Hi

I take raw images from the moment I turned to digital SLR. As far as I know this is the "digital negative" and we can get the best results of processing it.

I"ve meet a photographer who is saying while he is capturing large jpg images the quality is much better than raw to jpg.

One question:

why I cannot get the same quality( etc sharpeness ) converting it to jpeg. Ok I know jpg is compressing it....

Is there any smart way to preserve good quality with it conversion?

Joanna

What he said...

If your camera is able (most are) shoot some raw + Jpeg shots and see how you feel they compare.

I shoot all raw and use Adobe Lightroom / Apple Apeture / Photoshop / The Gimp

Ok

I probably said it wrong. I can't get the sharpness into jpg files.

I usually open raw in photohsop, then working with it a little and when I want to save it as a jpg the sharpness is gone. Should I ask how to turn photoshop files into jpg, and not loosing sharpness? Probably..

Ps.

I've started on film and It took me long way to believe digital can be any good...

The main advantage of using raw mode is there is more scope to rescue pictures if things go wrong at the shooting stage, especially if you have over-exposed the shot. In difficult lighting conditions it will also be much easier to correct the colours, for example if working with mixed lighting.

Jpegs have the advantage of taking up much less storage space. Also your camera will shoot a lot more pictures in quick succession before filling up  the buffer (the main reason that sports photographers will rarely if  ever use raw mode).

If you nail the exposure you shouldn't see much difference in the end results. Getting good results with jpeg files, however, means you have to take a bit more care in setting up your camera.

Personally, whether shooting raw or jpeg pics, I'd prefer to keep the in-camera sharpening to a minimum (unless you need to upload pics without doing any processing ) and do it later on your computer. That way you can better judge the amount of sharpening needed for each individual picture, which will vary depending on factors such as the iso you've used. High iso shots will take less sharpening before noise starts to become a problem

In most cases it is better to err on the side of under-sharpening. It will generally look better than oversharpening...

Cliff

If You want to retain the amount of information in the raw file you should save in tiff format that way no information is lost each time you open the file.  In jpeg which is compressed each time the fille is opened and closed a small amount of information is lost.
            &nb sp;    Colin

Hi,

if u are using canon camera you can use Digital Photo Professional - software to convert from raw to tiff / or straight to jpg file / and for e.g. in Photoshop do what you want with this.

You'll get hi quality jpg file, sharpness...

My question is what do you use this jpg files for ???????  

Mostly jpg files are for websites lower quality prints etc.

Another question is if you do RAW files what color space do you use  RGB or sRGB ... so

Regards Piotr

When you do a jpeg in camera the camera applies a sharpness algorithm to sharpen the image.  This is done because in most cameras they have an anti aliasing filter in front of the sensor that softens the image.

With raw this is not done for you, as its expected you will know how to do it yourself, like you say its a digital negative, so now you have full control of what is shapened by what amount. 

You should do input sharpening of your raw file, that an overall application of a small amount of sharpening, and save in a lossless format such as TIFF/PNG/XCF/PSD.  If your raw converter can't sharpen save it in a lossless format, open in PS or GIMP and apply a light unsharpen mask to the whole image.

Only resize once and if you resize the image you will have to sharpen it again with the "unsharpen mask".  Final step should be to output the jpeg.  Canon have this info somewhere on there site.  Depending on the image you may want to be very selective about what you apply the USM to and how much.  This is the power of RAW, you also have full control of the white balance, you can push or pull the exposure up or down 2 stops, change saturation and a few other things also. 

So if the jpeg looks better than the raw its generally down to the person processing the image not understanding that none of the automatic processes the camera follows before writing a jpeg will take place, its all down to you to do those processes, on an unsharpened raw with no fixed white balance and scope to push or pull the exposure by 2EV.  I only shoot raw, as once you understand how to make it work, the jpeg is as much use as a choclate teapot.