“RAW” in photography has the same meaning that it literally means. A raw file means that the currently it is just the data that the camera has to recorded and it still needs to be processed in form of an image, meaning that you still need to convert it into a file format of your choice such as JPEG or TIFF. It is like the raw vegetables that you bought. Those vegetables are in fact your food but you cant just eat it yet without cooking them per your taste. Likewise, A Raw format means that the for now it is just the data that you have bought but you still need to process it, change it per your taste and then print it out in form of a final image.
Remember before digital cameras how photographers used to shoot on negatives and print photos later? A Raw file is more or less a digital negative. When you shoot in JPEG mode, your camera takes the picture, processes it and saves as a JPEG file whereas when you shoot RAW, you will have to do the editing and processing on your computer yourself.
So why would anyone want to shoot RAW and just not flip the setting to JPEG? RAW files have several advantages due to it is preferred by most of the photographers. Some of these advantages are as listed below.
1. White Balance – RAW files have not yet had the white balance set which means that the photographer can later on change the temperature of picture per his choice.
2. Image Quality – Since it is still the unprocessed data, shooting RAW makes you able to extract maximum image quality.
3. Shooting RAW means that you have a 16 BIT image to work with post processing however if your camera recorded JPEG, you would only have an 8 BIT image.
4. Better Brightness – JPEG records 256 levels of brightness, and RAW records between 4,096 to 16,384 levels.
5. Freedom to correct Exposure – If you found that your image is over or under-exposed, you can easily correct it later.
6. Non-Destructive Editing – When you process a RAW Image, you have the option of rolling back whatever change you made and start all over again. No matter what editing you do, you are never at the risk of destroying the data.
RAW files however have some disadvantages too some of which are as below.
1. Heavy Files : Since RAW files record uncompressed data, they are a real memory hog. A raw file can be 3 to 4 times heavier than a JPEG file.
2. Processing: Its an additional task. You take the phots, go home, switch on your computer and then have to process these images in editing software.
There are several softwares available in the market for processing RAW files. Major Camera companies have their own softwares as well. For example Nikon provides Nikon Capture to process and Edit RAW files. Photoshop is also capable of handling RAW files and is overall the most popular software. [and best in my opinion]
