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For some images, this difference can be critical. The result is a file with far fewer potential tonal values than would be possible in a raw file of the same scene. The look of a JPEG image can be changed in an image editing application, but since it is a compressed format designed to yield smaller file sizes, a lot of tonal and color data has been permanently discarded during the compression process.
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Settings such as brightness, contrast, color saturation, and even sharpening may have already been applied.
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Here's a cooking analogy: a raw file contains the ingredients to make a specific meal that you can prep however you'd like, whereas a JPEG is that meal already cooked, and there is less flexibility in how you can modify it.Ī JPEG, even one that is straight out of the camera, has already been “developed” by the camera’s image processor. With more data stored in the file, there is more processing flexibility than a JPEG can offer. If the camera format is set to raw, no processing is applied, and therefore the file stores more tonal and color data. If the camera format is set to JPEG, this raw data is processed and compressed before it is saved in the JPEG format. When an image is captured in a digital camera, it is recorded as raw data. The advantages of raw become clear once you start editing your photos in programs like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This choice can have a significant impact on the processing options and possibilities available to you. One of the choices you encounter on many digital cameras is whether to save the photos from your camera as JPEGs or raw files.
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