JPEG vs RAW

[captpackrat]

My camera can take save images as both JPEG and RAW at the same time. In this example, the JPEG is on the left and the RAW on the right.

JPEGs save much faster, take up much less space, are usable just as they are, can be opened by just about anything and Windows can automatically display a thumbnail of the image. The biggest drawback of JPEG is that it is a lossy format, and working with a JPEG just makes things worse.

RAW files, on the other hand, contain the unprocessed data directly off the image sensor. They are higher quality, offer finer control, are generally 12 or 14 bit (vs JPEG's 8 bits) and are lossless. The drawbacks are its enormous file size (7 times larger than JPEG on my camera) and a proprietary format that might be difficult to open in the future.

In this particular image, notice the sky is a truer blue, there is more contrast in the clouds, the ground haze is more visible, the tractor wheels and clouds are whiter and the grass a bit greener on the RAW side.

Comments

[bluedeer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, part of it is because of the compression and averaging of colors to make it happen. I bet the Tractor on the JPEG is an average of more of the same shade of red than the one in the RAW. RAW is analagous to BMP, though even BMP has headers that tell a proram how big it is, how many colors it is, and what its dimensions are, while each RAW is always so different yet just same enough that whatever generates it and its proprietary software that opens it knows these details to begin with and don't need them encoded in the file. So if you know the RAW data header you can open it in pretty much any image program that can read a RAW format...provided you can provide the data header. Which can be a pain in the butt.