The Argument: RAW v. JPEG

For many years there has been an argument as to what a photographer should shoot, RAW or JPEG. And the RAW advocates had always brought up the issue, “You can't change the white balance in JPEG, only RAW.” And for the most part, they were right, up until now.

All of that changed with Photoshop CS5 and its feature within Adobe Bridge. Not too many photographers are aware of this feature. I discovered this while attending a Scott Kelby seminar in Atlanta. Like myself, the other attendees were astonished. Scott demonstrated how a TIFF or JPEG file can be opened in Bridge as a RAW file and then the process of changing the white balance and other elements of an image can be readily made. Being a JPEG guy for all of these years, I was amazed.

The white-balance adjustment is required when a photographer adjusts their camera for the wrong type of light condition. White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. Our eyes are very good at judging what is white under different light sources, but digital cameras often have great difficulty with auto white balance (AWB) — and can create unsightly blue, orange, or even green color casts. Understanding digital white balance can help you avoid these color casts, thereby improving your photos under a wider range of lighting conditions.

Whenever I'm approached on this subject, I silence the RAW wranglers with the following, “TIFF and JPEG white balance can be adjusted within Adobe Bridge. You can go to File, then Open file as Camera RAW, and there you have all the abilities to change the white balance.”

When attending the Bryan Peterson Photography Workshop in Savannah/Jekyll Island, I pointed this out to Bryan and a few students at the end of the last day. One student had complained that she was using up too much memory on her camera card and she didn't want to shoot JPEG because of the inability to adjust the white balance. A RAW file can take up to 30 Mb while the same image can be recorded in JPEG at about 8 Mb. It was at this point I had to wager in.

“That's no longer true...”

I described how to get into Bridge from Photoshop while Bryan took control of her PC. He looked at me with the same astonished look of those at the Scott Kelby seminar and stated, “I didn't know you could do that!”

The argument of RAW v. JPEG is over.