What exactly is happening to a Raw photo when it becomes a JPEG and what about Raw photos are so preferable for photo editing

Question

What exactly is happening to a Raw photo when it becomes a JPEG and what about Raw photos are so preferable for photo editing

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Answer 1

Using an analogy I used from another post with a similar question:

So every digital camera takes all the data (color/light/white balance/exposure) in and interprets it a little differently. You shoot a photo and let’s say, Apple, has decided how it should look. Sort of like giving a chef ingredients and they decide how it should taste. That’s a jpeg.

With RAW, the camera takes all the data in and instead of deciding for you how it interprets it, it just gives you the data and you can use an image editor or RAW processor to decide how it looks. Sort of like the chef giving you the ingredients back and saying “make it yourself”

It gives you more control over the image because it’s just…raw data. With a jpeg, you can edit and make tweaks to the color or exposure, etc. But it’s more limited. Like if you tried to take the chef’s creation and modify the flavor. You could change a it a bit but it’s not going to stretch very far.

So RAW can be helpful in tricky lighting situations where the shadows might be too dark or the highlights might be too light. It gives you more latitude to try to save those details later. Or if you are shooting in fluorescent light the color balance might look funky. You have a greater ability to correct that before the quality starts to deteriorate.

You might notice if you open a RAW image in a RAW editor, it might appear flat or too dark or too light. That’s because the camera didn’t make the decisions about what the contrast should be or how green the green should be, etc. Now that being said, most image viewers/editors will show you an embedded jpeg version as the preview. So it might look fine until you go to edit it. So RAW images require a little more work to make them look how you want them to.

Some cameras have good JPEGS that people are perfectly happy with. For example, most people find that Fujifilm cameras have very good straight out of camera jpegs. I also shoot a Fuji camera and I shoot RAW+JPEG so I can use the jpeg if I’m happy with it. Maybe tweak it a little bit. Or I can use the RAW if I want more control.

Hope that makes sense!