Shoot RAW, not JPEG

So, you’ve spend your precious savings on a - at least $600 (but probably $1000) - DSLR camera. You have more buttons, dials, and menus than you know what to do with, even after reading through this big fat booklet that came with it and explains its usage in ten different languages. But you still shoot in Jpeg, because... You didn't know there was an alternative?

You did all you can do to understand ISO, shutter speed (eg read my blogpost), and how less is more when it comes to aperture. Your million-dollar-camera can produce files in a (big-ass) Raw format, whatever that means, but it also has the nice comfortable JPEG format that we all know and love.

Shoot RAW, man!

“A RAW file is lossless, meaning it captures uncompressed data from your camera sensor.”

Most professional photographers shoot in RAW because it gives them more information to work with in the post-processing phase. A RAW file is lossless, meaning it captures uncompressed data from your camera sensor. Sometimes referred to as a digital negative, you can think of a RAW file as the raw ingredients of a photo that will need to be processed in order to bring out the picture’s full potential. This negative will have to be processed with software on your computer, your digital darkroom.

Because no data in the picture is lost, you can adjust almost anything in eg Photoshop, without loosing quality. The tradeoff for these detailed files is that RAW files are quite a bit larger than JPEG files. But hey, you didn't spend a million dollar on a high tech camera to loose all data each and every time, did you?

JPEG's are compressed versions of RAW's

Unlike RAW images, JPEG images are compressed versions of RAW files. In addition to this (efficient) compression capabilities, JPEGs are popular because the camera does a lot of processing work for you, so your photos look more finished straight off the camera. You can use them straight away, put them on Insta, add them to a Word document, etc. But all the extra information in RAW files is what gives the latitude to tweak the white balance and exposure, for example, to a much larger degree than with a JPEG.

Decide or use both

“RAW files give you more information to work with, but you have to put more time into that work.”

RAW files give you more information to work with, but you have to put more time into that work. If speed is of the essence, or you want a point-and-shoot experience that yields photos ready to use out of the box, JPEGs might actually be a better option than RAWs.

Visit my Photoshop blog to get your digital darkroom started!

Thanks to Adobe!