JPEGs
processed
in-camera have
sharpening applied
to them, so they
can initially look
crisper than raws.
WIth raws, you can
apply sharpening
afterwards. Camera
Raw and Lightroom
apply an Sharpening
amount of 40. Head
to the Detail Panel to
tweak this, or save a
new default.
Raws hold far more color information
than JPEGs. This can be measured in
bit-depth. JPEGs are 8-bit, while raws are
usually 12-bit or 14-bit (some newer cameras
and medium-format bodies are even capable
of 16-bit raws). An 8-bit JPEG holds 256 levels
of luminosity per color channel – or, to put it
another way, about 16 million colors. A 12-
bit image holds 4,096 levels of luminosity,
or around 68 billion colors. A 14-bit file with
16,384 levels of luminosity has a whopping
4.3 trillion color shades.Raws come in different file formats like
CR2 for Canon and NEF for Nikon. But
if you like, you can convert them to Adobe’s
non-proprietary format DNG, which stands
for ‘digital negative’. DNGs can be slightly
smaller in file size, and they don’t need XMP
sidecar files to store the extra editing data
that accompanies raws.