DPP Exercise 11: RAW

The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate the processing advantages of raw, but at the same time to put these advantages in perspective.  Higher image quality from raw is often over-praised.  

Isn't that the truth?

I rarely hear praise for jpg.  Following the advice of every “serious” shooter on the internet, I have been using raw nearly since I started at OCA about 18 months ago.  This is the first time I’ve actually done a head-to-head comparison and I find I now have more respect for jpg.


The exercise calls for a set of three images shot in both and jpg.  My camera supports simultaneous production of both, so this was no problem at all, just the pushing of a button.  The images were shot between 09:00-10:00 at Dubai’s Safa Park, site of a weekly weekend food and craft market.  It was a sunny day, the festival site sits under a stand of palms, so there was lots of shadow and dappled light.

The biggest challenge in this exercise was maintaining a sense of color neutrality.  Working back and forth between the raw and jpg files I found myself confounded.  What looked acceptable a moment ago looked wrong when compared against the previous image.  Around and around it went, one image feeding into the next and no end in sight to the adjustments.  At some point I gave up and decided to get on with the rest of exercise.

My overall impression is that jpg comes out of the camera a bit darker, more vibrant, and with more contrast than I’m used to applying in raw.

Darkness
The image of the baby and the sales clerk shows a difference in lightness or tone.  I’m not sure how to describe this.  The jpg is darker, with more contrast and has a vignetting effect, with darker corners and lighter center.

Clipping recovery
In terms of recovering detail, I did not suffer any extreme clipping and so recovery was not much of an issue.  Perhaps the most extreme example can be seen in the photo of the mother and children in the animal petting pen.  The lawn in the background came out a bit overexposed and a local adjustment was made to this area to bring back some of the color.  Although there are differences in hue between the jpg and raw, there doesn’t seem to be a major difference in the ability of LR to recover color.

Color cast
The effort to achieve some similarity in white balance between the jpg and raw files proved frustrating and impossible.  The image of the box of vegetables shot under artificial light comes closest.

Differences
There were differences I couldn’t overcome, like the child’s blonde hair in the animal pen image that appears more reddish in the jpg.   In the image of the bread shop, there are all kind of color differences, including the signage, the stool, the blue skirt and shirt, the pink shoelaces...  There were also differences in LR's auto Lens corrections, perhaps most notable in the box of vegetables.

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