RAW vs JPEG: the key to understanding

To continue this series on the basics of photography, I’ve wanted to write this slightly more technical, but very important, article for a while. If you read my photography articles regularly, you’ve probably noticed that I often recommend using RAW rather than JPEG.

So today, let’s talk about a subject that often sparks heated debates on forums and gives photography purists goosebumps… Should you shoot in RAW rather than JPEG? If you’re new to photography, you may not have paid much attention to it yet, but your camera lets you choose the image format you want to shoot in. By default, most cameras are set to JPEG. Personally, I’ve been shooting in RAW for years. After a short general explanation, I’ll go through the advantages and disadvantages of each format. Let’s get started.

First, I want to clarify a few terms. As mentioned in the introduction, both formats are available on your digital camera. The first thing to remember is that RAW is not an image format in the usual sense, and therefore not really a finished photo. It is simply the raw data recorded by your digital sensor when the photo is taken. Think of it as the digital equivalent of a negative. Back in the day, if you didn’t develop a film negative in a darkroom, you were left with a negative, not a finished photograph. RAW works in much the same way. Since it is not a finished image, you cannot really do anything with it without developing it digitally using photo-processing software. Note that some cameras also let you create a JPEG directly in-camera from a RAW file through a “retouch” menu.

JPEG, on the other hand, is a real image format created directly by the camera from the RAW data. It is therefore a “processed” format, because the camera has already applied the settings defined by the user. Only the information needed to display that JPEG has been kept. The format is therefore far more destructive. In other words, the image has already been processed by the camera body. RAW processing, by contrast, is reversible, since you cannot modify the RAW file itself. Once again, it is not a finished picture. In fact, no software lets you save an image back into RAW format.

Here is a small explanatory diagram to make this clearer.

This is the first major difference between JPEG and RAW.

RAW files are heavier, often much heavier, than JPEG files, depending on the JPEG quality options selected. In JPEG Low, for example, the image definition is reduced, so the file is even lighter. Transfer times between your memory card and your computer, as well as RAW processing and display times in-camera or in editing software, are generally longer than with lighter JPEG files.

Even though storage prices have dropped dramatically, to the point where a 1TB hard drive costs relatively little today, the heavier file size of RAW remains a drawback when storing this format on hard drives, and even more so online. JPEG files are obviously much easier to store.

Another point to keep in mind: because RAW files are heavier, they will fill your memory card much faster. You may therefore need to invest in larger memory cards if you shoot in RAW.

Since my trip to Asia in 2013, I’ve been using the French platform Joomeo to store and share all my photos and videos online. It’s my second backup method, in addition to physical backups on hard drives.

It is also worth noting that, in some cases, especially on low-end compact and bridge cameras, differences may appear in burst mode between RAW and JPEG. Most DSLR and mirrorless cameras, even entry-level models, generally do not differ much in frame rate, meaning the number of images per second, depending on the format. You will more often be limited by the buffer, basically your camera’s RAM, and its capacity in MB, which will shorten bursts faster in RAW than in JPEG. On many cameras with a mechanical shutter, the mechanical shutter itself will also limit the FPS more than the file format.

No matter what camera you currently use, whether DSLR or mirrorless, recent cameras usually show very little difference between RAW and JPEG while shooting.

There are other important differences between JPEG and RAW, especially when it comes to sharing, conversion and image quality.

JPEG is familiar to everyone and is a universal format that can be read by almost any computer. It is clearly much easier to open and share a JPEG than a RAW file, even though more and more image-processing programs, including free ones, can now read RAW files. Operating systems can also handle them better than before. On Windows, for example, since Windows 10, it has been possible to display some RAW files without additional software. However, since RAW is not a finished image in itself, you still need to convert it with suitable software such as Lightroom, DxO PhotoLab, Photoshop, Capture One, darktable, RawTherapee, and so on, if you want to share the image with the processing you chose.

You should also know that RAW is a proprietary format, meaning each brand has its own type of RAW file, such as .CR2 for Canon, .NEF for Nikon or .PTX for Pentax. Brands also provide free software to process your images, such as DPP for Canon or Capture NX-D for Nikon. These programs are often less powerful and less intuitive than the software mentioned above, but they are free and can be enough to start learning RAW development. One of their particularities is that they recognize and apply the processing settings selected in-camera at the time of shooting. In other words, by default, you can convert your images directly to JPEG with these programs and obtain exactly the same image as if you had shot JPEG in-camera.

There are books about every RAW processing program, so don’t hesitate to use them to learn! For example, here are books on DXO, Lightroom and Photoshop.

As mentioned above, the main disadvantage of a RAW file is that it cannot really be used as-is. A conversion, or development, step is required through a RAW converter or demosaicing program. To put it simply, you need to import your RAW file into software in order to process it, just as you would have worked in a darkroom back in the day, except now it happens on a computer. Keep in mind, though, that whenever you see an image, some kind of development has already taken place. When you shoot JPEG in-camera, it is not that there has been no processing. It simply means the “darkroom” work has been done instantly by the camera, a bit like handing your film to a lab for prints, with the camera acting as the lab.

One important point: in some forum articles, you may read that RAW photos are dull, low-contrast images that need processing. This is completely false. Since RAW is not an image, what you see as a duller or lower-contrast image when importing into Lightroom or another program is not the RAW file itself, but a temporary JPEG preview created by the software using default import settings, which you can adjust as you wish. In fact, if you import your RAW into a RAW reader such as RawDigger, open it in the free software provided by the camera brand, or simply view it on the back of your camera, you will see that RAW and JPEG can look identical, because the same development settings are being applied.

One of RAW’s biggest strengths is that it contains all the data recorded by the sensor and cannot be changed without being converted to another format. Each time you return to a RAW file, you can access that original data again. For example, if you shoot in “JPEG Low” at a definition of, say, 10MP, you will get a 10MP image. If, for some reason, you later want to go back to the original 24MP image captured by your sensor, you won’t be able to.

Because RAW keeps all the pixels recorded at the time of shooting, you can create a 10MP JPEG, then return to the RAW file later and create another version at 24MP. The exception is resized RAW files created at the time of shooting, found on some cameras under names such as mRAW or sRAW, an option more often associated with very high-resolution cameras such as the D850 or the 5DS.

Editing programs also offer a “quality” setting, graded differently depending on the software, from 1 to 100 in Lightroom and DxO, from 1 to 12 in Photoshop, and so on. This obviously reduces the overall quality of the image to create JPEGs that are more or less heavy. Once you have created your JPEG, for example at a quality of 90/100, you will not be able to reopen it and recover the quality lost between 90 and 100/100. Since RAW contains the original data, it always preserves 100% of that original quality.

Finally, when it comes to colors, you have far more complete control with RAW than with JPEG, with possibilities I’ll discuss in a little more detail in the next section.

This is where RAW really comes into its own: processing latitude. For your information, JPEGs are usually encoded in 8 bits, while RAW files are encoded in 12 or 14 bits. A JPEG image keeps only the most essential information from the RAW file when it is created, and everything else is discarded. In RAW, all the necessary information is kept, which means many more tones, colors, even if they are not always visible to the naked eye, and smoother gradients. Processing is therefore much easier with RAW. Once again, remember that RAW processing is reversible, or non-destructive, unlike JPEG.

The first point concerns exposure. Since RAW keeps all the information recorded at the time of shooting, especially brightness data, exposure adjustments are much more powerful on a RAW file than on a JPEG. This becomes even more obvious with “bad” photos, for example images that are very overexposed or underexposed. It is much easier to recover details in highlights or shadows from a RAW file than from a JPEG.

Sensor dynamic range and color data are much easier to exploit in RAW, whereas some of this information has already been removed from a JPEG and cannot be retrieved. In other words, when you shoot in RAW, you benefit from all the information recorded by the sensor, which allows you to make better use of your camera’s potential, the camera you paid for. To use an analogy, unlike a car that could go over 200 km/h but that you are legally forced to keep below 130 km/h on highways, there is no law preventing you from using your camera to its full potential. On the contrary, especially with digital photography, you can go beyond some limitations and better translate your vision.

Examples of low-light conditions where shooting in RAW is particularly useful

When it comes to colors, JPEG fixes them at the time of shooting, and many nuances are removed in the process. RAW, on the other hand, keeps all this information, which makes it much easier to correct an inaccurate white balance in RAW than in JPEG. Since color rendering is fixed in JPEG, you often need to pay close attention to it while shooting, because in some cases cameras are not powerful enough to set a truly accurate balance automatically. In RAW, whether the camera gets it wrong or not matters much less, because you can adjust it later to your taste. This lets you focus on more important things while shooting. I’m thinking in particular of framing and composition, two aspects that are far more delicate, or even impossible, to correct in post-processing.

Imagine you are given an image that is already colored. If you try to color over it, you won’t get the same result. For example, if you color a blue area green, it will become cyan rather than green. But if the image has no fixed colors yet, you can color that area green and it will become green. In this example, you can compare the first case to JPEG and the second to RAW.

Another positive point for RAW, especially for black-and-white lovers, is that you can completely recover the colors from a RAW file if needed. This is impossible with a JPEG already saved in black and white, because the color information has been removed. RAW also gives you infinitely more options to customize your black-and-white rendering.

One last point worth mentioning is the correction of optical defects, especially with third-party lenses. Cameras do not always include the necessary corrections. It therefore makes sense to edit the photo from the original RAW file rather than from a JPEG.

Digital noise is also better managed from a RAW file, while working on noise in a JPEG is more delicate because the camera has already applied a certain amount of processing and some of the information has already disappeared. To put it simply, the camera uses a noise-reduction algorithm, just like editing software does. The one inside the camera is generally much less powerful. So, if noise reduction has already been applied in-camera to a JPEG, the noise has already been reduced, but in a less refined way than with RAW processing in software. You will therefore not be able to redo the noise reduction without significantly altering image quality. Another advantage is that, with old RAW files, or with recent cameras you keep for several years, the camera’s noise reduction will hardly change over time, whereas software processing will continue to improve. This means you can benefit from these improvements later, even on old RAW files you decide to process much more carefully in the future.

I’m coming to the end of this article. I hope you now have a clearer view of the pros and cons of each format. Personally, I’ve been shooting in RAW for years, and for me it is the ideal format for anyone who wants to start post-processing their photos. If you don’t yet have enough experience with editing but want to get started quickly, I would advise shooting in RAW+JPEG. This gives you images you can use immediately without going through software, while keeping the RAW files so you can make the most of them the day you decide to process them more carefully. The downside, of course, is that this solution combines the weight of both formats and therefore considerably reduces the number of photos you can take on a single memory card before having to unload it.

Here is a short summary in table form.

Want to go further? I invite you to read the detailed article on exposure in photography.

See you soon,

Written by Sylvain PONS

I've been passionate about photography since 2010, learning as I went along. Today, I dedicate myself to guiding others in their choice of camera gear and sharing a variety of tips to improve their photography skills.

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