When available, I shoot RAW instead of JPG. It's something I just feel I should be doing but when asked, I can't really explain why or convince someone that the extra post processing work is worth it.
I have started watching "From Camera to Print", a 6 and a half hour video with fine art photographers Michael Reichmann and Jeff Schewe.
In one segment, they explain this very well. Without giving away too much from the not free but excellent video, here are a few items they have discussed:
- When saving as JPG only, your camera is deciding white balance, brightness, contrast, sharpness in a split second and throwing away the raw camera data. Michael Reichmann refers to this as “Your baking the image”.
- A JPG is reducing a 12 bit image in a 16 bit space down to 8 bits of information and restricting the dynamic range.
- Shooting JPG is like shooting a Polaroid and not having a negative.
- JPG compression removes color information while trying to preserve luminescence values.
- JPG is not a working format. It is an output for final delivery.
- Why throw away the RAW image data when modern software can quickly export large numbers of RAW photos as JPGs if needed.
I'm a supporter of always saving photos at the absolute highest quality possible. One comment reminded me of something talked about in Stephen Johnson's book. Software continues to get better and in 5-10 years, having the highest quality and original camera image data will be useful.
From the Photoshop Manual
A camera raw file contains unprocessed, uncompressed grayscale picture date from a digital cameras image sensor, along with information about how the image was captured. Camera raw software interprets the camera raw file, using information about the camera and the image's metadate to construct and process a color image.