Posts discussing digital photos that are more general in nature can be found in this category. Tutorials and helpful advice are common post-types.
This is the second post in my two post series on discussing the JPEG and RAW file formats. My previous post discussed the advantages and disadvantages of JPEG files, and this post will discuss the same topic for RAW files.
Unlike JPEG files, however, there are many drawbacks to using RAW files, and most who use digital cameras probably won’t want to use this format. The more experienced photographers, on the other hand, may love what RAW has to offer.
I have received several e-mails in the past regarding JPEG and Raw files that are produced by digital cameras. There is a huge debate online about which image format you should use – some of the debates can get pretty heated. In reality, like all such debates, the answer is: it depends.
While I have written many posts about both JPEG and Raw image formats, I decided to dedicate an entire post to each one, to sort of provide a more comprehensive description of each. After reading the two posts, hopefully you will determine which format best suits your needs.
The most common file format in use.
The JPEG file format has been around for many years, and is support by every image editor and web browser on the market. It is also supported by every digital camera, and any video camcorder that can also take pictures. Every digital photo print shop also supports the JPEG standard. If you want a universal image format, the JPEG format is the one to choose.
Smaller file size.
One aspect of the JPEG file format that has made it so popular is the fact that it doesn’t take up much storage space. This was important years ago when hard drives were much smaller, and the Internet connection speeds were much slower.
Today, digital cameras that are set to save JPEGs can save them much faster than when using the Raw format since their smaller size means camera’s can write the JPEG to the memory card much quicker than Raw files.
There are, however, a few downsides to compressing JPEGs, which I explain below.
Compression discards some data.
One of the downsides to the small files size is the type of compression that is used. The compression algorithm is “lossy”, which means data is discarded when the file is compressed. For the most part, however, you won’t notice any loss of data – unless you start to edit the file.
JPEG files contain 8-bits (256 tones) of data for red, green, and blue. This provides 16.7 million colours. While this is more than enough for viewing the photo, it can be limiting once you start editing and adjust the colours. With enough changes, you will start to see banding in the histrogram of the image. Banding occurs when there are no pixels values in some of the tonal values, and looks comb-like in the histrogram.
Digital camera’s sold today have the ability to capture 10-,12-,14-bits of data which provides more overhead for editing.
Artifacts can appear with more compression.
For the most part, you want to use as little compression as possible with your JPEG files. The more compression you use, the more artifacts may appear. These usually look like “smudges” in the image, and can really reduce the quality of the image. When saving JPEG images for printing, I usually set the compression level to the highest quality setting, which creates a great image without any artifacts.
No editing required to print.
If you aren’t into photo editing, and would just like to print your images, you can do so without converting to another file format. JPEG files can be printed directly from your camera without first editing the pictures.
Processed within the camera.
The one downside to the point above, is that all the settings from the digital camera have already been applied to the JPEG. This can be a downside if, for example, you had the wrong colour balance set, then your digital pictures would have a colour cast to them. As mentioned above, while you could edit the photos to remove the colour cast, you may also have issue with banding. With JPEGs you must ensure all the settings in your camera are accurate for what you want to produce. With black-and-white settings in the camera, you lose all colour information when using JPEG files.
In my next post, I will look at the advantages and disadvantages of using Raw files.
Which file format do you use, and why?
What other points regarding JPEG files can be added to the above list?
It has been a while since I have written a post regarding digital cameras. Since that time I have been learning more about digital cameras, especially on apertures and shutter speeds. While I am enjoying the learning process the one element that I have also been focusing on is taking tack-sharp photos.
For the most part, I usually hand hold my cameras when taking pictures. It is easier to move around chasing my boys while hand-holding the camera than keeping it on a tripod. At the same time, I have also started to look into taking photos of still life, and eventually want to look into landscape photography. During my experimenting I have learned about some points that will help make sure I take tack-sharp photos.
I purchased my first digital camera in 2002, and it included two very different image formats: a Raw and JPEG format. Back then I didn’t know much about the Raw format, but quickly learned what it was, and soon began using the Raw format instead of the JPEG format.
Much like the camera I had back then, many digital cameras include the option of choosing between the two formats. There is a great debate about which format is better, and why you should choose one over the other. In this post I will add my two cents to the debate and allow you to choose.
I have previously talked about colour management in the past, and those who are serious about digital photography will need to know about colour management. While it can get technical, colour management is simply the process of ensuring an image is display/printed properly from one device to another.
It can be difficult to explain, but with some of the newer browsers, it is much easier to show how it can affect the look of an image. In this post I’ll show how colour management can change an image, and what you should do about images on your web site/blog.
As I visit web sites one thing that always get my attention is the amount of time it takes to complete a page download. With web sites using more images to display the content, it can at times take much longer than necessary to finish downloading a page.
The biggest problem with the sites that do use a lot of images on each page is the size of the images. Some who manage web sites don’t realize that images need to be resized outside of the browser to decrease the download size. Specifying the size of an image in the HTML code will only shrink the displaying of the image, not the actual size. To shrink the file sizes you will need an image editor. In this post I will list a few image editors that can be used to edit your images for your web site.
If you are like me you probably have taken thousands of pictures with your digital camera. Digital cameras make it very easy to take photos, since you can view the photos immediately, and only keep the photos you like. Once you are done taking pictures, it is usually very easy to transfer them to a computer and then print them out.
Once you have transferred them, how do you organize the photos? There are many methods that people use to organize their photos, and I have my method, which I explain below.
I have written posts about the JPEG and TIFF file format, including the advantages and disadvantages of each. Digital cameras use the JPEG format because of it’s small size, so you can store more photos on a memory card. The downside to the JPEG is that is is lossy compression, so you lose some data with each save.
An alternative to the JPEG file format is the TIFF format. While you won’t lose any informatoin with the TIFF format, you will require a lot of disk storage as each file can be quite large. For those looking for another alternative, you can try using the PNG format, which is a nice compromise between the two previous image types.
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