via the lens wrote:
Depending on the photograph, in either case, the image could look fairly good out of the camera, or really bad out of the camera. If shooting RAW you would automatically process, if shooting JPEG not so much. Other than that you have at least entertained the thought of "putting the head of a goat on your x's body" I'm not sure what you are getting at. No one has said you cannot process JPEG. And, in fact, I am saying that you most likely should do that in many cases.
I process every single jpg worth keeping. If you don't understand what I'm getting at you're not trying. I don't understand what you are getting at when you say "if shooting JPG, not so much" It's particularly confusing since I do process all my jpgs worth spending time with. You say no one has said you cannot process JPEG, perhaps, but almost everyone wearing the raw t-shirt insinuates/says exactly that. Even you, in this post, insinuated it when you said "if shooting jpeg, not so much" I've seen numerous posts on this subject that make it seem if you take only jpg, you might as well leave your lens cap on.
I agree that all RAW photo's must be post processed, even if just to get them to the quality of the jpg. To go past that, rarely does it make any difference if the original was jpg or raw. With a jpg, I can change the white balance, brightness, add blur, remove haze, change shoe color, fix red eye, remove wrinkles, fix your nose, zits, arm fat, replace sky or your ex's head with that of a goat. Can I win photo contests, don't know, don't care.
To me, the main value of raw is it forces a few SOOC folks to get into editing. Editing is my main photo hobby, not that I mind taking pictures, but I don't spend days designing a photo shoot, and hours getting just the right picture. I actually think I take pictures so I can load them into my editor an spend some quality time with them. Been doing exactly that since long before raw was available. When it became available I naturally fooled with it long enough to discover it had no real benefits to me, and YES I have a good understanding of what raw is, and what jpg is, and yes, I love editng photo's. Jpg and editing are not close to mutually exclusive.
And no, I could not in a million years tell if your snapshot of a flower vs your 2 artistic shots of flowers were shot in RAW or JPG. No idea. I'd say both artistic shots had the background edited out, or, were taken with a black velvet sheet behind the flower. I've a ton of flowers like that taken in jpg that I replaced the background with black, or some other appropriate color. Zero, nada, nothing to do with raw or jpg.