Tag: RAW mode

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A couple of years ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several hundred photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post a couple of  years ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post a couple of  years ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post several months ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A couple of years ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several hundred photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post several months ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post several months ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post several months ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post several months ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

Editor’s Note: Since publishing the original version of this post several months ago, I have made a major change to my workflow and now shoot in RAW format only (i.e., with no JPEG version saved in addition to the RAW version of each image).  Shooting RAW+JPEG was a crutch that I used for a couple of years as I transitioned from JPEG to RAW format, but I realized I never use the JPEG files right out of the camera, and saving duplicate JPEG files takes a lot of disk space and time.  Please read my update in this recent post: Post on RAW vs. RAW+JPEG.  The original post on RAW mode follows:

======================

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

 

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

Two weeks ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that over the last two weeks, I have executed more than a dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

To JPEG or Not to JPEG: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

 

The Raw Truth [Encore Publication]: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

 

The Raw Truth: Why you should always shoot in RAW mode

For many years after I took the plunge into digital photography, I had my camera set to store image files in the JPEG format only.  I now realize that during those years I was throwing away a lot of very valuable information with every photo I made.  There are two main reasons for this information loss.  First, the JPEG format does not store the detailed data for each pixel in the camera’s sensor but instead does some processing according to your settings and then saves only stripped-down information from each area of your image.  Second, the JPEG standard is what’s referred to as a “lossy” format; every time it is opened and resaved, the image loses more detailed data.  Once your image data is thrown away, you cannot retrieve it.

By contrast, the RAW file format keeps all the data your camera’s sensor “sees” for every pixel in the image.  Yes, RAW files are bigger and take a bit longer to store on your camera’s memory card than JPEG files, and yes, they take up more space on the memory card and on your PC’s hard drive later.  For those early years of digital photography, I avoided shooting in RAW mode because I was concerned about having reduced shooting speed and storage space for these monster-sized files.  I also was concerned that it would be too much work to shoot in RAW mode because RAW images require post-processing in order to look their best.  I now realize that I had been making a big mistake.  Shooting in RAW all the time, even when high speed is needed for action shots, ensures that you’ll always have the most image data to work with later.  You will be able to crop your images more tightly, print them to larger sizes, and especially important, refine the exposure and color with far more control if they were shot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or other compressed formats.

I now shoot nearly exclusively using my camera’s setting to save files as both RAW and JPEG.  Having the JPEG version of each image can be helpful if I want to share the photo right out of the camera.  It will look pretty decent without any post-processing because the JPEG file is stored with all of the camera’s settings for white balance, sharpening, and so on.  But when I come home from a trip, I always do my post-processing on the best images using RAW files exclusively.  Because the RAW format stores so much more information about the color and brightness of every single pixel of the image, I have much more freedom in how I choose to develop the image using my editing software (typically Adobe Lightroom, but occasionally I also use Adobe Photoshop).

Below, I show two files of the same image of my wife and me by a “fairy chimney” rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey, both processed in exactly same the same way in Lightroom, but the first one was originally saved by the camera as a JPEG while the second was originally saved in RAW mode.  While the differences may be subtle at the size and resolution shown in this post, you can still make out more details in the RAW file, especially in areas shrouded in shadow.  The color of the sky is deeper.  Colors and shapes are rendered with more accuracy.  And of course, if we needed to crop or enlarge these images to a much bigger size, the quality of the JPEG file would deteriorate much sooner than would the RAW file.

 The JPEG version of this image.

 The RAW version of the same image.

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

Do you shoot in RAW mode?  If so, what do you like about it?  If not, why not?  Please share your thoughts here.