How do you feel about JPEG quality being equal to RAW in near future?

I was looking for an article I read last week that was very interesting and I wanted to run it by this community to get thoughts.  It spoke about JPEG technology on the rise and that this could make shooting in RAW obsolete in the near future.  It was very interesting and I hope to get more information about this.  Imagine getting the same quality in a much smaller JPEG file?  I know my hard drives and camera buffer will sure love to hear this. 

What do you think?   Plausible? 

Who knows, perhaps in 5 years?  But then again mirrorless prefer JPG anyway? 

Adrian Footman wrote: I was looking for an article I read last week that was very interesting and I wanted to run it by this community to get thoughts.  It spoke about JPEG technology on the rise and that this could make shooting in RAW obsolete in the near future.  It was very interesting and I hope to get more information about this.  Imagine getting the same quality in a much smaller JPEG file?  I know my hard drives and camera buffer will sure love to hear this. 

What do you think?   Plausible? 

No.

A) There's already a "better" JPG that no one uses. So much for that.

2) JPG is lossy. As in, data is lost. How can that ever hope to replace RAW? Be definition you can not get the same quality. They're selling snake oil.

C) Technology marches onward. Memory and storage become less expensive, processing becomes faster, and the whole points of "saving space" becomes less and less relevant.

Yes I saw the article go by (FStoppers, maybe?) and read it. I was not impressed.

If it's exactly the same quality (and flexibility) then the file size will be the same because with flexibility comes the information and with the information comes all those zeros and ones.


Personally I think it's stupid, how can a lossy format ever be better than a lossless format?! As jpeg improves RAW will also improve.

"What do you think?   Plausible?"

The way of the future. The way of the future. The way of the future. The way of the future.......
 I'll believe it when I see it.....

I think I read an article several months back on the same subject...IIRC, the new format would be lossless.... Thing is, the standard would take some time to make it's way into cameras (not sure if older cameras would be able to use via a software update)

If it is a smaller file size at all than the raw data, then it will never be lossless. It has to compress that data, so it will lose some parts to get to that size. So they must be speaking of very large Jpegs to be superior to RAW. In this case they are talking about turning Jpegs into TIFF files.

garyrhook wrote:

Adrian Footman wrote: I was looking for an article I read last week that was very interesting and I wanted to run it by this community to get thoughts.  It spoke about JPEG technology on the rise and that this could make shooting in RAW obsolete in the near future.  It was very interesting and I hope to get more information about this.  Imagine getting the same quality in a much smaller JPEG file?  I know my hard drives and camera buffer will sure love to hear this. 

What do you think?   Plausible? 

No.

A) There's already a "better" JPG that no one uses. So much for that.

2) JPG is lossy. As in, data is lost. How can that ever hope to replace RAW? Be definition you can not get the same quality. They're selling snake oil.

C) Technology marches onward. Memory and storage become less expensive, processing becomes faster, and the whole points of "saving space" becomes less and less relevant.

Yes I saw the article go by (FStoppers, maybe?) and read it. I was not impressed.

 

It's not really a question of "better".  It depends on who it's better for.  JPEG format is better for a lot of people.  It's simpler and quicker and doesn't require any post processing.  If you're more particular about your images and you want to take the time to creatively style your images then RAW will always be better.  With JPEG, you get what you get and while you can make some minor adjustments, the creative post editing options are much more limited.  

photographyelement wrote: It's not really a question of "better".  It depends on who it's better for.  JPEG format is better for a lot of people.  It's simpler and quicker and doesn't require any post processing.

In the interest of precision, JPGs are already processed by the camera. A JPG that isn't processed causes the file to fall into the TIFF category, as stated above.

If you're more particular about your images and you want to take the time to creatively style your images then RAW will always be better.  With JPEG, you get what you get and while you can make some minor adjustments, the creative post editing options are much more limited.  

Again, because the camera has already made most of those decisions for you. And thrown out everything it considers unnecessary.

Correct. All I'm saying is that for some people who don't have the time or don't want to edit their photos, JPEG is better. When the camera makes all the decisions for you and throws away the excess data, you're stuck with whatever the camera thinks is best. For those who want more creative control over the look of the final image, JPEG will never be the best option no matter how much more advanced it becomes.