Photography - RAW vs JPG

The topic of RAW vs JPG seems to come up a lot.  When I first started with digital cameras, I shot only JPG, but the more I read about the differences as well as advantages, the more I started shooting in RAW format.

JPG's are quicker to download from the camera to the computer and much smaller files, but with today's computers and cameras, and storage devices, those concerns are no longer, well, a concern.  The main difference between RAW and JPG is the fact that anyone shooting a JPG, even if they do shoot an image perfectly in-camera has just arbitrarily thrown away 16,129 tones (per color channel) in the print and kept only 255.  When you toss forty-eight thousand tones or colors, which seems like a bad decision, even if you don't do any post-processing, your image may not look quite as good as it could.  And if you do edit, you will be throwing away even more information, which can result in unwanted artifacts in the print/file.  So needless to say, I always shoot in a RAW format.  The more times you edit an image, the more information you discard, and that can lead to deterioration of the image.  If you've even seen uneven gradations in an image, that is what has happened.  It's usually more visible in monotone areas, like the sky, or a plain wall.  Or, even worse, you may end up with a portrait with a blotchy face.  Another advantage to RAW is if you accidentally do not expose the image perfectly, you have a better chance of getting a decent result.  Plus I have found I can even out the highlights and shadows a bit more.  This is especially needed if the lighting is terrible and you are unable to change it.

What about processing the RAW images?  Well, with Lightroom (which I use) and other software programs, it's pretty easy.  After you see the images that come out of your camera, you can edit them and apply presets (instructions within Lightroom telling it what you want it to do to an image) to all your photos at once (assuming the conditions they were taken in are the same).  Then you can export them as JPG files to save disk space.  Once they are perfect or the best you can make them, then you may want to delete the RAW files, or put them on an external hard drive for storage.  I just saw one on sale - a 4 TB drive for $109.00 - enough to hold more RAW files than you will probably ever take.

Most cameras can shoot both RAW and JPG at the same time, which might be a good way for you to compare the two.  With some Nikon cameras, there is room for two memory cards, and you can record RAW on one and JPG on the other.  With other cameras, these would be on the same card and would take up a lot of space so you might want to get a card with more memory.