Rockmeister
pfm Member
Maybe its a basic misconception about the discussion. Any photo can be great Art, if the photographer gets it right in the moment. Not all the great images were manipulated by lab techs at processing time.
It's simply that JPEGs are like lossy digital sound files. They don't contain ALL the detail captured by the camera. It's enough IF the pic works straight from the file, but if you need to alter it (or just like to muck about) then RAW files allow far more manipulation before the image shows signs of corruption.
Take an image of a blue sky in raw and JPEG. Stick them in an editor and paly with exposure and saturation. The JPEG file will quickly succumb to banding, where the tones and shades are seperated with a clear edge. The Raw file retains the subtle gradation and just changes tone and shade overall, because the JPEG is missing subtle tone and shade info in the crossover areas. Nor can you retrieve it.
It's simply that JPEGs are like lossy digital sound files. They don't contain ALL the detail captured by the camera. It's enough IF the pic works straight from the file, but if you need to alter it (or just like to muck about) then RAW files allow far more manipulation before the image shows signs of corruption.
Take an image of a blue sky in raw and JPEG. Stick them in an editor and paly with exposure and saturation. The JPEG file will quickly succumb to banding, where the tones and shades are seperated with a clear edge. The Raw file retains the subtle gradation and just changes tone and shade overall, because the JPEG is missing subtle tone and shade info in the crossover areas. Nor can you retrieve it.