RAW Photography Merits
You Can Set the Colorspace, Saturation, Tone, and Sharpness During Development
When using JPEG and TIFF format, it is possible to adjust the white balance, sensitivity, colorspace, saturation, tone, and sharpness using photo retouching software. However, components for each color can be recorded using only 256 levels, so making adjustments causes the color tone to be lost.
Also, converting the colorspace cannot restore colors that are outside of the reproduction color range.
RAW data, however, can record each color component as high color tone data using between 1,024 to 4,096 levels. Therefore, even if various adjustments are made during development, pictures do not loose their color tone.
Also, after light intensity data is changed, the data is processed into an image. So even if major adjustments are made, there is almost no colorspace skew, making it is possible to reproduce accurate colors. |
Exposure & Contrast Adjustment
You can see a difference in the exposure and contrast here. The JPEG image has very different coloration in the shaded area and in the sign because the exposure and contrast were adjusted on a picture that was already unbalanced. Also, the color tone of the grass and trees has deteriorated and become flat. |
