Posted by Jim Bullard on November 28, 2009 at 12:42 PM
Your test was flawed but not because of the printer. Since you started with a JPG and converted that to the TIFF for your test, any data that was going to be lost, already was lost. You can't recover data lost in JPG compression by converting the JPG to a non-compressed format. When it's gone, it's gone. Essentially both files were JPG compressed. The TIFF version was just that, a TIFF version of a JPG image.
To really see the difference you'd have to shoot two images, one RAW and the other using in-camera JPG. If you were shooting under conditions that all fell within gamut and used the lowest JPG compression ratio it might still be hard to see. It is when conditions exceed the limits of a 256 tone scale that RAW originals are a large advantage because it has the data with which to recover out of gamut detail. Actually there's MUCH more to it but that's the short version. If your shooting all falls within the limits that JPG can handle and you are happy with your results, more power to you but trust me, there is a difference.
P.S. Upsizing has nothing to do with whether your original is RAW or JPG or whatever. resizing only has to do with the number of pixels in the original vs the upsized file. A 10MP file upsized to 20MP is a 200% upsize no matter what file format you use. As a test of one file format vs another upsizing is irrelevant.
Posted by Mike Moats on November 28, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Hey Jim,
Why is the tiff file saving at 130mgs and in jpeg file saving only at 21 meg?. What is in the tiff thats not in the jpeg file, as my test shows opening and closing the jpeg up to five times made no difference in the print so why would I want to save as a tiff and suck up harddrive.
Posted by David Taylor on November 28, 2009 at 1:26 PM
One suggestion I might make (in addition to my post on your blog) is to shoot in RAW then convert them to JPEGs and save those. Since you are already NOT shooting in RAW, discarding the original RAW file probably won't bother you. You'll get higher capture quality and still be able to save your mastered file as a JPEG. I do agree with Jim's assessment (as I stated on your blog) that the test itself is flawed - simply because you put the same data in a larger box by saving a jpeg into a tiff file. The reason why the file size is larger (I believe) is because the tiff algorithm re-analyzes the file data before it saves and then does so without compression. That's why you are seeing a huge ballooning in the file size, it's just inherent in PSD & tiff files (or any other non-compressed formats) - there are no compression algorithms being used, so you are going to get larger files. Hope this helps. Again, I'm definitely NOT saying that you are wrong - your results in sales speak for themselves/it's obviously working for you - just that the test was inherently flawed.
Posted by Mike Moats on November 28, 2009 at 1:48 PM
Thanks guys,
I not trying to tell people that they shouldn't shoot RAW, but I hear it from people questioning me when I tell them I shoot jpegs. I ask them, do you think my images look bad or need the help of a RAW file. The answer is always no, so why would I want or need to shoot RAW and go through the extra processing and eat up file space.
I know people will say well the landscape and wildlife photographers have more issues with high dynamic range, but so did the film guys before they had photoshop and cameras that didn't work as well as digital cameras on high dynamic range, and somehow they came away with excellent images.
I not trying to give anyone a hard time on this issue, just wondering if someone can see any issue with my images and how they would benefit from shooting RAW, and if not why am I able to produce a good quailty image using jpegs and everyone else has to shoot RAW.
Based on my success with jpegs in my macro images, I beleive that a landscape or wildlife photograher can produce a good quality sellable print with a properly shot image using jpegs.
I also beleive when digital first came out the jpegs sucked, but with the advancements in digital cameras, you can get a good quailty images shooting jpegs.
A couple of points regarding your article on JPEG vs. Raw. First of all, you dont know what youre missing when you say you prefer JPEGs over Raw until you shoot a Raw file to compare it. Shooting a Tif is not the same as shooting Raw. Shooting Tifs may be slightly better than shooting JPEGs in terms of quality but, in my opinion, not worth the extra file space they consume. As you correctly stated JPEGs sometimes throw up to 80–90% of information away. Thats because they are composed of blocks of artifacted pixels instead of individual pixels. These artifacts are indeed visible on large prints but you wont see them in a complex landscape area. You have to look in smooth, solid areas such as a blue sky for example. JPEGs are also usually shot in the sRGB color space, good for web use but a smaller space than Adobe RGB which yields more vibrant colors for inkjet printing. Here again you wont see much difference if your color palette has a narrow gamut and you are not exploiting all the colors.
JPEGs look pretty good coming out of the gate because Levels, Saturation, and Sharpening are automatically applied to make the consumer and the camera manufacturer look good. And this sells cameras and promotes the use of photography. What’s wrong with that? Well, besides information being thrown away, and a smaller color space given, Levels and Saturation are applied directly to the background, permanently and undoable. Sharpening is supposed to occur as the last step inside of Photoshop or Elements, not the camera. Also, a subject that hasnt been mentioned, Bit depth, is given to you as 8-bit only, there is no option in JPEG for 16-bit thus throwing away millions of more colors and tones. But once again, you wont profit from 16-bit files if you only have a limited color palette and not many smooth areas where banding and posterization would show.
None of these things done to JPEGs are done to Raw files. Raw is a fully uncompressed file, the largest possible by your camera. They are in 16-bit depth, the larger adobe RGB color space, nothing is thrown away and nothing is done to it. Raw has the potential to be much better than a JPEG, but it is relying on you to supply the input in post processing. Raw has great exposure latitude, as in insurance, so it can recover from two stops overexposure to two stops underexposure. This feature is so good there’s almost no need to bracket your shots in the camera. However, bracketing is a good idea for HDR and Raw is essential for processing in HDR. And also, the ability to correct white balance in Raw is also critical as you know if you have ever had to color correct a JPEG.
In short, JPEGs are like fast food– fast, convenient, tastes pretty good. A good product if you like to settle for good enough. Raw files on the other hand are like raw food that you have to prepare-- They are slower, take more work, but end up tasting better--if you are a connoisseur. And its a better product for you in terms of quality and details if you are a perfectionist in your work. The bottom line that I teach my Photoshop students is to capture in RAW whenever that makes sense, and fall back to JPEG if your particular needs cannot be met with RAW, for example, when speed and volume are more important than optimal image quality. Incidentally, in general, the generational loss to making copies of JPEGs in terms of increased degradation and artifacts are very small but exist nonetheless--you would have to perform dozens of copies to see the difference. The point is that with Tifs the issue of degradation and artifacts would never be the case. The more important issues are the other areas I have mentioned and the ethic of artistic integrity. Thanks, I enjoy your work. I think its great, but if you shot in Raw and processed it expertly in Photoshop, I have no doubt it would be greater by a difference that would be very noticeable.
Rich G
Posted by Mike Moats on November 28, 2009 at 3:27 PM
Thanks for comment Richard,
I can’t debate all the stats and mathematical differneces in the jpeg/raw files, I’m only interested if the print is of the quality I need to sell prints, sell to magazines, attract sponsors and win contest, that I make my living from. I’ve acomplished all that so why the need for larger files, slower processing, if I’m getting the job done using jpegs.
I’m selling thousands of prints a year, having images pubished in major magaznes, winning awards, art consultant buy my prints for their design projects, and never a mention of quailty issues. How could I tell someone that they should be shooting RAW, when most are just shooting for fun.
I know you have all the stats that say your right, but people buying my prints don’t know about stats and don't have the sophistaction to see the differences in the quailty your talking about.
Now if you have to do it to please yourself that’s fine, But my opinion is the jpeg will produce good enough quailty to make a living as I do.
If I thought for one minute that my sales would increase from shooting RAW I would make a change, but the quaility would not be drastic enough to increase sales to the point to make the change.
Thanks for commenting.
Thanks Richard
Posted by Brad Mangas on November 28, 2009 at 8:42 PM
Interesting and well done post Mike. I'm sure the debate can go on and on. But as you rightfully pointed out, if you are getting what you want in the end, that's what really matters.
Posted by Dan Borzynski on November 28, 2009 at 8:44 PM
I am going to both agree and disagree with your position on jpegs vs raw.
From what I have seen of your work, both here and on your website, there is a common thread through all of the images. You are shooting in lighting conditions, whether occurring naturally or being created through diffusers, flash, reflectors, etc., that the old Velvia 50 film would have thrived in. Anything more than about 4 stops of contrast meant blown highlights or black shadows. Under those same lighting conditions, current digital sensors have a lot more latitude and you shooting to their strong points. Jpegs, combined with your photographic and artistic skills, make a lot of sense here. I can't argue with that because I think you are right.
But here is where I disagree. Under more extreme or less controlled lighting conditions, where the dynamic range of the scene is pushing the limits of the sensor, or under mixed lighting conditions such as you would get shooting indoors, when you know going in that the image will be heavily worked in PS, or in the hands of someone far less skilled, raw is really the best file format. You have a lot more latitude for mistakes, extreme values, image manipulation or incompetence. For *most* people, under the widest range of conditions, raw is probably the best blanket choice.
MIke, you actually know what you are doing. You are *not* most people. There is no reason for you to change and I don't for an instant think you are making a mistake by shooting jpegs. My hesitation in saying "great article" is that there is a wide range of conditions where raw is a more appropriate file choice, especially when you factor in the skills of the camera operator.
Posted by Mike Moats on November 28, 2009 at 9:33 PM
Hey Brad, you're right that the personal opinions could go on forever as what works for one doesn't also work for another. Thanks.
Hey Dan, I totally agree that for the landscape or wildlife photographer they have to deal with way more high dynamic range then I do, but the film shooters had to deal with it as well and they were able to produce great images without having photoshop to correct the problems with high dynamic range. My thought is that if you shoot an image just as they did in the film days, then you wouldn't have a need for the raw to make all the these corrections.
I agree with Richard that for landscape photographers you can have a problem with skys and solid color areas as the jpeg will produce some artifacts, I deal with that also as macro shooters produce solid colored backgrounds all the time in flower and bug shots. Noise filters have help me with that problem, but I've gotten good results in some of the solid background without the use of noise filters, so it doesn't always happen.
Bill Fortney who is an excellent professinal photographer that works for Nikon, worked as a photographer for the Washginton Redskins football team and as a nature photographer is in the top ten photographers in book sales, told me that his last book "500 feet above America" was shot with jpegs and it is mostly landscapes. If you get a chance to see the book, I think you'll agree the his jpegs look pretty darn good.
Thanks Brad and Dan.
Posted by Dan Borzynski on November 28, 2009 at 10:45 PM
"My thought is that if you shoot an image just as they did in the film days, then you wouldn't have a need for the raw to make all the these corrections"
Exactly right.
When I first started shooting seriously, it was pretty much Velvia 50 for nature photography, and that was only what I shot. Being able to shoot that film and get good results taught you a lot about exposure and if you mastered that film, you were set.
"they were able to produce great images without having photoshop to correct the problems with high dynamic range"
(warning: we may be coming at this from two slightly different directions!)
I think this is still true - it really comes down to understanding the limitations of the recording media. Slide film made it pretty obvious there was a problem. With digital, there is a lot more opportunity to correct mistakes and I think this is done more often that we'd like to admit. I know I am occasionally guilty of this myself. Usually I come to my senses halfway into an image and just hit delete, but not always
I'm not sure, though, if this is any more or less true than it was ten years ago before digital took over. What we have today is the ability to let the world see our work for very little effort on our part. The internet is just as accessible to a raw beginner and to a seasoned professional. We get to see the best and the worst and unfortunately, images that are not top tier vastly outnumber those that are. The result, I think, is that we tend to think people just aren't willing to spend the time to learn the craft. It is a misguided perception driven more by numbers rather than reality. I don't think the drive to master the fundamentals has changed, only that we get to see a lot more of the intermediate steps on the way to doing so.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. We wind up with sites like this one, where we can watch photographers improve the quality of their work, sometimes very quickly. We also get access to people like the moderators here, who will gladly share their expertise.
I think we both agree on one fundamental point: it is far better to spend the time to get it right in camera rather than to spend the time in Photoshop to make it less wrong.
I'll just add a caution that when you're shooting for hire, you have to shoot what the client wants. Landscape and nature shooting in general for your own prints gives you the freedom to shoot RAW and process at your convenience. But when a client is standing by, you're doing good to get images sorted, much less processed by delivery time. In our professional shoots I use RAW any time the lighting or color is tough, but it's truly a last resort. We haven't had a client yet that wanted RAW files. About 80% want jpegs and the remainder want tiffs. Heck, even our lab wants jpegs from our studio for printing portraits.
If you have visions of someday shooting for someone other than yourself, it behooves you to learn how to get by without RAW. Sometimes you might have time to do all that image processing before making a submission deadline. But often you're "sale" is happening right out of the camera. The clients will tell you what they want and when they want it. But it's not going to be RAW, and it's probably not going to be on a timeline that allows you to process the images after shooting. Get it right in jpeg or tiff, or negotiate for longer submission deadlines if you don't know how to do that.
Posted by Mike Moats on November 29, 2009 at 7:15 AM
Hey Dan,
thank you I just want someone to admit that if they can shoot a landscape scene properly in the field the jpegs should work out fine just as it does for me in macro. I invite anyone to stop at one of the twenty five art shows I do each year and look at my 24X36 prints and see if my images lack any pixels in color, sharpness, tones. I couldn't care less if everyone wants to shoot RAW and take the extra time it takes to process and eat up CF cards and harddrives, I just get tired of every telling me I'm doing it all wrong, when in fact the only people that seem to think I.m crazy shooting jpegs are photographers, I don't hear my art show customers complaining, I don't hear magazine editors, art consultants, sponsors, gallery owners having a problem with my jpegs.
Hey Hank
Excellent point and you're right most of the photographers I know that shoot weddings, portraits, editoral stuff mainly shoot jpegs, and they all priduce good quality images. I told a marketing manager at Fujifilm that I was shooting jpegs and he said he wasn't suprised as most of the pros they worked with were also shooting jpegs, of couse the fuji cameras were geared more toward the commercial shooters.
Posted by Mike Moats on November 29, 2009 at 7:37 AM
This really all started from a talk I had with a photogrpaher friend telling me I should be printing and processing with the tiff files rather then the jpegs. So I did my testing which as Richard and Dave pointed out is flawed as I started with the compressed jpeg. I'm still scatching my head on how the Tiff blew up by over hundred megs from the jpeg, and Dave explained it, but still thinking about that. When I get time I will go back and shoot with a raw file and then save as jpeg and tiff and see if there is any difference in the print.
The other point my photographer friend said was he felt I should be saving as tiff because of opening an image and resaving would not degrade the image. Where as everyone has been told that by opening a jpeg and then resaving you degrade the image, which my test showed after five times processing and resaving didn't effect the image at all, and Richard points out degrading does exist, but it may take dozens of times to see any serious degrading.
So you may hear back with more testing.
Thanks to all for comments.
Posted by Bill Brennan on November 29, 2009 at 8:26 AM
Thanks Mike for starting and all others for adding to an interesting and educational discussion of RAW vs JPEG. I like RAW images as I like to edit the keepers in PS. I hope that some day you will give RAW a chance to become part of your workflow so that you can fully appreciate its value.
Bill Brennan
Posted by Mike Moats on November 29, 2009 at 8:52 AM
Hey Bill,
I understand the value that raw offers, I just don't have the time or the desire to spend money on hardrives when the system I use is faster and effective for my purposes. I now work seven days a week with marketing, making prints, working with art consultants, working with sponsors, applying and working 25 art shows and 25 workshops a year, running online workshops, moderating on three photography websites, writing books and e-books, looking at doing a video this year, all the accounting, ordering materials, and trying to find time in all this to go out and shoot, somethings got to give, and it can't be the time running the business side because thats what makes the money.
" I now work seven days a week with marketing, making prints, working with art consultants, working with sponsors, applying and working 25 art shows and 25 workshops a year, running online workshops, moderating on three photography websites, writing books and e-books, looking at doing a video this year, all the accounting, ordering materials, and trying to find time in all this to go out and shoot, somethings got to give, and it can't be the time running the business side because thats what makes the money. "
And that's the difference between a business and a hobby. As my wife sezz, a photography business is 95% business and 5% photography, and if people put 5% as much effort into their business that they put into their photography, they would make 95% more money.
Posted by Jim Bullard on November 29, 2009 at 11:23 AM
Mike,
The reason a JPG file is so much smaller is because it is compressed. Every time you save a JPG file it tosses some data which it tries to reconstruct from an algorithm when you reopen that file. The reconstruction is an approximation of what the lost data would have been. The higher the compression ratio that you use the more data is tossed upon saving and the more data that the image browser/editor has to guess at when it reopens the file.
What JPG does is compare pixels across a span and if the difference is below a certain threshold, it drops the in between ones. Think clear blue skies for example with very little change in tone/hue. A JPG can drop a lot of those pixels and simply approximate the tone/hue of the in between pixels when reopening the file. You may have never noticed, but your JPG files are all different sizes. The reason is that highly detailed images can't be compressed (at a given compression ratio) as much as those images that have large areas of one tone/hue. If it did, you'd lose vast amounts of detail since no algorithm can reconstruct lost detail, only areas of little change.
The higher the compression ratio, the greater the data that is dumped and the bigger the approximation the browser/editor has to do to reconstruct the missing bits of data (dropped pixels). JPGs real weakness as an original file is that the image you see in your editor is already an approximation of the original since the camera software dumped part of the RAW camera data when writing the file to your memory card. That is fine if you don't have any clipped highlights or shadows and the compression ration was modest. The amount of detail lost is probably not noticeable to the average person but... if you do any editing you lose more. The definition of editing is to remove. You cannot put in what wasn't there. The other problem is that when you save the edited version (even if you 'save as' to a new JPG file) you are recompressing an already compressed file that you have removed data from (in the editing) between the two compressions. Do that several times and you will see a distinct difference. It is analogous to photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy, etc. After you do that too many times the image starts to fall apart.
Time seems to be the issue here. How many of you routinely go out and shoot 200 images or more several days a week (that's 600-800 images)? And then have to process ALL the images (throwing away only the few that were not stellar for one reason or another)? Add all meta data? And then have to save the originals, save the edits, then resize and downsize filesizes for internet, or mailings, etc. And then have to print a portion of the images?
Now how many start that much work in RAW? I see how that might work if the 200 shots were similiar enough to do one image and apply the edits to all the other images...otherwise you have a lot of work time.
Seems like many RAW shooters are looking for maybe a few out of those 200 images that they want to use. If so, then the extra RAW processing time works for them and they get a wonderful image.
I just can't see processing 600-800 images a week in RAW and having time to do anything else.
Discussion
21 repliesJpeg or Raw - Jpeg or Tiffs
To really see the difference you'd have to shoot two images, one RAW and the other using in-camera JPG. If you were shooting under conditions that all fell within gamut and used the lowest JPG compression ratio it might still be hard to see. It is when conditions exceed the limits of a 256 tone scale that RAW originals are a large advantage because it has the data with which to recover out of gamut detail. Actually there's MUCH more to it but that's the short version. If your shooting all falls within the limits that JPG can handle and you are happy with your results, more power to you but trust me, there is a difference.
P.S. Upsizing has nothing to do with whether your original is RAW or JPG or whatever. resizing only has to do with the number of pixels in the original vs the upsized file. A 10MP file upsized to 20MP is a 200% upsize no matter what file format you use. As a test of one file format vs another upsizing is irrelevant.
Why is the tiff file saving at 130mgs and in jpeg file saving only at 21 meg?. What is in the tiff thats not in the jpeg file, as my test shows opening and closing the jpeg up to five times made no difference in the print so why would I want to save as a tiff and suck up harddrive.
I not trying to tell people that they shouldn't shoot RAW, but I hear it from people questioning me when I tell them I shoot jpegs. I ask them, do you think my images look bad or need the help of a RAW file. The answer is always no, so why would I want or need to shoot RAW and go through the extra processing and eat up file space.
I know people will say well the landscape and wildlife photographers have more issues with high dynamic range, but so did the film guys before they had photoshop and cameras that didn't work as well as digital cameras on high dynamic range, and somehow they came away with excellent images.
I not trying to give anyone a hard time on this issue, just wondering if someone can see any issue with my images and how they would benefit from shooting RAW, and if not why am I able to produce a good quailty image using jpegs and everyone else has to shoot RAW.
Based on my success with jpegs in my macro images, I beleive that a landscape or wildlife photograher can produce a good quality sellable print with a properly shot image using jpegs.
I also beleive when digital first came out the jpegs sucked, but with the advancements in digital cameras, you can get a good quailty images shooting jpegs.
.
JPEGs look pretty good coming out of the gate because Levels, Saturation, and Sharpening are automatically applied to make the consumer and the camera manufacturer look good. And this sells cameras and promotes the use of photography. What’s wrong with that? Well, besides information being thrown away, and a smaller color space given, Levels and Saturation are applied directly to the background, permanently and undoable. Sharpening is supposed to occur as the last step inside of Photoshop or Elements, not the camera. Also, a subject that hasnt been mentioned, Bit depth, is given to you as 8-bit only, there is no option in JPEG for 16-bit thus throwing away millions of more colors and tones. But once again, you wont profit from 16-bit files if you only have a limited color palette and not many smooth areas where banding and posterization would show.
None of these things done to JPEGs are done to Raw files. Raw is a fully uncompressed file, the largest possible by your camera. They are in 16-bit depth, the larger adobe RGB color space, nothing is thrown away and nothing is done to it. Raw has the potential to be much better than a JPEG, but it is relying on you to supply the input in post processing. Raw has great exposure latitude, as in insurance, so it can recover from two stops overexposure to two stops underexposure. This feature is so good there’s almost no need to bracket your shots in the camera. However, bracketing is a good idea for HDR and Raw is essential for processing in HDR. And also, the ability to correct white balance in Raw is also critical as you know if you have ever had to color correct a JPEG.
In short, JPEGs are like fast food– fast, convenient, tastes pretty good. A good product if you like to settle for good enough. Raw files on the other hand are like raw food that you have to prepare-- They are slower, take more work, but end up tasting better--if you are a connoisseur. And its a better product for you in terms of quality and details if you are a perfectionist in your work. The bottom line that I teach my Photoshop students is to capture in RAW whenever that makes sense, and fall back to JPEG if your particular needs cannot be met with RAW, for example, when speed and volume are more important than optimal image quality. Incidentally, in general, the generational loss to making copies of JPEGs in terms of increased degradation and artifacts are very small but exist nonetheless--you would have to perform dozens of copies to see the difference. The point is that with Tifs the issue of degradation and artifacts would never be the case. The more important issues are the other areas I have mentioned and the ethic of artistic integrity. Thanks, I enjoy your work. I think its great, but if you shot in Raw and processed it expertly in Photoshop, I have no doubt it would be greater by a difference that would be very noticeable.
Rich G
I can’t debate all the stats and mathematical differneces in the jpeg/raw files, I’m only interested if the print is of the quality I need to sell prints, sell to magazines, attract sponsors and win contest, that I make my living from. I’ve acomplished all that so why the need for larger files, slower processing, if I’m getting the job done using jpegs.
I’m selling thousands of prints a year, having images pubished in major magaznes, winning awards, art consultant buy my prints for their design projects, and never a mention of quailty issues. How could I tell someone that they should be shooting RAW, when most are just shooting for fun.
I know you have all the stats that say your right, but people buying my prints don’t know about stats and don't have the sophistaction to see the differences in the quailty your talking about.
Now if you have to do it to please yourself that’s fine, But my opinion is the jpeg will produce good enough quailty to make a living as I do.
If I thought for one minute that my sales would increase from shooting RAW I would make a change, but the quaility would not be drastic enough to increase sales to the point to make the change.
Thanks for commenting.
Thanks Richard
From what I have seen of your work, both here and on your website, there is a common thread through all of the images. You are shooting in lighting conditions, whether occurring naturally or being created through diffusers, flash, reflectors, etc., that the old Velvia 50 film would have thrived in. Anything more than about 4 stops of contrast meant blown highlights or black shadows. Under those same lighting conditions, current digital sensors have a lot more latitude and you shooting to their strong points. Jpegs, combined with your photographic and artistic skills, make a lot of sense here. I can't argue with that because I think you are right.
But here is where I disagree. Under more extreme or less controlled lighting conditions, where the dynamic range of the scene is pushing the limits of the sensor, or under mixed lighting conditions such as you would get shooting indoors, when you know going in that the image will be heavily worked in PS, or in the hands of someone far less skilled, raw is really the best file format. You have a lot more latitude for mistakes, extreme values, image manipulation or incompetence. For *most* people, under the widest range of conditions, raw is probably the best blanket choice.
MIke, you actually know what you are doing. You are *not* most people. There is no reason for you to change and I don't for an instant think you are making a mistake by shooting jpegs. My hesitation in saying "great article" is that there is a wide range of conditions where raw is a more appropriate file choice, especially when you factor in the skills of the camera operator.
Hey Dan, I totally agree that for the landscape or wildlife photographer they have to deal with way more high dynamic range then I do, but the film shooters had to deal with it as well and they were able to produce great images without having photoshop to correct the problems with high dynamic range. My thought is that if you shoot an image just as they did in the film days, then you wouldn't have a need for the raw to make all the these corrections.
I agree with Richard that for landscape photographers you can have a problem with skys and solid color areas as the jpeg will produce some artifacts, I deal with that also as macro shooters produce solid colored backgrounds all the time in flower and bug shots. Noise filters have help me with that problem, but I've gotten good results in some of the solid background without the use of noise filters, so it doesn't always happen.
Bill Fortney who is an excellent professinal photographer that works for Nikon, worked as a photographer for the Washginton Redskins football team and as a nature photographer is in the top ten photographers in book sales, told me that his last book "500 feet above America" was shot with jpegs and it is mostly landscapes. If you get a chance to see the book, I think you'll agree the his jpegs look pretty darn good.
Thanks Brad and Dan.
Exactly right.
When I first started shooting seriously, it was pretty much Velvia 50 for nature photography, and that was only what I shot. Being able to shoot that film and get good results taught you a lot about exposure and if you mastered that film, you were set.
"they were able to produce great images without having photoshop to correct the problems with high dynamic range"
(warning: we may be coming at this from two slightly different directions!)
I think this is still true - it really comes down to understanding the limitations of the recording media. Slide film made it pretty obvious there was a problem. With digital, there is a lot more opportunity to correct mistakes and I think this is done more often that we'd like to admit. I know I am occasionally guilty of this myself. Usually I come to my senses halfway into an image and just hit delete, but not always
I'm not sure, though, if this is any more or less true than it was ten years ago before digital took over. What we have today is the ability to let the world see our work for very little effort on our part. The internet is just as accessible to a raw beginner and to a seasoned professional. We get to see the best and the worst and unfortunately, images that are not top tier vastly outnumber those that are. The result, I think, is that we tend to think people just aren't willing to spend the time to learn the craft. It is a misguided perception driven more by numbers rather than reality. I don't think the drive to master the fundamentals has changed, only that we get to see a lot more of the intermediate steps on the way to doing so.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. We wind up with sites like this one, where we can watch photographers improve the quality of their work, sometimes very quickly. We also get access to people like the moderators here, who will gladly share their expertise.
I think we both agree on one fundamental point: it is far better to spend the time to get it right in camera rather than to spend the time in Photoshop to make it less wrong.
If you have visions of someday shooting for someone other than yourself, it behooves you to learn how to get by without RAW. Sometimes you might have time to do all that image processing before making a submission deadline. But often you're "sale" is happening right out of the camera. The clients will tell you what they want and when they want it. But it's not going to be RAW, and it's probably not going to be on a timeline that allows you to process the images after shooting. Get it right in jpeg or tiff, or negotiate for longer submission deadlines if you don't know how to do that.
thank you I just want someone to admit that if they can shoot a landscape scene properly in the field the jpegs should work out fine just as it does for me in macro. I invite anyone to stop at one of the twenty five art shows I do each year and look at my 24X36 prints and see if my images lack any pixels in color, sharpness, tones. I couldn't care less if everyone wants to shoot RAW and take the extra time it takes to process and eat up CF cards and harddrives, I just get tired of every telling me I'm doing it all wrong, when in fact the only people that seem to think I.m crazy shooting jpegs are photographers, I don't hear my art show customers complaining, I don't hear magazine editors, art consultants, sponsors, gallery owners having a problem with my jpegs.
Hey Hank
Excellent point and you're right most of the photographers I know that shoot weddings, portraits, editoral stuff mainly shoot jpegs, and they all priduce good quality images. I told a marketing manager at Fujifilm that I was shooting jpegs and he said he wasn't suprised as most of the pros they worked with were also shooting jpegs, of couse the fuji cameras were geared more toward the commercial shooters.
The other point my photographer friend said was he felt I should be saving as tiff because of opening an image and resaving would not degrade the image. Where as everyone has been told that by opening a jpeg and then resaving you degrade the image, which my test showed after five times processing and resaving didn't effect the image at all, and Richard points out degrading does exist, but it may take dozens of times to see any serious degrading.
So you may hear back with more testing.
Thanks to all for comments.
Bill Brennan
I understand the value that raw offers, I just don't have the time or the desire to spend money on hardrives when the system I use is faster and effective for my purposes. I now work seven days a week with marketing, making prints, working with art consultants, working with sponsors, applying and working 25 art shows and 25 workshops a year, running online workshops, moderating on three photography websites, writing books and e-books, looking at doing a video this year, all the accounting, ordering materials, and trying to find time in all this to go out and shoot, somethings got to give, and it can't be the time running the business side because thats what makes the money.
Thanks for your comment Bill.
And that's the difference between a business and a hobby. As my wife sezz, a photography business is 95% business and 5% photography, and if people put 5% as much effort into their business that they put into their photography, they would make 95% more money.
The reason a JPG file is so much smaller is because it is compressed. Every time you save a JPG file it tosses some data which it tries to reconstruct from an algorithm when you reopen that file. The reconstruction is an approximation of what the lost data would have been. The higher the compression ratio that you use the more data is tossed upon saving and the more data that the image browser/editor has to guess at when it reopens the file.
What JPG does is compare pixels across a span and if the difference is below a certain threshold, it drops the in between ones. Think clear blue skies for example with very little change in tone/hue. A JPG can drop a lot of those pixels and simply approximate the tone/hue of the in between pixels when reopening the file. You may have never noticed, but your JPG files are all different sizes. The reason is that highly detailed images can't be compressed (at a given compression ratio) as much as those images that have large areas of one tone/hue. If it did, you'd lose vast amounts of detail since no algorithm can reconstruct lost detail, only areas of little change.
The higher the compression ratio, the greater the data that is dumped and the bigger the approximation the browser/editor has to do to reconstruct the missing bits of data (dropped pixels). JPGs real weakness as an original file is that the image you see in your editor is already an approximation of the original since the camera software dumped part of the RAW camera data when writing the file to your memory card. That is fine if you don't have any clipped highlights or shadows and the compression ration was modest. The amount of detail lost is probably not noticeable to the average person but... if you do any editing you lose more. The definition of editing is to remove. You cannot put in what wasn't there. The other problem is that when you save the edited version (even if you 'save as' to a new JPG file) you are recompressing an already compressed file that you have removed data from (in the editing) between the two compressions. Do that several times and you will see a distinct difference. It is analogous to photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy, etc. After you do that too many times the image starts to fall apart.
I hope that helps.
fantastic quality = raw
Aint no solution to the conundrum. Clients want jpegs cuzz they're idiots.
Now how many start that much work in RAW? I see how that might work if the 200 shots were similiar enough to do one image and apply the edits to all the other images...otherwise you have a lot of work time.
Seems like many RAW shooters are looking for maybe a few out of those 200 images that they want to use. If so, then the extra RAW processing time works for them and they get a wonderful image.
I just can't see processing 600-800 images a week in RAW and having time to do anything else.
I am sure there are exceptions.
IMHO, Troup