RAW vs JPEG. RAW What? JPEG What? What Is This Nonsense?

Photography Explained Podcast - Episode 243 - Transcript

🎙️ Introduction

Every RAW photo you will ever take ends up as a JPEG in the end. So why bother shooting in RAW at all? What a good question.

Take a photo in JPEG and it looks good straight away. Punchy colours, good contrast, ready to share. However, take the same photo in RAW, look at it unprocessed, and it looks flat, dull, a bit lifeless, rubbish even.

Now, there's a reason for that, and it's not that RAW is worse. No, no. It's that a JPEG has already been processed by your camera in a fraction of a second when the image was taken. And a RAW photo hasn't been processed at all, other than creating the digital file, that is.

And that's what this episode is all about. And at the end of it, you'll know exactly why so many photographers, myself included, choose to do all of that lovely processing themselves. Yes, really.

Hi, and welcome to episode 243, blimey, of the splendid Photography Explained Podcast. This episode is titled RAW versus JPEG. RAW what? JPEG what? What is this nonsense? What is this nonsense?

A very good morning, good afternoon, or indeed, good evening to you, wherever you are in the world and whatever time of day you find yourself listening to me, or indeed, watching me on the video feed. I'm your host, Rick. Hi. And in each episode, I try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes-ish, without the irrelevant details. Yes, really.

I'm a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you, dear listener, in my splendid podcast. And before I forget, you can text me from the podcast feed if you want to get in touch, or if you've got any questions from this episode.

Okay, let's get into this.

🍳 Your Camera Is a Very Small Kitchen

To understand why RAW exists at all, think about your camera as a very small kitchen. Just, just go with me on this, okay? Every time you press the shutter button, that kitchen decides whether to hand you a finished, plated meal or a bag of raw ingredients and an array of cutlery. Raw materials, if you like. I know.

That decision is called RAW versus JPEG , and by the end of this episode, you'll know what I'm talking about. You'll know exactly what each one gives you, why I shoot RAW myself, and why, whichever one you choose, you're always gonna end up with a JPEG file regardless, which sounds like a strange way to go about things, doesn't it? But it isn't. Just give me time to explain.

📸 The Tips

Tip 1: JPEG Is the Finished, Plated Meal

Okay, tip one. JPEG is the finished plated meal. A JPEG is a photo your camera has already cooked for you. The instant you press the shutter button, your camera makes a whole series of decisions on your behalf. How, how charming of it.

How bright should this be? What the colours look like? How much contrast? How sharp? It applies all of that, and then it compresses the file down, and it throws away all the stuff that it didn't need, all the information it's decided you don't need.

So what comes out the other end is a small, sharp, ready-to-share and finished photo. Rather like ordering a meal and having no say whatsoever in how it's cooked, but it does arrive quickly, and it looks nice on the plate.

It's a bit like dining in a restaurant and being given a microwave meal, an acceptable microwave meal, granted, but not the best of all the ingredients.

Tip 2: RAW Is the Raw Ingredients

Talking of ingredients, RAW is the raw ingredient, so this is tip two. A RAW file is different from a JPEG file. Your camera does the bare minimum needed to save the file and create that photo as a digital file and no more.

No creative decisions are made, no colour choices, no compression throwing information away. What you get is every raw ingredient your sensor captured sitting there on the worktop, completely unprocessed, waiting for you to do something with it. It's exactly as appetising as that sounds, which is to say, not remotely, unless somebody, meaning you or me, does some cooking.

A photo created using JPEG is a microwave meal. A photo created using RAW is a gastronomic delight full of flavours and rich in depth and everything. And that's me done with the cooking analogies, thankfully.

Tip 3: The Screen on Your Camera Is Lying to You (A Bit - Probably)

Tip three, get back on it, Rick. The screen on your camera is lying to you. A bit. Probably.

Here's where it really gets ironic. When you shoot in RAW and look at the photo on the back of your camera or through the electronic viewfinder, what you're looking at is a small JPEG preview your camera has generated just for that purpose, probably. Yep, it looks punchy. It looks sharp. It looks good. It looks exactly like the JPEG I described a moment ago.

And it looks like what you were after when you took the photo, so what's wrong with that? Well, this is the thing. It's not your RAW file. Your actual RAW file is still sitting there flat and unprocessed, looking nothing like the confident little preview you've just seen.

So don't be fooled by what's on your screen, and don't panic when the first time you open a RAW file on your computer, it looks worse than you remembered. It was never gonna look like that preview, 'cause that preview wasn't real. It was a JPEG wearing a RAW file's clothes, and nobody told you. How utterly unsplendid.

Tip 4: JPEG Photos Can Look Genuinely Great

Tip four, JPEG photos can look genuinely great.

I want to be really clear about this because when RAW gets talked about, it's as though JPEG is somehow inferior, and that is just not true. A well-exposed JPEG taken in good light by a camera that has metered the scene correctly can look fantastic straight out of camera.

Plenty of excellent photographers shoot JPEG only. Plenty of professional photographers shoot JPEG only. That's their choice, and that is absolutely fine.

Choosing JPEG, it's not a mistake. It's a choice. It's a choice about how much processing you let the camera and the software do and how much of it you want to do yourself.

And there are lots of presets in cameras these days. I don't use them myself, so I can't really tell you that much about them, that can give you instant looks straight out of camera. So JPEG isn't a bad thing. This is an explanation of the difference of the two and why you might want to shoot in JPEG or in RAW and also what I do and the reasons why.

Good ad lib, Rick. That was good, that.

Tip 5: RAW Gives You More to Work With

Tip five, RAW gives you more to work with.

And this is the actual difference. Because a RAW file has not had any information thrown away, you've got far more room to adjust it afterwards without it falling apart. If you brighten a dark JPEG too much, you might see blotchy, mushy shadows because the detail needed to do it was discarded when you took the photo.

Do the same to a RAW file, and the information is still there waiting for you. And the same is true of colour. If your white balance is off, a RAW file lets you correct it properly. A JPEG may only ever get you part of the way there. It's normally fine, to be honest with you, but there is a risk.

So the more raw ingredients, it means more opportunities to get a better result. That's the way to think about it. It's more opportunities to get a better result because you got more of the RAW data to work with.

And with RAW, if you use auto white balance, and why wouldn't you? No, it's not a bad thing, you can change the white balance preset while you're processing the image in Lightroom or whatever image-processing software of choice you prefer to use. And this is utterly splendid.

Tip 6: Why RAW Files Take Up So Much More Space Than JPEG Files

Tip six: why RAW files take up so much more space than JPEG files.

RAW files are bigger than JPEG files, a lot bigger than JPEG files. Now, why is this? Well, it's simple. JPEGs are compressed at the time the photo is taken and processed in the camera. And in that compression, that's when some data is lost.

The RAW file, though, is not compressed. It has everything, and that's why there's more data. Right, that was straightforward enough, wasn't it?

Tip 7: Shoot RAW and JPEG Together

Tip seven, shoot RAW and JPEG together. This is what I recommend if you're a beginner photographer and you're not sure about RAW. It sounds a bit complicated.

And I need to say this here, you don't have to use RAW if you don't want to. It's fine. It doesn't mean you're not gonna get great photos, 'cause let's not forget, great photos start with a great composition, not if you've taken a photo in RAW or JPEG.

“You can take a rubbish photo in RAW, and you can take a rubbish photo in JPEG.”

So let's be clear, you can take a rubbish photo in RAW, and you can take a rubbish photo in JPEG. There you go. But this is what you can do. You can shoot RAW and JPEG together, which is tip seven. So back to my script.

This is what I actually recommend if you're a beginner and you're not sure, and this is what I did when I first learned about RAW. Yep, I started taking JPEG photos back in the day, about 2001, 2, or 3. Blimey, that's, that's some time ago now, isn't it?

This is what you do. Set your camera to record RAW and JPEG at the same time . Most cameras will happily save both files for every single photo you take.

The JPEG means you got pretty good images straight away. You can carry on sharing straight away if that's what you're used to do. And the RAW file will sit there quietly waiting for you, giving you the chance to properly practise processing a photo yourself whenever you're ready to, without ever losing the actual photo, 'cause you've got the JPEG separate. So it's a win-win.

If you don't wanna do this, that's fine. If you do want to give yourself the chance to get the best photos that you can, do this, or just go straight to RAW as long as you're happy with the processing side of things.

💡 Key Takeaway: RAW and JPEG, best of both worlds, nothing to lose. But you do have more data to store, so hard drives will fill up quicker. Let's not forget that.

Tip 9: And Here Is the Irony

Tip nine, and here is the irony. After all that, here's the twist. Once you've taken your RAW file, you've done your own processing. You've brightened it, corrected the colour, made it genuinely better, made it the best that you can. What do you do with it if you wanna do anything with it other than look at it on your own computer?

You export it as a JPEG. Yep. After everything RAW gives you, after all that extra information, all that extra control, after all that stuff with RAW, you end up exporting a file as a JPEG, and this is why.

Because people can't open RAW files unless they've got photo editing software. So you convert it to JPEG, the universal format, and people can open the photos. Again, makes sense, doesn't it?

So the only difference here is that the JPEG was made properly by you using everything your camera captured, rather than automatically by your camera in a fraction of a second at the time you took the photo.

Same destination, different journey to get there. All that extra effort to arrive exactly where JPEG started, but it's important to remember, it's not the same JPEG that it would've been if you'd let the camera create it. It will hopefully be a better one, which it turns out is the entire point of all of this.

And with that, I can move on.

📋 Quick Recap

• Tip one, a JPEG is a finished plated meal cooked by your camera in an instant.

• Tip two, a RAW file is the raw ingredients and the equipment completely unprocessed.

• Tip three, your camera screen shows a JPEG preview even when you're shooting in RAW.

• Tip four, JPEG photos can look genuinely great, and choosing JPEG is not a bad thing. It's not a mistake.

• Tip five, RAW gives you far more room to fix brightness and colour without it falling apart.

• Tip six, RAW files are bigger because unlike JPEGs, nothing is compressed, and there's no data thrown away.

• Tip seven, shoot your RAW and JPEG together so you lose nothing and gain the option.

• Tip eight, change this in your camera's image quality menu. It's a one-off setting.

• Tip nine, every RAW file ends up exported as a JPEG anyway, just a properly made one.

Right, that's not too bad, is it?

📱 What If I Use a Phone to Take My Photos?

Most modern phones can shoot RAW too. It's just hidden a little deeper than in a camera.

On an iPhone, for example, which is what I use... Excuse me if I only use iPhone, but I don't have an Android phone, so I'm not really qualified to say, am I? On an iPhone, it's in your camera settings under Formats where you can turn on Apple ProRAW . On most Android phones, you need to switch the camera app into pro or expert mode where a RAW option usually appears.

Somewhere out there, there's a phone with RAW quietly switched on inside a formats menu nobody has ever opened, patiently capturing raw ingredients that will never be cooked.

The catch is the same as on a camera. RAW files from a phone are much bigger, and you'll need an app such as Lightroom Mobile to actually edit them properly because your phone's own gallery app might not do it justice. Again, this is not something that I do, okay?

If you're only ever posting straight to social media, JPEG's probably fine. I'm sure it will be. But if you're starting to care about getting the best possible result from every photo you take, it's worth having a look at.

🙋 What Do I Do?

Right, what do I do? I used to take photos in JPEG, and then I found out about RAW. I started taking RAW plus JPEG, and then I moved over to RAW only, once I'd sussed out the benefits, the differences, the processing, all that good stuff.

And since I made that change to shooting in RAW, I've never gone back. I have never shot in JPEG. Not true, Rick. You did once on a commercial shoot where you forgot to change the camera setting 'cause you were using a borrowed camera.

And, one thing about that, nobody noticed. That's the reality. We need to just balance out the fact that can you really tell if a photo was taken in JPEG or RAW? Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. A little bit more on that in a minute.

Another thing, I also use the highest quality settings. There are different quality settings for both RAW and for JPEG. Now, I know these create the biggest files, but image quality is my number one priority with every photo I take.

And when I export the photos out of Lightroom, I set compression to 92%, which is a good amount of compression without losing virtually any visible image quality. And I set the maximum file size to one megabyte, which most of the time works. Sometimes it doesn't, so I need to go up to two megabytes.

So I'm compressing a file that could be 20 to 25 megabytes down to one megabyte without any loss of quality. It's amazing, isn't it?

And the quality of the editing, the content of the editing, all that good stuff has been done by me and not by the camera or a JPEG preset. And I've got nothing against JPEG presets or JPEG, please believe me. This is just what I do. And with that I can move on.

🎯 Here's Something for You to Do, Dear Listener

Right, here's something for you to do, dear listener. Before you do anything else, go into your camera's menu, find the image quality settings, and switch to RAW plus JPEG . And that's it.

It's one setting. Change once, and every photo you take from today going forwards will give you both files and give you the choice your camera has been making for you up until now.

And then take a photo using RAW and JPEG and look at them side by side without doing any processing to either of them, and let me know if you can tell the difference.

🔗 Related Episodes

Right, related episodes. Okay, related to this is exposure, which I covered in Episode 226, Why Are My Photos Too Dark? Understanding Exposure for Beginners , which explains the exposure fundamentals that RAW editing gives you so much more room to correct. It's a sort of related episode, isn't it?

And another related episode is about white balance, which Episode 227, White Balance Explained: Why Your Photos Look Too Orange or Too Blue covered, which goes into this subject, which is, which is good stuff actually.

🔮 Next Episode

Right, next episode. Well, a bit of a change. I'm tackling that dial on the top of your camera covered in letters and symbols that might mean absolutely nothing to you.

And this episode is titled, wait for it, What On Earth Are The Letters and Symbols on That Turny Dial? Yes, I'll explain what all the letters and symbols are on that turny dial. And then there's a little, little twist to this, a little locking button in the middle on some cameras, so I'll cover that as well.

And I will, I will cover the two Canon cameras that I own, I'll have the turny dials on my Canon R100 and Canon 6D. And you will have a camera manual with your camera, so you can refer to them, and you can work out what they all are. But I'll explain the ones that I've got. How utterly splendid.

👋 Sign-Off

Okay, I'm done. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the splendid Photography Explained Podcast. I do hope you've enjoyed it and that you found it useful. If you've got any questions or suggestions for a future episode, please let me know.

And if you did love this episode, why not subscribe so you get every new episode straight to your listening device of choice? And if you could tell one person all about my splendid podcast, that would be greatly appreciated.

For everything else, courses, resources, my weekly email, and lots of other good stuff, check out my website, rickmcevoyphotography.com. And you can find me on YouTube, just put Rick McEvoy into the search, up I pop. And you can text me from the podcast feed, which I mentioned before, how utterly splendid.

Right, this episode was brought to you by a cheese and pickle sandwich. Yes, it really was. Which I consumed before settling into my homemade acoustically cushioned recording emporium.

I've been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast. It still makes me laugh, the cheese and pickle reference. And for giving me 27-ish minutes of your valuable time.

Now, I reckon this episode will be about 21 minutes long after I've edited out the mistakes and the other bad stuff. Thanks for listening. Take care. Stay safe. Cheers from me, Rick.