The Benefits of Camera RAW Mode

Final Image From Raw Camera File - Processed in Adobe Lightroom

Here is a perfect example of why serious photographers should shoot in RAW mode and develop a post-processing routine. The digital camera RAW mode gives you a digital “negative” that can be converted into a final .jpeg or .tiff image. The advantage of RAW as compared to a .jpeg shot in camera is the ability to go beyond the editing that can safely be done on a jpeg image. You can do a greater range of edits to a RAW file without degredation of the image as compared to a shot-in-camera .jpeg image.

In the photo shown on this page, the light conditions included dark shadows in the foreground, and very bright sunlight in the background. While the human eye can easily discern details in this wide range of light, the digital sensor in a camera is much more limited and will either make the shadows too dark, or turn light-colored details into pure white. In the RAW image shown below, the camera properly exposed the bright sky in the background, but the foreground is far too dark due to the limited dynamic range of the camera’s sensor.

If I had shot this image as a .jpeg, it would most likely be unusable. Trying to lighten detail in the darkest areas would cause the quality to suffer and noise to appear. The final edited image would be of poor quality. However, a RAW image file typically contains much more information than a .jpeg shot in camera. We can therefore generate a higher quality final image by editing the RAW format file.

The image at the top of the page is the final edited image. I took the RAW file (as it appeared below), and edited it in Capture One 5, a high quality RAW image editing software. I was able to extract quite a bit of detail from the shadows while preserving detail in the highlights area of the photo. I also enhanced the saturation and sharpened the image. Image degradation did not occur as it would with a jpeg. Learning to master a RAW image editing program will take a bit of effort, However, there are a number of video tutorials online for all the top selling RAW image editing programs, and plenty of online forums that can guide you as well. If you want the best quality output, shooting in RAW will give you much more control over the look of the final image and better quality!

Raw Image Before Post Processing