Jpeg into RAW Benefits Real?

[Steve Cat]

1. What features openup by converting jpegs into raw? I know the opening screen, but is there anything else?

2. Does elements handle the picture any differently once you click done and it opens itself as a "normal" picture for editing, i.e you are finished with the "first"? raw opening and edit screen?

3. At that point, once it is in the editor, is there a benefit in saving as raw? certainly over jpeg but what about over tiff or the other lossless formats?

[troush]

I would say save it as a psd file - it's lossless, and smaller than tiff. If you save as a jpeg, you'll recompress. No advantages to saving it as a raw file, as it wasn't one in the beginning.

-Trish

[GaryK]

Steve

Opening a jpeg in ACR will not do anything for the JPEG except give you a faster and possibly more convienient way to do some basic image adjustments.

As far as I know you can not save any file as a RAW file. As Trish said saving as a PSD is probably your best bet, although the files size will be considerably larger.

[Goofup]

Ah, the ole "RAW is better" thinking you got going on. "I've heard raw is better so I want to change my jpegs to raw!".

First if you did you wouldn't gain a thing. Really. Waste of time. I think you're confused about what a raw file/picture is.

Real raw pictures are files straight out of the camera with no in-camera processing of sharpening, white balance, saturation, etc. Raw files come out of the camera looking really bad because they're, well, "raw" pictures! They are NOT THE FINAL PRODUCT OR FOR VIEWING/PRINTING. That's not what they're for!!! They're to give you an unprocessed starting point so you can have maximum ability to adjust then and make them look good. How good they look is up to YOU and how good YOU are at processing them. Once you fix them, THEN you convert them to psd's, jpegs, whatever, for printing, viewing, etc. Unless you're really good a post processing most people have a hard time making raws look as good, much less better, than jpegs. Bottom line: if you can make your raws better than your jpegs, shoot raw. If not, shoot jpegs and make your life easier. (And if I read another "shoot raw because you can fix the white balance" I'm gonna barf. You can fix the white balance just as easy with a jpeg).

As already mentioned in other threads, there's no harm in messing with a jpeg in a raw converter, and they do have some handy adjustment features, none of those that aren't in PSE anyway. Raw converters are just another graphics editor program. However, you do NOT gain a thing by converting a jpeg to a raw file type.

Don't let the raw thing confuse you. Raw is just the basic ingredients- it's not a cake till you put 'em together just like you want and then bake it. There's nothing wrong with a pre-mix cake (jpegs), and for most people they usually turn out better.

[Jerrilyn]

How do you change the white balance if it's a jpeg? I use pse5.

[jlwilm]

Hi,

Check out the Subscriber, Videos section for February 3, 2006 - titled Colorcast. There are other ways, but this one is bullet-proof.

John

[TheSkySpy]

Think of RAW as an 'undeveloped' picture and your JPG as 'developed' (and unfortunately compressed).

Kind of like having a CD track and ripping it to a 32 kbps. Sure you can resave the mp3 as a wav again, but your not gaining anything (if you follow the 'loose' analogy).

[Steve Cat]

Yeah, but is it closer to 32 kps or 320 kbs, yes still not a wav but nobody can tell the difference