What is RAW format in digital photography? What are the advantages and disadvantages of RAW versus JPEG and why? Should you shoot in RAW or JPEG? Will shooting in RAW complicate your post-production and workflow? These are some of the most common questions that people ask after they buy their first DSLR camera and go through the camera options. Having a thorough understanding of advantages and disadvantages is essential for photographers to make the right decision on whether to use RAW format for their work.
Sand Dunes - Shot in RAW
I remember my first time going through the camera options and reading the Nikon D80 manual, wondering about what RAW does and why I should consider using it. JPEG is a no-brainer – it’s the default image format that is used in most point and shoot cameras and we all got used to it and know it very well, seeing and sharing JPEG images online and downloading/uploading them from and to our mobile devices. But there was something about RAW that I wanted to find out about immediately. Maybe it was the word “raw” that sounded intriguing, maybe it was the immediate desire to get the sharpest, highest quality and best pictures ever without knowing much about the camera…whatever it was, I went ahead and changed my camera settings to RAW and tried to take a picture. The first thing I noticed, was how small all of a sudden my memory card became. Wait a second! How come the number of pictures went down from over 700 to under 200? The image looked exactly the same on the LCD and yet it consumed more than three times more memory? Bummer. Then, I took the memory card and inserted it into my laptop. To my surprise, I couldn’t even open the darn thing! Worthless, I thought and changed my camera settings back to JPEG.
Sounds familiar? If you are in a similar situation, do not make the mistake of abandoning RAW as I once did and read on. You truly need to understand all advantages and disadvantages of both formats before making the decision, because you might be sorry that you didn’t later.
1) What is RAW?
RAW images, also known as “digital negatives” are virtually unprocessed files coming directly from the camera sensor. They are truly “raw”, just like your food ingredients that need to be prepared and cooked before they can be used. Unlike JPEG files that can be easily opened, viewed and printed by most image-viewing/editing programs, RAW is a proprietary format that is tied to the camera manufacturer and sensor, and therefore is not supported by all software products. RAW files preserve the most amount of information about an image and generally contain more colors and dynamic range than JPEG images. To allow digital cameras to display the recorded image on the rear LCD, RAW files typically consist of two parts – the actual RAW data from the camera sensor and a processed JPEG preview. Many image-viewing applications, including the camera LCD, then use this JPEG preview embedded into the RAW file to display the image to you.
1.1) Advantages of RAW format
- Compared to 8-bit JPEG format that can only contain up to 256 shades of Red, Green and Blue colors (total of 16 million), 12-bit RAW images contain the most amount of information with 4,096 shades or Red, Green and Blue (equivalent of 68 billion colors!) and higher. On my Nikon D700, I can record 14-bit RAW files, which equates to roughly 4.3 trillion possible colors. That’s a lot of colors compared to 16 million!
- RAW files contain the most dynamic range (ratio between the maximum and minimum measurable light intensities of light and black) and can later be used to recover underexposed/overexposed images or parts of an image.
- When a RAW image is generated, all camera settings (also known as metadata), including camera-specific and manufacturer-specific information, are just added into the file. This means that the image itself remains unmodified – the settings are only provided as a reference and you can make any changes to them later in post-processing applications like Lightroom and Photoshop. This is a huge advantage of using RAW, because if you accidentally use a wrong setting (like White Balance) on your camera, you will still have an option to change it later.
- Due to the number of colors stored in RAW images, the type of in-camera Color Space (sRGB or Adobe RGB) is also not important when you shoot in RAW – you can change it to any color space in post-production.
- Unlike JPEG, RAW files utilize lossless compression, meaning they do not suffer from image-compression artifacts.
- No image-sharpening is performed on RAW files, which means that you can use better and more complex sharpening algorithms for your photos in your PC.
- RAW files can be used as evidence of your ownership of the photograph and authentic, non-modified images. If you saw an alien and took a photo in RAW, nobody would be able to say that you used Photoshop to add the alien to your picture :)
1.2) Disadvantages of RAW format
- RAW files require post-processing and conversion before they can be normally viewed, which adds a significant amount of time to workflow.
- RAW takes up much more camera memory and space than JPEG images. This means that memory card can store fewer images and camera buffer can quickly fill up, causing the camera frame rate to drop down significantly. You will also need more RAM and much more disk storage on your computer to keep RAW images.
- RAW files are not standardized across different manufacturers. For example, Nikon software cannot read Canon RAW files and vice-versa. In addition, not all image-viewers and editors can open RAW files. If you have a brand new camera that just got released, you might need to wait for a while for software companies to catch up and update their software so that your RAW files could be opened and worked on.
- You will have to convert RAW files to a compatible format like JPEG or TIFF before you can give them to your friends and clients, as they might not have the tools to view them.
- Because RAW files cannot be modified by third party software, your settings will have to be stored in a separate sidecar (XMP) file, which again means more storage and tougher file management (unless you convert your RAW files to DNG).
- Due to the size of RAW images, archiving/backup procedure takes much more time.
2) What is JPEG?
JPEG is the most popular image format for photographs today, capable of displaying millions of colors in a highly compressed file. The compression method JPEG uses is “lossy”, which means that certain information is removed from the image. Different levels of compression (in percentage) can be applied on JPEG images, which impacts the quality and size of the image. The more details are preserved, the larger the file.
2.1) Advantages of JPEG format
- JPEG images are fully processed in camera and all settings such as White Balance, Color Saturation, Tone Curve, Sharpening and Color Space are already applied to the image. So you do not need to spend any time on post-processing the image – all you need to do is extract the image out of the memory card and it is ready to use.
- JPEG images are much smaller than RAW images and therefore consume a lot less storage and need much less processing power.
- Due to the smaller size, cameras can write JPEG files much faster, which increases the number of pictures that can fit in temporary camera buffer. This means that compared to RAW, you can potentially shoot at higher frames per second and for longer periods of time.
- Most modern devices and software packages support JPEG images, making the format extremely compatible.
- Digital cameras provide different compression and size options for saving JPEG images, giving you the flexibility and choice over image quality and size.
- Smaller size also means faster and more efficient backups.
2.2) Disadvantages of JPEG format
- The “lossy” compression algorithm means that you will lose some detail from your photographs. This loss of detail, especially in highly compressed files, will show up in images as “artifacts” and will be quite visible to the eye.
- JPEG images are 8-bit, which puts a limitation of 16 million possible colors. This means that all those other colors that your camera is capable of recording are essentially discarded, when the image is converted to JPEG format.
- JPEG images also contain less dynamic range than RAW images, which means that recovering overexposed/underexposed images and shadow areas will be extremely difficult and sometimes impossible.
- Since cameras fully process JPEG images, any camera setting errors will be practically irreversible. For example, if you apply too much sharpening to your images, you will not be able to “unsharpen” images later.
3) Should you use RAW or JPEG?
Let’s now move on to the most important question – should you be using RAW or JPEG for your photography?
For me, shooting in RAW far outweighs the advantages of using JPEG. Storage is cheap nowadays and the file size does not bother me, even for backups. Since I already spend a considerable amount of time taking pictures, I do not mind spending a little more time and effort working on them in the digital darkroom. True, if I had to process one image at a time in Photoshop, I would have abandoned RAW altogether, because I wouldn’t have the time to go through tens of thousands of pictures. Thanks to such wonderful post-processing tools as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I can work on my images in batches and I can spend very minimal amount of time on individual post-processing (when needed).
But time and size are small issues, compared to my ability to recover details from a RAW picture. Like many other photographers, I have been in situations where the light was not ideal and I either trusted my camera and had no time to correct the exposure or made a mistake, which led to a badly exposed image. If I shot in JPEG, those details would be gone forever and I would end up with a trashed image. But since I used RAW, I could easily adjust the exposure and change other settings and still have a good shot. This makes a huge difference, especially for rare, special moments that cannot be reproduced ever again.
Take a look at this image:
Hawk - As Shot, Underexposed
Basically, I screwed up and underexposed the above image about 1 – 1.5 stops lower than it should have been. Gladly, I shot in RAW and I was able to almost fully recover the otherwise lost details. The below image on the left was recovered from a RAW file (I added +1 Exposure and added +15 Fill Light in Lightroom), while the image on the right was recovered the same way from a JPEG image:
As you can see, the image on the left contains a lot more color and detail than the one on the right. The change in colors is especially noticeable in shadow areas and this is all due to the fact that the JPEG file is an 8-bit image and contains much less information for full color and detail recovery. If you take an extreme example where an image is underexposed by 2 or more stops, you will see that recovery from a JPEG file is almost impossible, whereas a RAW file will give you some colors and details to work with. And on top of the above underexposure problem, what if I had my white balance set incorrectly on my camera? That’s right, it would have been a trashed image. Try it yourself – set your camera to shoot RAW+JPEG, then underexpose an image and try to recover the details – I’m sure you will see a similar result.
Here is another example of an image that was processed in RAW and JPEG:
The above image is how it came out of my camera with standard settings.
And here are the results after some heavy processing in Lightroom. The image on the left is processed from RAW, while the image on the right is processed from JPEG. As you can see, the highlights on the stones in JPEG image look horrible in comparison to RAW – look at how much detail I was able to bring out of shadows from the RAW file. The sky looks too blue and gradiented and the rest of the colors are way off.
Anyway, here is my conclusion on the RAW vs JPEG debate: if you are serious about your photography and want to be able to sell or showcase your work in the future, you should shoot in RAW. If you are just taking pictures of your family for fun, then shoot in JPEG.
Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments section below.
About Nasim Mansurov
I loved this post, really, it’s incredibly helpful! It’s the first time I see the advantages and disadvantages of RAW vs. JPEG so clearly put and believe me, I’ve tried to do some research on the net before. Funny that I found it arriving at your wife’s recipes from Tastespotting… congrats on your blog!
Miriam, thank you very much for your feedback! I’m glad that you enjoyed the article and found it useful :)
I will be posting a large article that I have been working on for a couple of days later today or tomorrow about post-processing and file organization in Lightroom. So if you use Lightroom, I hope you will give it a read and let me know what you think!
Nasim, thanks for another great article. Frankly, I am shooting in JPEG at the moment, since don’t really have time for processing pictures. However, after reading this article I might switch to “RAW+JPEG” mode and in case of under(over) exposure or using wrong white balance will use RAW one. Thanks again!
Alisher, you are most welcome!
I personally do not use RAW+JPEG because it uses a lot of card memory and slows down the camera. What I would do, is shoot in just RAW and do some very basic post-processing in Lightroom. Once you switch to RAW, you will never want to go back to JPEG :)
For D700 NEF file uses about 10 MB, JPEG Basic – about 1 MB. Why JPEG slows down the camera?
Abraham,
What do you mean by ‘slow down’ the camera? NEF is supposed to slow down the camera, because the images are much larger.
I mean that JPEG adds only 10% memory thus about 10% time and not much “slow down” the process.
Indeed a good post, one question , you said ” I can work on my images in batches and I can spend very minimal amount of time on individual post-processing (when needed).” but using Lightroom for a while i didn’t find the way to process my RAW photos in groups, maybe you could help me with it)??
Tair, sorry for a late response.
Here is how you work in batches in Lightroom. Process an image, then simply right-click on it, go to Develop Settings, select “Copy”, select all options, then click OK. Next, select a bunch of other photographs that you want to apply the changes to and then right-click again and select “Paste”. This will copy-paste all settings from one picture to a group.
I find this very convenient and easy to use :) Let me know if you have any other questions.
both of nikon and canon RAW files can be used in lightroom?
Syafiq, absolutely! Lightroom fully supports all Nikon and Canon DSLRs and can even read point and shoot RAW formats from many other cameras.
Help Nasim! I have hundreds of pictures taken in Africa on a Nikon in Raw format. I was given them on 2 CDs, however, I have a PC and it can’t read them (note: I would like to enlarge and frame some). What can I do? A friend has a Mac which has a built in converter – can he convert the pictures on his Mac from Raw to Jpeg and burn new CDs (or flash drive) for me? If so, how difficult and time consuming is this?
Thanks for your help.
CJ
CJ, do you have Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom? You could easily convert the files yourself…
an excellent comparative analysis of these two formats and done with the average photographer in mind. since i don’t “need” RAW this article helps me decide which type of basic camera i may choose. if it turns out that raw is part of my purchase it wont be because i thought i needed it. thanks. gerald.
Thank you for your feedback!
Hi Nasim! been reading thru your article a whole lot this past couple of days. I forgot how I ended up here but Im glad I did. Your articles are really fun and enjoyable to read and it really helps especially me as a beginner person. I have one question in mind right now. I have a HP desktop and when I view my picture there is button that says auto fix, what can you say about this? like in windows when you view using their built in picture viewer there is also a button that say fix photo something like that. Is this a good button especially for me just a one click guy or any thoughts on this? tia
Myke, can you take a screenshot of the window and send a link to me? Or could you provide the exact text as you see it on your screen?
Thank you for such a wonderful article :)
i’ve just subscribed to your feed.. hoping to learn a lot from you…
Thank you for your feedback Raghav!
Bit late to see this but thanks. I’ve posted this to some places for other people to read :)
Great post and spot on with the pros and cons. I switched to RAW only a few shoots into getting my first DSLR (a 50D no less). I never went back. I too agree that if Lightroom or Aperture didn’t exist, of which I use the former, I would probably have gone mad trying to do it all in Photoshop.
The other great thing about RAW which wasn’t mentioned is the ability to create multiple treatments from a single image, such as with the Virtual Copy method in Lightroom.
Thank you Nick!
Recently, I had an incident when I accidentally switched to 8-bit TIFF on the camera and I was so frustrated, that I deleted most of them. I will certainly never go back to JPEG :)
And thanks for pointing out about the non-destructiveness of the RAW format – I forgot to mention it in the article.
Spot on with this article. I’ve read about 5 other articles on the topic, but find this the most ideal reference. I use Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw for my workflow, converting to DNG format. Unfortunately, Adobe Photoshop sticks it to you by making you upgrade to process RAW camera data from newer cameras. Have to use CS4 for my Nikon D700. On the plus side, photomerge function on CS4+ removed the vertical banding problem…
Perhaps favorite feature on Camera Raw, post crop vignetting. Great for food photography.
Thank you Chris!
Yes, I personally do not like that marketing strategy by Adobe…it is stupid that you have to upgrade to be able to use the latest version of Camera RAW. But it is Adobe and they are pretty much a monopoly…what can we do? :)
And yes, post crop vignetting is very nice – Lola and I use it a lot too.
There is alternative program – Paint Shop Pro, al versions – also old’s. For old’s I use Nikon ViewNX 2 for NEF -> TIFF transition/
Thanks for this article! My husband was trying to explain RAW vs JPEG to me, but for some reason it just didn’t click until you explained it! :)
Thank you for your feedback Nikki!
hi Nasim,
I think you’ve extragerated the difference in your last comparison. I tried a little editing (5 minutes) on your original jpeg file and I can get better result than your sample.
How could you have gotten better results, if you don’t even have the original RAW file to work with? The above example was to show what I can get out of a RAW file versus JPEG. You can try this yourself with your camera, just shoot a scene where there is a 2-3 stop difference between the bright area and the darker area in RAW and JPEG and then try recovering both images and see for yourself.
Why is there always sum “Dud” that has to try to prove someone wrong? It was a great article, and very insightful! Good job and thanks for explaining things. By the way “Photo Lover”, you did nothing but make yourself sound like a fool!
Great article Nasim! Again, crystal clear and to the point. ‘m officially a RAW dawg.
You are most welcome!
Man, you convinced me to shot RAW, now. I screwed up a lot of images in the past and you gave some good examples of how you can recover that. I was shooting JPEG, like most of the people, since I’m at the first DSLR camera and you know, not time or nerve for to much post processing, but is clearly worth it. I used to lost a lot of colors from landscapes !…..bad bad choice, JPEG. You can process RAW, faster, using lightroom, your computer will just work a bit more for that, processing that amount of colors, though.
Dean, I agree – RAW is the way to go. I was stupid to convert my old images to JPEG back in the day – now there is nothing I can do with them.
Hi – I came across your site yesterday while looking for a way to arrange photos in lightroom3 library.I eventually ended up looking at other articles and I would say you have done a very good job..
Regarding this article, I was thinking about the importance of the first advantage of RAW : its ability to store 68 billion of colors. Are our normal LCD monitors/printers capable of displaying so many colors?
Hi Nasim,
Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. Just a clarification on your comment re batch processing in lightroom; In your workflow does it mean you apply the SAME correction to a WHOLE batch of pictures? Seem incomprehensible to me.
Rudy, I apply the same default correction (such as copyright/metadata information, sharpening, etc) to all pictures, then work on them one by one. So it is not like one template works for everything, no.
Hi Nasim,
Great blog, I found you for the DNG vs RAW, but I guess my question would be more related to this title.
My question is more specificy to Lightroom and wonder if you can help me here. I used to shoot Jpeg until recently. I have aquire Lightroom 3 and love the raw possibilities, so I shoot in both format. With my Nikon D90 I select RAW and small Jpeg so I can have Jpeg files ready to publish in batch over to my Flickr account without converting RAW to Jpeg manually. In doing so, I end up having duplicate of pictures that I, again, have to manually delete the Jpeg after. Would you know if I can set Lightroom to automaticly import the RAW only when I insert the SD cards and not the Jpeg format? I tried to look up the import settings but found nothing of such possibilities.
Thanks
Anthony, your best bet would be to sort images by extension and delete them before starting the import process. I do not think it is possible to limit the import by extension in Lightroom.
Sorry for a late response.
Hi Nasim,
Thank you for answering. It was a bit late, but as we say: better late than never. :)
My issue is now solve with an SD card named, Eye-Fi. With the Eye-Fi center it send my Jpeg files directly to my Flickr and sends the RAW format in my hard drive under the Eye-Fi folder and without the need to take the SD card out of the camera, it transfers over your private wifi network. And when I turn on LR3, the import comes directly from the eye-fi folders. all this instantly.
hope this can help other users out there looking to do the same.
Anthony, glad you found a solution! The Eye-Fi is a great tool; people even find ways to stream their images to the iPad while shooting :)
Dear Mr. Mansurov,
I am a long time reader of Ken Rockwell and Thom Hogan and I recently came upon your blog. I am adding you as a must read! I find your writings very down to earth and extremely informative to enthusiast photographers like me. Keep up the good work and I wish you all the best!
Thank you for your feedback Raden, sorry for a late reply.
many many thanks. i have a nikon d500.i have the same experience like u. just now i will change my camera setting to raw. but how will i process a raw file to jpeg. i have only adobe photoshop 7.0
Thank you this is a great article and the most comprehensive and clear that I have read. I am just wondering if DNG files lose any colour? I purchased a Canon 1000D a few years ago, and recently discovered that all programs and updates including Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom does not recognise it’s RAW files. I’m incredibly disappointed at the false claims by both Canon and Adobe, who are claiming the programs and updates are compatible with my camera. Some Canon users have problems and some don’t which is strange to me. Since I haven’t been even able to open my RAW and with some images can’t even convert them to DNG, I haven’t had the pleasure of working with RAW. Does Nikon have these compatibility problems with Adobe as well? I am less keen on Canon, now. Any advice or feedback would be appreciated. This article shows me what I have been missing out on! Thanks again. NLouis
Nicole, you need to update your Camera RAW to the latest version. Download it from here. Once you update everything, both Lightroom and Photoshop will be able to open all RAW files and you will be able to convert them to DNG.
Hello,
My post shoot workflow has generally been as follows. After shooting in RAW (using my Nikon D90), I process my photos in Adobe Raw (which came with PSE8). I then convert to a jpeg and further post-process in Nikon’s Capture NX2 (levels and curves, mainly). Would I be better off not importing a jpeg file into Capture NX2, i.e. work only in RAW in Capture NX2? Have I been losing overall quality by doing what I’ve been doing?
Michael, you should reverse the process – first do it in NX2, then take it to Photoshop for further tweaking, if necessary. You are losing 90% of information when working on JPEG files in NX2.
Just found your website and i have been glued to it ever since. Love the info and pictures. Thanks so much.
I am writing because Windows now has an update to view RAW files which makes using RAW all that much better. You can get it at the link below.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26829
I’m very glad I found your site. Thanks to you, I know a lot of useful and valuable information about the photo.
Finally! Thank you for that well written article about RAW vs. JPEG pictures. It’s all good now that I know the difference between the two. Thank you so much! I can finally produce best pictures like a professional photographer. Thanks for sharing this! Good job!!! What a big help for a newbie like me. :-) I’ll explore your website for more helpful basic tutorials.
You are most welcome Janna!
This was actually the BEST raw vs. jpeg explanation/examples I’ve seen! thanks, was just great.
ciao Nasim…i was looking for a resource about RAW vs JPEG for a beginners photography workshop that my group(KALIPI) here in Milan, Italy are hosting this coming sunday..i had been tasked to handle this topic and im so glad i came across your blog..this is exactly what i was looking for..straight forward and no non-sense way of explaining what the 2 formats is all about!..i hope you won’t mind if i use this blog in my presentation…will definitely put the credits to you man…more power to you!
Thank you Erick, sure you can use the material on this website, as long as credit is provided. Have a wonderful day!
Nasim,
You write very interesting blog articles….interesting to me anyway.
I have a question on RAW vs JPEG.If you shoot in RAW,process it in PS or Lightroom,and then convert it to JPEG,wouldn’t you then lose a lot of information like if you originally took the photo in JPEG?
Great article, great page Nasim
I always shoot in Jpeg because I haven’t had the courage to shoot in RAW. I still process my photos in iPhoto and not yet familiar with Lightroom, Elements or Photoshop. I’m going to Vietnam and Russia soon and can only imagine the shots I could get shooting in RAW vs Jpeg and processing my photos with something other than iPhoto. Any recommendations? Love your website, btw!
I am still learning and have recently decieded to take the plunge into shooting in raw. I shoot with the nikon d60 and shoot sports and wildlife. Because of unexpected shots and lighting conditions, I have discovered another way to edit my work. Also I am looking to move to the d300 and becasue of cost, will have to buy used equipment. What is your opinion? Thanks, Mike