There is not a clear date as to when we began to routinely create our images in RAW format. Most (all?) of the instructional material we had studied paid too little attention to this matter, or waffled on it, and so we didn’t appreciate the differences in the two formats.

Now we shoot everything – every image we might ever use other than strictly for ourselves – in RAW. Which is to say that while we sometimes use our phone to make a quick JPEG photo of our very fine kitty-cats Georgie and Kita for Facebook, or to take a field shot of a mushroom or flower we wish to identify, we’ve pretty much given up the idea that a JPEG file will suffice when we want to capture anything more than a quick record. We say that even though we have published photographs from original JPEG files in national magazines. And we say that knowing that at least one friend scored a national magazine cover with a JPEG phone shot.

So, yes, it’s possible to get a very nice capture in JPEG. In fact, oftentimes sports photographers shoot in JPEG – particularly when getting a photo out to a publisher in a timely manner is paramount. In a well-lighted stadium filled with agreeably contrasting colors, there may not be a need to retouch a photograph. Similarly, on a blue-sky mid-day at the beach, there may not be much – or any – advantage to capturing the scene in RAW format over JPEG.

But setting such circumstances aside, one’s odds of making a satisfying image increase if one begins with a RAW file. That same beach in soft morning or evening light or under a sky filled with storm clouds will photograph with more richness and subtlety when captured as a RAW file.

However, shooting in RAW is predicated on having the ability to retouch (process) the original image file in Lightroom or some similar program – and then committing oneself to doing so. Because the drawback to shooting in RAW is that images tend to look flat until they’ve been retouched.

So…

Generally speaking, if one’s objective is to take good – and perhaps sometimes even beautiful – pictures for an audience of family and friends, or simply to make a field record for one’s own use, and to do so with as few complications as possible, set the camera to JPEG, shoot away, and have fun.

If one’s objective is to more consistently create beautiful and even artistic images, set the camera to RAW, and then commit to evaluating and retouching images with editing software. Such software is the digital analog to processing film in a darkroom. Because a RAW image contains much more information than does a JPEG image, the software will provide more control when it comes to adjusting white balance, bringing out detail in shadowed areas, fine tuning color, sharpening details and controlling the amount of noise in an image.

One place the difference between RAW and JPEG most obviously manifests itself is in skies. Generally speaking, there’s not a lot that can be done to a sky in JPEG before noise – graininess, weird colors, strange lines – begins to emerge. RAW provides considerably more latitude before noise emerges… and once you begin to notice noise in images, you can’t stop noticing it.

Which brings me to this concluding observation. Whether one wishes to grow as a writer, musician, fly-fisherman, photographer, chef or in any creative activity, next to studying the accomplishments of others and applying the lessons therein, there is no substitute for mindful, purposeful self-editing. If you shoot in RAW, you will be compelled to edit your work.

Growth will come from that.