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RAW vs. JPG Images

Frank J Casella

Blog #583 of 614

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December 20th, 2014 - 12:46 PM

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RAW vs. JPG Images

The dialog keeps coming back with the same arguments on both sides that I've seen for years. Perhaps the proportion of people weighing in on one side or the other is shifting, but the essential arguments remain the same.

That people feel RAW provides more dynamic range illustrates just how uninformed people are about the science of digital sensors.

First some backstory -- I've had a camera in my hand since I was a kid some forty years ago. I started with the Polaroid camera then graduated to film. In college I worked with every format camera from the 35mm SLR to the large box View cameras. I've shot thousand of rolls/sheet and in the darkroom every day with my hands in the sauce, as they said it back then. When Digital cameras came into play it changed how we think about photography and its workflow. I've then shot thousands of images in RAW format until a few years ago switching to JPG convinced this argument is over.

What convinced me? The article at this link ( http://tinyurl.com/ltapzcj ) by Dan Heller, who is arguably one of the finest photography gurus on the planet. After reading this article I had to track dan down to ask him the usual questions found in this debate. Here are his answers as I understand them:

I asked Dan when I look at JPG and RAW lately they both look similar, that the POD business who print our photography into wall art should not have issues with either format?


Dan said it doesn't surprise him that I'm not seeing differences in the jpg/tiff files, but points out something that his (now ancient) article should highlight: choosing which format you use has more to do with the programs used in a workflow than it does about which is "better."  Once a particular quality level is achieved, it's arbitrary which you choose. At this point, however, the workflow perspective takes front stage.

The POD companies ( like Fine Art America, ect,) have a series of automated programs that they use to take in images and put them through the system to come out the other end. Many of those systems are purchased from third party suppliers, who themselves wrote their own workflow processing programs... and those guys wrote their code to only look at particular file types. Reasons may be far and wide: it: could have been long ago when conventions were different, limited technical abilities (by the programmers), they had to conform to file types because of what were then their own suppliers along the workflow stream, or even the simplest one: poor decision-making by management.

Whatever the reason, Dan said, don't assume that companies make such decisions based on technically optimal (and current) state of the art.

As for RAW, Dan told me, he is finding less and less reason to ever use it. The fact that you can change white balance is itself becoming increasingly less valuable because image editing software is getting so good that you can emulate the same conversion on non-raw files.

Then what Dan had to say is most interesting, and I tend to agree .. .. that he thinks photographers get a bit too bent on attempting to achieve the impossible: the desire to mimic real life in the light data collected by the sensor. The human eye is simply too inefficient to capture it, and even if it could, the human brain cannot retain the information long enough to judge whether any given photo of a scene is technically balanced. Numerous studies have shown that humans do not have the visual equivalent of the ear's ability to have "perfect pitch" for sound. We cannot look at a "red" and identify where along the spectrum it is.

See this article ( http://tinyurl.com/fa6s4 ) for a good example. This corroborates a study long ago (but cannot longer find) showing that people using photoshop to edit a photo to "balance the color to what they perceived to be normal" all yielded roughly the same result, despite the fact that they were each in differently colored rooms with different light wavelengths. (Fluorescent vs incandescent vs natural, etc.) Another study showed the people with miscalibrated monitors also yielded roughly the same results when output to a printer, with the variations not significantly different the randomness found in the standard deviations. People disclaim these through anecdotal experience, but their perceptions are more the result of other factors (including bias and filtering of data) that is not supported by research studies.

Even black and white: check out this page ( http://tinyurl.com/ypux5 ) illustrating the concept perfectly.



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So the next question that often comes into debate from graphic designers and the like is that we often are at the mercy of the client's choice of photographer, so RAW files give us an opportunity to adjust the lighting color and temperature (and other factors) a lot easier than trying to manipulate a jpeg or tiff.

Dan shared that's simply because they trained themselves using the tools of their choice.

What Dan means is this is a classic example of people misattributing cause-and-effect. We think it's the "raw" that produces the result, but in fact, it's simply our own area of expertise. We've simply mastered the editing tool brilliantly (I presume). Others (such as myself) are equally trained on using jpg. That if we were put to a challenge, to produce a print from the same digital photo shot in both jpg/raw mode, a panel of independent judges would look at the final print and declare neither of us the winner.

Photography is an art, not a science. Craftsmanship will always supersede technology.

All tools require a learning curve, and beyond that, a a truly gifted artist requires time to develop a level of expertise that makes them extraordinary.... whether it's film versus digital media, or photoshop vs. printshop, or RAW versus "jpg."  You can imagine there are probably still film-photographers that use the conventional darkroom to make their own prints. Yet, despite the inferior dynamic range and resolution of film, the years they bring in extraordinary experience and craftsmanship would yield a superior print compared to a moderately experienced digital photographer that uses RAW.



===

So, my next question for Dan was that I have always been told that you can't manipulate a JPG because it doesn't have all the information in it and it is compressed and sharpened already .. it is inferior to RAW.  If I understand you right, I am learning that a JPG out of the camera is not compressed, does have that information in it, and has more of a range than the film and soup I learned with. 

The answer to this is that early in digital photography, memory was very expensive, so camera manufacturers set the default compression rate for jpg images very high so more images could be shot on a small memory card. That's how the info we heard about jpg started. 

Since then, memory isn't a problem, so they no longer compress jpg anymore.


After learning the from Dan and confirming it with my own eyes ... my advise: pick your tool and shoot in JPG and go have fun.



For more information on this see my blog article " What the Smartphone is Doing to the Future of Photography " at this link: http://tinyurl.com/lrerova

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Frank J Casella

9 Years Ago

Homewood, IL

As a follow up, I found this article on Ken Rockwell site about how film is the real RAW . Makes me think about the great Ansel Adams, how his iconic fine art landscapes were mastered by the narrow dynamic range of film. If you prefer to shoot RAW you might consider to shoot film instead. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/real-raw.htm