Travel Photography - Raw or JPeg

I recently took a photo workshop for basic understanding of my DSLR D90 . I was told to always set my camera on JPEG Fine. Today I purchased a Tokina 12-24 F4 IF DX Lens and in converstaion telling the seller I was going to travel in Europe he said to remember to shoot in RAW , which confused me . I believe I have enough gear to take over knowing that my skills are limitied , however the best teacher is experience so I plan to shoot everything I see !
I can only hope that 50% of my photos are keepers ..money shots would be a bonus! Can some one enlighten me as to why he suggested shooting in RAW. I use Lightroom 3 as a photo editing program , if that matters .
Other lenses are the Nikon 18-105mm and a 50mm f.2

Thanks in advance .. hope this is the correct forum to pose this thread ..being a Newbie and all !

I recently took a photo workshop for basic understanding of my DSLR D90 . I was told to always set my camera on JPEG Fine. Today I purchased a Tokina 12-24 F4 IF DX Lens and in converstaion telling the seller I was going to travel in Europe he said to remember to shoot in RAW , which confused me . I believe I have enough gear to take over knowing that my skills are limitied , however the best teacher is experience so I plan to shoot everything I see !
I can only hope that 50% of my photos are keepers ..money shots would be a bonus! Can some one enlighten me as to why he suggested shooting in RAW. I use Lightroom 3 as a photo editing program , if that matters .
Other lenses are the Nikon 18-105mm and a 50mm f.2

Thanks in advance .. hope this is the correct forum to pose this thread ..being a Newbie and all !

IMO there is only one general advantage to shooting with a DSLR in JPEG and that is that shooting in JPEG creates smaller file sizes.

As JPEG files are smaller, more can fit on any given media card, can be transferred more quickly, and can be uploaded directly to social media [though depending on your camera, a JPEG Fine file might also be too large for most sites without some downsizing].

The primary advantage of shooting in RAW is that you end up with a file that is know colloquially as a digital negative, that is that you have every last bit of information recorded by the sensor at your disposal, allowing you to achieve significantly better final results using imaging processing software like Photoshop.

RAW will also allow to to "save" a lot of bad shots by bringing out shadow detail and retrieving lost or clipped highlight detail. Shooting in JPEG really cripples your ability to do this, leaving you with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get result, good or bad.

Of course you can always re-size and save copies of RAW files as JPEGs.

I hope your workshop was free because if not then with absolute and unqualified advice [meaning advice not put into a specific context] like, always shoot in JPEG, you didn't get your money's worth, whatever you paid.

Good explanation^
Generally speaking, the pros always shoot in RAW and the pro/sumer eventually migrate to RAW from JPG. Some cameras can be set to simultaneously save exposures in RAW and JPG but why bother, the JPG file saved isn't the finest.
The files can be huge so card capacity gets maxed out faster than expected on occasion and some printing/editing programs can't work directly from RAW. That being said, I'm using RAW for only the past 18 months after nearly a decade of JPG. You can bring out remarkable detail in nightime shots, in shadows. and adjust the flash intensity or white balance after the fact. See if your Nikon can be set to dual mode in order to do a comparison.

I still like 35 mm film and on rare occasions will lug my Nikon F3 but the ability to see image results immediately sure beats waiting for plastic to be developed...did just throw out some OD Kodachrome.

Besides the issue of file size (i.e. how many files can fit on a card), main reason NOT to shoot in RAW is write speed. When shooting in continuous mode, most cameras except the top-of-the-line pro models cannot write the files on the memory card fast enough. Buffer gets filled and shooting speed slows down. Actual speed and number of pics taken before slow down occurs depends on the camera, the specific card, and the drive mode used (for example, my Canon 7D has two speeds - 3fps and 7fps).

And if you think you NEVER fix your photos on the camera after shooting (whether you just don't bother to, or your technique is so perfect that it's not needed), then there's no point shooting RAW.

See if your Nikon can be set to dual mode in order to do a comparison.

I am not aware of any dSLR that cannot save a JPEG file along side RAW. In fact, the preview shown on the LCD after a shot IS already a JPEG.

Both.

I set my Canon 7D to record both. If you resize files, edit them, or ever think you will, you'll want raw. Think of it this way: compared to jpeg, raw gives higher resolution. Would you spend more for a higher pixel count? If so, shoot raw.

With the cost of offline storage (portable USB hard drives) very cheap these days, there is little to no cost to saving files in raw.

I agree that any photo class telling you to always shoot jpeg fine was taught by somebody who didn't know what they were talking about. Why would Nikon give you a RAW option if you weren't supposed to use it? If you are just doing snapshots for the web then jpg is OK, but why have a D90 if that's all you are going to do? But I will also agree that for action shots where you need a lot of continuous shooting RAW can slow things down, sometimes unacceptably.

For travel photos I always shoot RAW because the locations are places I can't go back to easily if I screwed something up. And while LR3 gives you access to the Adobe Camera Raw decoder, if you really want to get the most out of your files you need to use Nikon's raw decoding software. I started using Capture NX2 a couple of years ago and was astonished by how much the software can do and how easily it can do it. And it's really not that expensive. LR3 is mainly a cataloging and library program with an editor attached. RAW files have proprietary formats. While Adobe and others can do a pretty good job of backwards engineering, only the manufacturer of the camera knows exactly how those files are supposed to be processed.

A 50% keeper rate would be amazingly high. I think I end up with about 10%, especially when traveling. I suppose if you really take your time and are careful about your settings and so forth you might do a good bit better.

I always shoot Raw. There are one or two drawbacks (as mentioned - file size, write speed and also the fact that many computers need a plugin to view thumbnails of the RAW files). Having said that I have had a number of shots that were "saved" by having the ability to tweak the Raw file later.

Think of it this way (as others have indicated). Raw gives you a digital negative that you can tweak and correct to give you the best possible shot. JPEG is like getting a print back from a photo developer and then scanning it into the computer before you start to tweak it. You have already lost a lot of information before you even start.

To me JPEGS are for people that want holiday "snaps". If you are vaguely interested in photography (and it sounds as if you are) then go Raw.

A 50% keeper rate would be amazingly high. I think I end up with about 10%, especially when traveling. I suppose if you really take your time and are careful about your settings and so forth you might do a good bit better.

Agreed - with memory now so cheap I am vary lazy! I shoot dozens hoping for the odd keeper!

It depends on what you will be doing with the pictures. Without a doubt, the best quality is if you shoot in RAW, without any compression or the rest that JPEG adds in.

But the downside is it creates a larger file, it is slower to write and transfer, all that stuff. That may or may not be an issue based on your equipment.

If all you are doing is shooting to post pictures on facebook or give the grandparents a snapshot, it's probably overkill and even some of the larger sized jpegs would be overkill. But if there is ever a chance that you would do more with the picture, it's worth shooting in RAW.

There's a good little overview of the differences between the two and when JPEG may be a better choice here

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/raw-vs-jpeg

Though if you have the ability to do so, save both at once and get the best of both worlds.

Think of it this way: compared to jpeg, raw gives higher resolution.
This is absolutely false. Completely and totally. Just simply untrue. The resolution is exactly the same. The amount of data is different, but not the resolution.

I'm going to disagree with everyone above and say that shooting in JPEG is likely completely sufficient for 99.9% of users and comes with sufficient benefits to make it worthwhile. It is how I shoot and how I have done so for many years now (even with the option to shoot RAW on a number of my cameras) and I have no intention of changing anytime soon.

The benefits of RAW are mostly that you can spend more time manipulating the "digital negative" and tweaking the image to make it "perfect" in post-production without losing the details of the image. In theory there is no reason not to go that route as more data is always better.

In reality, however, I find that I've either taken a pretty darn good photo or I haven't and with way I'm not up for spending a couple hours on each shot to tweak the white balance and gamma and whatever else those sliders present to me. I use Picasa for my editing. It handles brightness, contrast and cropping just fine. And, yes, there is minimal data loss as I save the image a second time (from the original JPEG to the processed one I export) but that loss is not sufficient to actually mean anything to the vast majority of folks taking photos or looking at them.

Shooting in RAW means longer post-processing times, larger files, slower burst capture rates and probably a few other "overhead" issues with very few bits of upside for far too many folks out taking photos. If you are finding that you really need to be spending that much time in post-production then perhaps it would be better to revisit how you're capturing the photos in the first place.

Shoot JPEG, enjoy yourself and save time. Works quite well for me.

A lot of strong opinions on this subject...

A couple of points that haven't been mentioned to death, yet:

* Workflow. RAW processing workflow is more cumbersome than JPEG. JPEGs can be instantly posted, shared, viewed. RAW, in most cases, cannot.
* Saving RAW+JPEG is theoretically the best of both worlds, but, alas, there is a catch: file sizes are even bigger and write speeds are even slower.
* RAW is head and shoulders above in-camera JPEG when you are shooting in low light and have to bump up the ISO. The difference between in-camera JPEG's anb RAW files that have been noise reduced in e.g. Lightroom when shooting with ISO 800 and above is remarkable.

So, why not go both ways? Switching between JPEG and RAW is not that difficult and in many cameras you can have customized shooting settings that you can select between.

- If you are shooting in very good light and/or need to get very high frame rates, go JPEG.
- If you are pressed for time and simply need to get images out for viewing fast, go JPEG. (I am almost completely a RAW shooter but when I photograph events and want to get images online or printed very fast, I simply flick the switch)
- If the lighting conditions are tricky, if it is dark, or you want to make sure you get every last bit of dynamic range, go RAW. The worse the light, the happier you are that you went RAW. I'd say it is less a matter of "saving" an image than giving yourself more headroom to work with. You really cannot save a truly bad image no matter what the format.

Lightroom can handle both types easily and there is no huge difference in your workflow - you can simply tweak the RAW images more with less artifacts.

As I mentioned earlier, I am 99% RAW. I only use Lightroom, never Photoshop (this is a both a matter of a conscious decision and deficient Photoshop skill set).

As for one of the earlier posts claiming you get more resolution with RAW – that was either a very badly limping metaphor or utter misinformation. I suspect the former. The actual resolution remains the same.

Cheers,
T.

... Shoot JPEG, enjoy yourself and save time. Works quite well for me.
+1 !!! ^

For the pro or the photography enthusiast, RAW makes a lot of sense. I often shoot RAW or RAW+, but photography is my hobby and passion - and occasional extra money maker. Spending the time in front of the computer to get those keepers just right for print or publishing is part of "digital photography." But for the travel snapshots that the casual user wants to email to family or post on Facebook or forums, a well-crafted JPG works fine without all the extra time and work.

For the newbie and learner who is traveling about, the camera will do a lot of the postprocessing that we do in Photoshop or the like right in the camera. Use the appropriate picture styles (ie "Landscape," "Portrait" or whatever fits) and take good, well exposed, well composed shots and avoid all the necessary "workflow" that the average casual shooter will not do anyway.

When asked for advice on cameras and process, I always ask the other questions to determine what the asker really wants. If he/she wants to take pictures like mine - or better, like what they see in magazines - then I explain about the extra time and work and advise learning Lightroom or Elements or something and shoot JPG at first but transition to RAW or RAW+. If they just want to take nice family pictures and travel snaps then the casual user can probably get better results learning the picture styles and some basic camera/photography technique and staying with highest-quality JPG. Or just get a high-quality point-and-shoot and forget about the DSLR. Modern cameras do an amazing job of producing good images almost completely unsupervised. When I tell family members about the 2 hours or so I spend each night on the road just sorting, cataloging, postprocessing and resizing my images before emailing those daily photo blog updates, they suddenly decide it is more than they want to do. Fine JPGs that are ready to go seem like a much better deal at that point. :p

I'm going to disagree with everyone above and say that shooting in JPEG is likely completely sufficient for 99.9% of users and comes with sufficient benefits to make it worthwhile.

I thought I was going to be the first semi-contrarian....

I suspect that most of the folks above extolling the virtues of RAW also have personal web galleries displaying their photos, have taken photography-specific trips/classes/etc. I include myself in that list. I've been shooting RAW for at least 5 years, it just gives me much more leeway in optimizing photos.

But...

I suspect that 99% of all photos shot are JPEG. Most people are taking snapshots to capture interesting moments, memories, etc. They aren't attempting to create art. They wouldn't know what USM(50,.5,10) meant if we spotted then the s,h,a, and r.

But...

OP, since you have a DSLR and are taking classes and asking the question, it tells me that you may well be in the 1% that does care. In fact, mentioning that you use Lightroom pretty much convinces me of that fact. If you have invested in LR and learning PP skills, I would strongly recommend RAW. At the end of the day it gives you more information to work with and almost always an opportunity to generate better final output, if you really care about the details. And it's much easier than the old days when RAW was a badge of honor only for the brave, and RSE was a revolution.

I've shot professionally and I have no problems shooting in jpg for myself. Yes, I still do some light post-processing in either Picasa or Lightroom.

Occasionally, I'll even print them out up to 11x14 or bigger.

If I'm not happy with my shot right after I took it, I doubt I'll be happy with it after post-processing.

My college prof always said poop in = poop out and while she was talking about shooting for TV, it still applies here. The less I have to fix, the better.

The key is to minimize your mistakes out on the field. Use the built in light meter and/or the histogram.

Special note on your wide angle: Try to avoid having an empty foreground. Everything will look further away than it is, so try to get up close.

And BTW, I look forward to seeing the final results.

If I'm not happy with my shot right after I took it, I doubt I'll be happy with it after post-processing.

My college prof always said poop in = poop out and while she was talking about shooting for TV, it still applies here. The less I have to fix, the better.

The key is to minimize your mistakes out on the field. Use the built in light meter and/or the histogram.

I am not advocating for the OP to shoot in one format or the other as I have no idea what specifically they are after but using this logic s/he might as well shoot in RAW.

Today's larger and cheaper media cards make the size issue much less of a factor and based on what little info the OP gave I seriously doubt that write speed will be a factor at all.

With RAW, if the OP uses the poop-in-poop out idea and nails the shot in-camera then it is just a simple matter to save the file as a JPEG and s/he still has the RAW file for back-up.

Also, even the best pros out there can still lose shadow detail and overall contrast, or clip the highlights. At least with RAW there is still a chance of saving the shot - much, much less so with JPEG

Given that storage is much less of an issue now, as are framerates somewhat, why not shoot RAW? Processing programs like Lightroom and Aperture have made RAW much less of a PITA to deal with post shoot.

Also, even the best pros out there can still lose shadow detail and overall contrast, or clip the highlights. At least with RAW there is still a chance of saving the shot - much, much less so with JPEG

Exactly. And does a pro always get the white balance right all the time? Especially when shooting quickly on the go?

Shoot raw. Use Aperture. For minimal processing, consider the "enhance" preset on import. Completely nondestructive, original files are preserved. See: http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/aperture.htm

Thank you to all that posted on this thread ... I will switch to RAW .. one must expand his abilities in order to learn this craft. I will ensure my wife takes the point and shoot for insurance.
Thank you all for your guidance and expertise ...
I will post upon my return .

And if you think you NEVER fix your photos on the camera after shooting (whether you just don't bother to, or your technique is so perfect that it's not needed), then there's no point shooting RAW.

Quibble: not only never do so now, but don't think you'l ever want to later.

I use Picasa for my editing. It handles brightness, contrast and cropping just fine.

And with most cameras, Picasa handles RAW just fine as well, and can do basic white-balance and exposure correction at least as well.

Shooting in RAW means longer post-processing times,

Not noticeably so for me on fast modern PCs, given the same software; quickie post-processing in Picasa is very fast with either raw from my DSLR or jpeg from my compact. Heavy editing in photoshop is barely any slower with RAW (and often quicker, given that it's easier to fix the color balance issues at import time than using the sliders on a jpeg.)

larger files,

Disk is cheap. Even with RAW averaging about 10-12mb/file, a few thousand pictures from a two-week trip is only 20-30gb; that's not that big even by smaller-than-HD SSD standards.

slower burst capture rates

Are you shooting sports? I use a 4 1/2 year old Rebel XTi. Its burst rate with RAW is fast enough for me; modern DSLRs are generally faster.

Shoot JPEG, enjoy yourself and save time. Works quite well for me.

Whereas I shoot RAW, use the same automated tools for 98% of the shots, and still have the option of doing more detailed postprocessing on the 1%-2% where it's worth it.

I wish I had something more substantive to add other than: thank you, everyone. I know very little about this topic but the discussion is very interesting and it is quite valuable to hear everyone's opinions on this subject. I am very much more educated from having read this thread so far. ^

This is absolutely false. Completely and totally. Just simply untrue. The resolution is exactly the same. The amount of data is different, but not the resolution.


The viewed resolution is reduced. The resolution of the original imaging sensor remains the same.

When you reduce data something has to give. What gives is the fine details: the resolution. That's why it's called "lossy" compression.

You can see the difference by adjusting the amount of JPEG compression that's used. (You can also see it if you have the ability to compare what's thrown away.... that's actually better if you ever get the chance to see an image generated by JPEG minus RAW). BUt many photo packages allow you to save images at various levels of JPEG compression - look at one that's saved at 25% vs 90%. You WILL see the difference.

If you want to call it something other than reduced resolution, OK by me.

As for saving in raw vs jpeg, think of the potential future use. I'm currently working a project to duplicate photos my dad took back in the 1940's. For many, I have the negatives & slides (some are deteriorated - Kodachrome holds up the best of all), for some I have just prints. I wish they were archive quality, but they're not (I've been scanning them at 5400 dpi). I look at RAW as the format I'd like to have for future use....

If you want to call it something other than reduced resolution, OK by me.

Resolution can mean either optical resolution (normally applied to the lens) or pixel density (either at the image sensor or in the final file); I've not normally heard the loss of detail via lossy compression referred to as "reduced resolution" but in the optical sense that would be correct (the other issue besides loss of detail is that it tends to cause some artifacting at high compression... which is generally easier to spot than just the fuzzier details.)

As for saving in raw vs jpeg, think of the potential future use. I'm currently working a project to duplicate photos my dad took back in the 1940's. For many, I have the negatives & slides (some are deteriorated - Kodachrome holds up the best of all), for some I have just prints. I wish they were archive quality, but they're not (I've been scanning them at 5400 dpi). I look at RAW as the format I'd like to have for future use....

That's generally my argument for why people should shoot RAW (and highest-resolution) even as newbs: you never know what you or someone else will want at highest-possible quality later. 5-8 years ago with clunkier tools and disk space about 8 times pricier (or much more as you go back in time), there were fair arguments against it. These days, those don't apply to stills.

They do still kinda apply to video; low compression full-HD is still a bit much to manage both in space and processing power. In a couple more years, they won't apply to either video or stills.

That is the same theory I use. On my Canon SLR I use JPG + RAW. 99.9% of the time I am not using the Raw file, but would rated have it and not use it than want to use it and not have it. With 2 TB external drives at about $100 space is far less of an issue than it was before.

It is the same argument for shooting at Max resolution and quality. You can always make things lower quality/resolution, but can't make them better.

Just a side note, my dad is a professional photographer and shoots jpeg.

As for saving in raw vs jpeg, think of the potential future use. I'm currently working a project to duplicate photos my dad took back in the 1940's. For many, I have the negatives & slides (some are deteriorated - Kodachrome holds up the best of all), for some I have just prints. I wish they were archive quality, but they're not (I've been scanning them at 5400 dpi). I look at RAW as the format I'd like to have for future use....

Just a side note, my dad is a professional photographer and shoots jpeg.

That's his job. Go shoot and give the clients the prints or JPEG files, collect pay, end of story. He actually has much less reason than us amateurs to keep copies of RAW files around for years (or forever).

Just another 2c on the subject.. I shoot RAW or RAW +JPG

* JPG is a processed image by the camera. The same 'shot' will look different/be interpreted by different cameras, even within the same Brand; however it's 'ready to go' after its shot & saved
* RAW is raw, gives you the most flexibility when you get back to your home or laptop; however, there's not a universal standard and cannot be shared easily as its just 'raw' data with no processing/interpretation done---yet.

That being said, I'd always do raw + jpg or raw. Today, you may only care about social media and basic prints, but having raw gives you the ability to tweak images and work with them well after the fact--years possibly.

I personally like to travel with 4GB High-Speed CF cards, not higher for a few reasons:
1 - If the card went bad on the trip, my picture loss is minimal
2 - 4GB is a just the right size to transfer/backup to DVD (Yes, I know about 8gb DVDs, see #1 though)
3 - Fast 4GB cards are pretty reasonably priced and available compared to higher capacity cards.

I have yet to run into a circumstance that (with a good HS CF Card) couldn't keep up with my shooting while writing RAW + JPG. If I need to share pictures while i'm on a trip, I'll shoot combo so I can quickly upload at the end of the day, but inevitably, at some point, my RAW images are getting dumped into Lightroom and color/wb corrected at a minimum before going to final jpg output.

Side note: I highly recommend Lightroom if you're serious or at least a photography enthusiast.

I shoot both. Most of the time, the JPEG is fine. Occasionally, I have a bad case of "raw to the rescue". I can see the argument for shooting raw exclusively though: Raw processing just isn't as hard as it used to be.

Used to shoot in RAW. Realized that I rarely if ever needed to utilize the benefits. Switched to JPG and never looked back.

really only use raw if i plan to do hdr or stitching.. otherwise jpeg is good enough.

Always RAW.

This is partly to compensate for my failings (I like candid photography, and so you tend not to have a lot of time to get the perfect conditions - I also have pretty shaky hands!)

It's also partly because I like to archive images, and will come back later, have an idea, and re-process the image in a different way if I've been inspired to do so. As RAW is a decent archive format (not as bulky as TIFF, but still lossless) and gives you more flexibility in terms of exposure, it gives you a lot more flexibility if this is how you tend to work with images. JPEG is a lossy format, meaning that every time you make changes to the image, you lose quality.

Every time you save a JPG you lose quality, but you must actually close and re-open the file to suffer the loss. Making a change to a JPG does not result in a loss if you save the change to a non-lossy format. For RAW you would also need to save changes to a non-lossy format (you can't save it as RAW), so there's not really any benefits from that standpoint.

Every time you save a JPG you lose quality, but you must actually close and re-open the file to suffer the loss. Making a change to a JPG does not result in a loss if you save the change to a non-lossy format. For RAW you would also need to save changes to a non-lossy format (you can't save it as RAW), so there's not really any benefits from that standpoint.

RAW -> TIF

Most of the scans I have made are in TIF (with a few also in PSD). They're much larger than the Canon CR2 files that I'm shooting today.

RAW -> TIF
JPG -> TIF

No difference, other than the benefits that existed in the original RAW or JPG file.

I do RAW+ unless making a time lapse with large amounts of pics, then just jpg. Just made one with 1400 pics and actually used a low quality jpg and was still around 2gb. If amy normal RAW+jpg fine, would have been around 32gb. Camera could have handled it, but I just didn't want to bother.

Every time you save a JPG you lose quality, but you must actually close and re-open the file to suffer the loss. Making a change to a JPG does not result in a loss if you save the change to a non-lossy format. For RAW you would also need to save changes to a non-lossy format (you can't save it as RAW), so there's not really any benefits from that standpoint.

Quite a bit of software that works with raw formats these days will do so by saving the changes non-destructively as a XMP or similar formula that goes along with the raw file (essentially allowing the software to replicate the changes when reopened) rather than requiring you to save to a PNG (or some other non-lossy format eg PSD/TIFF/TGA; there's also a non-lossy version of JPEG although it's rarely used.)

Photoshop can also go from RAW to DNG, which attempts to be a generic "raw-like" format.

Such software could do the same thing for JPG, essentially making edits to the JPG non-lossy, so this is not necessarily a benefit of shooting in RAW.

Such software could do the same thing for JPG, essentially making edits to the JPG non-lossy, so this is not necessarily a benefit of shooting in RAW.

Never said it was (indeed, most nondestructive edit software will run on jpegs and pretty much any common raster format) -- just that it's a way to keep raw-format pictures fully flexible: even moving to a non-lossy compression like PNG or TIFF will make impractical to go back to the original state for white balance and some camera-specific adjustments.

Of course, doing non-destructive edits on jpeg won't save you from further losses if you have to recompress to jpeg to share them or use them in another program :)

Suggestions need to be made based on your needs. Do you need them for sharing on social sites and sending 'em to friends? Or do you want to just save 'em for family viewings only? Go with RAW if it's the later one and JPEG if else.

One thing to bear in mind is that shooting habits in raw are in many ways less important than shooting habits in jpg. If you're shooting raw and forget that the last time you used your camera you set a custom white balance, no problem -- you still have all of the raw data to fix the white balance. If you make the same mistake shooting jpg, you might end up with unusable results. I've made that mistake while shooting raw+jpg and was really happy that I had the raw to fall back on.

I shoot only raw or raw+jpg except when I need maximum burst for a lot of shots (very rare, normally just for sports). Huge CF or SDHC cards are so cheap now that I don't see the point in limiting my options or ability to make corrections later.

One thing we have noticed in Photoshop CS is that if you open a picture in JPEG, it will be a larger size image than the same picture in RAW (with both the same pixels per inch). Unsure why this happens, but it negates a benefit of RAW. On a side to side comparison on the screen, the sharpness is the same, but the colors tend to be slightly closer to true with the RAW.

One thing we have noticed in Photoshop CS is that if you open a picture in JPEG, it will be a larger size image than the same picture in RAW (with both the same pixels per inch). Unsure why this happens, but it negates a benefit of RAW. On a side to side comparison on the screen, the sharpness is the same, but the colors tend to be slightly closer to true with the RAW.

What camera model do you have?

I've definitely not noticed any change of resolution between full-resolution JPEG and CR2 on either of the Canons where I've used raw heavily (XTi and S95.) Opening an arbitrary shot done as RAW+JPEG on my S95, it did come up with different "pixels per inch" (180 on the JPEG and 240 on the CR2) but the actual underlying resolution is the same 3648x2736 and the PPI figure is just metadata and mostly only relevant if you print directly from Photoshop.

On a bit more examination, it looks like the PPI is an option you can set in the Adobe Camera Raw UI, and that there's an option there to downscale RAW images when they're sent from the plugin into Photoshop. You might check if somehow that's gotten set?

What camera model do you have?

I've definitely not noticed any change of resolution between full-resolution JPEG and CR2 on either of the Canons where I've used raw heavily (XTi and S95.) Opening an arbitrary shot done as RAW+JPEG on my S95, it did come up with different "pixels per inch" (180 on the JPEG and 240 on the CR2) but the actual underlying resolution is the same 3648x2736 and the PPI figure is just metadata and mostly only relevant if you print directly from Photoshop.

On a bit more examination, it looks like the PPI is an option you can set in the Adobe Camera Raw UI, and that there's an option there to downscale RAW images when they're sent from the plugin into Photoshop. You might check if somehow that's gotten set?My Photoshop instructor noticed this and she shoots a Canon DSLR. I shoot a Sony DSLR. I just tried it again and when you open the RAW version of the picture in CS5, it showed on the ruler a size of 10" x 15". When I opened the JPEG version, the size showed as 42" x 64".

My Photoshop instructor noticed this and she shoots a Canon DSLR. I shoot a Sony DSLR. I just tried it again and when you open the RAW version of the picture in CS5, it showed on the ruler a size of 10" x 15". When I opened the JPEG version, the size showed as 42" x 64".

This has nothing to do with the actual resolution of the image. For some reason, the DPI presets for the different image formats is just different. Looking at the numbers, it seems likely that the RAW defaults to 300 dpi (or thereabouts) and the JPEG to 72 dpi.

The resolution for a RAW and corresponding JPEG image is the same. RAW simply contains more information per pixel; hence the ability to do more with the image.

Cheers,
T.

This has nothing to do with the actual resolution of the image. For some reason, the DPI presets for the different image formats is just different. Looking at the numbers, it seems likely that the RAW defaults to 300 dpi (or thereabouts) and the JPEG to 72 dpi.

That sounds like about the size of it. They can fix the default DPI in the Camera Raw plugin, if it bothers them, but it's ultimately a non-issue.

The resolution for a RAW and corresponding JPEG image is the same. RAW simply contains more information per pixel; hence the ability to do more with the image.

It's not quite as simple as "more information per pixel" - in some ways there is less on a regular Bayer-pattern sensor, since on a JPEG each pixel has red, green, and blue components and in the actual sensor, each pixel only has one of the three. BUT because you know which pixels are red, green and blue, you have control in software over how it interprets at any later point, rather than jpeg where that decision is made when the file is saved to your memory card.

This has nothing to do with the actual resolution of the image. For some reason, the DPI presets for the different image formats is just different. Looking at the numbers, it seems likely that the RAW defaults to 300 dpi (or thereabouts) and the JPEG to 72 dpi.

Most likely it's because a person shooting jpegs will probably be using a lower end image editing app and will show the shots using a browser, which is 72dpi. Dealing with various dpi's can get really confusing. Someone shooting RAW is more likely to be doing pro level work and can deal with all the changes in dpi and sizing more easily.

You and I understand dpi and sizing. Imagine though if I gave someone a shot that was a quarter inch by a half inch at 1000 dpi. They'd be totally confused.

It's pretty simple -

RAW: shoot RAW if you are going to be post-processing your images in Photoshop or Lightroom.

If size is an issue and you don't want to deal with 100s or thousands of large RAW files, for whatever reason, see JPEG.

If you need instant output without processing, see JPEG.

JPEG: If you are not going to be post-processing, shoot JPEG. Pick or create a Picture Style to get your desired image look.

If you have chosen to shoot JPEG, for size or any other issue, and will be post-processing set the Picture Style to Standard or Neutral.

If you need both image types, shoot RAW+JPEG, or better yet, just shoot in RAW to maximize memory card space, and use software like Instant JPEG from RAW to quickly convert all of them or the ones you need to JPEGs.

Learn more about this kind of stuff at my blog Picturing Change!
http://blog.dojoklo.com/ (http://blog.dojoklo.com/)

JPG on anything other than an M9.