JPEG vs RAW dynamic and color range

Usually, I shoot in raw, but I've decided to give a JPEG a try today.

Interestingly enough, it seems that JPEG gives more dynamic range and especially color range than RAW out of the box.

I know you can adapt RAW to suit your needs, but in this flower shot, image reported highlight clipping (more like color clipping) and neither recovery or color temperature slider could help much.

JPEG



RAW



It could probably be solved by heavy color slider editing, but would the final color look anything like it's in real life and close to JPEG, or would it be darker and desautrated in order to keep it from clipping?

Similarly, in RAW white tends to burn easier than in JPEG, but it can relatively easily be fixed using a recovery slider, however recovery slider impacts colors.

Furthermore, JPEG skin tones are simply unachieavable, I tried everything I could and I couldn't get RAW skin tone to look like JPEG (which has got certain depth and real-life skin look to it).
--
Cheers,
Marin

That's interesting...that's nice to know for a lot of us that shoot JPEGs. I'm surprised we haven't had a RAW vs JPEG debate going on because of your findings. We need to wake them up.

Could you test some of the other cameras, if you have them? I'm using an E-500 and E-510. Thanks.

Digirame said:

That's interesting...that's nice to know for a lot of us that shoot JPEGs. I'm surprised we haven't had a RAW vs JPEG debate going on because of your findings. We need to wake them up.

Could you test some of the other cameras, if you have them? I'm using an E-500 and E-510. Thanks.

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There really isn any point in debating it, because it has been debated to death, and there will never be a resolution to the debate...

Jpg is better for those who wish to shoot jpg..

RAW is better for those that insist they want ALL the data..

There really isnt anything to debate, and you wont win any converts in either direction. Its something every photographer should decide for himself.
--
Larry Lynch
Mystic, Connecticut

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Oscar Wilde

I think Olympus is able to extract more from the camera than industry standard ACR.

No doubt raw contains more data, but the question is which software can read all or most of it correctly.
--
Cheers,
Marin

Gidday Marin

If I may make one suggestion:

Don't work in sRGB.

Even in 16 bit, it is severely deficient in the green part of the spectrum. So much so that a print from sRGB of my infamous red Ford headlight (below) comes out as an orange-red instead of a pure red; and the resulting print looks about 0.5~0.75 stop over exposed.

I ascertained that these effects are due to the deficiency in green in the image after conversion from ProPhotoRGB-16 to sRGB-16, all other things being the same. At certain parts of the image, the green value dropped from 59~62/256 (PPRGB-16) to 1~3/256 (sRGB-16), while the blue and red channel values remained the same.

There were also significant, but more subtle, changes in the blacks and other areas. I also ended up with severe posterisation in the upper RH area.

Both these images were sent to the printer direct from the PSD-16 files, letting PS manage the colours, using the Ilford profiles for the paper and printer.

My test image:



--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
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G'day again Marin

msusic said:

I think Olympus is able to extract more from the camera than industry standard ACR.

Click to expand...

Nah.

I always shoot RAW + JPEG, use ACR/PS and routinely get far better (more true to life) results from the RAWs. I only ever use the OoC JPEGs as a kind of backup, and for the web and like uses.

msusic said:

No doubt raw contains more data, but the question is which software can read all or most of it correctly.

Click to expand...

Yes, it does; and it isn't even hard to get it ... In fact, it's downright easy.
Don't work in sRGB though ...

Get Scott Kelby's excellent book " Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe PS CS3 ". There is a CS5 version available at twice the price, but the example images are identical (you can download them from his web site); and the ACR interface just hasn't changed all that much since CS3 (the algorithms have, but that's to be expected ... ).

While I often disagree with the values he uses, his system is brilliant.

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
(see profile for current gear)
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I consider this to be a breach of my copyright.
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I have never intentionally shot aRGB as I've never seen an advantage.

I also shoot 100% raw/RAW/ORF. As a matter of fact, my E-1s have never been set to anything other than raw. Works for me.

John King said:

John King said:

Bill Turner

Click to expand...

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Gidday Bill

Bootstrap said:

I have never intentionally shot aRGB as I've never seen an advantage.

Click to expand...

There is an advantage if one is a JPEG-only shooter. Wider colour gamut = more latitude in PP.

Bootstrap said:

I also shoot 100% raw/RAW/ORF. As a matter of fact, my E-1s have never been set to anything other than raw. Works for me.

Click to expand...

The camera colour space setting has no effect on the RAW, as a RAW file does not have a colour space until it is assigned one in PP; same as WB.

--
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I consider this to be a breach of my copyright.
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I know...I was just joking. I've seen so many of these...well...you all woke up. I finally see some replies. I would still like to see comparisons and what the OP shows is interesting. Yes, we don't need debates; I don't like the arguing...discussions yes...arguing no. We shall see...be good everyone.

Yeah, ACR is the industry standard blah blah blah. I find myself using it because it's incorporated in Lightroom.

But Oly Studio/Viewer gives the best color and DR that I've tried. It's slow, and the NR doesn't come close to Lightroom 3/new ACR. But for output that counts, I export raw to tiff from Oly Viewer and then tweak the NR in Lightroom.

By your examples it looks like you are trying to make your raws look as good as your jpegs with PS ACR. ACR needs lots of tweaking with Olympus raw files and IMO still falls short (except for noise reduction) compared to other converters.

but I will have to add to disagreement. I shoot JPEG, use that same sRGB you so strongly advise against, and never have this problem with green, distorted red etc, that you describe. More than that, and most importantly - this workflow (JPEG, sRGB) is fairly common, probably even the most common, and it's not like we regularly see those weird color deviations...

Something else must be at work here.

Digirame said:

Yes, we don't need debates; I don't like the arguing...discussions yes...arguing no.

Click to expand...

Good luck with that... it's all holding together only until first zealot arrives to claim that his way is the only right way, and all pros do only so, and anyone who doesn't just has no idea... you know the drill

If you're comparing out of camera results and within a limited color space(hence why there is a color clipping but not exposure clipping) then you've pretty much missed the whole point here.

A jpeg and raw file are supposed to be identical if left untouched and if the raw is opened with the same image processor as the jpeg(even the software that oly gives you may not actually be the same exact processing that the camera uses so it can vary ever so slightly), in this case the jpeg has already been processed by olympus and the raw hasn't so what you see is how the raw is treated within the default e5 acr profile and within the confines of the srgb color space. Try this again with argb or if you actually want this to matter, edit a challenging scene and see how far you can push both files then post your results. This has been done ad nasuem and the results are always the same if done right.

Recovery didn't do much because it is an exposure luminance adjustment and not a color adjustment ofcourse.

msusic said:

Usually, I shoot in raw, but I've decided to give a JPEG a try today.

Interestingly enough, it seems that JPEG gives more dynamic range and especially color range than RAW out of the box.

I know you can adapt RAW to suit your needs, but in this flower shot, image reported highlight clipping (more like color clipping) and neither recovery or color temperature slider could help much.

JPEG



RAW



It could probably be solved by heavy color slider editing, but would the final color look anything like it's in real life and close to JPEG, or would it be darker and desautrated in order to keep it from clipping?

Similarly, in RAW white tends to burn easier than in JPEG, but it can relatively easily be fixed using a recovery slider, however recovery slider impacts colors.

Furthermore, JPEG skin tones are simply unachieavable, I tried everything I could and I couldn't get RAW skin tone to look like JPEG (which has got certain depth and real-life skin look to it).
--
Cheers,
Marin

Click to expand...

--
Oldschool Evolt shooter

Gidday Pris

pris said:

but I will have to add to disagreement. I shoot JPEG, use that same sRGB you so strongly advise against, and never have this problem with green, distorted red etc, that you describe. More than that, and most importantly - this workflow (JPEG, sRGB) is fairly common, probably even the most common, and it's not like we regularly see those weird color deviations...

Click to expand...

You will never see what I am talking about if you work only within an 8 bit colour space, and never leave an sRGB colour space.

pris said:

Something else must be at work here.

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A wide gamut, 16 bit colour space?

An Olympus RAW is 12 bits. Mapping this into an 8 bit colour space does not make a lot of sense. If people choose to do so, it may explain why they see little difference between the OoC JPEG and the image file created from the RAW data file.

I can easily see these differences on-screen, and prints are so deficient because there is insufficient "green" ink being laid down, even in this predominantly red image. I routinely see these differences between my OoC JPEGs from all three of my bodies, and the RAW files, in all kinds of images.

There is nothing else at work here, as the results are the same no matter what printer the two files are printed on (3 x different Epson pigment printers and 2 x Canon dye printers).

I do not use the Olympus s/w because I always work in a 16 bit colour space, and the Olympus s/w strips the EXIF data out of 16 bit files.

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
(see profile for current gear)
Please do not embed images from my web site without prior permission
I consider this to be a breach of my copyright.
-- -- --

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Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php



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it's not a simple 12 bit to 8 bits. This is a very common misconception about JPEG. Data is encoded in weight, in areas. That's why JPEGS look as good as they do. In fact, everything we share and when people go "ooh, ahh look at this raw output" is 99% of the time on the web a JPEG.

As for sRGB- aRGB can have some advantages when printing that vary wildly by subject and by the quality of print. But personally I don't find it worth the workflow hassle. To really see it on a monitor you need to get an adobe-gamut aRGB monitor which are expensive and if you are going to share on the web now you are adjusting colors to something that most of your audience will see it differently and you don't even know it (unless you compare in sRGB / aRGB browser profile aware etc in a normal monitor).

It hasn't been for me the workflow hassle but if it works for you great.

--

Raist3d/Ricardo (Photographer, software dev.)- "You are taking life too seriously if it bugs you in some way that a guy quotes himself in the .sig quote" - Ricardo

I think you're confusing the effects of a tone curve with the effects of DR.

Your contrast and blackpoint setting is different on the raw image. That alone is enough to give the illusion of less DR since the whites will clip faster and the blacks will be blacker.

Also bear in mind that the red warning doesn't mean there's no information left in the source file.. it means that there's no information left in the file you're exporting. If you overexposed the raw file, you could do negative exposure compoensation and get some info back. With jpeg that's simply not possible as the source data is gone.

Finally, can I just say that since JPEG is always a subset of the original raw data, that it is simply impossible to get more actual DR out of a jpeg image. The camera may apply a flatter tone curve to make the shadows look brighter or the highlights flatter than the raw image, but the same can be done to the raw image manually.

D

Some times I use Prophoto 16bit in ACR(with ORF!). Not while I can see specially the color difference.( have a s'RGB screen)

But with pics that has a big DR you can see a big difference in the histogram. A clipping s'RGB is many times not clipping in Proph.

I pp in this colorspace and as last I convert to s'rgb for screen or a'RGB16bit for print. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it but shots with many greens in them are more natural IMHO.

Gidday Ricardo

Raist3d said:

it's not a simple 12 bit to 8 bits. This is a very common misconception about JPEG.

Click to expand...

Of course. But it is a still a lossy conversion.

Member said:

Data is encoded in weight, in areas. That's why JPEGS look as good as they do. In fact, everything we share and when people go "ooh, ahh look at this raw output" is 99% of the time on the web a JPEG.

Click to expand...

If you look at a ProPhotoRGB image on the web, it looks abysmal. e.g.



Here is the sRGB version:



However, it is hard to get around the differences between colour spaces, as shown here (from Blatner & Fraser Real World PS CS):

Member said:

As for sRGB- aRGB can have some advantages when printing that vary wildly by subject and by the quality of print. But personally I don't find it worth the workflow hassle. To really see it on a monitor you need to get an adobe-gamut aRGB monitor which are expensive and if you are going to share on the web now you are adjusting colors to something that most of your audience will see it differently and you don't even know it (unless you compare in sRGB / aRGB browser profile aware etc in a normal monitor).

Click to expand...

BTW, I do use a monitor with an aRGB gamut (24 inch, it wasn't terribly expensive - under Oz $1,000); and print on an Epson R3880. I do notice a big difference between colour spaces.

Most people who look at my images do so on my monitor, or my A4~A2 prints ...

I also convert almost everything I upload to my web site to sRGB, but I do not use it otherwise.

Member said:

It hasn't been for me the workflow hassle but if it works for you great.

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What hassle? There isn't any. None. Zip. Nada. Zero.
Also BTW, one does not "adjust colours"; one converts to a colour space ...

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
(see profile for current gear)
Please do not embed images from my web site without prior permission
I consider this to be a breach of my copyright.
-- -- --

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Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php



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Gidday Dingenus

dingenus said:

Some times I use Prophoto 16bit in ACR(with ORF!). Not while I can see specially the color difference.( have a s'RGB screen)

Click to expand...

The CRT I have just replaced with an aRGB ASUS Pro was a Philips 109. It was supposed to have an sRGB gamut, but had a noticeably wider gamut than any of the flat panel sRGB panels that I own (or any that I have provided for my clients). So does my Philips 107 CRT on another of my computers.

I have worked in PPRGB-16 ever since I discovered it years ago (from Blatner and Fraser). Like you, I couldn't see it on the screen. I still can't. However, I am closer to it now, lol! It does make a considerable difference in print, even with my Canon iP4000R (now dead, and replaced by an MG6150 for general network colour printing). The difference is dramatic when printing with the R3880.

dingenus said:

But with pics that has a big DR you can see a big difference in the histogram. A clipping s'RGB is many times not clipping in Proph.

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Also my experience. PPRGB is a wider gamut than the eye can see on average.

dingenus said:

I pp in this colorspace and as last I convert to s'rgb for screen or a'RGB16bit for print. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it but shots with many greens in them are more natural IMHO.

Click to expand...

Again, this is in line with my experience. When others remark on the colours of my images, I attribute the improvement in this aspect of IQ to working in a wide gamut colour space and 16 bit. The same images are nothing like as good when using either OoC JPEGs, or using JPEGs from the RAWs.

Since I try to teach people about the effects of data loss as it relates to final IQ, I am somewhat sensitive to these things. I also have 20/10 vision (with my glasses on ... ). This latter may contribute to my heightened sensitivity to these things.

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
(see profile for current gear)
Please do not embed images from my web site without prior permission
I consider this to be a breach of my copyright.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group

msusic said:

Usually, I shoot in raw, but I've decided to give a JPEG a try today.

Interestingly enough, it seems that JPEG gives more dynamic range and especially color range than RAW out of the box.

I know you can adapt RAW to suit your needs, but in this flower shot, image reported highlight clipping (more like color clipping) and neither recovery or color temperature slider could help much.

Click to expand...

I have seen clipping like that and use the Targeted Adjustment Tool in ACR to do the recovery. It has always worked very well in dealing with specific areas of clipped colors.