Comments on: RAW vs. JPG: Print shootout

By: Sofia

Sofia — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:38:47 +0000

Nice Post!!
I like JPG better because it’s ready to be printed, easy to store in a cd or easy access to be display on my Digital Frame In Raw I think it’s unknown the limitations this one may have in the future. SC

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:07:10 +0000

I’m glad you asked non-photographers as they are, in some ways, more important in terms of their opinions than other photographers. Most collectors are not photographers themselves. Most of my photographer friends are completely geeky, and can’t spot a good photograph if it bites them in the ass. For a long time I shot NEF exclusively and used Capture NX. Sure, at 100% there are some differences, but at 20X30″ I can see NO difference worth mentioning. In fact, I find the JPEGs have slightly better colour, and that includes after colour correcting the NEFs to match. The main thing to remember is that it is irrelevant what format you “capture” the shot in because even pros send an 8-bit tiff to their clients or agencies. Nobody in their right mind would send a “NEF” or “CR2″ file.

By: Conventional Wisdom is Wrong

Conventional Wisdom is Wrong — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:55:17 +0000

The “conventional wisdom” about how re-saving a jpeg loses quality is a complete myth.

JPEG compression is only re-applied to an image who’s data is either manipulated or re-cropped with a top left cropping coordinate that is not a multiple of 8. That’s right, you can even re-crop a jpeg without losing quality, provided you pick a top left point that is a multiple of 8 so as to not break the 8×8 grid division that JPEG internally uses to sample the image. If you do nothing to the image and simply re-save it, no compression would be applied. If this isn’t the case, your image editing program should be deleted immediately because it’s very obvious/easy for software to decide not to re-compress an image if nothing has changed.

This is actually all very well documented in the wiki article on JPEGs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG).

By: Тут Хумора.NET » Пара фотоссылок

Тут Хумора.NET » Пара фотоссылок — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:32:12 +0000

[...] фотоссылок RAW vs. JPG: Print shootout. Попытка сравнения качества отпечатков кадров, снятых [...]

By: Ratsters

Ratsters — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:10:28 +0000

Finally, concrete samples of what RAW and JPG actually look like; thanks a million for taking the time to build such a good dossier on the subject. In just a couple of photos, you have demonstrated the Pros and the Cons of both formats.
Thanks again.

By: Steve G

Steve G — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 05:00:28 +0000

So I wonder what would happen if you printed at 16×20 or even larger and ran this test. Is there a difference in RAW vs JPEG at very large sizes like this if you have a modest 6Mp or 8MP DSLR? Can I get larger high quality enlargements with RAW vs JPEG?

By: Tamer

Tamer — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:15:54 +0000

I think we can use both Raw and Jpeg, when I take family pictures I prefer JPG, because in the future I want my children to be able to pop the CD and see the pictures and print them. In Raw you never know, you are actually taking a chance if the file can be read 20-30 years from now.

If I want a art photo and I want to tweak this thing in PS CS2 and planing to make a fine art large print from it i will shoot Raw. But I know some professional photographers who take 10000s of 10000s of pictures only shoot in JPG. Processing all these pics will make you insane. How about making a great shot in the first place as a real photographer rather than trying to fix your boo boo in photoshop.

So I shoot 90% JPG and 10% Raw

By: Fraser

Fraser — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 06:42:04 +0000

The main benefit of using RAW (I shoot D2X and process in Nikon Capture 4) is that the files can be REALLY twisted and perfected. If you are shooting to your histogram, and not clipping your highlights, you can get a stunning image by lifting your midtones using curves, and or increasing contrast etc.

You can also generate two files from the original and merge “exposures” which can help a lot.

If you do all this in RAW, you are keeping the original file pristine, and getting much better results. RAW files can take a huge amount of punishment compared to drum scanned film or JPGs… If you are starting with a JPG you are just limiting what you can do to optimise the file by ‘handycapping’ your start position.

And of course you can then do a lot of stuff in Photoshop, even at 16bit now…

My experience is that you can get the equivalent of a 6×9 film camera out of a D2X, or a 6×4.5 from a D70, if you are really carefull with your workflow.

Of course you end up with a lot more data to store.

By: Armin Schon

Armin Schon — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:02:00 +0000

I can only agree with the conclusions in this article. But there is more to it. I found in a similar side-by-side comparison that the in-camera processing (in this case a Lumix FZ30) introduced tiny JPEG blocking artifacts even in HQ mode, which are probably also part of the reasons for the reduced resolution observed above. Interesting enough, when I shot RAW files, processed them in Adobe Dark Room and saved them as JPG at 80% quality setting, I got 50% smaller JPG files than what comes off the camera AND had no detectable blocking artifacts whatsoever! Further compressing the camera JPEGs with ACDSee didn’t introduce more artifacts, but also didn’t fix what the in-camera processor had messed up, needless to say. So I remained with a net gain of some 25% in file size when using the external RAW->JPG path.

See for yourself at http://www.flickr.com/photos/madinisrael/sets/72157594296470164/

By: Wes Kisting

Wes Kisting — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:14:53 +0000

By the way, nice article with a very level-headed view of what is, for some people, an inexplicably touchy and controversial subject. I have added a link to your article in my own article about the subject, which expresses a similar viewpoint (www.roguepaddler.com/camform.htm).