Photography: An unorthodox position in the RAW/JPEG debate

In my post, A macOS Photo Editing Workflow, I admitted to taking the somewhat unorthodox position of capturing both RAW and JPEG versions in-camera and normally working with only the JPEG version. The conventional wisdom in photography is that RAW is the more flexible option, providing greater opportunity for correcting and improving the image in post-processing than when the camera is allowed to make all the decisions on your behalf. There are traditional reasons for not using RAW files such as the increased file size, but these are normally only relevant in specific situations—there seems to be few generic reasons not to use RAW unless you are operating under specific constraints.

I was therefore intrigued to see a recent article entitled, Is RAW Dead? in Photography Week. In addition to examining all the usual issues, it points out that in-camera JPEGs are now so good that in the majority of situations the camera will probably do a better, or at least no-worse, job of rendering the final image than you. This makes sense: unless you actively tweak the settings in your RAW processor then you are simply handing the conversion over from one algorithm (your camera) to another (your RAW processor), and while in the past the processing ability of a camera was limited compared to that of a PC, the advances in mobile chips and image processing have removed the PC’s previous advantage. Moreover, since the JPEG output is the version seen by potential buyers and new owners of their products, the camera companies themselves are highly incentivised to make the JPEG output as attractive as possible. The article does list a specific benefit of RAW as being able to recover an additional 1-2 stops of highlights and shadow detail compared to JPEG, although it also points out that a wider range can be obtained using the camera’s automatic exposure bracketing or even built-in HDR.

For the moment I will be having my cake and eating it by using RAW+JPEG: JPEG for convenience but with the RAW available as an option should the trade-offs and technology change in the future.