RAW vs JPEG

WHICH SETTINGS MATTER WHEN IT COMES TO RECORDING RAW FILES?

A raw file is often referred to as a digital negative, as it enables you to produce a range of different JPEG ‘prints’ while leaving the original image untouched. There are some aspects you have to get right in-camera when recording in raw, but in terms of image processing, you could leave everything set to automatic and just fine-tune the result later in software if you so wish. As highlighted earlier, there are some creative and technical reasons why you might not want to do this.

Getting it right in-camera can also save you time later. When you open a raw file in your camera’s proprietary raw software, such as Canon’s Digital Photo Professional or Nikon’s Capture NX-D, it’s initially decoded according to the image processing data that’s been saved as part of the raw file, so it will be displayed with the white balance, picture style and other settings dialled in on the camera at the time it was taken.

06 PICTURE STYLE

Change the look of an image — although bear in mind that the effect is ‘baked’ into a JPEG.

05 LENS CORRECTIONS

Remove aberrations and dark corners. Software options are better than in-camera ones.

04 WHITE BALANCE

Although this is locked in on a JPEG, you can still remove colour casts in Photoshop.

03 NOISE REDUCTION

You can adjust the strength of this setting, but the results may not be obvious on the camera.

02 FOCUSING

In most instances, you can’t change the point of focus once the shot has been taken.

01 EXPOSURE

Aperture, shutter speed and ISO are fixed at the time of shooting.