Sorry, this is going to get a bit technical (sort of).
For readers that aren’t into photography, modern DSLR cameras can take photos in two formats: RAW or JPG. Jpg files are more commonly known, as its one of the most common file formats that people use to view or send photos. The camera takes a the data from the sensor and compresses it to form a jpg picture. The immediate advantage of jpg is that the file size is significantly smaller (5 mb instead of 29) which save space on memory cards and hard drives. And they’re much easier and more convenient to share. RAW files are a bit different. They are the uncompressed raw data that the camera sensor generates. It’s not an image, just data that can be converted into one later. Professionals shoot RAW because it gives them ultimate control over their image, so that they can use post-processing to make it look as best as they can. Unfortunately, they are much larger files, may require an extra program to process them, and requires an extra step to convert them into a usable format.
When I first started taking photography seriously, I shot everything as RAW files. I had a program that I could use to sort them and Polarr (my photo editor) can edit them. In my head, I thought that the editing I was doing was exclusive to RAW files, and it was impossible to do with jpg’s. Then one day, I tried to edit a jpg, and found the exact same result.
As an example, I did a comparison shot. The first was edited with a jpg, and the other was a RAW file with the exact same edits and then subsequently exported as a jpg. Can you tell the difference?
Yea, me neither. Ever since mid-September, I’ve been shooting exclusively jpg files. It’s faster, smaller, and much more convenient for my work flow. And I don’t notice any difference between them with clarity, sharpness or noise. Maybe Adobe Lightroom may handle RAW files better?
If anyone notices a difference between the two file types, feel free to message me. I’d love to learn more about it.
Andy Chen Photography 