- At some point you may have heard the term raw format,
or raw photo, or raw photography.
By default, your camera stores images as JPEG files.
JPEG is simply a standard for storing images
which everyone has agreed upon.
JPEG files are great for digital photography
because they can be heavily compressed
without showing a loss of detail.
That means they don't take up a lot of room
on your computer or camera, and they can be
easily transmitted electronically.
Also, because they're such a well-accepted standard,
you're fairly assured of being able to read a JPEG
in any piece of software that you use.
That small file size comes at a price, though.
JPEG files do not actually contain all of the color data
that your camera captures when it shoots.
JPEG files don't provide as much latitude for making edits
in post-production, and if they're too compressed,
you'll see visible artifacts in your final image.
For all of those reasons, your camera
also probably offers raw format.
Raw files lack the compression artifacts of JPEGs.
They store all of the color that your camera captures,
and they offer the ability to make
more extreme edits in post-production.
Raw files are not sharper than JPEGs,
nor do they offer a broader range of colors
or more dynamic range than JPEGs.
In fact, straight out of the camera,
raw files will likely look softer
and possibly have less interesting color than a JPEG.
But raw files offer tremendous control of white balance,
something we haven't talked about yet.
Now, this isn't a raw course, though I do happen
to have one of those for you to watch.
But the reason I bring up raw right now is that,
if you shoot raw, you'll sometimes be able
to recover slightly overexposed highlights.
Take a look at this image.
This is a cow out standing in his field.
And if you look at the sky, you'll see
that I've overexposed the highlights.
I've lost a lot of detail in here.
They've gone out to complete white.
If this was a JPEG file, there would be nothing
I could do about that, I could darken the image,
but the clouds would still stay white.
But with a raw file, watch what happens.
I can put all of that detail back in there.
Look at the difference here, yes,
I have darkened the image overall,
but there are other things I can do about that.
I can brighten up other parts of the image.
What's important here is, because this is raw,
I have managed to recover all of this detail.
I can save this image now and end up with a good result.
For now, stick with JPEG files.
There's no reason to complicate things
while you're still learning, and I don't want you
to rely on a safety net that you don't know how to control.
However, at some point you will want
to switch to raw shooting for all
of the reasons that I mentioned earlier.