Tennessee Photography by Bradley Proctor

This is a controversial topic that comes up often on photography forums. While most will agree that RAW is the way to go, there are still those that hang on to the notion that JPEG is better. While shooting in JPEG has it’s useful purposes, I believe RAW is the best way to get the most out of your photos. My goal in this article is to explain the advantages of shooting in RAW.

• When shooting a picture from a digital camera, the data coming from the sensor is 12 bits (or 14 bits on some newer DSLRs). When the camera is set to JPEG, all decision and processing of the image are made by the camera in a split second and the image is reduce to 8 bits. Then the image is saved as a JPEG, which is a lossy format, where image data is compressed and further degraded.
• When a RAW format image is processed, it is done with a computer which is much more powerful than the camera processor and spends much more time analyzing the data to create the image. The 12 bit (or 14 bit) image data is then transformed by the RAW converting to 16 bit data which is more resilient to color changes. With 8 bits, there are 256 different brightness levels per channel. At 12 bits, the camera can capture 4096 different brightness levels.
• The camera makes a JPEG image by using the white balance setting to figure out how to process the image data, where as with RAW, the white balance setting does not effect the image data. This means that with RAW, the white balance can be adjusted in the RAW converter after the image has been taken. Fine tuning of the image becomes possible, whereas with JPEG, adjustments do not come easily.

With the advance of RAW converters such as Adobe Lightroom, there is little reason to be shooting in JPEG anymore. Processing RAW images now days takes little time and effort, and storage is cheap. But don’t take my word for it, try it out, shoot some RAW images, shoot some JPEG images, compare the processing capabilities of each. Compare the quality, the ability of each to retain detail in the highlights.