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Should we always get better pics by retouching a RAW instead of JPG ?

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akcapak

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I am a newbie in this world. Till now i was editing my pics (JPGs mostly) in a simple software like picasa or photos, adding some saturation brightness etc, that's it. I was using my NEF files just for having some HDR like effect in some pics, in the Photomatix Pro.

Nowadays i am trying to use Lightroom and Perfectly Clear Plugin, in a more professional way so to speak. I recently read on internet that editing raw files gives a better end result, clearly as it consists of nearly 3 times more data in it. But are you guys really retouching your RAWs always?

I have tried editing some images using lightroom, and i can mostly get more or less the same end results with editing JPGs instead of RAWs. And a lot faster.

I have this feeling (i don't know if it is true..) : JPGs images are saved with my camera settings, i.e. White Balance +A2, Picture Control Vivid +2 Saturation, Exposure + 1 etc.. So even without retouching my JPGs seem ok. But all my NEF files look dark, lack of color, as if it was taken in AUTO mode... So i always need more time editing the RAWs. And the end result does not necessarily look better.

Here is an exp. This is how JPG looks as shot:

6ee947d2101b4e7ca7ea81968f106c6a.jpg.png

This is how NEF file looks like as shot:

a73434666b974bedbaaaaf5beee77ee7.jpg.png

And these ones are after some Lightroom editing. The settings are clearly not same, as i did not open the images side to side and tried to get exactly same end results. However i tried to make a good looking pic. For the first pic (JPG) i needed just 1 min. For the second (NEF) i think 5min. Although the end result is not same, i believe one is not necessarily better than other..

JPG editing:

d3bd6dfce0984c18badfdb1cacb387dc.jpg

NEF editing:

e4430e476dd6438db2155ddf6b26a012.jpg

So does editing RAW pictures rather than JPGs not always make sense? Or do i miss sth here?
 
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akcapak said:
So does editing RAW pictures rather than JPGs not always make sense? Or do i miss sth here?
Click to expand...
The reason the raw looks dull is because it is supposed to be raw, not finished. It isn't fair to compare it to a finished JPEG. The raw is "raw material" for you to make something that does not look like the JPEG. If the raw looked like the JPEG there would be no point in having a raw option.

As you gain experience, you'll become increasingly unhappy with JPEG. When I look at the castle edits I think they are colorful and vivid, but not realistic. The colors seem too punched up, and I don't like seeing blown highlights in the clouds.

I would have started with the NEF and worked on preserving and compressing the dynamic range. With JPEG...
Raw capture affords you the opportunity to make wider and more subtle adjustments than you can with a JPG file. But that does not mean that you will necessarily get better results, unless your editing skills are up to the task. I suggest that you devote some time to learning the basics of digital editing in general and Lightroom in particular. It will be worth the time and effort, if your goal is to get your photos to look better and to express your personal way of seeing.

Rob
 
You can actually do quite a bit of editing to a JPEG file. Witness all the edits that are done in this forum, mostly to downsized, compressed JPEGs. However, you'll run into problems with things like artifacts, posterization, and banding a lot sooner if you start with a JPEG rather than a raw file.
--
- Bill
 
Modern cameras have fairly sophisticated JPEG engines. If you're editing Raw files, you need to be at least as good as the JPEG engine in your camera. When you start out, you probably aren't that good. It takes a lot of practice.

If you're satisfied with the JPEGs your camera produces, then maybe it's not worth your trouble to become an expert at Raw editing. But for the perfectionist -- and there are a lot of those in this particular forum ;-) -- the notion of settling for excellent output from the camera's JPEG engine is unthinkable.
 
akcapak said:
even without retouching my JPGs seem ok. But all my NEF files look dark, lack of color, as if it was taken in AUTO mode... So i always need more time editing the RAWs. And the end result does not necessarily look better.

So does editing RAW pictures rather than JPGs not always make sense? Or do i miss sth here?
Click to expand...
My approach has been to have a raw development process that quickly gives me an image identical to an out-of-camera JPEG or very close to it.

I get an identical-to-JPEG result, if I want to, with my Olympus camera by using the camera maker's raw development software. It's just a single click to save the JPEG with all the camera settings applied (the raw developer offers these as default). For the images that do require some more adjustment, I tweak the settings of the raw developer or else I save its output as a 16-bit TIFF for further processing in Photoshop Elements.

For my Canon camera I could get an identical-to-OOC-JPEG image out of Canon's DPP software. But since I don't like the default Canon JPEG rendition of greens and blues, I am doing my Raw development in DxO OpticsPro where I have the colour settings tweaked to my liking. I have a set of standard settings set up (one for portraits, one for landscape, one for b&w, etc.) which give me the desired result with, again, just a single click.

The end result is that raw development is a very fast process for most of my images and never inferior to the OOC JPEG. But for the fraction of my images that do benefit from a bit more processing, it's a huge benefit for me to have the raw image available to do that.

Key is setting up a fast process to handle the images that don't need adjustment. Knowing how to use your camera to get it right most of the time, is part of that process.

Of course I understand that there are people who use a lot of in-camera art filters and special effects - for them the choice is different possibly.
 
Depends what your pleasure is, reality or surreal fantasy.
 
akcapak : Throw a link to the RAW of that castle up (New thread so people see it) and watch what they do. Its crazy the talent some of the people give away for free here. Then you will see some of the possibilities of raw editing.
 
akcapak said:
So does editing RAW pictures rather than JPGs not always make sense? Or do i miss sth here?
Click to expand...
The reason the raw looks dull is because it is supposed to be raw, not finished. It isn't fair to compare it to a finished JPEG. The raw is "raw material" for you to make something that does not look like the JPEG. If the raw looked like the JPEG there would be no point in having a raw option.

As you gain experience, you'll become increasingly unhappy with JPEG. When I look at the castle edits I think they are colorful and vivid, but not realistic. The colors seem too punched up, and I don't like seeing blown highlights in the clouds.

I would have started with the NEF and worked on preserving and compressing the dynamic range. With JPEG this can be difficult because if the camera clipped the highlights, with JPEG they are unrecoverable. But with raw, they are often recoverable.

If this description has lost you, that's what I mean by raw meaning more as you gain more experience. Once you stop wanting photos with exaggerated color and contrast, you start getting interested in more realistic and subtle color, more graceful transitions,and precisely controlled tonal compression. That is when working with JPEGs starts to get frustrating.

Maybe I realize that I should have used a much different white balance setting when the photo was shot. With raw this is no problem, I do it and full quality is preserved. With JPEG, you can't move the white balance very far before the color quality starts to fall apart.

OK, I just looked a little more closely at the last two edits. You do want to gain some more editing experience. For example, in the edited JPEG the reds are too saturated so there is no detail in the red flowers at the bottom; they look like flat spots of red. The red flowers in the edited NEF looks better because there is still detail in the reds. However, there is a severe chromatic aberration problem in the NEF that was never corrected, probably because you weren't aware of it. In the JPEG version, this was presumably corrected by the camera.

It looks like the main reason the JPEG looks better is because the JPEG-to-RAW conversion in camera is currently better than your editing skills. But if you improve, your JPEG-to-RAW conversion skills will eventually beat the camera. At that point you will no longer be happy with the JPEG and you will want to work with RAW.
 
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Why do people still persist on debating this. It's confusing how many people will come and argue jpeg over raw.
 
SFXR said:
Why do people still persist on debating this. It's confusing how many people will come and argue jpeg over raw.
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A question is asked, people respond. If the only voices to be heard are pro-jpeg, then that is the lesson that will be learned by those who are uncertain. And that is why it is necessary for others to counter with facts about the benefits of raw shooting. Sorry if you find it so annoying.

Rob
 
graybalanced said:
akcapak said:
So does editing RAW pictures rather than JPGs not always make sense? Or do i miss sth here?
Click to expand...
The reason the raw looks dull is because it is supposed to be raw, not finished.
Click to expand...
Actually raw data looks much like this (nothing we'd consider an image, dull or otherwise):



This is raw data, it's not what I'd call 'dull' but unrendered!

This is raw data, it's not what I'd call 'dull' but unrendered!

So IF someone states that in a raw converter, the image appears 'dull' or anything but what they desire, it's up to them to develop the above raw data using appropriate settings. A default in a raw processor that produces 'dull' and poor quality imagery isn't a very good pre-set or starting point. The idea is to make the image look good from the data I posted that doesn't look anything like a dull color image.

--
Andrew Rodney
Author: Color Management for Photographers
The Digital Dog
 
In comparison would have kept the original JPG, but that's personal taste. More to the matter: To speed up the process with NEF files you can try to use one of the dedicated camera profiles provided by LR. Camera Calibration -> Profile -> Camera Standard is what comes closest to Nikon JPGs.

With Adobe's Standard profile try to set Tone Curve -> Point Curve to Medium or even High.

Anyway, you don't have to do all the work over and over again. Once you found out which basic settings are to your taste you can save them as a preset, apply that to every new image and start from there.
 
SFXR said:
Why do people still persist on debating this. It's confusing how many people will come and argue jpeg over raw.
Click to expand...
It is not really a debate. It's a clarification.

When I started out everyone said "shoot raw" so I shot raw plus jpeg and my raw looked bad. Like the OP I was shocked.

I realized then what the OP is asking about: to shoot raw there is first a learning curve to have the skill to achieve something as nice (usually) as the jpeg and from there you can truly get creative.

--
Art Altman
https://www.artmaltman.photography
--
 
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