Hi, hey, lets talk about RAW format images...

if you are experienced, and know what RAW format is...

you can skip along, that's okay...

but if you have never heard of it...

or a little bit unclear why RAW is so important...

stick around, let's explore it in this video with some examples.

All right, RAW versus JPEG...

RAW's evil twin is JPEG, there's nothing wrong with a JPEG...

and often people will shoot both, so let's talk about the differences...

in the real world, you'll have lots of information coming in...

like there's lots of tone, color, and...

and all sorts of information that your camera can absorb through the sensor...

way more than it can put into the little rectangle is your image...

so covering loads of it, and that's what you're doing...

you're adjusting all the settings to see...

what of that information you want to keep, and what you want to throw away...

and that's what you do when you hit 'Click' on a JPEG...

you decide, you make a decision on the color, the exposure...

the lights, and darks, the highlights, what you're going to do...

like this image here, if I go, if I make this video...

you can shoot raw video as well, so if I make this super dark, or super light...

I probably want it somewhere in the middle, like this...

so you make those decisions, you take a snapshot...

and that's great, you got it, you're done...

what RAW does, is it actually captures more...

information than that little rectangle can...

you know, that you can see on that rectangle, like going back in time...

you can-- your raw image, you go...

actually, I want to change my exposure, want to make it darker, or lighter...

or somewhere in between, or mask parts out...

mask me out so that the background's darker, and the foreground is lighter.

So it gives you more information to work with...

can only ever see the one rectangle, but you can kind of go forwards and back...

and find the parts you want, kind of exaggerate different parts...

so that is-- is that a good example of what a RAW--

let's just-- I'll show you in Lightroom...

I'll show you some good and bad examples of RAW versus JPEG...

so you can play along, I'm in Lightroom...

I'm going to open up Photos tab, add some photos...

and what you'll see is, in your Exercise Files there is a RAW folder, 02 RAW...

and I want to bring in everything from this folder...

and what you might notice is that there's actually only two images...

a JPEG and a RAW version of it...

same photograph, you got two formats, you're like, "I can see JPEG"...

that's not RAW, that's mixed up RAW, A-R-W.

Every camera manufacturer actually has a different extension for them...

it's not a generic one...

the generic one is DNG, for a digital negative...

it is still a RAW file, they're just called something different...

Nikon like have NEF, for a Nikon raw file...

clearly that is Sony, ARW, Canon have like...

CRW, CR2, and CR3...

so you'll get used to whatever your camera raw file is...

will be right next to the JPEG...

there'll be something, I'm going to bring in all four of those...

I'm going to bring it into an album, going to put it into a None album...

just going to dump ours into Lightroom, and, depending on yours...

it will probably default to, show me all photos that have been put in just now...

or you can see all the photos that are in Lightroom.

I'm going to look at the ones just now to tidy it up, just got these two...

these two, these are really good examples, so there's my JPEG, and there's my ARW...

so let's open up that ARW version, the raw file, double click it...

and I'm going to go to my Settings...

and all I'm going to do is drag the exposure...

you're like, "It's a cool shot, I love it"...

but let's just say you want to go back in time, and you're like...

actually, I want to bring in some of the-- look, surprise...

loads of information that was potentially lost...

it is all in and around here...

but let's do the same thing for the JPEG, so down the film stroke...

you can't see the film stroke, click on this, go to the JPEG version...

how do you it's the JPEG version...

because we've started on the raw folder yet...

it's not super easy, you can go to the information option down here...

that's the JPEG version, that my friend, is the RAW version...

JPEG, RAW, can you see it there?

That is the Eyeball there, I'm going to go back to editing...

I'm going back to this first one...

I'm going to say, do the same thing with my JPEG...

no problem, look, here it comes, here it-- oh...

it's there, but it's not just not as good...

it's just not as much information captured...

JPEGs, you'll get away with a lot of it...

and you can do some amazing things...

just with the JPEG, you can make some adjustments...

it's the big adjustments that you might want to do...

you just can't do in JPEG format, you need RAW...

same with this one, which is which?

I'm going to hit my little Eye down here, so it's the JPEGs first...

and my RAW file is second...

so I'm going to start with my RAW file...

I'm going to say, 'Edit', 'Exposure', I'm all the way up...

I'm not fixing that photograph, but I'm like, "Hey, look at all of that"...

some ugly looking cars down there...

something you probably don't want there, but hey...

let's say we do, we need the ugly looking cars, I can drag it all the way up...

and I'm going to click on this same one, JPEG, it's the same size...

dimensionally, it's the same quality shot...

there's just not as much information in there...

and you're like, "That looks all right, what's wrong with it," same, same.

Let's have a little look at comparing the two...

so we'll do cavemen compare, let's zoom in...

so we've learned the shortcut, 'Command +', or 'Ctrl +' on a PC...

so do that a few times, a few times...

I did it about four, you get the tricks, four or five...

and then, nothing selected, just click and drag this little hand...

and let's find, I don't know, some bits...

let's look at this building here, and bit of the trees...

and if I just click on this other, the RAW version...

it will kind of comparably go to the same place, let's be clear that way...

look at all the information in here, it takes a little while to process...

so away, but you can see all of this, there's no color, there's no real tone...

it's still grainy because it's, you know, you can't go back and change the ISO...

but look at all the information that it did capture...

amongst the trees and the cars, these are the cars that we definitely need...

and they're actually right...

look at the Audi badge, let's have a look at that...

it's just the smoosh, JPEG format.

So you don't always need it, but it's handy to have...

and if you can shoot it, shoot them raw, awesome...

even there, shooting raw and JPEGs, you'll find most cameras shoot both...

so that if you just want to go quick and easy...

and just use JPEGs, awesome, you got it...

but if there's that one photograph, you're like...

"Oh, I wish I could get into those"...

you know, into the bushes a bit better...

or see some of the internal parts of the image...

look at that versus this one, uh, ah.