Underwater-Photoshop :: Workflow :: File Formats

File Formats

Photographers love to have something to argue about and whether to shoot JPEGThe Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format is widely used. It is a bitmap format commonly used to display photographs and other continuous-tone images in web pages on the Internet. JPEG retains all the color information in an RGB image but uses a compression scheme that reduces file size by discarding extra data not essential to the display of the image. or RAWRAW files contain the same data captured by the CCD with no processing by the camera. This requires a ‘plug in’ for your image editing software to be able to open them. is one controversial debate filling many forums across the Internet.

It has become popular in recent times to shoot your images on RAW format. RAW simply means raw data straight off the camera's CCDCharge Coupled Device. An integrated circuit (microchip) consisting of a group of charge storage cells (tiny capacitors) with the ability to pass charge from one to the next in a line like firefighters passing buckets from one to the next.. This is opposed to other formats which are processed in the camera (in firmware) and which are usually compressed, like JPEG or TIFFThe Tagged-Image File Format (TIF) is a bitmap format extensively used to exchange files between applications and computer platforms. It is found in most paint imaging and DTP programs. TIFF is a lossless full-color image file format.. Not all cameras support RAW format, so if you don’t have it, don’t worry about it.

It is a myth that either JPEG or RAW takes 'better pictures'. Photographers take better pictures! Anyway, I am not concerned with the merits of either argument at the moment and will take you through the different workflow options for both formats. I will only mention

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