Interestingly enough many amateur photographers shoot their images in a format known as JPEG. JPEG was actually invented in the early 1990s for the sole purpose of allowing small compressed files to be on websites and speed download on the then slow dial up internet access at speeds of 56kbs! There was little concern for actual quality or sharpness, size was the primary factor hence the compression factor involved at the expense of quality. Well in theory a uncompressed version was in the design specs but nobody ever pursued it. But there is a format known as RAW which most higher end DSLR cameras and some point and shoot will produce. What is RAW format? Essentially it is a file format that captures all image data recorded by your camera sensor when you take a photograph. When shooting and saving in a format like JPEG the final image is processed based upon camera settings and any unnecessary details are discarded.
So in a nutshell saving an image in RAW format gives the highest quality files, which when used for editing allows you to create the highest quality and most awesome images possible and yes you want high quality.
You see as mentioned earlier when saving as JPEG format is that the camera does it’s own processing to convert the RAW information into a JPEG. However, realistically your camera is nowhere near as smart as your brain, nor is it as powerful as your computer. By using a RAW image you do that thinking and processing yourself, yes you can make the decisions on how the image should look, and will most certainly produce far better results.
Lets dig a little deeper. One is the potential for brightness levels and variance in brightness levels. JPEG only has the potential to record and save 256 levels of brightness, the RAW image however, if saved as 14 bit format, has 16,384 levels available! This allows much smoother transitions in colour tones. The difference when you are editing are huge!
Next is exposure. With JPEG you get what you get, with RAW as there is much more information in the file it is far easier to compensate for incorrect exposure levels allowing recovery from blown out highlights and lost shadow area details.
With RAW format you get to choose the white balance! With JPEG it is applied, with RAW you get to apply it as you like.
With RAW there is FAR MORE access to the sharpening and noise algorithms in the file if you use Lightroom which is FAR more powerful than any parameters and software built into the camera.
You also have the ability to undo and redo as you do not destroy the master.
You in the end will get FAR BETTER IMAGES AND PRINTS!!
No professional would do otherwise. I hope you have found this helpful!
Now the downside.. yes it is not all good. The big one is file size and space to store them! RAW files are much larger than the JPEG images! In some cameras recording RAW can slow the camera down and fill buffer faster. And sometimes the RAW image is a format that not all software can read.
So not all perfect but in the end still worth it! Record both and use the JPEG if you need something to share quickly and the RAW for the final awesome print!