Also, the Develop settings can be set up to automatically match JPEG output, which makes the “speed and simplicity” argument for shooting JPEG redundant. Lightroom’s Develop module can be used to interpret your master files in a variety of ways, but they work best when they are used to edit raw images. But, in a way, this is a good thing because you want there to be room to expand the tones and add more contrast as you see fit. Some photographers have found their initial encounters with raw images to be off-putting because some raw images may appear dull and lifeless when they are first imported into Lightroom. A raw file is like a digital negative that has yet to be processed, and as such it’s a master file with the potential to be edited in many different ways.
This is the major advantage of raw: when you shoot using raw mode, apart from the exposure and ISO setting, nothing else about the image processing will have been decided yet. Whether you can capture 14 bits or just 12 bits of data per channel, being able to record up to 4096 levels or more is still a lot of levels to play with.Ī raw capture file contains the direct raw data as captured by the sensor, without any pre-image processing applied to it. It is claimed that the medium format digital cameras and some of the more recent digital SLRs can capture as many as 14 bits of data or 16,384 levels per channel. But even so, you want to preserve as many levels of data as you can. This does not mean that every image you capture will contain 4096 levels in every channel-an underexposed digital photograph will have far fewer levels than this. Here is a brief summary of the differences between shooting in raw and JPEG mode.Ī typical good-quality digital camera might be able to capture 12 bits of data per channel, which equates to 4096 levels of information per color channel. The fact that you now have more controls at your disposal to edit the color and tone in a JPEG capture is in one way a good thing, but it would be unwise to conclude from this that a JPEG image can now be considered equal to the quality of a raw capture. Raw or JPEG?Īt first glance, Lightroom appears to handle the processing of raw images and non-raw images as if they were the same. The following is an excerpt from The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers by Martin Evening.