RAW Vs Jpeg - EVERYTHING You Need To Know

[Music] you hey everyone Steve from backcountry gallery here this time I want to share the real reason to shoot RAW images instead of JPEG but first let's briefly talk about exactly what a raw file is basically a raw file is your unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor in your camera this data in and of itself can't be directly edited with a normal bitmap editor it has to be converted to a usable format first this is where our RAW processing software like Lightroom for instance comes in now the advantage is that because the data is unprocessed it allows for a much higher degree of post-processing flexibility and image interpretation then maybe an image that's pre processed by the camera like a JPEG for instance however raw may not seem all that necessary at least not at first the thing is when people are first trying to decide between raw and JPEG they'll often set their camera to capture both at once and then compare the results what they often see is one of two things either the images are virtually identical or the JPEG actually looks better than the raw file in fact let me show you what I mean okay so here's the samples that I wanted to show you the way I did this is I went out and I shot raw plus JPEG so one of these is a raw file and the other one is a JPEG file so let's take a look at the differences here now if you'll notice the image on the Left has a nicer sky I think the blue is much nicer over here and it looks like it has a little bit better color overall and better contrast than the image here on the right if we zoom in you can see that we have slightly better sharpness with the image here on the left then we do with the one on the right and in fact let me just move over here and you can take a look at these tree branches and you can see we have much better detail in the image here on the left than we do on the right and the contrast is better the sharpness is better everything's better over here so I would say between these two if I was going to pick one to use I would definitely be favoring the one on the left so let me show you something though I think you're going to be surprised if I turn off lights out mode on Lightroom here you can see that this is actually the processed JPEG from the camera and this is the raw file now this is where people get into trouble because they'll do exactly what I just did they'll go out and shoot raw and JPEG and they'll compare the images side-by-side and they'll come to the conclusion that gee these JPEGs actually look a lot better than what I'm getting from the raw file so you know you can kind of see where some of the confusion comes in not only do JPEGs often look better right out of their camera than the raw counterparts but they also are significantly smaller take the church photos we just compared the JPEG was shot at the absolute best quality available with my da 50 and even then it was less than half the size of the raw file this means JPEGs take up less space on your memory cards and less space on your hard drives plus the smaller image size means that in the field your cameras buffer can last longer before it fills up and that's actually not all JPEGs are also ready to go right out of the camera and they are compatible with pretty much any device with raw you need special software to see the images and you have to process them and export them as JPEGs afterwards so at this point you're probably wondering why the heck you'd ever want to shoot raw and that's a good question with just a single answer post-processing flexibility the thing is when you shoot JPEG you're more or less stuck with the camera's rendition of the scene after all I think we've all had the experience of looking at an image on the back of the camera and discovering it really didn't match the scene in front of us even if we had the correct settings in those cases a raw file often allows us to process the image so it looks like what we see Plus even if the image is rendered by the camera is actually pretty good raw offers us the flexibility to make the final output even better so this begs the question why can't we just process the JPEG instead why do we need the raw file at all the thing is JPEGs simply don't have all the information from the sensor and RAW files do to put this into perspective our 8-bit JPEGs have 256 brightness levels per RGB channel for a total of just over 16 million colors that seems like a lot but the 12 bit raw file has 4096 brightness levels RGB channel for a whopping 68 billion colors 14-bit we're talking 16,000 plus brightness levels per channel for a total of four trillion colors as an example compare 8-bit jpg to a 12 bit raw file the 8-bit jpg has less than 1% of the total brightness levels / colors available to it that the raw file does still our eyes can only see about 10 million colors so the 16 million we get in our JPEGs is plenty for our display images and by the way I talk all about bit depth and how it works in my exposure and metering book for an icon if you want more info but here's the trick the camera always starts with a raw file even if you're shooting JPEG in order to create our 8-bit jpg image the camera's jpg engine needs to decide what data to save and what to toss from the raw file since the JPEG can't hold all the data so the JPEG is produced based on two things the first is your settings like exposure white balance that sort of thing and second how the camera's JPEG engine interprets the data from the scene it does this assuming that you're not going to want to adjust things like highlights shadows or white balance later the JPEG engine then decides what data it needs to keep from the raw file to create an image that's intended to be used as is it then creates one possible version of the image and the rest of the data from the raw file is discarded when the cameras version of the image looks great then life's wonderful and the truth is it probably does that more often than not for most scenes however if we want to adjust something after the fact it's much tougher because we don't have access to that raw file anymore and the necessary data that went with it think of it like this imagine you had a box containing hundreds of Legos and you wanted to make a little Lego car the box of Legos is like our raw file information and the car is like our JPEG output we're not going to use every Lego in the box to create the car only what we need for this particular version of the car that's what your camera does when it creates your JPEG output it uses just the information that it needs from the raw file to output a version of the image from its jpg engine to your memory card the problem is if you want to create a significantly different version of the little Lego car you'll likely need to go back to the box and grab some other parts and in the case of our JPEGs we toss out the box so well you can do some adjustments we don't always have everything we need to do it and that's where we get into trouble let me show you so I think the best way to sort of demonstrate this image information disparity between JPEGs and RAW files is just to show you how this works so I'm going to use these underexposed images because we're definitely going to see a huge difference here between what we can do with the raw file and the JPEG and again keep in mind the reason is the JPEG is basically the Lego car that we created from our box of Legos I mean we have all the information here we need to make this version of the image but we don't have enough information here to make another version of the image and I'm going to show you that right now so what we're gonna do is I'm going to jump into the develop module we'll put this raw file in here and we'll sync up these two images right here so let's do that and I have auto sync turned on so that's going to apply the settings not just to this raw file but also to the JPEG over here as well so each image is getting the exact same treatment then we'll just compare so let's go and get started so let's go ahead and start by adding some exposure or brighten this up a little bit about maybe three and a quarter stops or so I'm gonna pull my highlights down outside there because we don't want this to be too bright in there but I lift the shadows up so we can see the rafters real nice here so this is making some pretty good progress with just very little work on our part I'm gonna grab the color picker tool we have a nice middle tone path right here so I'm gonna give that a click and you can see we have a nice white balance now in fact this is a little oversaturated so I'm gonna go down to the HSL and drop the oranges there just a little bit so this isn't quite as saturated there that looks pretty good and it didn't take very long at all however let's take a look and see what happened when we tried those same settings on the JPEG again we have auto sync turned on so both of these images are using the same exact setting so let's hit compare mode here and you can see let me switch these around and you can see that the JPEG did not fare nearly as well with this exercise as the while dead so the first and most obvious thing here is the massive color shift the JPEG has suffered because of our brightening process here you can see that it is really really green compared to the nice colors we have over here and the reason it went that direction is because the JPEG simply does not have the color information that the raw file does it was thrown out because it didn't need it for the version of the JPEG that the camera produced however believe it or not that's not even the worst problem here if we zoom in you can see that we have lost massive amounts of detail in the shadow areas and the reason for that again is because the JPEG didn't need that information in order to have a nice dark version of this however when we try to lift it up what the software does is it takes the information that's there and then sort of extrapolates what it would look like if it were brighter the problem is this causes errors and those errors sort of compound the brighter you push and the harder you push those shadow areas and pretty soon you have something that looks a lot like this so there is a massive difference in quality here in granted the raw file does show some noise here but that's at least correctable we could fix this this is completely a lost cause there's nothing you can do with it now I could already hear the YouTube comments though about the color it's like hey you're not even trying to color correct that JPEG maybe you know if you tried a little harder you'd be able to match the raw file and I do want to show you what happens when we try to do that so let's go ahead and jump to the develop module and we'll just see if we can go ahead and do something with a color here I have auto sync turned off so it's only gonna affect this image right here so let's start the same way we did with the other image the raw file version of this one let's go grab our color picker and use a neutral here and as you can see we didn't get the nice result when we did when we tried that with the raw file and the reason for that is because of the massive color shift basically this is way way way more green than what we were dealing with with the raw file so a little click out here isn't gonna make that work because we've had this huge color shift when you have a massive color shift like that you can't just pick a neutral anywhere in the image and have it apply and look nice across the entire image it doesn't work anymore so then you do something like this your next step is to go over here try to use the sliders and say oh maybe we'll do a little more magenta here maybe we'll pull some of the yellow and we're getting this to almost look like wood here but look what happened out here because you're basically just swapping colors back and forth you don't have the color information so you're just adding color casts to various degrees through help the image when you're pushing the sliders around and it makes getting a good white balance nearly impossible what you have to do is actually go in and try to maybe color correct just small areas of it with either an adjustment brush or with in Photoshop but even then it doesn't work out well let me show you because we don't have the subtle color variations if you look here we have all sorts of dynamic deep color variations going on in the wood that are not present here we cannot recreate this by just coloring this another shade we have darker colors here in lighter colors here and we cannot get that back from the JPEG and that's basically the problem here is that when you try to process a JPEG even if you're not as Extreme as this if you're trying to pull shadows or adjust color or anything like that you don't have much flexibility before you start running into these kinds of problems and that's why everyone likes shooting RAW files over JPEGs because we do have this flexibility and we can maintain this nice look to our images when we do need to adjust them so it gives you a lot of flexibility after the fact but it's not just about the shadows and the colors we also have a pretty big advantage with highlights so let's take a look at a version of this scene that was overexposed and take a look at how the highlights react so here we have the two overexposed versions the JPEG on the left and the raw on the right and for this example I just want to concentrate on the highlights and we'll see what we can do with the raw file versus the JPEG in this particular scenario so head over the develop module make sure we have the raw file selected and auto-sync on so once again the changes we make to the raw file will also be applied to the JPEG I'm going to go ahead and drop that exposure down about there and maybe drop those highlights down let's set that white balance again just doing this very quickly for you now let's bring up the shadows so we can see the rafters just like that the image is pretty much done let's go ahead and compare it to the jpg and as you can see the JPEG has not fared quite as well once again even the bright areas here not look quite as good as what we have with the raw file as far as color goes but again we're concentrating this one on just the outside areas here that are overexposed so as you can see we have really nice detail here in the path and the color and the grass looks good in this case the detail is all but gone and the grass looks terrible if you look at the building itself here you can see that we've lost all the detail here and we still have very nice detail here and if we go up into the branches you can see that the JPEG does not hold up to the raw file at all so what does that mean well simply that the raw file has more information once again we're dealing in this case with a 14 bit file so it has much more dynamic range and it has far more tonal levels than our 8 bit JPEG plus the JPEG was created again to create an overexposed version of this image it wasn't created to make this so once again going back to our Lego car analogy we're taking a Lego car that was supposed to be one way and trying to make it into something else and we just don't have the parts available to make that happen with our JPEG now I know what you're thinking hey what about like a more normally exposed image instead of these severe examples let's take a look at that too okay so here's a JPEG that is properly exposed for the scene that we've been working on the last few minutes and as you can see it's okay but it's not great the problem that we're having here is that there's a pretty wide range of light here we have some pretty bright light out here and we have some darker light inside here and by the way this barn is open on both sides so it was open behind me while I was shooting this so when I was standing there I could actually see a lot more detail up here than what I'm seeing here and I could see a lot more detail outside than what's kind of getting a little bit blown away here and as far as this image goes this is probably about the best exposure I can do for the JPEG because I wanted to be able to see this but I also wanted to be able to see that so I had to compromise and this is about the best exposure so let's go ahead and take a look at what I could do with this image though as a raw file my version of it this is my version of that exact same photo so the camera did this with the raw file I did this with the raw file and that's really the point that I want to drive home here because I had all the information I was able to lift these shadows up so that they looked more like what I saw when I was standing there I was able to bring these highlights down so again they looked more like what I saw when I was standing there when I was there that morning I could see all the information up here all the detail up here I had some nice warm light coming through behind these houses here this house here in this barn here and this is a much more faithful representation of the image then this one was but the problem is had I shot just straight JPEGs and no Raw's this is the one I would have been stuck with I would never have had the opportunity to do this one because this is what happens when I try to correct the JPEG to make it look like the raw file it doesn't look very good the raw file is the one that you want and it definitely gives you the best quality and again this is just one interpretation of the raw file the camera did this I did this and this took all five minutes by the way and that brings me to another point though one thing I hear all the time is that the reason people shoot JPEGs is because they want a faithful representation of the scene the problem is that's on how it works just look at picture profiles for example my z7 has 28 different picture profiles that can be used and applied to create a single JPEG output each one will give a different version of the same raw data this means no matter what your image is getting processed in my mind if you use JPEGs you're putting that post-processing into the hands of an engineer at a desk somewhere far far away that person has never seen you and they certainly don't know what you just photographed the problem is unless the people programming the JPEG processing algorithms are there when you snap the photo there is no way the camera can know the perfect way to process it and so far I've never caught a programmer with a notebook lurking in the bushes while I shoot so I don't think the way these images are processed is gonna change anytime soon so anyway in my opinion if the image is gonna get processed I think it's better to be processed by the person who actually captured it finally don't get me wrong there is still a place for JPEGs for example I personally use them for things like I don't know birthday parties pet photos family gatherings things of that nature where I don't really want to have to spend any time post-processing and the JPEG can handle the job it's not uncommon to see them used when the photographer needs to quickly post them maybe to get the images to press or social media or something like that with a magazine everyone has different needs and there's never a one-size-fits-all answer however I can tell you that for me personally for my serious work my wildlife and landscapes I always shoot raw and take the do-it-yourself approach to post-processing the truth is I very seldom shoot JPEG so that's about it if you're a Nikon or Sony shooter and want to learn how to set your camera for raw shooting stick around to the very end of this video again make sure you check out my ebook secrets to exposure and metering for nikon not only will it give you more info on the topics discussed in this video it will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about exposure and metering from how your meter works to metering modes to shooting in manual mode to how to use ISO and how it works and shutter speed and aperture and how that all works together we leave no stone unturned in this books 670 pages it even covers advanced topics like bit-depth ISO invariance and et TR check it out I think you'll like it also make sure you stop by the site and sign up for my free email newsletter so you never miss a blog post or video and of course you'd be my hero if you'd like subscribe and click that little notify bill thanks so much for watching and have a great day and if you want to learn how to set your nikon or sony for raw shooting stick around we're doing it right now okay before we begin I want to discuss Rob bit-depth however this is just gonna be kind of very basic general info and recommendations to get you started there's actually a lot more to this topic than I have time for here in fact it takes up like most of a chapter in my exposure and metering book the main difference though between 12 and 14 bit is the amount of dynamic range the file can hold a 14 bit file can hold roughly two stops more dynamic range that a 12 bit file can however it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between the two options in a normal photo where 14 bit can give you a potential advantage is if you're shooting lower ISOs and really really need to pull shadows like three four or five stops in that case it's possible you'll see a little better result in the shadows the deep shadows with a fourteen bit file instead of a 12 bit file on the other hand 12 bit files are smaller and take up less space on your memory cards a handy option if you're running out of space on those memory cards in the field in addition the smaller 12 bit files take longer to fill your camera's buffer in fact I often recommend shooting 12 bit for action if it seems like you're always bumping up against that buffer during longer bursts generally speaking on most cameras you lose roughly a stop of dynamic range for every stop of ISO over base ISO so again very generally speaking on most cameras if you're shooting over ISO 400 you can fit the useful dynamic range of the image into that 12 bit file space and will see no difference between 12 and 14 bit files personally I usually leave mine icons set to 14 bit however if I'm running out of card space or need a little extra room in the buffer I don't hesitate to switch to 12 bit and there's actually been entire trips I've shot completely at 12 bits since I was nearly always above ISO 400 on those trips Sony however doesn't give you a menu option to switch from 12 to 14 bit at least not that I'm able to find modern Sony's will shoot fourteen bit all the time unless you're doing like a long exposure with long exposure noise reduction and abled or if you're shooting in bulb mode or and this is the big one during continuous shooting when your file type is set to compressed under those three circumstances it will shoot 12 bits so if you do want to sort of force your sony to switch to 12 bit compressed raw in continuous mode is one way to do it anyhow that's the crash course let's take a look at setup okay so here we are on the back of an icon this happens to be a z7 but pretty much every Nikon looks a lot like this what you're gonna do is go to the photo shooting menu that's the one with a little camera here and what you want to find is the image quality option that's where we can set Raw on this camera it's about the fifth slot down but it might be in a different location depending on which camera and the age of the camera and things like that so look for something called image quality under the photo shooting menu give that a click with the OK button and what you want to do is have it set the way I have this set just to raw now there is the JPEG plus raw options up here but personally I don't see a lot of reason to do that because we can make JPEGs from our RAW files so in this case I'm just gonna go ahead and select any F raw and that's it we are now set for raw shooting however we do have some other options if we go down to where it says any F raw recording when you find that menu option hit the ok button and you'll find two options typically under there the first one is all about compression I have it on right now I have lossless compressed and truthfully that is really the only one I recommend compressed actually throws out data so we don't want to do that one and uncompressed is just making big files for no reason at all so lossless compressed is really the only thing you should be choosing here next we have the bit depth option here and right now I have it set to fourteen bit and we have twelve and fourteen bit options there again most of the time I start off at least at fourteen bit and then make my decision as to whether I want twelve or fourteen once I'm in the field so I'm gonna set that to fourteen bit and that's all there is to setting up an icon for raw shooting okay so you're looking at the back of my Sony a9 mark 2 and the first thing we want to do is go to that little camera option camera number one there and go down to file format and we're gonna select Raw from the file format menu here we can do raw and JPEG or JPEG but I recommend just using raw because you can always make JPEGs from your RAW files so let's go ahead and select that next we have the raw file type and we have some options for compressed or uncompressed that's pretty much it unfortunately unlike Nikon Sony does not have a lossless compressed option so we are going to discard some data with the compressed option now in practice I've played with this back and forth and I have not seen a significant difference between compressed and uncompressed yet but to be fair I have not shot the Sony nearly as long or as much as I've shot the Nikon so down the road I may change my tune about that however there are a few things to consider here the first one is that if you're shooting uncompressed you're gonna get those fourteen bit files if you switch to compressed and you're in continuous shooting mode you'll get those 12 bit files so depending on what you need you may have to consider those options as you're debating whether you want compressed or uncompressed so if you wanted to save some space in your buffer or in your memory cards maybe you want to try and compressed so that you can fit a little bit more information into both of those places but you know obviously up to you whichever one you decide my default with this is just to leave it uncompressed and then if I need a higher framerate in my in the case of my Sony 89 mark 2 I'm limited to about I believe 12 frames per second if I'm an uncompressed raw but if I go to compressed raw I can get that 20 frames a second so it all depends on what I need so I switch these around quite a bit but my usual start position for this is uncompressed I can always pop back in here and change it if I want to so that finally wraps us up thank you so much for watching have a great day you

Channel: Steve Perry

Views: 34,850

Keywords: photography tips, photography help, Backcountry Gallery, Steve Perry, nature photography, RAW or Jpeg, RAW vs Jpeg, RAW and Jpeg comparison, RAW better than Jpeg, Jpeg better than RAW, RAW images, Jpeg Images, Shoot RAW or Jpeg, Explain RAW, RAW Jpeg difference

Id: -_z9MZPlKvM

Length: 25min 48sec (1548 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020