Shooting in JPEG vs. RAW

Shooting in JPEG vs RAW?

 

In today’s blog, I’m going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of shooting in JPEG vs RAW format. A JPEG is a format that compresses image files. This format is very favorable to any device that has a screen on it can view the JPEG image. The RAW image format has processed data from the image sensor in a camera, image sensor, or motion picture scanners.

 

To change your camera settings to JPEG or RAW follow these steps below:

  •  Go to menu
  • Select the first selection highlighted (Image Quality)
  • Select from either JPEG or RAW (Highlighted in red)

Image-Quality-Settings          Image-Quality-Settings2

 

Advantages of RAW:

  • Higher bit depth: Able to store more color information.
  • More dynamic range
  • This format applies lossless compression so your image won’t have any artifacts.
  • All of the camera metadata is stored.

Disadvantages of RAW:

  • RAW files are larger file sizes compared to JPEG.
  • Post processing is required using this format.
  • Software to view this file isn’t always available.

 

Advantages of JPEG:

  • Smaller file sizes
  • More flexibility for image quality and size. Able to change the level of compression as well
  • Software to view is much higher.

 

Disadvantages of JPEG:

  • Detail is lost in your final image, and at times are visible artifacts left behind.
  • Max color depth of 8 bit. Some colors the camera captures are not presented in your final image.
  • This file has little to no dynamic range of its data.
  • Irreversible processing.

 

JPEG is a compressed image format, that takes original data and condensing the file, so it takes up less storage. There is a loss of quality to your image when shooting in this format. While RAW is a non-compressed image format, that offers a lot of advantages over JPEG. Overall if you are deciding which format to use, I would highly recommend shooting in RAW format.