There’s a reason almost all cameras, from cell phones to point-and-shoots to expensive DSLRs, take pictures in JPEG format. In general, JPG photos are of good quality and easy to view on a computer or mobile device, and they can be stored on a memory card in thousands.
It doesn’t take any special software to open a JPG file, and you can edit one almost anywhere from iPhoto to Photoshop.
RAW is another format that DSLRs, as well as some point-and-shoot cameras, are capable of shooting in, which has some incredibly useful features for you. The RAW format is favored by some, the JPG format by others, and some people use both.
In terms of which is better, there is no right or wrong answer. Instead, you should find a solution that works for you. RAW is more advantageous than JPG for a couple of reasons.
Adjusting White Balance
Colors appear differently in real life depending on the type of light; sunlight, fluorescent bulbs, or a flash from a camera. Color perception is adjusted by our brains based on these differences, but your camera doesn’t always know what to do depending on what the situation is.
White Balance settings on most digital cameras fix this problem by displaying values such as Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, and Flash. It is difficult to fix yellow or blue tints in photos unless the White Balance is set correctly.
The JPG format has a serious limitation in that it discards most of the data it deems unnecessary for a given picture. This makes it difficult to correct the White Balance. Thanks to RAW’s preservation of all color information, the White Balance can easily be adjusted to suit the photograph.
If you shoot in RAW mode, the camera starts with one of its White Balance settings, but you can adjust it as needed on the computer.
While modern cameras are much better at getting the white balance correct on their own, you may still find yourself tweaking it quite often using programs like Lightroom, Photoshop, and Aperture.
When you shoot in RAW, you have the option to ‘tweak’ your photos. With a few adjustments, you can get photos that are more pleasing to me than those taken with my camera on its own.
Fixing Exposure
The benefits of shooting in RAW include the ability to adjust the colors you see, as well as the colors you don’t see. Because much of the data that was captured by the image sensor has been lost, it is impossible to save a JPG photo that has been overexposed or underexposed.
Cameras can help us get the right exposure when we take a picture. However, sometimes they don’t work out, and you may end up with memories that are too dark or too faded. When an image is captured in RAW format, it keeps all the data, giving you more flexibility in adjusting it later.
It is possible that when you return home from a shoot, you will find some of your photos are too dark or too light to be usable. With a JPG image, you were pretty much stuck with the results. When shooting in RAW, however, you can brighten dark areas or darken light areas to produce a much better image. Dark and light areas of JPG would be unrepairable and would have remained too dark or too light.
Color Adjustment
Another reason for shooting in RAW is that we often like to adjust specific colors in a photo. In a JPG file, each pixel in a photo contains 8 bits of information for each of the three primary colors of light; Red, Blue, and Green.
You don’t have to get too involved with the math here, just know that the 8 bits mean that each JPG contains information about 256 (2 to the 8th power or 28) different shades of each primary color. In contrast, RAW files store 4096 (212) or 16384 (214) shades of information per color, depending on whether your camera supports 12 or 14 bits.
Even though these numbers might not seem substantial, it’s clear that either one of them is much greater than 256. Because RAW provides so much more information, we can edit colors more easily since we have more information to work with.
The RAW Downside
It is true that shooting in RAW has its downsides, most notably the size of the files. Compared to JPG files, RAW files occupy 10 times more space on a memory card, which seems like a lot of space wasted if you do not edit or post-process a lot.
Honestly, taking RAW pictures of nature hikes or your kids in the park might be overkill. A JPG file can certainly be edited to some extent. The color information in most JPG files allows for some editing flexibility in Photoshop and other image editing programs. However, RAW gives you much more flexibility, and even though the file size is much larger, it is well worth the tradeoff.
Conclusion
Make your own decision, but do not get sucked into the RAW vs. JPG debate. Neither format is objectively superior and both formats have their plus and negative points. The key thing is to find a workflow that suits your shooting style and goals.
The absolute most important thing is taking pictures you like, as long as they make you happy.