# RAW vs. JPEG in Pixelmator



## blackbook

I'm really a snapshooter and find Pixelmator does the editing I need to do at my level.

Do I really need to continue shooting in RAW or is JPEG fine?

Btw, I'm using an Olympus OMD EM10.


----------



## polywog

If you're only doing minor edits, like levelling, cropping and a bit of sharpening you're probably fine with JPEG, but use the best quality you can in camera.

If you need to adjust exposure, white balance etc, you'll want RAW since there is far more information to play with.

A good strategy might be to keep shooting RAW, and save your edits as JPEG, so you always have a known good copy to go back to.


----------



## IllusionX

That's why i like to use Aperture. Now i am unsure if Photos.app does the same, but Aperture handles RAW without ever modifying the original file.

I like to shoot RAW


----------



## blackbook

IllusionX said:


> That's why i like to use Aperture. Now i am unsure if Photos.app does the same, but Aperture handles RAW without ever modifying the original file.
> 
> I like to shoot RAW


Won't Aperture phase out though? I'd read somewhere that they were going to stop updating it...or perhaps that was Pixelmator.


----------



## pm-r

blackbook said:


> I'm really a snapshooter and find Pixelmator does the editing I need to do at my level.
> 
> Do I really need to continue shooting in RAW or is JPEG fine?
> 
> Btw, I'm using an Olympus OMD EM10.



It might be time to read some of even the old articles on what mode to use like:
RAW vs JPEG (JPG) - The Ultimate Visual Guide


----------



## polywog

blackbook said:


> Won't Aperture phase out though? I'd read somewhere that they were going to stop updating it...or perhaps that was Pixelmator.


It's already gone. Adobe Lightroom is similar (and in some ways I find superior.)


----------



## IllusionX

^ what he said.

I am still using it, but i know i will eventually have to move on. I will probably wait until the end of 2015 before switching over to photos app, as it will be a clean cut to move on to 2016.


----------



## pm-r

I don't think it will matter much for the OP as I understand he's getting rid of his Mac Mini anyway and just going to use some iDevice and Pixelmator.


----------



## polywog

IllusionX said:


> ^ what he said.
> 
> I am still using it, but i know i will eventually have to move on. I will probably wait until the end of 2015 before switching over to photos app, as it will be a clean cut to move on to 2016.


With any luck, Photos will be a worthy successor by then. So far it's sub par.


----------



## Oakbridge

One thing that I remember hearing at a presentation was this. If you shoot only jpeg, and at some point there is a disagreement about your ownership of a photo, you don't have much to fall back on. However if you shoot RAW, you could always tell the other party to produce the RAW image of the photo in question which they won't be able to do. 

It's like you've got the true original.

Also I like knowing that I have an original untouched image for whatever may come, with regards to technology, in the future. 

I worked for Black's Cameras in the late 70s early 80s, probably the peak of the SLR boom. Every so often we'd have someone process a roll of film who had just taken a Photography 101 course or read a book. They would complain that their attempts at bracketing (shooting one shot at proper exposure based on the camera's light meter, another shot one stop overexposed and a third shot one stop underexposed) all looked the same.

We had to explain that our photo finishing process would automatically correct exposures +/- 2 stops. So the machine was trying to 'fix' what it saw as a problem with the exposure. The negatives would be correct but there was no way around having the prints all looking the same. The only option would be to develop the film themselves, shoot slides or to deal with a higher end lab who often would provide a proof sheet (an 8 x 10 of all of the negatives processed as positives) or uncorrected proofs. 

I see shooting RAW as the equivalent of shooting slides or looking at negatives. It's a true indication of what the camera saw before anyone or any 'thing' tried to do any 'fixes'. RAW allows the photographer to control themselves what adjustments (if any) they want to apply to the image.

Personally I use the RAW+JPG setting on my Nikon. Aperture 'pairs' both images together for viewing. You can choose which version is displayed in the settings.


----------



## eMacMan

I generally strip out the EXIF info and crop photos before posting them online. One can then challenge the pirate to produce an uncropped photo with EXIF data. Another effective tool is to use reduced image sizes. While that won't keep someone from stealing an image and posting it elsewhere, if they do try to sell prints. the prints will usually look like crap.

Strangely sites like ehMac offer another form of protection as you can post images so that the user has to be logged in to view the images. They will not find those images with a simple random search.

That said were I to discover one of my images posted elsewhere, I would simply ask that it be removed or proper credit given. The only time I would really pursue it further is if it was being used in a way that I felt was inappropriate such as promoting a politician.


----------

