RAW vs JPEG

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Originally Posted by george013

Be carefully with this statement. It looks like one says that if several books have a table of content on page 3, they have something in common.
When I remember well, Nikon has 3 main filestructures, all called NEF.
George

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NEF and other raw file formats do have a lot in common beyond the existence of a TOC. The content is image related metadata and indices for use in reconstructing an image from the rest of the data. The index in many cases is the model number of the camera and the link I provided includes a link of it's own to values which describe the image data. It's at http://lclevy.free.fr/nef/values.txt following other links within the original will give you a lot of information on tags and values in the file. I believe the D1 had it's own unique codec but that a common one came out with the D1x

I just love the capabilities inherent in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). In fact, if that were the only reason for shooting in raw, I would still shoot raw. There are just so very many things that I can do in ACR including a much easier way to adjust perspective distortion...

Sure, you can open a JPEG image in ACR but, you can also boil ice cubes to make tea. But, that is not the most efficient way do do things...

I started out with the book, Getting Started In Camera Raw by Ben Long. Although this is an older book (and I would definitely recommend getting a more up to date book if I were purchasing now) it still has a lot of valid information.

There is a plethora of YouTube videos on using Adobe Camera Raw: https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...obe+camera+raw

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Originally Posted by rpcrowe

I just love the capabilities inherent in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). In fact, if that were the only reason for shooting in raw, I would still shoot raw. There are just so very many things that I can do in ACR including a much easier way to adjust perspective distortion...

Sure, you can open a JPEG image in ACR but, you can also boil ice cubes to make tea. But, that is not the most efficient way do do things...

I started out with the book, Getting Started In Camera Raw by Ben Long. Although this is an older book (and I would definitely recommend getting a more up to date book if I were purchasing now) it still has a lot of valid information.

There is a plethora of YouTube videos on using Adobe Camera Raw: https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...obe+camera+raw

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How to open JPEG in Adobe Camera Raw? I was always fascinated by the ACR feature of adjusting the saturation of each colour seperately. It is much easier in ACR to convert the coloured image into selective colour.


Edit: http://blogs.adobe.com/pselements/op...shop-elements/
Got it... :) Will try tonight

When I have the JPEG on my drive, I open it in Photoshop using File> Open as> Camera Raw

http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/photos/i-...-gBcd3Z5-L.jpg

The JPEG will then open in the Camera Raw workspace. This "looks" like the commands have been grayed out but that was just due to working with the "snip-it" plug-in.

http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/photos/i-...-MHncvms-L.jpg

However for a really neat way (IMO) to adjust values of images, NIK Software's Viveza Plug In gives tremendous control of many facets of your image.

http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/photos/i-...-jxcDZxn-L.jpg

Viveza is only one of the plug-ins contained within the NIK Software set...

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Originally Posted by mrinmoyvk

How to open JPEG in Adobe Camera Raw? I was always fascinated by the ACR feature of adjusting the saturation of each colour seperately. It is much easier in ACR to convert the coloured image into selective colour.


Edit: http://blogs.adobe.com/pselements/op...shop-elements/
Got it... :) Will try tonight

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You can also set file handling option in ACR preferences so that you can double click on any JPEG image and it will open in ACR. JPEG or Raw, all my images are opened through ACR. It's one of adobe's best creations.

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Originally Posted by GrumpyDiver

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3. If you print you are looking at a few 100,000 colour shades. Depending on the specific printer, estimated numbers I've seen run from less than 400,000 at the lower end to 700,000 at the higher end.
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5. Unless I do something really extreme in post processing, I don't see the artifacts everyone keeps writing about.

I'm willing to bet no one knows whether or not the images I post to this site started out as jpegs or RAW data.

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I read the link and I think it quite wright about the losses in JPEG about the colors mostly in landscape pictures with the "band effect" in skies (I saw it in few pictures and finnally understood from where it comes ;) after reading John Watts' clear explanations).
Now the point I want to ask (sorry for my ignorance :( ) is: after I shoot raw (NEF for me) and process the picture "lossless" to get the best of it, if I want to print an high quality album, what is the best format for these pictures (I guess that the raw file is not compatible with the publisher, most of the time I order by internet through the dedicated software of the professionnal printer)?
Thanks a lot in advance for helping,
Philippe

Best to ask the printing company for advice on format, colour space and resolution, otherwise I think we'd be guessing.

The company I use (in the UK) specifies what to send. I also use their dedicated software.

Dave

Thanks Dave,
But in general what is the best format to lossless save a raw file after PP? TIFF? Else?
Philippe

Philippe - you seem to be labouring under the misconception that RAW is good and jpeg is bad. This argument is more about which form to use for editing, rather than final output. There is no question at all that RAW files can stand more heavy handed manipulation than jpegs, but no pixel based editing program can handle raw data and all must turn this data into a format that can be edited.

Once the edit is finished, the output needs to be in a form that is usable; TIFF files (which can be uncompressed, lossless compressed or lossy compressed) are quite large and inefficient for storage. While this is not an issue for storing locally (large hard drives are relatively inexpensive), they do take a long time to load through the internet, so the defacto "standard" for displaying files on the net are sRGB jpegs because of their relatively small size.

When we get to printing our images, the story gets a bit more complicated and file format and colour space used become important. All printers use some variant of the CMYK colour space, and photo inkjet printers will add more "colours" to the mix to expand the colours that they can output. Professional ink jet printers are generally at least 8 colours and some higher end models have up to 12 different colours; which means that depending on the printer itself; the number of distinct colours that can be reproduced varies between around 350,000 to around 750,000. This is a lot less that even the lowly sRGB jpeg that can produced a mere 16 million colours. What is important to note is that some of the higher commercial ink jet printers can output colours that are outside the range of the sRGB colour space, especially some of the more brilliant shades of greens and blues.

So commercial printers do vary and the default that they work with will be sRGB jpegs; especially the ones working in the consumer market. If you ask and they don't know what colour space they use, assume that they can only print sRGB jpegs. Some custom commercial printers do handled Adobe RGB and can also handled TIFF files; these companies will definitely be higher end ones that commercial photographers use.

I hope I've clarified, rather than muddied things up too much.

In general, I would say TIFF, though they can get pretty large.

Just for interest, why do you want the create the non-RAW image? I use Lightroom as my main editor, and the images stay there till I know what I want to do with them.

If I've used a plug-in then typically I'll have an additional TIFF file.

Dave

Thanks Manfred, as usual you clarified.

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Originally Posted by davidedric

In general, I would say TIFF, though they can get pretty large.

Just for interest, why do you want the create the non-RAW image? I use Lightroom as my main editor, and the images stay there till I know what I want to do with them.

If I've used a plug-in then typically I'll have an additional TIFF file.

Dave

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I use to PP my prefered (best?) pict with On1 PPS9.5 after basically adjusting the raw file in ViewN2. The non-raw image is for creating an album of printed pictures (I like to have real printed pictures in a book to stare and enjoy them from time to time, not only looking them in a monitor), some of them in relatively large size (+/-20x30cm) and the company I send is printing in 6 colors (for Manfred's opinion). The problem is, after reading the post of the link opening this thread (John Watts), I effectively had some pictures with this described banding in the blue sky, understanding it could be an artefact of JPEG compression, loosing ntermediates tones (am I right?). So I would at least be able to keep these smooth shading in lanscape's skies or other delicate color gradations. perhaps I'm fooling myself? Indeed I'm not an expert :rolleyes:
Thanks for your kind interest.
Philippe

A little off topic (and maybe I should start a thread) but are there any Linux users out there processing RAW files?

I have darktable and also bought Corel AfterShot but at the moment I'm away from home with only a little netbook which is struggling to cope, so I can't really assess either yet. Will be back home next week and will be able to try on a faster laptop.

Philippe - I kept my explanation to inkjet printers only, because these are commonly used by people that print at home and by commercial photo printers. Once you get into books, it is whole different situation. These are large, high volume production printers made by companies like HP, Durst, Fuji, Noritsu and use a variety of processes from digital offset printing, to digitally exposing traditional colour photo papers to dye sublimation, etc.

These processes are relatively inexpensive as compared to inkjet printing and in my experience the colours are not as good as what a higher end dedicated, multi-colour inkjet printer can produce. I was looking at a Blurb book (which I understand are done on HP Digital Offset printers), and the colours are nice but not great.

If I were doing what you are, I would contact the company creating the book and ask them for the icc profiles for the equipment and paper that they will be printing your book with. I would then load this profile into Photoshop and use the soft proof function to review my images. If I see banding in the sky in soft proof, I would re-edit the images until they look right.