Re: RAW vs JPEGs - Does RAW show more detail?

If your softtware forces you to save your converted RAW file to
another
format in order to work with it conveniently, then I assure you - it
is
lightyears behind the curve. Here, I am talking about programs like
Photoshop CS2 or Lightroom, also (from what I understand) Aperture,
the
Nikon software, as well as some relatively "low end" programs like
ACDSee Pro (which I use).

That is an absurd perception of the workflow.

Absurd? It happens to be the type of workflow recommended by the
experts in the industry - Peter Krogh, etc. Far from being absurd, it
is absolutely the norm in the business these days. What do imagine to
be even slightly unusual about it?

You are suggesting that each and every web page generate images
from a raw data file... each time it is viewed.

"web page"? What on earth are you talking about? Who said anything
about web pages? Of course, for the tiny. practically insignficant
percentage of images you shoot that end up on web pages that get viewed,
you want JPEG files, sized appropriately. I've never said otherwise.
But that's not what we are talking about here - we're talking about what
happens to the bulk of your images, not the few that get special
treatment.

That is technically feasible, but is not a reasonable workflow.
I cannot imagine why you want to generate image formats each and
every time, rather than just save one to a file and eliminate
the time consuming process of conversion.

Again you seem oblivious to the fact that this is *not* what happens.
Do you not understand what I mean by the termed "cached" or "embedded"
preview? New conversions take place only when you do something that
*requires* a new conversion, which is relatively rare. See below.

Hence I totally agree that if white balance or exposure needs to
be adjusted it is quite appropriate to start with a raw data
file. It is absurd to do that when one merely wants to crop or
resize and image and change the sharpening appropriately.

It's only absurd if your RAW software makes this process unnecessarily
complicated. With programs such as those I mentioned, these types of
things can be done quite simply starting from the original RAW file, at
the touch of a single keystroke. Is it a little slower than doing this
from the JPEG? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it is relevant to put this in
perspective. As it is, there are several things I might want to do with
an image:

- just look at it
- look at it and update metadata
- look at it and some simple processing to it (crop, resize for web,
etc)
- re-examine the adjustment parameters applied to the RAW data

In the first and second cases, the cached/embedded preview ensures that
working with the original RAW is just as fast as working with the JPEG.
Faster, indeed, since working with the JPEG implies you spent the time
generating the JPEG in the first place. In the third case, which is
what you are talking about, it is possible that it will take slioghtly
longer to do this sort of processing from RAW than from JPEG. And if
you are in the business of constantly generating new resizes and crops
of certain of your existing images, then those images would indeed be
good candidates for generating JPEG conversions of. But I've got tens
of thousands of images, and it's way under 1% of them that I ever dream
of doing resizing or cropping beyond the original. Why waste time and
space generating JPEGs for the other 99% just to save a second or so on
the rare occasions when I do need to do something like this? OK, if I'm
generating a whole bunch of resized images to email someone or post
online, it might be more than a few seconds I save, but again, how often
does one do this? If I resize a set of images for the web, I save those
JPEGs, so if I need to have web-sized versions again, I've already got
them. But again, not having to do that for 99% of my images is a huge
win.

It's the fourth case that is the REAL win for this type of workflow,
however. If you are in the habit of browsing JPEG only because your RAW
softrware is too antiquated to let you view the RAW files themselves
quickly (via "smoke and mirrors"), then when you decide to update the
conversion, what do you do? I'll tell you what I do: oress the "R" key
while looking at the image. I'm now in the RAW processor, ready to go.

In any case, while it is becoming to apparent to me that someone who has
not experienced this type of software in action using a profession
workflow of the type I am decribing is going to have difficuly seeing
just what the savings really are. Which is fine, and if you're happy
using the sort of workflow that is forced upon you by your software and
haven't seen the need to grow beyond it, that is fine. You've seen the
alternative - even if you don't appear to fully understand it - and have
decided it is not for you. But my original comments were not directed
at you - they were directed at someone who, I suspect, is completely
unaware that these other possibilities even exist.

---------------
Marc Sabatella
marc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Music, art, & educational materials
Featuring "A Jazz Improvisation Primer"
http://www.outsideshore.com/


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