A growing tread for none professional photographers is to use the RAW image file format. RAW format has been used by professional photographers since the arrival of Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) in the early nineties. RAW format is an uncompressed unaltered version of the image that is created in the fraction of a second after the lens is closed. Consisted of pure 1′s & 0′s for each pixel in the sensor, the common nickname for the RAW format is a digital negative. RAW file format has the ability to update the color profile post photo.
JPEG is a compressed image format basic upon the lossy style of compression. Based on a percentage, 100% begin untouched and 0% being, well unusable crap, the lossy compression is using in images, audio, and video. JPEG (aka .jpg) is a web standard for full detail web imagery. JPEG’s are printable, a feature not available with RAW file to which has to be first need to be converted to a JPEG first.
Breakdown Q&A:
Why bother with Raw if it’s just going to be made into a JPEG?
RAW allows for a higher level customization over JPEG. So if it seems right to use RAW, use RAW.
How do know when to each file type
Ask yourself what is the intent of the shot. If going to print, how big does the print need to be or how big can the client change it to be. Bare guildelines: If taking photos of documented people (you know their name or there is something recognizable about the subject) use RAW format. You never know when that photo might come back to make you rich. Cinematic shot are should be RAW files but Panoramic come with a trade off of size vs quality and depending on the scene you’ll need to choose between which is more important.
What if all I want to do is scrap book and never print higher then 5 by 7′s?
JPEG all the way. It’s for that reason that Point-and-Shoots don’t offer RAW. The average consumer doesn’t have the ability to do post editing in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Adobe Camera RAW, so they use mostly automatic presets and delete in camera none perfect shots. For those uses JPEG is the best option.