In photography, image quality is one of the most important things to consider for your post production and display of photographs. It’s imperative to have to most quality in your photos as possible. Photos containing visible pixels make images look blurry and unprofessional. That’s why it’s very important to understand the differences of RAW vs JPEG files.
RAW is a file that is stored on your memory cards as close to what the sensor saw as possible. RAW files are extremely large because they store the most amount of information as possible.
When you hear photographers talk about digital negatives, they are talking about RAW files because RAW is the digital version of a negative in film photography. Instead of taking the negative into a dark room to create a print, digital negatives are imported into a RAW compatible editing software to develop the file into a photograph similar to what was seen in the field.
One of the most important things to know when you are working with RAW files is that in post processing, all of your digital data is stored after each change. For example, if you are editing a RAW image of a sunset, you might change the saturation and luminance of colors. Since you are editing a RAW file, every part of the image will maintain the original quality. However, if you had been editing a JPEG file, each time the photograph is altered, the software would compress the image quality, making it a smaller file for each edit.
In simplest definition, smaller files = less quality, larger files = more quality. If you look in your DSLR menu, you’ll notice different options for image quality. The options are divided into small (S), medium (M), and large (L). The other two options are RAW (of course) and RAW+JPEG.
If you choose to shoot in a JPEG format, even though your files will be compressed during post processing, you should be shooting in L. However, if you choose to shoot in RAW, you have the option of a single RAW image or a RAW and JPEG image. RAW+JPEG will actually store two files on your memory card, one in each file format.
So, like I stated before, the advantage of editing RAW files is the ability to make changes without compromising the quality of the image. Every edit that is made, keeps every detail in every pixel of the photo. That’s A LOT of information!
Once you make all of your changes, you have the ability to export your photo to any size JPEG as you would like. Any file above 2000×2000 pixels is a large file. Obviously, you can do more or less. Honestly, you can’t tell a huge difference in 1000×1000 and 2000×2000, so you can choose something in that range or above.
If I try to find a drawback of RAW, it would be that they take up A LOT of space on memory cards and computers. In fact, you will find that if you shoot in RAW you won’t be able to fit as many photos on a card as you could if you were shooting in JPEG. But, that’s really the only drawback!