Comments on: RAW vs JPEG: What’s the Difference and Which Should You Be Shooting?

By: Helena

Helena — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 06:04:23 +0000

I shoot both and give JPEGs to clients for choosing which photos they would like to have edited and use RAWs for editing, then convert them to JPEG (btw here is a good guide on that if anyone needs it) and give the final JPEGs to the client and keep some of them for my own portfolio, the RAWs are gone by that time. Using RAWs for editing just give you more freedom and place for being creative, so I personally think shooting both is the golden middle.

By: gtvone

gtvone — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:02:26 +0000

In reply to David.

Hi David, I see where you're going here, but – and with all due respect – I kinda don't 100% agree. ?

A raw and a jpg that are the same pixel size are going to "zoom in" the same – given you're not posting a raw image online for people to see, that is… So you export the raw to jpg the same size as the jpg from the same camera – same sized image. Same zoom level.

Where it can get confuddled I guess is that the jpg being compressed (no combining pixels, just removing some colour data to make image file sizes smaller) is going to have less information in the file when you zoom right in – but the jpg you exported from the raw is going to be the same. There are lots of technicalities that make for different file sizes of that jpg etc, and we could get right into those, but that's a story for another day.

Appreciate your comment! Thanks!

By: David

David — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:12:53 +0000

Sime – Enjoyed the article. One aspect of JPEG that you didn't mention is that JPEG applies a lossy compression to the images. This means that not only has the camera decided which setting to apply to the picture, it also has combined pixels in the image to save space (part of the compression algorithm). What this means is that addition data, beyond what you mentioned, is also lost. This comes into play when you want to zoom in. The image will become pixelated/blurry extremely quick. So, it you think that think you will be wanting to zoom in on your images, RAW is the better option.

By: jhsvdm

jhsvdm — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:07:54 +0000

This discussion will soon include HEIF files as per newer cameras as well. Not all editing software can handle these. Nonetheless, it is useful if you could have a nice picture straight out of the camera. The cameras do develop the RAW files and you have some input into how it should too. They use picture styles like landscape, portrait etc and for each of these you can tweak saturation contrast sharpness to fine tune. Some cameras will also let you set a film simulation. You can set your camera’s development settings to render sharp high contrast monochrome pictures too. Just need to play around with it and find what suits your taste.