Common image formats for photography
A few cameras also offer alternate formats including TIFF. Sometimes we need speed on images processing to capture moving object that we wont to miss it. and some times we had alot of time to capture the images until we have the best position and composition with the image.
And the better setting for starting your camera is choosing the right format from your images that you want to capture. Just say if you are in sports scheme such as capturing your child playing a basketball, and you need the best time to shoot.
The logic is you need a faster image processing on your DSLR camera to take the best moment while they still playing. Here are some things that might help you select the best one for your needs.
JPEG
JPEG is the default format used by almost every digital camera ever made. Named after its developer, the Joint Photographic Experts Group (pronounced as “jay-peg”) this format often lets you specify both image size and compression.
At the moment you capture an image in this format a processing chip in your camera manipulates it based on the camera settings you used, and then compresses it to reduce its size.
The changes made to the image cannot be undone later because it's the final, altered image that is saved in the image file. Some of the original image data is lost for good.
The advantages JPEG format is the size which is very small, so it is very portable and easy to quickly preview and sharing. In case of digital photography, the use of output JPEG images accelerate writing data to the memory card, as well as add image data that can be loaded on a memory card.
Disadvantages of JPEG compression format is a "loosy" so the image quality tends to decrease. For the purposes of preview may not be a problem, but for the sake of printing (especially large) this causes degradation of image quality compared to using the TIFF format.
RAW
RAW is a format that’s available on many cameras, especially SLRs. For the highest possible quality, you want to start with the best possible is a RAW image file.
These files contain all of lhe image data captured by the camera's image sensor without it being proceessed or adjusted in any way. This lets you move the images to the computer and interpret this data the way you want to instead of having the camera do it for you.
When you want total control over exposure, white balance, and other settings, this is the format to use because only four camera settings permanently affect a RAW image the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and focus.
Other camera settings are saved as metadata and affect the appearance of the thumbnail or preview images but not the RAW image itself. One thing to keep in mind is that RAW images are not always noticeably better.
Where they shine is when you have exposure or white balance problems. Because RAW images have dramatically more information to work with, you can open up shadow areas, recover lot details in highlights, and make fine adjustments to colors.
Advantages using RAW?
- We can tweaking the raw file into mature photos as we want.
- lot more Option for photo processing
- Information stored more (if you choose JPEG, the camera will eliminate a small portion of data to reduce file size and speed up processing)
- Image quality overall is better, this is related to the compression when using JPEG
- Protected from under / over exposure (exposure compensation)
- Set the white balance more accurately
- Set the basic settings such as sharpening, noise reduction, contrast and curve freely
- Got a wider dynamic range
- Adjust the level of noise reduction as needed
- More free play color and saturation
- We are free to determine the level of JPEG compression ratio.
Disadvantages using RAW?
- Needed more space in a hard drive capacity and memory card. Since there is no compression process, the size of the RAW file is much larger than JPEG (about 3 to 4 times greater)
- Takes more time. Both during shooting (reduced speed cameras, especially in burst mode) and during processing on the computer (because the file size).
- Keep the computer with tight specifications / High (high end)
- Takes a long time to process a lot of photos
- Need special software or plugin to process RAW.
TIFF
TIFF (tagged image file format) is a format that's often used to exchange files between applications and computer platforms. It's supported by virtually all paint, image-editing, and page-layout applications. TIFF files tend to be larger than both JPEG and RAW images and can be saved using either 8 bits or 16 bits per color.
Advantages TIFF format is able to balance between image quality and file size and acceptable to the various graphics applications.
Therefore, the format used in the plural image data transfer are still demanding the prime quality of the image data as stockphoto, images, graphic design, or for printing.
Disadvantages TIFF format is of course the file size is still too large for mere purposes of sharing and preview images.