CHG_CANON wrote:
It's up to you. All editing programs work great on JPEGs. The from-camera JPEGs have all the same pixels as the RAW files. But, the details that describe each of those pixels have been compressed into an 8-bit format, down from typically 12-bit. The further you need to edit the image, especially in the modification to the color tones (making the image much brighter or radically adjusting the white balance), here you're more likely to encounter issues in 'how far' you can adjust before running into problems due to the less data (bit-depth) of the image file.
If you're just going to press <auto> in your editor on the RAW file and call it done, how different is that edit processing than using the camera JPEGs? That same <auto> as you might be doing to your JPEGs too.
When you become a RAW photographer, you become the decision maker for these considerations in post processing, where many had been decided by the camera for the JPEG:
1. Sharpening
2. Noise Reduction
3. Color Saturation
4. Exposure adjustments, general
5. Contrast, general
6. Highlights and shadows
7. White Balance
8. Lens corrections
9. Color space
10. Pixel resolution for target image share platforms
11. Disk storage (for the larger files)
12. Image file back-up strategy (for those larger files)
You don't have to understand all these issues, but when you do, you'll be much more successful as a RAW photographer.
Personally, I think shooting JPEG+RAW is a waste of time and space. You don't get better at shooting and editing either image format, while the two versions of every image creates both version control management issues and excessive storage needs. If you work only with one file type, you can get a lot better at being successful with that file type, understanding deeply the limits and the opportunities of that format.
It's up to you. All editing programs work great on... (
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I agree with this also. No pro here, but realized awhile ago that jpgs were just taking up PC disk space. Once I got going and more familar in LR/PS, I never touched the jpegs, and set my camera to only shoot raw.
About <auto>. As a maybe 5 out of 10 LR proficiency user, and still learning, I use auto as a starting point. I don't think in the thousands of images I have processed, I was satisfied with only the changes <auto> made. Hopefully one day I'll know how all the sliders effect an image beforehand. One thing auto doesn't do for you is dodge/burning/masking type processing in areas you would like something changed. Trial and error there for sure.