Cant spot the difference

[Derek G]

Still getting to grips with new camera, and am shooting in raw plus jpeg problem is I cant distinguish between them which is better ,is this normal for new starters,this is before I use any editor by the way, of which I have elements 10, ACDSee pro5, and DPP .

[John Varndell]

Hi Derek
Yes I have struggled to see any significant difference between RAW and JPEG but in general the JPEG looks best prior to post processing. Where the RAW file scores over JPEG is in the processing options available. If you are up to speed with any of the Photoshop products you can play tunes with the RAW file.
I hope this helps!!

John

[rpcrowe]

There are some images in which there will only be a slight difference between RAW and JPEG. Oher times, there can be a large degree of diference.

I frankly like working with the RAW editor better than working with a JPEG image.



I have control over many facets of my image in one spot and can usually get the image pretty close to how I want it before I open it in either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements for full editing.

Among the things that are easier (at least for me) is adjusting the color balance. I almost always shoot in AWB and that usually does a pretty good job. However it is easy for me to adjust the color in the RAW editor...

[herbert]

Hi Derek,

If you are using DPP to look at the photos they will look the same. This is because the canon software respects all of the settings from your camera including the picture style. However if you shoot raw you can change these settings after taking the shot within DPP. It is a good way to see how the picture styles effect your photos, e.g. Landscape, portrait, monochrome.

This is just the tip of the iceberg to what you can do with raw files. The best thing is to experiment with the settings on the first tab such as picture styles, sharpening, contrast, exposure and white balance. All of these are greyed out for jpeg images since they have already been applied in camera. For jpegs you can only apply curves and some other simpler settings on the second tab (these are still available when shooting raw).

The white balance and exposure are the two key ones to try out. White balance can help fix those shots where colours just look a bit weird and you do not know why.

Any more questions then post them here and someone will help you out.

Alex

[revi]

Another thing to keep in mind is, that the preview image used for RAW files (and embedded in the RAW file, normally)
is the same image as the in-camera JPG (scaled down, though). So it's fairly normal that there's no or very little visible
difference between the RAW preview and the in-camera JPG on screen...

Remco

[Derek G]

Thanks, good to know I dont need an eyetest

[The Blue Boy]

Hi Derek,

The main difference between these two files is the information (data) they contain. Raw files contain all the information taken at the time of capture, where as the jpeg file is a compressed version of this data and has discarded quite a bit of this info as that file is created.

Now for most people, at first glance there is very little difference in appearance. It's not until you start to edit these files that the difference becomes apparent.

[Glenn NK]

I think the above replies to the OP question are spot on.

Occasionally I come across a JPEG from someone else in my family, and I can't do much with them compared to the flexibility I have with RAW. I use Lightroom for most of my work, and when I attempt to change the camera profile, there is nothing so frustrating as seeing the term "embedded". Which means I can't change it.

I read in one of Martin Evening's book on LR that blown highlights were easier to recover from RAW than JPEG. My personal experience confirms this.

Glenn

[ktuli]

Derek,

You might be interested in this thread and in particular, I posted a comparison between JPG SOOC and RAW with minor adjustments.

For me, having only converted to shoot RAW this year, I find the flexibility with being able to adjust White Balance, Exposure, etc, etc at the bit level without having any affect on the original file (Adobe Camera RAW uses a small file that it saves alongside your RAW file to store the changes you made to it without affecting the original) is far too useful to me to be able to go back to shooting JPG.

Hope this helps.

- Bill

[Ronny]

I am also more than interested in the subject "Raw", because I have never used it.
In several comments I noticed that exposure is one of the options that can be adjusted in raw.
Do you mean that the depth of field can be corrected?
I just bought the book "Photoshop Element 9" from Scott Kelby that has a large article of raw which I will try to understand.

[The Blue Boy]

@ Ronny,

Exposure can be adjusted along with many other things, white balance, hue and saturation, the list goes on. Until you've got yourself a raw converter we can't be of much more help.

Make sure to read the tutorials here mate, this one for raw.

Depth of field is a very different subject and mainly restricted to your cameras different lens aperture and focusing distance. This is the tutorial for DoF.

[Hero]

Exposure can be adjusted...

Um, it's not really the exposure you are adjusting. The exposure is set/fixed at the moment you press the shutter. If you really could adjust exposure you would be able to recover pixels lost in the black and the white. What you are really doing with the exposure-compensation tools in RAW-editors is stretch, shift or compress the spectrum of what has been recorded. The big difference between doing something like that on a RAW file or on a JPEG is that with a RAW file you have much more headroom to play with before your adjustments loose IQ. Another thing is speak for RAW is that due to the wider spectrum of the RAW-file, you have more information to begin with.

[herbert]

Um, it's not really the exposure you are adjusting.

+1

Although the exposure is fixed at capture the advantage of the raw file is that you can shift the point at which the tone curve is applied. Note that the sensor data simply records how much light there was. However our eyes see light differently to cameras. We notice changes in the ratio of light and have different sensitivities depending on the brightness. E.g. We notice a small change in brightness when it is dark but can ignore changes in brightness when it is very bright. This is why you can look at the sun during a sunset and see nice shadows in the scene. It also explains why noise is most apparent in shadow areas. The tiny mistakes added by noise (e.g. 10%) will look like a huge difference to our eyes.

What's this got to do with raw? Well the camera records a huge amount of information. However our eyes cannot see it if uncorrected because it all looks too dark except at the bright end. So the data have to be mapped to a new set of points that better suit the way we see. Once this is done we can see the entire range of brightness.

But we are not finished. The data looks flat (no contrast). So a sigmoid curve is added to the mapping. This makes shadows darker and highlights brighter. The curve is steepest in the middle and so contrast looks greatest here. The key to the raw conversion is picking the point where the centre of the tone curve lies. You can move it to suit the image content. This is the equivalent of changing the exposure. You can also change the steepness of the curve and the start and end points depending on the raw converter you use.

It is possible to do this because the raw file has 12 or 14 bits to record the data. A jpeg has 8. So the raw file has 16 or 64 times as much data as the jpeg can contain. This allows you to shift the tone curve around, altering the contrast and appearance of the image without compromising quality. You can usually shift it +/- 2 stops which makes a big difference.

I've given you lots to think about. However if you have a try in DPP to do these things you may have the sudden realisation that shooting in raw is like night and day.

Why would you shoot jpeg? Camera makers have been doing this mapping stuff for years. It works very well considering how hard it is. So you get nice files all processed for you. They are smaller too. Pro sports shooters and newspaper journalists use Jpeg so they can upload to their boss within 3 seconds of taking the shot. However if you want the best looking photo you should take charge of the conversion process. You will enjoy it when you get better photos as a result.

Alex