The matter has been discussed many times, but many people not familiar with the differences between those image formats are regularly asking: what are the advantages of capturing photographs in the RAW setting?

Well, you can look at the RAW format as a digital negative. A traditional negative has a certain emulsion density. Which means that if you increase the light intensity that shines through the negative onto your photo paper, more details will become visible in the highlight areas (remember, it's a negative). If you hold back the light intensity, you will be able to keep more details in the shadow areas.
Traditional printers knew exactly how to take advantage of this density by increasing the light intensity or by holding back the light to produce a perfectly tone-balanced print in all areas. From one negative, you can produce countless images or prints with varying light intensities and tones.
This is in short what you can do with a RAW file too. The RAW format is actually not an image format; it is a database of ALL the colour and light DATA, captured and registered by the camera's sensor and processor. You need a RAW converter (which acts like a negative developer) to translate the RAW data into one of the existing image formats like TIFF, JPEG, PNG or BMP.

A camera JPEG file is the result of one (only one) of those possible development settings, predefined in your camera. You can look at it as a print that's been ready-made. Only, you didn't choose the development settings; your camera did that for you. Of course you can tweak some of the camera's preference settings like contrast, saturation and sharpness to your liking, but once you've done that, that's about the end of your possibilities.
The moment you click the shutter button, you're left with that one print which is the JPEG file, and you have no negative to return to.

In some cases, a JPEG is all you need. Because of the compression and the loss of data, it takes up less space than a RAW file, and it's quicker because you can skip the development stage that a RAW file has to go through. Some professional photographers only shoot in the JPEG format. But that's only because they know to perfection how to stay out of trouble in terms of lighting and colour control.

With the following example, I'll show you why I'm not one of those professional photographers and why I prefer to shoot in the RAW format.

It really seems as if I have gotten myself in deep trouble with this image.
I was shooting towards a bright sunlit area in the background through an almost pitch black dungeon. Actually it was the portal of a medieval castle in Ghent. The background is somewhat overexposed, while the foreground area is almost totally lost in darkness.

A total disaster if you look at it this way. Definitely.

Or maybe not?

Here's where the RAW format comes in handy. Because the single RAW file allows for a number of different exposure settings, I was able to open the image as several successive smart object layers in Photoshop, each with a different exposure setting. I used six different layers with 1.5 stop exposure increments (from plus 4 to minus 3.5).

Thank you, RAW.

You may be asking yourself if this would have been possible with a JPEG file..?

No way!
And to prove it, I saved the unprocessed RAW file as a JPEG (highest quality) and opened the JPEG back in Camera Raw (yes, you can open a JPEG in Camera Raw) so I could produce the same amount of different smart object layers as I did with the RAW file. I followed the exact same procedures as before.

Of course, this was a nearly catastrophic image to begin with. The best way to go is to avoid shooting in conditions like this in the first place.
Professional photographers who know perfectly well what they're doing, and who know perfectly how to stay out of trouble, would never take on anything like this.

Thanks for this info, Geert.

Got to get myself a program that can handle raw. If not my PSP X3 can do it... forgot to look. Just bought it and havent yet installed it.

Helle

I only use RAW and you explained clearly why.  Certainy not all images require the processing of your photo but that is a wonderful example of the value of RAW and show what can be done with an image extreme on both ends of exposure.

You have done a fine service posting this thread.   Many folks may benefit from it.   Tom.

This is an amazing illustration. I would be interested, and I suspect other would be as well, to know the steps you followed to go from the first to the second.

Wayne

Hello Wayne,

I'll try to describe the different steps in the following posts.

I'm using Photoshop; maybe the users of other software can do something similar, but I have no experience with other software.

Open the image in Adobe Camera Raw. Slide the Exposure slider to the right until you have a clear view on all the details in the shadows. In this case I went all the way to +4.

Here I also reduced the blacks (from the default 5 to 0) on the Blacks slider to open up the shadow details.

I also turned down the Clarity to -40. I found this works best with a multiple layer image.

Now, very important... Hold down the shift key. This should change the Open Image button into an Open Object button.

**Click Open Object.
**

Now your image opens in Photoshop as a Smart Object. In your Layers palette, right-click (or control-click) next to the name of the layer. You'll see that a new drop down menu opens up. Very important again: Choose New Smart Object via Copy.

Note: If you just duplicate the layer, you will not have the same result.

You will now have a second layer with a new Smart Object on top of your original layer.**
**

Now doubleclick on your new top layer's icon. Haha! This will take your image right back into Camera Raw.

What you have to do here now is adjust the exposure slider. For this image, I used increments of 1.5 stops, so I went for a new value of +2.5 instead of the +4 from the previous layer. When you get to do this more often, you can find what increments work best for you or how much different layers you want to work on.

That's all for this step. Click OK.

OK, if you did it right, you now have two different Smart Object layers. The top layer is a tad darker than the bottom layer. But the top layer completely covers and obscures the bottom layer. What you want to do now is blend these two layers together, so that the top layer doesn't interfere with the darkest areas on the bottom layer.

To do that, in the layer panel, double-click exactly under the name of the top layer. You'll see a new dialog window opening, the Layer Style window. At the bottom of this window, you find the Blend if section. Look at the This Layer slider.

Important: hold down the Alt key (or Option on Mac) as you click and hold on the small black triangle at the left side of the This Layer slider. The triangle will divide into two even smaller triangles. Alt-drag the rightmost small black triangle all the way to the right under the white triangles.

Click OK. You have now blended the two layers together!

OK, we now have two blended layers. To continue, you now have to repeat steps 2 and 3 for a number of successive Smart Object layers, each with a different value on the Exposure slider in step 3. You don't need to repeat step 4, as this step will be embedded in each successive copied layer. For this image, I opened a total of six Smart Object layers (with Exposure values of +4, +2.5, +1, -0.5, -2 and -3.5). The goal is, if possible, to cover the complete dynamic range from shadows to highlights. If you think the highlights are completely covered with an exposure value of eg. -2, you don't need to go any further.

Once you reached your desired number of Smart Object layers, you'll see that the combined image looks very flat. You can now start adjusting the levels on each individual layer. Go to the Layer menu, drop down to Rasterize and choose All Layers. This changes the layers from Smart Object layers to normal layers.

Adjusting the levels on each individual layer is maybe the step that requires the most attention and experimentation. The general idea is to increase the dynamic range for each layer seperately, eg. by darkening the midtones and shadows on the bottom layer(s), and by lightening the darkest tones on the top layer(s). Experimenting is the best option here.

A bit of finetuning and that's it...

This may all seem quite complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it shouldn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes to complete the whole procedure.

Hope this has been useful... ;o))

This should possibly be put on the tutorial section to be kept and available as a tut. Any thoughts on putting it together for that, Geert?

Possibly there can be a title and link to this thread(mods?), making a tut available without further work needed on a redo of the same information.        Tom.

Geert,

Thank you so much for taking the time to show those steps! I have copied them down and I will try doing this as soon as I can. I have done all my shooting in raw mode but usually just convert them to a jpg for minor adjustments, because that's all that is possible and sometimes even the minor adjustments are difficult or cause some degradation.

I always hoped to find the time to learn more and so I saved every photo in untouched raw mode in case I could one day do more. I think this technique could help me salvage many past photos with these types of exposure problems.

Thank you again!

Wayne

OHH !I see you made a beautiful tutorial too now.

I have now bookmarked it. Thank you very much, Geert. :)

Helle

Geert, what version of PS do you use? Unfortunately my CS2 does not have the menus as described for smart objects.  Then again, perhaps these are more hidden in my older version.        

Tom, smart objects were introduced in PS CS2 in 2005. But probably the functionality was not yet what it is now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_history

There is a way around it if you don't have access to the smart object layers.

In Camera Raw, you can adjust the exposure settings like in step 1, then just open up the image in PS and save it in the highest setting (be it JPG or Tiff or even PSD). Open your original image again in Camera Raw and save a second file with the second exposure setting. Do this for each of the required exposure settings. Best way is to number the files in a logical way, so you'll see which is the lightest and the darkest one.

Then, in Photoshop, go to the File menu, drop down to Scripts and choose Load Files into Stack (I hope CS2 has that feature ;o)). If you have the files already open in PS, choose Add Open Files; otherwise, browse to your pack of saved files, select them all and click OK. Each one of your files will be stacked as a subsequent layer, all in one new document. They will not be smart object layers, but that doesn't matter now (that's what this workaround is for).

(If you don't have this Script feature in CS2, you'll have to duplicate the layers from within each image onto the lightest image).

If needed, arrange the layers in your layer palette so that the lightest one is at the bottom and the darkest one is on top, with all gradations nicely in between.

Then continue with step 4 above: blend every layer above your bottom layer with the underlying layer.

The last step is to adjust the individual layers; the Shadows/Highlights command works best for me (forgot to mention that in step 6 above).

Thanks, I will give it a try one way or the other. Reply appreciated.    Tom.

very good info..thank you for taking the time to present this to the forum..

I am working as a professional industrial photographer and I always shoot in RAW - can you imagine the embarrassment of having to go back to a job because you messed up with a simple thing like the exposure?!?

I also end up having to create multiple exposure images - blends of differently exposed images from the same RAW file - and this would be impossible to do from a jpeg. The only time that I would shoot in jpeg is if I was shooting cadid photos at a party for example.

I would recommend anyone that has the facility of RAW to use it more often than not.

A big commendation to Geert for taking the time and effort to post this here!

I'm not homophobic - I love my house!!! 

I would be interested in seeing the result that could be achieved with this image by using a combination of the exposure and fill light controls, I am sure further adjustments would be necessary but it would be a useful comparison

@ MGTF:

the Fill Light slider in Camera Raw can be very useful in clearing up the shadows in 'mild' cases where you have overly dark areas; however it obviously can't help you with bringing back the highlights. For that you have the Recovery slider at your disposal. But if you use a combination of those two sliders to help you out on both ends of the spectrum, there are very nasty 'clipping' or halo effects that appear on the most contrasty edges; the edges where a dark (fill light affected) area directly meets a light (recovery affected) area. Believe me, I tried it many times and the effect on the edges is not very nice to see... and very difficult to correct.

Exactly these unsatisfactory results made me completely avoid the Recovery and Fill Light sliders and made me search for a much cleaner and controllable method.

Have any of you who normally shoot raw loaded the photos to your computer software and discovered a bit late that "somehow" the quality choice in your camers wa changed to JPG?   

I had that happen the other night, shooting indoors in available auditorium light when the flash proved unsatisfactory.  Strange lighting combinations would create a strange color cast and when trying to correct for that in camera white balance and messing with higher ISO for the limited lighting, somehow the raw was set to jpg. 
Soon enough at home, I realized again how limited is jpg in some situations and how limited I felt (and was) in editing.           Tom.

Here's the result you wanted to see...

The original Raw file was only once processed in Camera Raw, nothing was done in Photoshop except resizing and saving.

I had to set both the Fill Light and the Recovery sliders at the maximum value of 100 to get this result. At first sight, it seems to have come through pretty well. What you see here is the resized version. To show you how it looks at 100%, without resizing, look below.

Here the nasty effects are actually quite moderate because there's lots of detail around, but they look much worse when there are large areas without detail like skies or clean buildings.

Verdict: for me, the Fill Light and Recovery sliders can be used as a quick touch-up for small sized web images where the flaws can go relatively unnoticed; but they're not ideal for high quality images aimed at showcasing or printing your work.

Detail of the same critical area at 100%.

Tom, what you described...

yes, I had something similar happen when I was shooting with my Panasonic LX3 in difficult low light conditions... I got lazy and switched the camera to the Intelligent Auto setting. I forgot that the camera then automatically reverts to jpg and adapts the iso accordingly. Result: unpleasant surprise when I came home; limited editing possibilities and more noise than I wished for ;o)

Geert,

Excellent illustration of the difference in these two methods! I think at this point your status is now raised to the 'guru' level.

Wayne

Tom,

I never had it happen that way. What I usually do is deliberately set the camera to JPG and then fail to remember to set it back. I am also prone to setting the +/- control and forgetting to set it back until I've wasted a shot or two.

Wayne

Thank you Wayne! :rolleyes:

But wait a minute... didn't gurus make boatloads of money..?

Thanks, Geert! I've been working alot in RAW lately and still feel like a newby at it.  This tut is really going to help when I pull up a file I feel is hopeless. A whole new way to look at it and experiment. I'm copying the process now, so I can pull it up the next time I'm working on one!

Thanks again,

Kim

Kim, although my Photoshop™® is lacking some of the actions in this fine tutorial, I am able to get around most of it.   Also, using Adobe Lightroom 3 ™® allows  a multitude of editing abilities using the data contained in the raw file.  Such is the value of raw!

Isn't it nice to go look at some older photo files and see the files are raw?  To see an edited image in jpg is a touch disappoining since I generally can do a better job with the photo now than a few short years ago.   Sure, it takes lots of space but I learned soon but not quite soon enough to keep all the originals, editing only duplicates, regardless of format.  

Tom

Hey Tom!

I'm using PSCS4 ext, but still getting use to it after spending years using Corel Photopaint and Photoshop Elements (which I still use when I just want to crop and resize for web).

I thought about trying Lightroom, but my little pea-brain can only hold so much info before it explodes!

I love working in RAW now and often kick myself in the butt for the times I didn't use it, but could have (what was I thinking?). LOL

Yes, I too keep the originals of everything. I learned this lesson the hard way years ago.  You just never know when some guru is going to come along and teach this old dog a new trick to try on that old RAW file!