Black and White in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom II. Digital Capture File Formats JPEG vs. Raw Capture Those of you with digital SLRs or high-end point-and-shoots have a choice when it comes to the file format that your camera writes: JPEG (the world and web standard for photographic imagery) and raw (a proprietary, unprocessed, "negative" of your image file). As raw files are exponentially larger than JPEG files, many users find they can "buy" three to four JPEGs for the cost of one raw file, and thus never bother to explore the many advantages raw capture has to offer. The raw format does have significantly powerful advantages and those not (yet) shooting raw should consider all of the following benefits. Raw files are larger, but they are also uncompressed, high bit depth unaltered originals. This means many things as you bring them into your imaging application: first, you have the best image fidelity that your camera can muster, the greatest amount of capture information, and the most control over image processing. Further, the raw format maps to the image settings applied at capture, and every subsequent editing change applied in processing, sits alongside the raw file as an external reference component associated with each image file. Since changes and edits are not applied directly to the raw image file, all raw processing adjustments are completely non-destructive and infinitely editable. Although programs like Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom can now read JPEGs, the application of controls such as "temperature" and "exposure" are hacked into the JPEG file artificially. While a raw file contains the unprocessed and uncompressed image data captured by the digital camera sensor, images captured in JPEG format are compressed in the camera in order to make them smaller. This compression process, known as lossy, is extremely destructive to image data. Artifacts can easily be seen in magnified viewing on screen. In addition, both JPEG and TIFF formats process the image data in-camera, manipulating the image data by adding adjustments to all images unilaterally such as contrast and saturation. For this reason, JPEG files tend to look much better initially, but remove a great deal of control over image processing. JPEGs also freeze applied capture criteria and bake the settings into the pixels which, unlike raw, cannot be undone. JPEGs can be extremely useful and beneficial if memory is essential, if the number of images you can capture on a card must be increased, if general pre-processing speed outweighs custom image processing, or if images are destined for the web. Keep in mind, however, that quality is significantly compromised in the exchange. Best practice therefore is to use JPEGs when resolution and image control are not as important, and use raw for everything else! 30