User ID

Not sure but wouldn’t that be associated with the camera asking for the date and time to be set up when it’s switched on ?

User ID

Mooooooo ..... and amen.

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

2 excellent replies, by others, were:

1. Double check your settings

2. Check your card for the CR2 files.

The wireless transfer process would only send the jpg files for me... so I reverted to plugging the card in the PC and transferring with Win. explorer.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

I wish to point out that "The data that was lost" was not lost! It was discarded as being un-necessary to the developed JPG, ready for viewing and printing.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

There are programs that claim to be able to convert a jpg to a raw format. They are misleading you. They may convert the jpg to something with a raw extension (e.g. CR2) but what you get will NOT be raw data. As noted above, the full raw data has been discarded when the jpg was written to the card and cannot be recovered.

Your best bet now is to ensure that it does not happen again and that your camera is always set to write CR2 files. Use the mistake to learn for the future.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

In the PS Elements Editor I can open a JPEG as a RAW file with many of the tools that ACR uses but not all. You should have that capability in Photoshop too.

reguli Loc: Uruguay

This is basically imposible. You did not mention what camera you have, but some of them have 2 memory cards and in one the jpg's are saved and in the other the CR2. Recheck your configuration.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

You can also do this in Affinity - but it is still the same JPG file in all cases.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Opening a jpg in ACR is not opening it "as a raw file." It is simply using the tools of ACR to edit your jpg.

There will be no magical difference in results than if you'd simply edited in the main workspace.

Ah, I see Delderby had the same message for you, 54 seconds earlier

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

OK, OK, my wording is off a bit. We have to be careful on this forum with our grammar lest we raise the ire of the techno-experts. The PS Editor drop down says "Open as RAW" and when I do that it makes many of the ACR tools available for use on the JPEG file. I am totally aware that this method does not convert the JPEG to a
RAW file. Sorry if my imprecise grammar may have misled the OP.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Given the topic title and opening post, this is not a "grammar" issue; it's about facts. We're just trying to be clear here.

Hopefully, you'll see the humor in this observation: I have PS Elements 2018. The exact wording in my dropdown menu is Open in Camera Raw

😁

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I've done similar with my Pentax. No way of going back. Therefore I reprogrammed the RAW to JPG fx button to fx SR/VR On Off. Luckily the few times it has happened the Jpgs were right on and were not a problem to use. Using ACR I can Save the camera JPGs as DNG files so they can not be damaged or changed.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

The data compression is not the issue, it’s the bit depth. JPEG’s are 8 bit while the CR2 files are probably 14 bit. That means in a JPEG there are 24 bits per pixel, 8 for each RGB channel. That means each channel has 256 possible values and when you combine the three channels, (256x256x256), you get 16,384 possible shades. With 14 bit you get 16,384 possible values for each channel, (16,384x16,384x16,384), meaning you get 4,398,046,511,104 possible shades. That’s the data that’s discarded when you have a JPEG instead of a raw file. Truth be told, you can’t see the difference. Chances are you have an 8 bit monitor, but even if you have a 10 bit monitor you’d be hard pressed to see any difference which is why JPEG as final output is fine. Chances are for your average scene your JPEG’s will be fine for editing. Where the 14 bits of raw come in is when you have a scene with a wide dynamic range and want to recover highlight and shadow detail. Also if you push the saturation in a JPEG it’s susceptible to banding in gradient areas so you lose the smooth gradient.

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

I didn't doubt your comprehension - but it's quite a big audience

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Raw sensor data formats such as .CR2 are one-way tickets to other file formats. There is no going back. Most of the information present in a raw file is discarded when the camera's processor converts the exposure to a JPEG. NOTHING can convert an image file format (TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG...) to raw data.

Raw formats are the "original, unprocessed film" of digital photography. They include a sample JPEG processed using the camera's menu settings. But the raw data is always constant. Raw files can NEVER be changed, so if you save raw files, you can use future, better software to process them years from now. Or, you can just make a better JPEG than the camera did.

SOME camera manufacturers' proprietary software, such as Canon DPP 4, can save their "changes" into the metadata of a raw file, but the original metadata and preview image remain in the raw file, unchanged. This means that opening a .CR2 in DPP will display the last changes made in DPP. But you may always revert to the defaults used to create the original preview image, OR, you can get any effect you want. This DOES NOT happen in third party software. Third parties (Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Affinity Photo, RAW Power, Capture One...) have their own processing defaults and profiles they apply to the raw data when you open it.