Are jpgs worth it?

[mike rosenlof]

If I'm recalling correctly, jpegs are limited to 8 bits per pixel per channel. So just for that reason, I think something more like raw/tiff is needed for editing, especially for monochrome. You don't want to lose dynamic range before editing.

 

[olakiril]

If I'm recalling correctly, jpegs are limited to 8 bits per pixel per channel. So just for that reason, I think something more like raw/tiff is needed for editing, especially for monochrome. You don't want to lose dynamic range before editing.

Jpeg use non-linear luminance encoding so the bit depth does not affect the dynamic range. The major limitations are the much smaller color space and the banding that occurs in the gradations between similar colors.

Also, new cameras have started to use the HEIF 10bit format, so for small changes it should be good enough.

I love working with Fuji cameras but not their color film simulations.

That's how I feel about the normal jpeg colors from most cameras. If you use Lightroom and not SOOC then the advantages of Jpeg are just size/speed. If I could have the flexibility to create the SOOC profiles that I truly want, then I wouldn't use Lightroom at all.

 

[benlees]

I use jpegs 95% of the time. For tricky lighting and/or shots with lots of snow I will use raw. White balance can be a minefield...

All jpeg settings can be tweaked in the camera set up menus. 'SOOC' doesn't really make sense... whatever someone doesn't like can be changed.

 

[JeffS7444]

I generally prefer raw, but a couple exceptions include iPhone 11 in which auto-HDR and Deep Fusion are only supported in JPEG and HEIF (and I'm not about to buy iPhone 12 just for ProRaw), also Olympus Pen-F which has in-camera effects available via handy control on the front of the body, and which will generate both raw and JPEG files, so there's no penalty for using those features.

 

[Ronald M]

If your end use is “fine art” wall print, you need raw. If I need “rush “ final prints in the next hour, JPEG . But be sure to get color balance right in camera. This has happened to me when I needed 50 actual prints in an hour. I use Nikons for this.

No camera program gets sharpening and noise reduction correct . It simply does not know end use size.

If you want to send grandma a picture of i year old with birthday cake, she will be pleased with JPEG basic

 

[Larry Cloetta]

?........If I could have the flexibility to create the SOOC profiles that I truly want, then I wouldn't use Lightroom at all.

If you have a newer Nikon, their Picture Control Utility 2 software lets you do exactly that. I realize I said this a few posts above, but saying it again. The SOOC jpg world has changed. What “everyone knows” from 5-10 years ago isn’t the full story any longer.
Nikon’s software for doing this opens up a lot of doors, but, in True Nikon fashion, the product is eye opening, but the marketing and instructional materials might be the world’s worst. You’d have to install it and work with it a while to realize the capabilities, but it does exactly what you are asking for, and more. Using this software, you start with RAW/NEF files, you edit them in what is essentially the RAW converter to the standard you want, then create a profile in the software, and load that profile into your camera as a preset which lives in the menu, and if you shoot jpgs using that profile, it’s RAW processed in the camera the way you would have done it in ACR and spits out the processed image as a jpg. I don’t know if any other manufacturer has something which duplicates this, maybe some do, maybe all do, I don’t know, but you’d need to be familiar with this software first to know the answer to that. Downside is every RAW file is processed the same, but for people who think that having a “recognizable style” is a good thing, this is a plus, not a negative. Upside for everyone is that it’s easy and a time saver, and you now have a “style” which is always a button push away.

But if there’s a chance you’d want to do any significant edits, shoot RAW, or RAW plus jpeg. It’s no more time consuming to edit a RAW file than a jpg, and the results are better. That much hasn’t changed.

 

[Bill Pierce]

Fuji X Weekly is a website that among other things publishes its own film simulation settings for Fuji cameras. Initially they published settings that emulated popular films. That expanded and grew to include simulations not based on film, just based on an interesting appearance. Fuji users might want to check it out.

https://fujixweekly.com/recipes/

 

[agentlossing]

Do you think your camera produces jpgs, although they are limited in how they can be altered compared to raw files, that, on a good day, with a few simple adjustments can produce an image of “exhibition” quality?

Has no one pointed out yet that every exhibition of digital photos is made up of JPEGs?

So the question is really, can the camera edit from the RAW data, or does it have to be an image processing program on a computer. Increasingly I think cameras can pull it off, if the conditions meet the strengths of that particular sensor/processing engine. For example, my Ricoh GR III and Pentax KP can both produce images that I don't feel need any editing, or which look better than I could process from RAW data without spending a considerable amount of time on them. But it has to fit the ideal conditions for the hardware and processing. High ISO, for example, is usually still outside the capabilities of an onboard processor to really preserve optimal detail and colors, especially if printed large.

 

[olakiril]

If you have a newer Nikon, their Picture Control Utility 2 software lets you do exactly that. I realize I said this a few posts above, but saying it again. The SOOC jpg world has changed. What “everyone knows” from 5-10 years ago isn’t the full story any longer.
Nikon’s software for doing this opens up a lot of doors, but, in True Nikon fashion, the product is eye opening, but the marketing and instructional materials might be the world’s worst. You’d have to install it and work with it a while to realize the capabilities, but it does exactly what you are asking for, and more.

Thanks Larry, I quickly browsed through the previous link as well as the manual (http://download.nikonimglib.com/arc...0657Aiow68/D-PCU2__-020400BF-___EN-_R01__.pdf) but I saw it is only possible to change the luminance curve.
While it is the proper direction and it is better than many, I would still like a full 3D LUT support. That is the only way to truly change the color maps. Do you know if the Nikon program can do this? If it can, I will be selling my Sony camera 🙂 .

 

[jsrockit]

Has no one pointed out yet that every exhibition of digital photos is made up of JPEGs?

How so?

If I print from my RAW files, then it’s an inkjet print not a jpg. What am I missing?

As for jpgs... I like RAW because my taste in post processing is always changing. 5 years from now I can re-interpret the same file. You can only do that very minimally with jpgs due to their lack of processing flexibility in comparison to RAW.

 

[agentlossing]

How do you print a RAW file? It goes through some conversion whether you see it or don't, unless I'm much mistaken.

 

[jsrockit]

How do you print a RAW file? It goes through some conversion whether you see it or don't, unless I'm much mistaken.

Well, I print directly from Lightroom from a RAW file is what I meant. If I send something out to print, it’s usually a tiff file.

 

[Dogman]

Post processing a JPEG in Lightroom is just as non-destructive as processing a Raw file. Save your edits done to the original JPEG and keep the original JPEG as shot. You've got the same, unprocessed original to work with years down the road.

As for wall print "fine art" photos, who's to say what the print was made from. You can print from anything and get effective photos. If you're talking about "fine art" being mountain streams, sunsets and kittens printed to wall size...well, that's not my idea of "fine" art. Grandma would love those too.

 

[benlees]

Post processing a JPEG in Lightroom is just as non-destructive as processing a Raw file. Save your edits done to the original JPEG and keep the original JPEG as shot. You've got the same, unprocessed original to work with years down the road.

Indeed. Another simple thing is to save the original jpeg as a tiff before messing with it.

Raw conversion software is a bit of an elephant in the room as they differ from each other, and over time the developer may make changes. Again, tiff or jpeg to the rescue...

 

[agentlossing]

Well, I print directly from Lightroom from a RAW file is what I meant. If I send something out to print, it’s usually a tiff file.

Gotcha. I am having trouble finding a good explanation of what's going on when you tell a RAW file to print - there's a definite conversion going on there, but what I am seeing is that it might not necessarily be to a JPEG, since JPEGs themselves have to go through a conversion to a printer's software in order to print through it. But I guess the point is that you aren't going to squeeze any more data through a printer's "pipes" with a RAW or TIFF than a JPEG typically, since printers usually further compress the data that is going through them.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

Thanks Larry, I quickly browsed through the previous link as well as the manual (http://download.nikonimglib.com/arc...0657Aiow68/D-PCU2__-020400BF-___EN-_R01__.pdf) but I saw it is only possible to change the luminance curve.
While it is the proper direction and it is better than many, I would still like a full 3D LUT support. That is the only way to truly change the color maps. Do you know if the Nikon program can do this? If it can, I will be selling my Sony camera 🙂 .

“Full 3D LUT support” that’s a big ask, and I doubt it, if I grasp what you mean by “full”. Lot going on with “full”. But, for practical purposes, I think you can get what you want if you just wanted to create a specific color balance for an in camera preset, that you might have created with 3D LUT Creator. It can certainly do that, but if you wanted a different color grading you’d have to create a different preset, by hand, to match that, using the Picture Control Utility, and load that one into the camera as well. You want “Sony Colors”, done. You want “Canon Colors”, done. I am likely not explaining this well, but you can create a RAW file using as the basis for that an example of whatever color graded photo you made using the LUT you made elsewhere, load that RAW file into Picture Control Utility, and either leave it alone and import that way of processing into the camera as a preset generated by PCU2, or tweak hue, chroma, saturation, tint, tone curve, sharpening, etc of your LUT compliant RAW file in PCU2, and load that into your camera as a preset.
So, maybe it more or less gets you there.

It does way more than provide a way to alter luminosity and tone curve, in other words. You can start with a RAW file loaded into PCU2, a RAW with the characteristics you want, that’s the starting point you will bake into the preset, and alter that to taste if desired, something you have already color graded, orange and teal example, anything.
The Nikon “manuals” on the web for the software don’t begin to describe the possibilities, nor do they have instructional videos to make it clear either, which is what I meant by saying Nikon is hopeless at marketing. The link you provided is a perfect example. It sounds like a lame program, which can’t do much at all. It’s why I mentioned earlier that one would really need to use the program, for a while, with a camera, to see the capabilities. And, to make things worse, the program, though competent, isn’t instantly intuitive.
So, to answer your question, it’s not a 3D LUT creator per se, but is pretty advanced regardless, and hardly anyone is aware it’s out there.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

Post processing a JPEG in Lightroom is just as non-destructive as processing a Raw file. Save your edits done to the original JPEG and keep the original JPEG as shot. You've got the same, unprocessed original to work with years down the road.

Well, that’s certainly true, since LR saves the original, but there’s been a mountain of information thrown away in the in camera conversion of the full RAW file to jpg format right at the beginning, before it ever fot to LR. That’s the destructive part.
If I am editing a RAW file and a full sized jpeg of the same image in PS, the jpeg falls apart a lot sooner than the full file containing all the information off the sensor. A lot sooner.
If not doing extensive edits, there are unlikely to be many problems, but you can’t do as many things with a jpg as you can with a RAW file, at least I can’t.
Whether we need to do those things, every time, that’s something else again, which is why I’m also simultaneously posting about the potential upsides of just outputting jpegs if that does everything one wants. That’s fine, maybe it’s better in many ways as a way of doing things that provides everything one desires in less time, but jpegs can’t provide everything that is possible out of what the sensor recorded.

 

[Disappointed_Horse]

Possibly of interest, this site has downloadable picture control settings for Nikon cameras:
https://nikonpc.com/

I have downloaded some of these and played with them a bit on my D7000. They seem to work as per the website.

 

[gabrielelopez]

You can apply the camera equivalent of any jpg "film simulation" in lightroom (or camera raw, is the same) in the first color-rendering option, the program just gets all the information from the raw itself, and it comes pretty the same. This said, in my opinion, shooting good jpgs takes ME away from a part of the process that I don't like. I hate digital post-processing as much as I love developing and printing analog. So it's up to your preferences. Fuji jpgs are lovely, but I guess many are...it's just about taking time to learn how to do what.

 

[Bill Blackwell]

My work-flow begins with creating TIF files from DNG/RAW files and process those for printing, then I make [reduced to < 3mb] JPG files for posting on-line (that's all JPGs are good for, IMHO).

I never print from JPG files.