RAW vs JPG

Many point and shoot cameras only shoot .JPG files, however, if you have a DSLR you likely have the option to shoot RAW. What is RAW? It's a type of image file that saves much more information from the photograph than other file types. This is because the information of a RAW file has not been compressed or processed in any way. JPG files compress the information of the photograph into a smaller storage space; this causes many editing opportunities to be lost. For example, if you shoot a photo and that picture comes out underexposed, How do you fix this? With a JPG file it's very hard to fix it and still be left with good quality. But with a RAW file all the information is still there, untouched. You can literally edit more light into the image to fix the problem and still have that good quality photograph.

The picture to the left is quite underexposed. I shot it using RAW and JPG and we're going to see which one can bring back some of that lost detail better.

My camera has a setting that allows me to shoot an image and capture both the RAW and JPG formats, so I used that option for this photo. There was a single light source that was placed slightly behind me; this is was part of why the image is under-exposed. The lighting was more back-lit than evenly lit in the front.

So let's see if we can bring back some of that detail that was lost in the shadows.

Check out the two versions. They are the exact same photo besides the format. I edited both images mostly the same to bring back the detail in the shadows.

    RAW                                                         JPG                    

As you can see, the JPG quality degrades much faster than the RAW with the post-processing. When the shadows are brought back in the JPG, a ring of light appears around the subject; the shirt also has more noise that appeared only after the shadows were brought up.

Shooting RAW can save your images many, many times. RAW files do take up a bit more space on your SD card, but it can do wonders for your photographs.