment on RAW VS. Jpeg.

**midget** · 08-13-2007, 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by dipstik

bah, I knew this would come up eventually.

RAW is a TOTAL and complete waste of your time, and has no place in the professional world where real photogs have real deadlines.

I guess every working professional photographer in every industry aside from news and weekend warrior that shoots little league and high school sports for prints isn't a real photographer.

Myself included.
Thanks for enlightening me dipstik.

**dipstik** · 08-13-2007, 11:01 PM

Originally Posted by midget

I guess every working professional photographer in every industry aside from news and weekend warrior that shoots little league and high school sports for prints isn't a real photographer.

Myself included.
Thanks for enlightening me dipstik.

Dood, read the rest of my posts in this thread. You will see I had a change of heart and realized that I came off like a total jackass.

**cj001f** · 08-13-2007, 11:18 PM

Originally Posted by dipstik

Dood, read the rest of my posts in this thread. You will see I had a change of heart and realized that I came off like a total jackass.

he realized we need more jackasses, not less

**midget** · 08-14-2007, 02:01 AM

also depends a lot on your tone curve you have set in your camera. if it sucks, you photos suck, to start.

**Benny Profane** · 08-14-2007, 06:41 AM

Originally Posted by Tippster

All our (Reuters) stills guys shoot and move everything in JPEG. So does the AP, AFP, and Getty to my knowledge.

This allows me to conclude that JPEG most certainly is a professional format, at least in Photojournalism.

Speaking in absolutes is the greatest thing in the whole world.

well..... (nose in the air)....I suppose it's OK if you're printing on.....(holding nose)....newsprint.

**Tippster** · 08-14-2007, 07:02 AM

Originally Posted by Benny Profane

well..... (nose in the air)....I suppose it's OK if you're printing on.....(holding nose)....newsprint.

Heh. Lord knows these suck...

http://photos.reuters.com/Pictures/g...,scrollbars=no

...especially blown up to poster size on our office walls...

No doubt RAW files let you manipulate the image more. My company, since the Photoshop fiasco about that doctored image from Beirut, now will only allow the editor to use curves to change saturation, contrast, and brightness. No other tools are allowed in the workflow, so maybe that's why they don't shoot RAW.

**Benny Profane** · 08-14-2007, 07:36 AM

yeah, as a retoucher, I guess I am the anti christ to your editors. Boy, are you guys paranoid about touching a picture. Did ya see how some guys have been fired for over saturation and eliminating a few non essential details after that sucky Beirut thing? Lighten up. The old Life and Look pictures were helped a lot.

**MeatPuppet** · 08-14-2007, 08:38 AM

Originally Posted by dipstik

Can anyone actually tell the difference between a print of a well shot Jpeg image and a print of a well shot RAW image?

Shooting in RAW is a lot like bracketing your shots. Only, instead of just giving yourself a wider exposure range to choose from, you also have a wider range for saturation, contrast, sharpness, etc. You also get to make these choices while viewing the image on a calibrated monitor, rather than guessing what you want and then setting the camera to do it for you.

So, two random images, one shoot in jpeg the other shoot in RAW; you probably couldn't tell which was which. But, take two identical images shoot at the same time, one in jpeg and the other RAW, and one will be exactly what the photographer wanted to create. The other will be what the photographer guessed he wanted to create before he took the shot.

Tippster: Those are some amazing photos. Just imagine how many more amazing shots they would have been able to publish if they had been shooting RAW

I think photos that tell a story rely far more on the composition to evoke emotion than anything else. Landscapes, marketing photos, etc. are more heavily influenced by the colors. So shooting RAW will benefit these photogs more than it would benefit the news or event photog.

**dipstik** · 08-14-2007, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by Benny Profane

yeah, as a retoucher, I guess I am the anti christ to your editors. Boy, are you guys paranoid about touching a picture. Did ya see how some guys have been fired for over saturation and eliminating a few non essential details after that sucky Beirut thing? Lighten up. The old Life and Look pictures were helped a lot.

Photo ethics are a huge issue for news photogs. That issue is what I've been taught and lectured on more than anything, and is probably the reason I'm so obsessed with getting it right in-camera.

Read the NPPA's code of ethics: http://www.nppa.org/professional_dev...es/ethics.html

There sure isn't a lot of breathing room for post processing!

**Benny Profane** · 08-14-2007, 03:50 PM

Originally Posted by dipstik

Photo ethics are a huge issue for news photogs. That issue is what I've been taught and lectured on more than anything, and is probably the reason I'm so obsessed with getting it right in-camera.

Read the NPPA's code of ethics: http://www.nppa.org/professional_dev...es/ethics.html

There sure isn't a lot of breathing room for post processing!

I'd say. I think some have gone too far. Like this:

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswir..._id=1002914629

"In the original photo, the sky in the photo was brownish-gray. Enhanced with photo-editing software, the sky became a deep red and the sun took on a more distinct halo," the editor's note says.

"Schneider said he did not intend to mislead readers, only to restore the actual color of the sky," the note continues. "He said the color was lost when he underexposed the photo to offset the glare of the sun."

Uh...as the caveman said....what? How does anyone know the sky was "brownish-grey"?? And, really, what's wrong in correcting some colors? What are these people saying, that a digital photo must go straight from camera to print?? Trust me, this never happened with film. Take it from someone who worked on many many pictures for Time Inc.

**anotherVTskibum** · 08-14-2007, 05:53 PM

Originally Posted by Benny Profane

I'd say. I think some have gone too far. Like this:

...

Uh...as the caveman said....what? How does anyone know the sky was "brownish-grey"?? And, really, what's wrong in correcting some colors? What are these people saying, that a digital photo must go straight from camera to print?? Trust me, this never happened with film. Take it from someone who worked on many many pictures for Time Inc.

The big difference as I see it is that standard digital post-processing makes it incredibly easy to retouch photos in ways that are clearly unethical (such as the missing pair of legs in that sports photo from the midwest). Combine that with a lack of a shared-processing darkroom environment (one of the traditional checks on excessive post-processing that has been replaced by solitary work on laptops), and the industry has to take a harder stance on general post-processing work. Add in the general threat to news photographers that comes from GWCs, and the ethical approach is one of the major differentiations between the (paid) submission from a photoj and (unpaid) submission from a person on the street.

The example you cited did seem a bit extreme, but I think that case was also the result of the photog already being on double-secret probation for previous overzealous editing.

On the original subject, I shoot RAW, all the time. I can live with the slower buffer writing, even for action shots--it just needs I need to be on with my timing. If I was freelancing on a deadline that precluded processing RAW (which seems highly unlikely--I can process RAW almost as quickly as I can deal with JPEGs, if the computer is willing to keep up), I'd shoot RAW+JPEG so I could have the full-quality file to deal with at a later date, if I was so inclined. I'm not a photojournalist by trade, though.

**Gunder** · 08-14-2007, 06:06 PM

Originally Posted by anotherVTskibum

The big difference as I see it is that standard digital post-processing makes it incredibly easy to retouch photos in ways that are clearly unethical (such as the missing pair of legs in that sports photo from the midwest). Combine that with a lack of a shared-processing darkroom environment (one of the traditional checks on excessive post-processing that has been replaced by solitary work on laptops), and the industry has to take a harder stance on general post-processing work. Add in the general threat to news photographers that comes from GWCs, and the ethical approach is one of the major differentiations between the (paid) submission from a photoj and (unpaid) submission from a person on the street.

The example you cited did seem a bit extreme, but I think that case was also the result of the photog already being on double-secret probation for previous overzealous editing.

On the original subject, I shoot RAW, all the time. I can live with the slower buffer writing, even for action shots--it just needs I need to be on with my timing. If I was freelancing on a deadline that precluded processing RAW (which seems highly unlikely--I can process RAW almost as quickly as I can deal with JPEGs, if the computer is willing to keep up), I'd shoot RAW+JPEG so I could have the full-quality file to deal with at a later date, if I was so inclined. I'm not a photojournalist by trade, though.

Funny with just one click you can see exactly what the camera captured when dealing with RAW files, so in that aspect the RAW files are harder to get away with doing unethical editing.....

**dipstik** · 08-14-2007, 07:56 PM

Originally Posted by Benny Profane

I'd say. I think some have gone too far. Like this:

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswir..._id=1002914629

"In the original photo, the sky in the photo was brownish-gray. Enhanced with photo-editing software, the sky became a deep red and the sun took on a more distinct halo," the editor's note says.

"Schneider said he did not intend to mislead readers, only to restore the actual color of the sky," the note continues. "He said the color was lost when he underexposed the photo to offset the glare of the sun."

Uh...as the caveman said....what? How does anyone know the sky was "brownish-grey"?? And, really, what's wrong in correcting some colors? What are these people saying, that a digital photo must go straight from camera to print?? Trust me, this never happened with film. Take it from someone who worked on many many pictures for Time Inc.

Oh I believe you on that, and I believe it still goes on today. The problem seems to be that newspapers and other various news outlets are not always trusted by the general public. Just look at the reputation Fox News has.

So take that into consideration with the fact that newspaper circulation and subscriptions are dwindling rapidly (I'm not sure if the same is true for other print news outlets?), and you can see why editors are trying so incredibly hard to remain credible in the public eye. With credibility comes reliability, and therefore more subscriptions.

Another thing to consider is how fiercely competitive the photojournalism industry is. This competitiveness puts huge pressure on the full-time staffer to produce consistently high quality work. So the temptation for manipulation becomes quite real if they have a bad day and don't come back with great images.

Add all that to everything VTskibum said about the ease of digital image manipulation, and you can see why that photog got the boot for adding "just a little color" to his images.

If they let him get away with "enhancing" a photo like he did, then next time maybe he would do something a little more drastic, like removing a distracting element from an otherwise clean photo. And it just goes on from there. So I guess there needs to be a pretty clear cutoff for what is considered manipulation and what isn't; there can't be a gray area.

If you're interested in the subject, check out this article: http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/.../toledo05.html

**Benny Profane** · 08-14-2007, 08:06 PM

Dude, there is a grey area, and there always has been.
Like I said, news images have been enhanced since they were published - I know, I've done a few thousand. Now there's some sort of witch hunt goin' on, out of, well, fear and ignorance. High minded newspaper editors walking around in some ethical heaven, while everybody under 30 years old doesn't touch their product.

**SIIHP** · 08-15-2007, 08:50 PM

This could have easily been answered like this:

RAW is basically the digital version of a negative. It has no data loss. It offers much more options in post work. It WILL give you a higher quality image, espeically if you know what you are doing. On the flipside, if you don't konw what you are doing you will get crap.

JPEG is basically like taking your film to Walmart and getting your pictures developed. You don't have any real control, you get what it thinks is right. It works well enough for most people, but some of us would rather have total control over what the image looks like.

**Shepherd Wong** · 08-15-2007, 10:21 PM

Just to clarify for any sorta nerds out there. To the best of my knowledge as a math nerd, the disadvantage of jpeg isn't due to it being lossy, it's due to converting 12 bit raw data to 8 bit data prior to jpeg compression. Lossy is no big deal. In frequency space(where the actual compression takes place) a lot of the DCT coefficients can be ignored, no big deal. If any camera shot 12 bit jpegs I doubt there would be any practical advantage in shooting raw.
Unless you plan on doing gnarly post processing I doubt you will see much difference between the two. That being said I still shoot raw because I post process every image I have shot so far.