RAW or JPEG?

11 Reasons Why You Should Always Take Your Pictures In RAW

Gilles in Semliki National Park, West Uganda, Africa

We have heard this question many times, and listened to endless discussions on this subject. The answer is quite straightforward though. If you plan to enhance your pictures, you should always take them in RAW.

What is RAW & what is JPEG?

RAW is a proprietary file format (.CR2 for Canon, .NEF for Nikon). When taking a picture using RAW, the camera captures all the data as recorded by the sensor of your camera.

JPEG or JPG stands for “Joint Photographic Experts Group” or “Image File Format”. JPEG are standardized pictures. When using JPEG, your camera actually takes the picture in a RAW format, applies a more or less strong compression as well as a range of defined settings like White Balance, Sharpness, Color Space & Color Saturation, finally erases the RAW file and saves the picture as a JPEG.

What are the 11 main advantages of RAW?

Heidi at Amber Fort, near Jaipur, the Pink City, Rajasthan, India

1. Higher Quality of Image

• No compression

When you take a picture, the first file is a RAW file. Only in a second step does the camera convert and compress the image into a JPEG. So when you take pictures in RAW, you don’t loose any information through a compression process.

• All data available

Think of RAW as a “Digital Negative” of your picture that waits to be developed into a picture. With all possible data available, you can then decide precisely how you want to “develop” your picture to reach the best result. Such improvements are best done in Lightroom (partly in an automated process), since its computing power is much higher than your camera.

• Increased Brightness

JPEG captures pictures in 8 bit, RAW in 12 or even 14 bits. To make a long story short, it means that you have up to 4.096 different levels of brightness with RAW against 256 with JPEG. Quite a difference, actually!

• Extend the Dynamic Range

Are you into HDR Photography? As you have more information available on the exposure, HDR programs can create a better result from a RAW file than from a JPEG.

Gilles near View of the World (Malindidzimu), Cecil Rhodes’ Grave, Matopos or Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe, Africa

2. Many more possibilities to improve your pictures

• Easy Use

Believe it or not, with the right tool (like Lightroom), optimizing pictures in RAW is much easier and much quicker than in JPEG. This doesn’t have to be Rocket Science. More often than not, a few clicks will tremendously improve the result.

• White Balance

With RAW, one click can change the White Balance. You want to make a sunny day out of a rainy day? (Almost) no problem!

• Under / Over-Exposure

Sometimes you simply do not have the time to expose your picture correctly. Or worse: part of the picture is under-exposed (in the shade) and part of it is over-exposed (in the sun). Using RAW you have more information available, the correction will bring far better results.

• Noise Reduction

Lightroom offers much better algorithm to optimize sharpness & especially to reduce noise than your camera, and is much more powerful at that…

This is especially important when shooting pictures with low light environments.

• Color Space

If you want to sell picture via a Stock Image Agency, you must have the final picture in Abode RGB (1998). If you want to put your pictures on your website, you will want them in sRGB, to enhance the compatibility with Internet browsers.

That is only possible if you take your pictures in RAW, else your camera has already applied the defined settings (normally sRGB).

Khardung La, the highest motorable road in the world, at 5.602 meters, on the way to the Nubra Valley from Leh, Ladakh, India

3. Improve your Workflow

• Non-Destructive Editing

Non-Destructive editing allows you to make changes to an image without overwriting the original image data, which remains available in case you want to go back to it. Because Non-Destructive editing doesn’t remove data from an image, the image quality doesn’t degrade when you make edits. You can perform non-destructive editing in Lightroom or Photoshop working with Adjustment Layers or Smart Filters.

• Optimize your Workflow

Lightroom allows you to work your RAW pictures in Batch (not only one picture but a group of pictures at a time), which allows you to work a lot faster.

In Shiraz, Iran

Advantages of JPEG (supposedly…)

• JPEG requires less storage space than RAW

Honestly, how much does a 2 TB external hard-drive or a 32 GB SD Card cost nowadays?

• JPEG doesn’t need to be edited

If you use a software like Lightroom, your RAW pictures are automatically converted while downloading them onto your computer, so this is no real advantage in our opinion.

• RAW slows your camera down

This is actually untrue, as the camera will create a RAW file anyway and then convert it into JPEG. So this is actually one step less.

• RAW is a Proprietary Format that you might no longer be able to read in the future

This is true! However, in our opinion, this argument isn’t a real one, as you can convert your RAW Files (.CR2 or .NEF) into DNG (Digital Negative) when downloading them on your computer (it can be a defined setting in Lightroom).

Moreover, how likely is it that Canon or Nikon will disappear from the market within the next years? Should that happen anyway, you can still convert your .CR2 or .NEF into .DNG with you’re your current Lightroom version.

Gilles in Kashan, Iran

As a conclusion?

RAW has a wide range of advantages (we listed here 11) against JPEG. All professionals use RAW. There must be a good reason for that!

At this point we want to make a  concession: when taking pictures for a filmstrip, we use our GoPro, which only shoots in JPEG. But for a filmstrip, JPEG is enough, as there won’t be much editing…