What is a simple and effective method to sharpen for web output in Photoshop?

Question

In Photoshop, I've got a master PSD image file with all mask and adjustment layer treatments, but no sharpening at all. I save for web and create a JPG at 1200px. Now, I bring that file back into Photoshop for some sharpening.

What's a quick and effective way to sharpen? I've read that using Filter -> Sharpen twice is good, but to me the outcome looks a bit over-processed. Is Smart Sharpen a better tool than just Sharpen? What about Sharpen More, Unsharp Mask, and Sharpen Edges?

Asked by RaffiM

Answer

There are a number of different lines of thought on this issue, and it seems that each one vehemently defends itself as the "one true way" to sharpen your image. In my experience, it comes down to personal preference and the specific image that you're working. Keep in mind that "sharpness" is really just an area of high contrast along an edge or line in your image. There are three primary methods that people use, but each have the fundamental effect of increasing this contrast:

1. Unsharp Mask - As I understand it, this was the "old" method for sharpening photos. Without going into too much detail, this method creates a blurred copy of the image and compares it to the original to determine where the edges are that need to be sharpened. This method has three options, Amount, Radius, and Threshold. Amount controls the intensity of the sharpening, radius controls the distance from edges that will have the sharpening applied, and the threshold controls how "different" two pixels have to be to be considered for sharpening. The unsharp mask in my experience tends to have a stronger effect than other methods, which I prefer, but some people don't.
2. Smart Sharpen - This method is the newer method for sharpening photos, with a bunch of different options. The Gaussian Blur option behaves similarly to the unsharp mask, but it also has the option to remove lens blur and motion blur. It has similar options to the unsharp mask method. I use this when I want to try to remove lens or motion blur, but I find that its Gaussian Blur sharpening isn't quite as pronounced as the unsharp mask.
3. High pass filters - This method is different than the other methods; it actually creates a second layer, and uses blending options to get a sharp effect on the edges. I don't like the appearance that the high pass filter gives to images, but I know a lot of other people prefer them.

The other filters (Sharpen, Sharpen More, and Sharpen Edges) I find to be less useful, because you have much less control over how they are applied to your image. But in some circumstances they may be appropriate.

This website has a really nice comparison of the high pass filter to the unsharp mask, and Ron Bigelow has a really detailed series of articles on each of the different sharpening methods. But I think the best thing to do is open up a few different copies of an image, apply different sharpening methods to each, and see which ones you like best.

Answered by David

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Is there are any difference in quality between Large Fine JPG and converted NEF?

Question

Assume that I do not want to do any post-processing, such as white balancing, etc. I would like to preserve the best resolution (for possible cropping). So the question is: Are there any quality differences between shooting in-camera JPG, versus converting NEF to JPEG using ViewNX, Picasa, etc.?

Asked by yura

Answer

If you aren't interested in post-processing, then an in-camera jpeg will have the same resolution as a RAW image and the amount of detail in the image should be roughly the same. There is more flexibility in the RAW format in terms of post-processing and color corrections.

As an example, here is Digital Photography Review's review of the Nikon D800 showing the difference between high-quality jpeg and RAW -- http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d800-d800e/22

Answered by David Rouse

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JPEG XR Plugin for Photoshop Elements 10?

Question

I think I took a neat picture of a butterfly that I just used PSE10 to cut out of its background. Now, I want to package the butterfly as "free" clipart using appropriate tags to preserve my intellectual property.

Is there a decent JPEG XR plugin for PSE10 that supports transparency? If there is such a plugin, would using the plugin or JPEG XR force me to pay a royalty fee to a company every time I give someone a copy of my butterfly?

I've seen several posts on Bing that there used to be a JPEG XR plugin for older versions of Abobe Photoshop CSX, but all links I find to that plugin seem to be broke. Also, I am a very crude ameture so I don't want to shell out the money for CS6.

Thanks,

Shawn

Asked by Shawn Eary

Answer

I am not sure about a JPEG XR Plugin for PSE, however, I would use PNG for my file.

You could download GIMP and then use the GIMP JPEG XR Plugin to do what you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

Answered by Lynda

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Why do my sRGB exports from Lightroom look different from RAW files shown in the program even though my monitor can only show sRGB?

Question

I have read tons of docs about color management over the Web, but there is something I can't understand.

I have a screen that can only render the RGB color space.

It is very well calibrated using a LaCie Blue Eye Pro.

I use Lightroom to see an image, shot as RAW with a Canon camera, in "Adobe RGB" color space (even if that does not mean anything in this case).

When I open the image into Lighroom, and export it as JPG in the RGB color space, the image seen into Lightroom is not rendered the same as the one exported.

The thing that I don't understand is that, whatever the color space my original image can be, whatever the screen is calibrated or not, whatever software I use to see the image, if my screen cannot render more than the RGB color space, I guess that the image displayed into Lightroom and the one exported in the RGB color space should be rendered the same way on the screen.

What's wrong ?

Asked by Oliver

Answer

Color management is an annoyance that I've recently been learning about; it is not completely accurate to say that just because your monitor can only display sRGB that it's meaningless for your photos to be edited in the AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB space. What is actually happening is that Lightroom is translating colors from ProPhotoRGB into the sRGB space that your monitor can display. It does a bunch of fancy math (I think maybe some matrix algebra? I'm not positive, though, maybe somebody can correct me) to perform this translation -- thus, what you see in Lightroom is not your image as it appears in ProPhotoRGB or in sRGB, you are seeing an interpretation of ProPhotoRGB space in sRGB that tries to be as faithful as possible to what the image would look like on a device capable of displaying ProPhotoRGB.

When you export your photos from LR, you have the option of choosing what color space you want to use for the exported photo (you can choose sRGB, AdobeRGB, and ProPhotoRGB, among others). When LR does this, it first converts the photo into the chosen color space, and embeds information into the JPEG file describing the color space (these things are called ICC profiles). Now, when you open the JPEG in some other program, if that program is able to understand the embedded color space information, it can perform the same math that LR does to convert the file into your monitor's color space, and it should appear the same (or at least similar to) LR. If the program you open it in can interpret this embedded color space information, we say that it's a color-managed application.

The problem is that a lot of applications are not color-managed. Windows Photo Viewer may or may not be (I've read competing statements, but in any case it doesn't seem to work as well as LR); Firefox only supports old versions of ICC profiles, Safari and IE are, and Chrome is not. So if you open up your image in one of those applications that doesn't support color profiles, or doesn't support them well, your image is going to look bad because the proper color translation isn't being performed.

There's a really nice three-part series on color management here. You can also check out whether the device you're displaying supports the appropriate ICC color profiles using this test image. One other really neat feature of Photoshop CS5 (and maybe other editors too, I don't know) is that it will actually show you what parts of your image won't translate color spaces well; if you press Ctrl+Shift+Y, or go to View->Gamut Warning, it will highlight in grey the colors of the open image that don't exist in the target color space. I've found this to be somewhat useful.

Answered by David

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Does reducing JPG resolution decrease, increase, or have no effect on image quality?

Question

I'm getting ready to download a bunch of images from Dreamstime. I'll eventually want most of the images in the 400x300 pixel range for my website when I'm done working with them. Dreamstime offers various resolutions to download images in- 1000x750, 2000x1500, 4000x3000, etc. I'm used to printing, where you want to get the largest images possible because that translates into higher quality prints.

I've searched around on Google and Stack Exchange and I can't figure out the answer to this question: Is there a loss in quality if I choose the 4000x3000 images and reduce them to 400x300 in Photoshop? Is the quality loss greater or less than if I reduced the 1000x750 image to 400x300?

Thanks Stack Exchange!

Asked by Jack T

Answer

Bear with me for a second here for some background....

When you downsample a 4000×3000 image to 400×300, you are "discarding" 11.9 million of the 12 million pixels. This clearly reduces "image quality", depending on what exactly you mean by that term.

If you go from 1000×750 to 400×300, you're reducing the area by about 6 times. Again, data is discarded, but not as much.

Now, if your original image had a lot of defects — noise, aberrations, and focus error — the resolution may exceed the "effective image quality", and the extra detail is contributing nothing. In that case, downsampling to some degree doesn't "really" reduce image quality. This is very dependent on the actual original, though — and in any case, going all the way down to a basically-thumbnail-sized 400×300 is pretty drastic.

Hopefully that's all pretty obvious. With that out of the way... In this case, since 400×300 images are your target, the question is really "is there any value in having larger images and downsizing them myself rather than having the stock photo agency do it for me."

The answer to that is: maybe.

1. It's possible that the agency uses poor downsampling and sharpening algorithms for the smaller choices. Or they may use perfectly good algorithms that have the wrong parameters for your taste — for example, too much sharpening. By picking a bigger version and downsampling yourself in Adobe Photoshop or dedicated scaling software, you might be able to do a better job, and tailor the results for your artistic needs and desires.

2. Starting from bigger pixel dimensions allows you more flexibility, since you can crop and still have room left over. You could decide that just the corner or the center of an image fits your use better, and crop out a 400×300 section rather than downscaling.

3. Likewise, if you're doing other manipulation on the image, to change color or make a montage from multiple images, having some extra data to work with at that stage won't hurt (although beware of spending too much time getting detail right when it's just going to get scaled out of perception in the end).

Ultimately, the answer will depend on your particular situation and how it relates to these factors, but hopefully this will give you a way to make that decision.

Answered by mattdm

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Pentax K-5: Is it worth using the Premium JPEG quality setting?

Question

Similar: How do I choose which resolution (megapixel) and compression (normal, fine, superfine) to shoot in?

The Pentax K-5 has a JPEG quality setting called "Premium", denoted by four stars, which is not available in entry-level Pentax cameras. This setting extends beyond the "Best" (three stars) setting in my K-r which already offers very good image quality. Is there a significant advantage in using this setting, or is this not worth the larger file sizes (which can easily exceed 10 MB)? Should I choose RAW instead?

Asked by DragonLord

Answer

I default to the three-star setting (out of four), but I always use RAW + JPEG so I can revisit the choice, because there are situations where yes, it makes a difference. Particularly, when there is strong contrast across color channels, like a tree with red leaves or flowers against a blue sky, JPEG compression artifacts can be surprising visible with the three-star setting.

For most cases, you won't be able to discern a difference in double-blind testing, but in the times when it's needed, it's nice to have.

And, if I get a shot I know is a keeper, I often go back in-camera and do a careful RAW conversion, tuning the white-balance and tone curve as well as saving in the top-quality JPEG. I don't mind paying the space price for my top few images, even if the image quality difference is imperceptible. This isn't as powerful or flexible as PC-based conversion, but I can do it on the subway or whereever and then use it instantly (rather than joining the backlog of hobby to-dos). If an all-RAW workflow is more your style, that's also a totally legitimate choice, and makes this meaningless — but if your approach is more like mine, it's a nice thing.

Answered by mattdm

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Which Windows raw image viewer can only show jpeg, but on delete both raw and jpeg?

Question

I'm searching for an image viewer with the following features: (situation is, that both jpeg and raw are saved)

• windows (7) support
• when clicking through pictures only show jpeg
• when deleting photo, delete both raw and jpeg
• auto-rotate at EXIF-rotate attribute
• freeware

At the moment I use Faststone Image viewer, which has all wished features except show only jpeg (if raw exists) and delete both raw and jpeg.

Asked by Chris

Answer

Check out this tool: FastPictureViewer

I'm not sure if there is a free version available but for those who are intrested in buying a viewer that's able to do this... Just take a look :)

Answered by Thomas Dekiere

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Does size reduction in a fine quality JPEG photograph introduce noise?

Question

Does size reduction in a fine quality JPEG photograph introduces noise?

I use Gwenview to reduce the size of the JPEG photographs. Does that cause some noise introduction?

Asked by Anisha Kaul

Answer

In essence, no. That is, if you are referring to grain like noise such as what you see with higher ISO images. What you have with saving/resaving jpegs (especially at diffrerent quality levels) is artifacting. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact. The more aggressive the compression with jpeg the more data is thrown away (as mentioned in the earlier answer) and thus more visual artifacts are created.

I'm not familiar with the tool you mention but the best thing is use a higher quality setting (if available) for images that have lots of smooth areas (as those tend to be areas that get artifacts) or for ones with lots of detail you want to make sure is in the final image.

Answered by nwcs

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How can I work around Photoshop Elements 7's inability to open JPG files from my Android phone?

Question

I copied some photographs that I took with my Android phone to my laptop. When I tried to open them with Photoshop Elements 7.0, I received the following error message:

Could not complete your request because reading spatial lossless jpeg files is not implemented.

Is there a workaround for Photoshop Elements 7.0? If I upgraded to the latest version would it work then?

This question was previously asked at the Adobe forums with no responses currently.

Asked by Gdalya

Answer

The problem seems to be that I set up my phone to encrypt my SD card and when I pulled files to my PC, they came off still encrypted. A fuller discussion of this issue can be found on Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange.

Answered by Gdalya

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Why are my Lightroom 3 developments displaying in some applications but not others?

Question

I'm shooting timelapse photos in JPEG and Ive imported them using Lightroom 3. They were initially upside down so I flipped them around added some exposure and saturation adjustments. I selected all the photos and saved the metadata. Now when I look at the photos inside the finder I see an accurate thumbnail and when I open a photo in the Preview application it looks correct. However, when I import my JEPG sequence into After Effects in order to render a timelapse video my photos are upside down and don't have my exposure/color adjustments. I tried opening the image sequence in Quicktime 7 to see if it was just AE but the same thing happened.

Am I doing something wrong? Any help is appreciated!

Asked by trying_hal9000

Answer

Lightroom doesn't change the original image; it stores all of its changes in a "sidecar" file with an XMP extension. Most of Adobe's applications (After Effects seems to be an exception) will read in both the image file and its associated XMP sidecar, and some third-party applications do as well. But since the original image file (whether that's a JPEG or raw file) hasn't been touched, when it is opened alone by another application, it will still be in its original, pristine state. (The two files -- the original and the XMP -- will normally be combined when the image is exported or saved as a copy, so any image adjustments and additional EXIF-compatible metadata will become part of the new image.)

Answered by Stan Rogers

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Why don't cameras support JPEG 2000 format?

Question

The original JPEG format was updated in 2000 to provide a variety of features including less artifacts, better compression and lossless compression. Why haven't cameras updated to use this new format?

Answer

JPEG 2000 has not garnered wide acceptance due to a few factors.

• Lacking backwards compatibility to JPEG
• Lack of wide browser support
• Questionable legal status
• (Only) 20% higher performance, while considering how inexpensive storage is
• Additional processing power/time needed to create
• JPEG already considered quite good
• Amount of rework to the code in cameras and desktop software is high

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Is it possible to set the year instead of a complete creation date in a JPEG?

Question

I use iPhoto to manage my pictures. Unfortunately I have many pictures from the 80s. These pictures are actually slides that I have scanned in during 2008. So my problem is that the creation date of all these pictures is set to the date when I scanned it in. Now I want to set the real date of these pictures. Unfortunately I don't know the exact date, but at least the year.

So is there any function available to only set the year field of a date without a specific date?

I asked this question here, because the problem is not Mac-specific, but a general problem.

Answer

The EXIF specification for JPEG metadata says:

The date and time of image creation. In this standard it is the date and time the file was changed. The format is "YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS" with time shown in 24-hour format, and the date and time separated by one blank character [20.H]. When the date and time are unknown, all the character spaces except colons (":") may be filled with blank characters, or else the Interoperability field may be filled with blank characters. The character string length is 20 bytes including NULL for termination. When the field is left blank, it is treated as unknown.

Which allows for entirely unknown dates, but doesn't have a standard for less-precise dates. You could fill unknown portions with spaces, but I'm not sure which software will let you do that, and more importantly, which software will react badly to reading that, since the standard does not explicitly give that as an option.

I think you have two basic choices:

• Option 1: Guess. Based on the subject matter, put in your best guesses for the date and time.
• Option 2: Chose a clearly-arbitrary value like midnight on January 1st of the appropriate year — YYYY:01:01 00:00:00. When someone looks later, they probably won't think that the pictures were all from some wild New Year party.

The latter can be combined into the former. When I know the day but not the time, I usually set the time to noon: 12:00:00, because this avoids (a large degree of) time-zone ambiguity. (Another unfortunate lack in the EXIF standard.)

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Are “Windows Photo Viewer” rotations lossless?

Question

Can I rotate lossily compressed photos that I view in Windows Photo Viewer without worrying about losing even more information to compression?

Answer

If the dimensions of the image are multiples of 8 (or 16 if chroma subsampling is used) then the rotations are lossless. Otherwise it is not possible to rotate the image without recomputing the blocks i.e. recompressing the image, which is lossy.

The reason for this is that jpeg images are broken up into a series of 8x8 or 16x16 blocks which are compressed individually. Incomplete blocks are only allowed on the right edge and bottom edge. Thus is your image is not an exact multiple of 8/16 it will contain incomplete blocks, which will end up on the wrong edge after rotation.

I verified the above assertion using the version of Windows Photo Viewer that ships with Windows 7. I used two images of colour noise. One image was 256x256 i.e. both sizes multiples of 8. The other image was the same but cropped to 253x253 i.e. neither size was a multiple of 8. Here are the images:

256x256

253x253

I then performed four anti-clockwise rotations, closing photo viewer after each rotation to ensure the image was saved in it's rotated state.

256x256

253x253

There's no need to perform a subtraction to see the difference with the 253 pixel image, it's noticeably darker and muddier!

A diff on the other image looks like this:

i.e. the images are identical, the rotations were lossless.

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How do I decide between “RAW as Master” and “JPEG as Master” when importing RAW+JPEG into Aperture?

Question

I guess this comes down to an Aperture question and a more general post-processing question.

I've been shooting RAW+JPEG and importing both to Aperture with the RAW image set as the master. But I've noticed that in low-light or high-contrast photos, if I switch the JPEG to master the photo "looks better".

Why does the version I set as master affect the appearance of the photo in my library in Aperture (where does the other one go exactly)?

And why does the RAW image seem to look worse in these situations? How can I figure out approximately what the camera did for the JPEG so that I can best process the RAW image?

Answer

The Aperture software display the one that you selected as master with the applied changes. If you compare an imported RAW with a JPG, Aperture treats them a little bit different. That is until you make any changes that is. When showing a JPG imported image, the camera has already performed all the post processing, like white balance adjustment and in some cases noise reduction. The RAW image is only corrected with "RAW fine tuning". It does not have any noise reduction or sharpening and stuff. Therefore you have to work more with the RAW image than the JPG image. The reason for cameras to have a JPG + RAW mode is for you to get a quick way of getting a usable image without doing any post processing.

I think it is impossible for you to figure out how the camera did to convert from RAW to JPG. However you could test the preset "Auto Enhance" which could give you similar result. It perform things like sharpening and adjusting the colors of the pictures. Note that the noise reduction is not adjusted when applying "Auto Enhance".

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Should I care about jpeg2000 (and does anyone else)?

Question

I know the question is a bit subjective, what I'm after is if there is enough improvement in jpeg2000 and enough support in software (image viewers, browsers) to warrant using it.

Answer

I will respond by referencing the reasons for defining the JPEG2000 specification in the first place, which, when you read it, will explain why you don't see or hear about it:

JPEG 2000 images have a number of properties which make them very suitable for use with the Internet. Typically, Internet users are constrained from downloading large, high quality images because of their physical file size. Often providers of images must create three or more versions of an image, varying from a tiny thumbnail through to a page size image.

Digital cameras have improved in quality and resolution to a level where they are now competing effectively with traditional film. The images they generate are often no longer directly suitable for Internet deployment - the quality and size is wasted on traditional computer monitors. In part, this is because the monitor might show no more than a quarter of the captured image without scrolling, and in part because the colour fidelity of the monitor does not match that of the camera.

So, JPEG2000 was created to improve image download time, and the fact that digital images were getting larger. Now, while we still need to care about optimizing JPEG for web viewing, and something like JPEG2000 would be nice, times have changed. I think this is dated thinking, as the expansion of broadband, dynamic image loading of JPEG and auto-sizing found in sites like Flickr and Smugmug to name two, have really eliminated these issues. Rarely do you run into an issue where a DSLR JPEG is 'too big' to show on a screen. Not to mention that screens are higher resolution and much larger than they were in 1999, when the specification was proposed.

This was made a standard in 2000, and is supported by most browsers, but I suspect it isn't used because it doesn't solve any problems.

I think no one cares. Note that JPEG XR/HD Photo have been created since, and no one seems to care about them either, not even Microsoft, who hasn't updated their HD Photo spec or info since 2006.

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How to avoid jpeg compression artefacts when saving photos in web resolution?

Question

When I save a web-resolution image (for example, 1920×1024px), flat areas tints often have damaged shades of color. I'm saving in Photoshop CS4 with quality 2 in standard mode, because I need the files to be less than 300k. How can I make my JPEG images this small without the compression artefacts?

An example: http://www.screencast.com/users/capsize/folders/Jing/media/f858e229-1f05-431c-98ce-5334918aa1f3

Answer

If you save a JPEG image with an extremely low quality level, you WILL get compression artifacts. Its just a simple fact of JPEG lossy compression. If you wish to avoid compression artifacts, use a higher quality setting than 2. You won't need to save at maximum quality, as most images can be saved with a fairly low quality setting without noticeable loss in detail or visible artifacts.

One thing to note is that smooth gradients and JPEG do not mix well. JPEG compresses small blocks of the image, and when it comes to smooth gradients, it tends to make all the pixels in a block the same or very similar colors. This creates distinct banding (posterization) that can be quite visible. The only way around this is to use a higher quality setting, however that will obviously increase your file size.

An excellent article that might be of help can be found here:

• An Analysis of Lightroom JPEG Export Quality Settings

The above is for Lightroom, however the fundamental concept still applies to Photoshop. The important point from the article above is that the lower range of quality settings for JPEG tend to have a minor effect on image size, and it is only when you get to the upper few brackets that image size starts to climb by any significant degree. I would suspect that you could change your quality setting from 2 to 5 and only incur a small hit to your image size.

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How to/Best Methods to Correct Washed Out JPEGs?

Question

I have many photos that have that washed out look about them and some that are completely blown out. These photos are JPEG only and were not taken (or I do not have) the RAW file. I currently attempt to salvage them using Camera RAW and some layer adjustments in Photoshop. What are some tips and techniques that I can attempt to use to correct these photos and restore them to best state possible?

Note: I currently use only Camera RAW and Photoshop. However answers that are for Lightroom (or other programs) are welcomed as other users may find them beneficial.

Example Photograph that I would like to use for something:

Source of Photo

Other examples would be photos that look like there is a haze over the subjects.

Answer

It's amazing what you can do just using the Levels dialog in Photoshop.

To get this version of the example image in the original question, I converted the greyscale image to RGB at 16 bits (Image->Mode) to give PS some room to smooth out the adjustments, then hit ctrl+L to bring up the levels dialog. Moving the black slider until the shadows were well-defined fixed the tonality. (There was no actual black in the histogram, but the darkest darks are only a hair above black.)

Then, because I can't leave well enough alone, I gave the image a quick pass using the Topaz Labs DeNoise plugin and killed a couple of the most obvious scratches using the spot healing brush (in CS3) before re-converting to 8-bit.

There was a lot more spotting that could have been done, and I suppose the curve could have been tweaked, but the main problem with the source image was simple fading. Fading of the darks and staining (yellowing) of the whites are the most common problems with old B&W photos, and the effects of both of those problems can be handled with the sliders in the Levels dialog. (With colour photos, the three colour channels will have faded at different rates and need to be adjusted separately). If there are actual blacks and whites, you can use the eyedropper tools to set the black and white points, and if there is something in the image you know should be about the same tonality as a grey card, you can use the grey point eyedropper for that.

There was no discernable sky content -- it's very likely the picture was taken with a blue-sensitive panchromatic film using no filtration. A lot of old black and white snapshots are simply not going to have a useful sky since you need to use a yellow filter to get any tones much lower than white. If you want a sky, you need to invent one or transplant one from another photograph.

Photo restoration can get to be a long, involved process, but the initial stages -- the steps that are going to account for most of the improvement -- are generally fairly simple. There will be a lot of work anyway, so there's no sense making things harder than they need to be.

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Why can I adjust the white balance of a RAW file but not a JPEG file?

Question

I recently started setting my DSLR to save RAW files, and using Adobe Lightroom to process them. I still, however, use my little point and shoot camera a lot which does not have an option to save RAW files. I've also noticed that in light-room the white balanced options are different with RAW files vs JPEG files. With RAW files you have the option of choosing from a number of white balanced settings (florescent, halogen, auto etc..), whereas with JPEG you do not. Why is this?

Answer

The quick and short answer:

All images start as RAW files that must have colour balance applied to them.

For jpeg images this transformation is done in the camera using the camera white balance settings. As mentioned above, Lightroom does not have enough information to undo this transformation.

Saved RAW files have no transformations applied by the camera, allowing you, the photographer, to decide later which white balance transformation you wish to apply.

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Should I use RAW or JPEG for wedding photography?

Question

I am about to shoot in a wedding ceremony and would like to know, Should I shoot in RAW or JPEG?

I asked a photographer (outside the US) and he said converting RAW into JPG changes color (or something like that) so they always shoot in JPG. I won't buy it unless someone convinces me here. I see the convenience of shooting in JPG: no conversion, smaller size — and, adjust lighting and the photo is ready.

I have a Nikon D5100 and a 16 GB card, so I can take plenty of RAW pics. My RAW file size is +22MB vs JPEG is 1.3-4 MB.

Is RAW always required or is RAW for some times and JPG is fine too?

I know there are related question but this question is related to wedding photography only. Thanks. Let me clarify. I think in Pakistan photographers never shoot in RAW.

Answer

JPEG offers two advantages (other than how many images you can fit on a card) that may be extremely significant under the right circumstances: the speed of workflow after the shoot (assuming you've gotten things right in camera) and the speed at which you can shoot.

RAW files take a lot longer to write to the card than JPEGs do (and RAW+JPEG takes longer still), so in the genres of photography where you need to take a lot of pictures quickly, a given camera will almost always perform better when shooting JPEGs. That is important to sports and wedding photographers as well as to photojournalists. The absolute last thing you want is to have your shutter release locked or delayed because your camera's buffer is full. And it doesn't matter whether that means getting the 9-10 FPS of a high-end speed demon like the Nikon D3s or the Canon EOS 1D Mk. IV or squeezing 3-4 FPS out of an older or entry-to-mid-level camera, having to wait for the buffer to write out to the card may mean missing the only shot that counts.

And while JPEGs limit you in what you can do in post-processing, they also limit what you have to do in post-processing. That difference in turn-around time can make a big difference to the amount of work you are able to take on, especially when you're working at the lower-priced, more cut-throat end of the industry. It may take (on average) a thirtieth of a second to take a picture, but it takes a lot longer than that to review, cull, and refine them afterwards. Even an extra ten seconds per picture (or series) can mean giving up another shooting day, so the financial advantages to shooting RAW and getting it right in-camera are very real at that level. Most of the better cameras will let you set custom picture settings (more than one) so that your "signature look" can happen primarily in the camera.

Of course, if you get it wrong in-camera shooting JPEGs, you can't hide your mistakes nearly as easily or as well. So you need to balance the business risks of missing the shot, taking too long in post and having the ultimate control in post. A best-case compromise might be to shoot the formals (the ones that you can take some time over, and that have to be absolutely perfect) in RAW and the spontaneous action in JPEG. But it is a business decision, not a photographic one.

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Good examples of RAW's advantages over JPEG?

Question

I'm curious to see some real examples of where simply capturing the same photo in RAW (and being processed by someone who can do it justice) has significantly improved the photo at the end of the process.

I understand what RAW is and why you might want to use it over JPEG, however, I'd like to actually see some examples where it has allowed for a better result. More control over tone, conversion from the more detailed data to 8-bit RGB etc.

Does anyone have or know of some processed RAW+JPEG shots for exact comparison?

Answer

The Value of RAW:

I think you may be misunderstanding the value of RAW. In the grand scheme of things, from seeing a scene with your eye to printing it, the best you get is what the printer you printed with is capable of, and that tends to be considerably less than what you see, or your camera or your computer is capable of representing.

The value of RAW is not really in the end result, although it is possible for the end result created with a RAW image to be better than that created with a JPEG. The reason for this has to do with the workflow between snapping a shot and saving or printing a final image. RAW gives you headroom that JPEG can't come close to offering. You have the ability to recover highlights and shadows, apply alternative tone curves, rework old RAW images with newer RAW processing algorithms to get better results, etc.

You are basically asking what is the value of an original film negative or slide, over a final scanned JPEG copy of that film negative/slide. With the original film, you have plenty of capability to rework and improve, use different printing techniques, etc...where as with the final JPEG, you got what you got, and not a whole lot more.

Example:

An original JPEG of Lower Yellowstone Falls. The sky was completely blown out, as this was one of the very first few photos I took over a year ago when I first got into photography. I had researched RAW, along with most other camera theory, long before I ever purchased a camera, so I had RAW+JPEG enabled at the time:

Below is the reworked version from a RAW file. Because of RAW's considerable headroom, I was able to nearly fully recover the horrendously blown out sky, retone the whole image, and generate three alternative exposures (-1.5 EV, Original EV, +1.5 EV) using Lightroom to create a far sharper, clearer, and richer HDR image:

It was largely because of the radical improvements I was able to make to this image that I rarely ever shoot in JPEG anymore. I opt for RAW the vast majority of the time, and as I am still a student of the artistic aspects of photography, I appreciate the headroom that RAW offers. Most of the time, the final image saved from a RAW file is very similar to that of a JPEG...its the times when you botched it big and need to massively rework an image that RAW's advantages over JPEG really start to shine. Its all in the workflow, rather than the destination. ;)

JPEG Example:

Mark took the time to rework the JPEG sample I posted, to demonstrate what can be done with a JPEG. I think its important to note that a JPEG is not completely unworkable once it is taken...I may have lead to that belief in my comments above. JPEG images do have some room to be reworked, if needed, however it is more limited than RAW. Marks reworked copy of the JPEG sample is here:

A couple things should be noted. For one, he was able to retone the image decently, and it looks similar to the retoned RAW example I posted. The retoning, caused the unrecoverable parts of the sky to become yellowed, which I would consider an undesirable outcome. Depending on the software used, that may or may not happen. Something also not visible in the very small JPEG examples are compression artifacts, which have a tendency to become more pronounced as you rework an image, limiting your options.

Detailed Example:

Something else that I was able to recover from was a severe degree of softness, caused by the 18mm extreme of the cheap EF-S 18-55mm lens I used when I took this shot. I have some crops below that demonstrate the original image, a sharpened copy of the JPEG using a technique explained by @Guffa here on Photo-SE, and an HDR version that was only possible because with RAW, I could use Lightroom to export two additional alternative exposures 1.5EV from the original. Even using Guffa's excellent sharpening technique, the JPEG can't compare to the ability to create an HDR image from a single poorly-shot RAW image (these images are about 1/3 of their full resolution):

And another example:

The HDR examples were not sharpened using any normal sharpening technique; the added sharpness was the result of Photoshop's image alignment during Merge to HDR.

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