What exactly is happening to a Raw photo when it becomes a JPEG and what about Raw photos are so preferable for photo editing
In: 239
The difference is compression.
A raw file contains every single spec of color information about the image.
A jpeg contains less information about the image.
Both files can be viewed as an image, but the images are subtly different.
If you zoom in, the jpeg image starts to lose detail long before the raw file.
In editing you want to have as much image information as possible so you can do better editing.
Compression is when you take a large amount of data but store that data in less memory.
Compressed jpeg data cannot be used to recreate the original raw file because the process of compression is “lossy” meaning you lose some of the detail in the data when you compress it.
You can always use a raw file to create a compressed file such as a jpg.
The same concept exists in audio. The songs you stream are heavily compressed. A lot of the detail of the sound is truly lost in an mp3. A wav file is one type of raw data file but they’re too big to stream.
Latest Answers