drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

Ralloh Loc: Ohio

Hate to be nitpicking here, but, you may be a pro but what you said tells me you don't really understand RAW. You said, "I can do some raw editing when I open a jpeg in raw". I don't even know what that means. On face value it seems you are saying you can take JPG, open it in RAW (?) then edit it like a RAW file. If you only have a JPG, you don't have a RAW file to work with. Yes, you can open a JPG in an editor that edits RAW, but, you are still only editing the JPG. OK, I'll stop pulling my hair out through frustration now.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

Yes you can open a jpeg in raw and yes you are editing a jpeg and as far as I know in Adobe raw. When it comes to saving the jpeg at the end of the edit Adobe asks what to save the file as and I save it to another drive using the same file name as the original jpeg. At no time does Adobe convert the file to raw. Although Adobe does ask you what to save the file as. I was just saying you can open a jpeg in Adobe raw and edit it there to some extent.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

JPEG = Fast Food
RAW = Home cooked meal.

Both are food. Home cooking is better for you.

Ralloh Loc: Ohio

OK, now that makes sense. It was just worded a bit odd before. I'll stop pulling my hair out now. I obviously don't have much to spare.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Opening JPEGs in Raw still doesn't give you the depth of information of shooting in raw.

In fact, in terms of color balance, I would say that you can never completely recover all your white balance options if you captured in JPEG.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I think you need to make the distinction that you are opening JPEGs in the Adobe CAMERA Raw editor, which, in both Lightroom and Photoshop, gives you a subset of tools for JPEG adjustments. Canon DPP and SilkyPix and a few other editors will do the same.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

It has nothing to do with being a geek and everything to do with being serious about quality. With raw plugins for Windows I can view raws just like jpgs in Explorer. If I want to convert to jpg it can be done in seconds, or I can choose to batch convert in DxO with resulting jpgs of much higher quality than anything coming from the camera's limited and limiting algorithms.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

It is absolutely untrue that chroma adjustment is the same for raw and jpg. Raw can adjust the three primary color channels independently of each other, whereas in jpgs it is only possible to put a color wash across the whole frame. No way can you correct more than minor tints well in jpg.

If you have any doubts about this shoot a tungsten scene with a sunny WB in both jpg and raw, do your best adjustment in both and see what's what.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

In an image editor you have color channel adjustments. You can either raise or lower RGB levels independently or use color axis sliders (easier) which adjust on the blue/yellow and green/magenta axes. PS allows you to adjust chroma values independently in shadows/mids/highlights, which is a fudge but might help a little if you shoot jpgs.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The point of JPEG is to use the same sort of "PRE-processing" that it took to get great color slides. Careful use of an exposure/white balance target, plus menu settings that give your images precisely the look you want, are the steps that are equivalent to using an incident meter, a color temperature meter, color balancing filters over the lens, and good film choice...

It's a completely opposite mind set from working in raw. The goal is NOT to edit a JPEG. It's to use it as-is, or with minor adjustments. If your situation is such that you cannot trust your exposures, or you know you must do substantial post-processing for creative reasons, then raw capture makes the most sense.

Those of us who burned through countless bricks of slide film years ago had no trouble learning to work with JPEG capture. Many pro photographers who worked exclusively with color negative films prior to 2000 had serious trouble learning to make usable JPEGs.

I was a trainer at a school photography company from 2005 - 2012. I watched our lab customers grapple with JPEG digital capture and freak out! A lot of old-timers retired. One guy went into a manic depressive state and sold his business, rather than accept the fact that we threw all our film processors and optical printers into recycling heaps.

It all came down to a latitude change. Kodak Portra 160 had +2, -1.3 FULL stops, before things got wonky. JPEGs have +1/3, -2/3 stops of latitude before you can see noticeable quality degradation.

LABS fixed customer exposure errors when we printed from film and film scans. So photographers got lazy! But with JPEGs, we couldn't fix the kinds of errors they were used to making (never knew they were making!).

Raw is most similar to color negative film. The difference is that YOU perform part or all of the lab process. Labs generally don't process raw files. So the onus is on photographers: Get it right at the camera, or get it right at the computer. It's not a debate, it's a choice!

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Shooting in Raw, I can make anything between a "normal" straight shot and a single shot HDR if I can adjust it in Adobe Camera Raw. I like that latitude of choice.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

Sorry I do get wordy and confusing at times

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

I agree that fine JPGs look pretty good from my Nikon D800e. In fact I often take both RAW and JPG but I really like the freedom that RAW gives me to make the image my own. The JPGs I actually use are the grab shot, family visit, trip to the beach etc . images. The images I want to make for my own satisfaction and printing for framing can always be a little more like my vision the I start with RAW. Just saying'

catchlight.. Loc: Wisconsin USA- Halden Norway

...page 6 is about to begin.

Hard to believe there would be a quality debate raw vs jpeg...

Speed and file storage benifits yes...a bit hard to understand any other point of view but I'm trying...