JohnFrim wrote:
I don't print my images, so I will ask, what sort of printer can show these differences? Are we talking a home inkjet printer, Walmart, or a commercial lab?
And asking on behalf of all who only view their photos on a monitor, TV, tablet, etc, walk me through this. Suppose I have a SOOC JPEG that has overly dark shadow regions that I want to brighten a bit. With 8-bit-per-channel colour any adjustment I make will be quantized into 256 levels. So let's say I am at level 80 and I think it is too dark, but level 81 is too bright. With the SOOC JPEG I have no options, but with the 14-bit RAW I should be able to get the equivalent of 80.4 or maybe 80.6 which would be perfect. But wouldn't my monitor simply display 80 or 81?
I don't print my images, so I will ask, what sort ... (
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Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I am on vacation as soon as I get off work Thursday night, but I have to have the sports sections for the next four papers done before I leave. Not as bad as that sounds since we are between high school sports seasons and the stories are all season review stories from the fall sports and season preview stories for the winter sports. Nonetheless, it makes for some long hours.
First your question about printing images. No I would not go to Walmart, Costco, or any other printer of that kind. Why? Because they use a computer to automatically color correct images. I don't want my images color corrected. They already have the color that I choose for them to have.
I view that portion of post processing exactly the same as when I used a darkroom. I took notes each time I printed a photo of exactly what I did. When I got a photo that I really liked I then used those same profiles each time I processed an image with similar contrast. Saved a lot of processing time once I had a series of profiles that were accurate for what I wanted. I do the same thing with prints. Once one is processed to what I think is my liking I send it off to be printed. If the printing matches what I intended I file those post processing notes away and use that profile to process similar photos. Saves a lot of processing time as you get a larger and more accurate group of profiles.
The technical portion of your question is meaningless since as you already pointed out you are unlikely to be able to see the difference on your monitor.
Now for the part that no one is going to like. Any one image that someone on this sight can produce in raw can probably also be produced in jpeg by someone who has set the right profiles on their camera and is reasonably good at post processing. (the raw proponents don't want to admit that)
Now for the part that the jpeg proponents don't like. The advantage of raw is I can make 20, 30, or more different images out of the same raw file. To match all of them in jpeg I would have to have shot several different jpegs with different in camera profiles. Possible, but somewhat tedious, and certainly not very useful for things like sports.
The jpeg people will claim that sooc is the only true photo and the rest are just manipulated images that are art, but not accurate portrayals of the actual scene. The reality is that there is no accurate portrayal. The camera does not see a scene the same way that a human does, so no matter how carefully you shoot an image someone who was at the scene will remember it differently than you do. So the reality is that what a scene really looks like is very subjective.
So here is why I am not going to play the game of posting a sooc jpeg and the resulting processed raw image. The reality is that any one raw image that I can post here, no matter how good, someone else can do the same photo in jpeg.
So then why use raw. Some of the jpeg people seem to think that the reason is because the raw people don't take the time to get the image right in the first place. That isn't necessarily the case.
Example in my job I shoot both for the web and print. As I'm sure that you have noticed many newspaper photos look rather dark, and of not very good quality. Part of the problem is the presses that the images are printed with. Part is the quality of the photography to begin with. Newspapers are using fewer and fewer professional photographers and the quality of the work has consequently suffered.
However, there is another major difference. Newsprint is not white. Consequently if you print the same image that looks good on the web skin tones will be incorrect, the image will look dark and muddied and in general the quality of the print will be poor. A copy of the image on the page printed on bright white paper in a pdf file for proofing will look good, but the final image will not.
I know, this is a long explanation, but it is the beauty of raw. With raw I can quickly process the photo twice. Once for the web and once for print. At least for our press the finished image needs to be cmyk, while the web image needs to be rgb. To look good as a finished print the image needs to be overexposed and the color balance needs to be altered. Otherwise skin tones will tend to look yellowish or even orangish. Not very attractive. If all I do is shoot a jpeg image I don't have enough leeway to process an image that looks really good on the web and an image that really looks good on newsprint from the same file. With raw that is not a problem. Just open the file, process it so it looks good on the monitor, save it as a jpeg file and the web version is done. Then reopen the file, process it so it is overexposed about 3/4 of a stop, and change the color balance, and now it is ready for print. I have profiles for both set up at work on photoshop. We don't use lightroom at work.
Now when I shoot for my own use, there is another reason to shoot in raw. Lets say that I have a scene with some fog and low clouds and beautiful fall colors. If The image is overexposed a half stop the fog will be bright and white, but the fall colors will be somewhat dull and faded. On the other hand if the image is processed differently the clouds can be made to look dark and foreboding, while the fall colors will be more saturated. Neither image is necessarily better than the other, they are just different. With jpeg I could probably shoot both, but it would take time. With raw I can shoot it once and process for both. That's one of the advantages of raw, but you are unlikely to see a significant difference if I post one sooc jpeg and one raw image.
The next reason for raw as has already been stated is to open up shadows. You can do the same ting with jpeg hdr, but I'm sure you have seen what the sooc people here think about that.
The reality is that there are things that raw is better for and there are things where it makes little difference. The second reality is that especially with a non calibrated monitor even a fairly significant difference will still look very similar. The differences will show more clearly in print.
However, there is another issue that is not always adequately covered when this topic comes up. It is easy with a raw file to process an image in such a way that the colors in the image are outside of the range that the monitor can show and even outside of the range that the printer can show. Unless raw is carefully and judicially used with current monitor and printer technology the superior color rendition is actually wasted since it is out of gamut and can't actually be shown.
The real advantage of raw is that all the data is saved. That may not matter today, but with improved technology in the future we may be able to do things with current raw images that are impossible today. When I first started shooting digitally both my camera and image processing skills were suspect. As my processing skills improved I tried to go back and reprocess images that I had already shot years earlier. It is then that I became a raw advocate. The things that I had shot in jpeg only there was very little that I could do to the image that I hadn't already done. On the other hand there were many raw images that I could process significantly better than I had been able to do before. As technology improves I would expect to be able to go back again sometime in the future after I retire and be able to improve, or even save images that are important to my family or my memories, but that were mediocre or even worse photos when originally taken. That's the real advantage of raw, and there is no way to show that to you by posting one image as requested.
If you really want to see the advantages of raw shoot raw + jpeg, open the raw image making sure it doesn't have your camera settings for the jpeg image. It will look dull and flat. Now use arc and adjust the sliders and look at some of the choices that you can get. Change the white balance. Change the amount of black, etc... when you get a version of the image that you like note the settings that you used so that you can duplicate them open the image and compare it to the sooc image. Now reopen the raw file and look for another set of settings that you like but that makes the image look significantly different. Once again write down the settings and compare to the jpeg image.
It won't take long before you will begin to see the real advantage of raw. As you get a bigger list of settings that you like set up profiles in your processing software to match those settings. Your post processing will get faster and more precise.
One final thing. The other problem with posting examples is each of us has our own personal tastes. I tend to like more saturation than my wife does. You may like more black than I do, or more white. If you look at Ansel Adams work later in life he began to use more contrast in his printing, so even as we age our personal tastes may change. Raw images allow me to take advantage of that fact more easily and more precisely. It isn't today that you will really see the advantage of raw, it is 10, 20, or even 30 years down the road when your tastes have changed and you can go back and improve your favorite images.
And sorry I can't give you presets to help with your raw processing. Since our personal tastes are probably different it is highly likely that you won't even like some of my presets.
Hope that answers your question. Sorry the response is so long.