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As a photographer, this means that you will get a lot of clients for your business. One of the questions you will be faced with early on is whether you should be using raw images of Jpeg. It’s basically raw vs. jpg.

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Sometimes living an exceptional moment is not enough. Sometimes you need to capture it all, in a lens, with all its beauty and magnificence. Photography allows you to do so. It doesn’t matter whether you wish to crystallize a moment for your personal use or your business; photographs play a much more significant role in your life than you think they do. Almost all industries use them for marketing their services. On a personal level, people use them to hold on to precious moments.

What are Raw images?

Both Raw and JPEG images are types of file format. RAW is a type of format that captures all the available image data in its entirety. When you take a photo using your camera, the sensor records quite a lot of data.

For instance, let’s say you take a picture of a person. The RAW image will depict every feature of the said person to the tee. This is why it is often said that RAW images have better quality than Jpeg images. Raw images are workable; it is easy to process them afterward. For instance: There is a blog that explains how you can remove dark circles in Photoshop.

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Such editing is best done on raw images. Before you think about post-processing, think about the mode of capturing images.

What are JPEG/JPG images?

Contrary to Raw images, Jpeg images are processed in nature. And this occurs within the camera.

Note: JPEG and JPG are the same file formats. They just have a different name. I wrote a tutorial a few months ago and I described why because of Windows we have two names for the same format.

This means that the first output you get after capturing a picture is a compressed and processed version of the photo you took. The level and type of processing vary from one model of camera to another.

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Elements like color temperature and exposure are altered according to the settings of the said camera.

Moreover, additional changes like contrast, brightness, sharpening, noise reduction, and addition of blacks are added, and then the file is compressed to deliver the output.

Benefits of Raw Images

To understand which type of format is best for you, it is essential to know the advantages offered by both. Here are the benefits of using raw images.

It produces the best quality images

When you are a professional photographer, the quality of your pictures matter.

Let’s say a company gives you the task of shooting pictures for the website. With their logo design, placed on every picture, they require professional photos as well. Here, quality matters. And the highest level of quality is only delivered by RAW images.

A quality lens can only showcase its full glory through its raw images. After automatically processing it, the results can never be as perfect as they once were.

With raw photos, you are given autonomy to process the images as per your expertise. And your brain is much better than the processing capabilities of any camera.

Greater levels of brightness

There are various stages of turning the black parts of the picture to white. These steps are known as levels of brightness.

All photographers know that the higher the levels of brightness, the better the picture since it ensures smoothness.

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Compared to JPEG, which records 256 levels, RAW images tend to record levels between 4096 to 16384. In professional lingo, this is known as “bit.” JPEG is known to capture photos in 8 bit while RAW does so in 12 or 14 bit.

Therefore, additional steps of brightness are much smoother and also allow you to make various alterations to the image without reducing quality. Why? This is because there are more levels available for you to work with.

Easy corrections

As a photographer, you will not just be working in controlled environments. Instead, you might have to cover events where things are dynamic and mobile. Let’s say you get hired to cover a wedding.

It doesn’t matter how great of a photographer you are; some pictures will still come out over or underexposed. It isn’t much you can do if you take photos in jpeg mode.

However, in the case of raw images, you can quickly correct the issues because all the additional information about the image is already stored in the file.

Benefits of JPG

Does this mean that JPEG offers no incentives, at all? No! Here are certain advantages you can only realize if you choose JPEG images.

No need to worry about image processing

If you are new to the world of photography, processing pictures manually might seem like the most laborious task. There are a lot of elements and factors that you need to work with. This is why many beginners prefer JPEG since it does all the processing for you.

When shooting pictures in JPEG mode, all you need to do is focus on your subject and capture the image. All the laborious work is then done by the camera. This includes factors like color saturation, white balance, tone curve, sharpening and color space, etc.

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For a beginner photographer, this mode gives them a chance to perfect their photo capturing ability and hence build a sound portfolio. Not only this, but JPEG photos can also help professional photographers with delivering consistent photos, all year round.

It also helps with ensuring quick output, which might be preferred by those who are swamped with projects.

The size of the file is small

JPEG images are compressed files. This means that they take up less space on your memory card. Contrary to this, RAW images are enormous.

After all, they feature every minute detail of the scene they capture. If you are shooting for an event, shooting in RAW mode means carrying a lot of memory cards because they will fill up at a fast rate.

If you have a fast-paced project where you don’t have enough time to keep changing memory cards, it is better to opt for JPEG mode.

Final Verdict

So, which is better? Unless convenience is your priority, it is safe to say that RAW images emerge victorious in this battle. As a photographer, I always try to capture images in RAW mode. This will help you take beautiful portraits that your clients love!

About the author: Michelle Joe is a blogger by choice. She loves to discover the world around her. She likes to share her discoveries, experiences, and express herself through her blogs. You can find her on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook

Welcome back, folks! Today, we’re going on more details in Camera RAW in Photoshop. This tutorial in the continuation of my past tutorial on Camera RAW in Photoshop – Part I. Last time, I covered Basic, Tone Curve, and Detail tabs. In this tutorial, I’ll cover HSL, Split Toning, Lens Correction, and Camera Calibration.

You’re not going to use the tabs frequently that we’re going to learn today. Whenever I open Camera RAW, I use Basic and Noise 70% of the time and rest of the tabs 30% of the time.

So, let’s begin with the tutorial.

Step 1: HSL and Grayscale in Camera RAW

HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. I think that there is no real estate available in Photoshop interface so Adobe decided to go with the short form.

In this tab, you can change the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance of an image or convert an image to Grayscale (Black and White).

First off, I’ll show you how to convert an image to Grayscale. All you need to do is to click on “Convert to Grayscale”.

Now that you know how to convert an image to Grayscale in Camera RAW, time to learn HSL. If you look at the below screenshot, you’ll find three tabs which are Hue, Saturation, and Luminance.

Let’s understand each of them one by one.

Hue: Hue is the color in your image. It changes your color. Look at the first slider which is Red. If you drag all the way to left, all red present in your image will become Pink. If you drag is all the way to the right, the red in your image will convert to Orange.
Saturation: Saturation is the intensity, or richness, of that color. Switch to the second tab. Now if you drag the Red to the left, the Red will become gray. If you drag the Red to the right, it’ll become more saturated any may be unpleasing to the eyes.
Luminance: Luminance controls the brightness value. Switch to the third tab. If you drag it to the left, Red will get darker and then to Black. If you slide it to the right, Red to turn lighter and then to White.

Step 2: Split Toning in Camera RAW

Split Toning is the easiest way to give a very colorful effect to your photos.

Split toning involves tinting the shadows of an image in one color and the highlights in another color. Although mostly applied to black and white images, this method can quite successfully be used on color images.

In the image, I kept the image colored and applied Split Toning.

It has three sections which are Highlights, Balance, and Shadows.

In the Highlights section, if you change the Hue slider, the highlights of the image will have a hue of that color.

The same goes with the Shadows slider.

Note: You must drag the Saturation first at least to 10 before you slide the Hue slider. This is because, if Saturation is 0 then you won’t see any difference if you drag the Hue slider.

In the Balance slider, you can set the balance between highlights and shadows. I have set it to 35% which means that whatever is less than 35% brighter than the absolute mid point, will be considered as the highlight.

Step 3: Lens Correction in Camera RAW

This tab is used to correct all the defects that a lens add.

Let me explain each slider one by one.

Distortion Amount: Even lenses worth of $2,000 distorts the image. They make the image blobbed in the middle which disturbs the lining of the images. Use this slider to remove the blobbiness.
Defringe: In some images, you see either a purple or green line around the edges of things in your image. Generally, these lines are noticeable only when you zoom in the image. This defringe slider helps you to remove it.
Vignette: You already know what a vignette it. It’s the black or white circular shape which fades into its background without a definite border. You can either add or remove vignette using this slider. Drag it to the right to remove and drag it to the left to add.

Step 4: Effects in Camera RAW

Adobe named this panel as Effects but I personally don’t believe that you can create any nice looking effects from this panel.

First is Dehaze. It does what its name suggests. This slider helps to remove or add the haze in the image. Photoshop is not a magical tool so let’s not expect any magical return when using this slider. 🙂

Grain adds grain in the images. You may want to use it if you’re a wedding photographer. Most wedding photographers intentionally add grains to make the images beautiful.

You are wondering that why is Vignette also here even if you saw it in the previous panel. Both will give the same result as long as your image is not cropped. I’d like you to do a task. Close Camera RAW and crop an image. While cropping, make sure that you don’t turn on “Delete Cropped Pixels”. Once done, again open Camera RAW and try the two sliders. You’ll see the different results. I leave it to you to figure out why did you see different results.

Step 5: Camera Calibration in Camera RAW

In this tab, you can define the process in Camera RAW.

The process version is the Camera Raw technology that Photoshop uses to adjust and render photos. The latest version in 2012.

This is the place where you calibrate the RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) of the image. You probably don’t want to change it because it is really tough for a beginner’s eyes to detect the miscalibration in R, G, and B.

That’s all, folks!

Let’s meet next week. Make sure you watch other tutorials on 30 Days to Learn Photoshop series.

30 days to learn photoshop camera Camera RAW lightroom RAW

Raw vs. JPG – What file format should you use?