What is the difference between RAW and JPEG format?

This short article is going to talk about the difference between RAW and JPEG file format. Which one should you use?

There is a difference in what happens AFTER the image has been captured with the camera sensor:

Difference between RAW, JPEG and TIFF after taking an image with a digital camera

Camera parameters are applied according to the settings set in the camera.

Things to consider when choosing the file format that is right for you:

RAW	JPEG
you are going to edit some of the captured images	you know you won’t want (or bother) to edit images afterwards
you want to have as much information available as you can for more control and better editing at a later time	you’re only interested in capturing the images, browsing them, uploading them on the web or printing them as fast as you can
	you need the camera to work fast – process and save images fast on the memory card (e.g. events, kids playing, sports..)
	you want to save as many images on the memory card as you can (you are limited with the size of the memory card)

When I first started taking images, I thought, why bother using raw (it’s bigger file size, unprocessed image, would take time to edit it, I didn’t bother editing images)?

As soon as I started playing around and editing images on my computer, I quickly realised that more-pixels-is-better because you have more information to work with, which results in higher quality edit. This showed in particular when I was used to editing the “newer” images which I took in raw and then I wanted to edit some older images which were taken still in jpeg. The difference was quite noticable. Unfortunately.

Of course I never edit all the images but just the ones I really like or when I try to experiment.

You must take into consideration that you can always reduce the amount of information in the image (resize, reduce resolution), while increasing it is impossible (you could “make up” pixels, but the quality is not the same).

So my recommendation is that, if you know you are not going to edit images afterwards and just use your camera for capturing moments to remember (as most people do), use JPEG. It’s good enough. If you know that you would like to edit specific image later on, you can always switch to raw temporarily. And of course, for those of us who always like to be in control, RAW is the best answer.

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