SLT-A65 RAW vs JPEG

11 years 5 months ago #256417 by wtchdrmd
I did a test looking at identical images, the first one recorded in RAW, entered into Photoshop CS5 and converted to a JPEG at highest (12) quality, the second one being a FINE JPEG from the camera, then both opened in Photoshop and enlarged to a size equivalent to 100% of the second JPEG. The image recorded in JPEG had much less noise and appeared to have better color than the one captured as RAW and converted. Is this because the JPEG has noise reduction already applied during the JPEG compression ? It suggests that unless you really know what you are doing, many people may end up with a better image by skipping RAW and just taking FINE quality JPEGs.


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11 years 5 months ago #256480 by Stealthy Ninja

wtchdrmd wrote: I did a test looking at identical images, the first one recorded in RAW, entered into Photoshop CS5 and converted to a JPEG at highest (12) quality, the second one being a FINE JPEG from the camera, then both opened in Photoshop and enlarged to a size equivalent to 100% of the second JPEG. The image recorded in JPEG had much less noise and appeared to have better color than the one captured as RAW and converted. Is this because the JPEG has noise reduction already applied during the JPEG compression ? It suggests that unless you really know what you are doing, many people may end up with a better image by skipping RAW and just taking FINE quality JPEGs.


Yes, it's in camera NR.

RAW will nearly always give you better results, but as you said, you need to know what you're doing.

You can do better NR (and have more control over it) by doing it yourself in PP, but yeh it takes some skill. Thing is, if you shoot RAW you can always fix it later when you have the skills, if you shoot jpeg, you're stuck with jpeg for all time.

That said, people say the fuji jpegs (xpro1, x100, X-e1 etc.) are really good and better than RAW because of the film simulation that fuji can do so well in camera but other companies (adobe) haven't been able to replicate. So a lot of fuji users shoot jpeg (or RAW+jpeg).
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11 years 5 months ago #256548 by KCook
I don't pixel peep that much, so my eye is not all that sensitive to noise in the first place. With my Canon, I use Canon's own editor, Digital Photo Professional, for RAW conversions. Even in that case I do not trust the conversion to JPG to be 100% faithful to the camera's JPG shot. When (rather rare?) JPG output is key I always set the camera to RAW+JPG to play safe.

Kelly Cook

Canon 50D, Olympus PL2
kellycook.zenfolio.com/

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