By Jonathon Dolansky, video tech

Let’s start with steaks.

Have you gone to dinner with someone who ordered their steak rare? They may be onto something… Whether you enjoy a rarer steak or not, most cooks will tell you that ordering a rare steak means you get a juicier, more tender, and more flavorful piece of meat. 

Imagery isn’t much different. Images can be captured on camera in a file format known as RAW. And, just as a rare steak is juicier and more tender, a RAW file holds more information. This allows you to draw out all the flavors from the captured image. 

A Quick History of Image Processing

Negative Developments

Before digital cameras became the standard, images were captured on strips of film. 

This film was coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion that contained microscopic crystals of silver halide. The silver halide crystals are extremely sensitive to light, and were kept in complete darkness until the camera shutter opened and exposed the film for a brief moment. This exposure began a chemical change, albeit a slight one. The change was so small that it wasn’t immediately apparent. 

Exposed film was then processed in a darkroom with a series of chemical baths to create a negative of the image. (A “negative” is a form of the image whose colors are inverted to their complements, not the attitude of the waitress who isn’t satisfied with a 20 percent tip on the steak you ordered.)

The negative image was further processed to re-invert the colors back to normal before being enlarged and printed if it’s a photo, or cut together for video. 

The Birth of Digital Photography

Fast-forward to 1992 when the Joint Photographic Experts Group created the standard of lossy compression for digital images: the JPEG. Today, the JPEG is the most commonly used image compression standard for digital images—meaning quality images at a smaller file size. Many cameras today will default to shooting in JPEG, which processes and compresses the image automatically from within the camera. 

JPEGs are perfect for the average user because the majority of photos are going straight from the camera to the internet, but the problem with compressing your images is that you trade some quality for the smaller file size. JPEGs can have their degree of compression adjusted, with more compression equaling more loss in quality, just like a steak that’s cooked longer will lose some of its flavor. 

Check out the image below. Yes, it’s an extreme example designed to show a gradient of compression, but it illustrates the point. Most JPEGs, however, have little perceptible loss in image quality. 

Why RAW Imagery Is Best for Editors

If most JPEGs have little loss in quality, why bother with the massive file sizes of a RAW image? Good enough is good enough, right?

No, not always.

A compressed file makes images more difficult to edit. Reconsider the picture of the cat. If I wanted to edit the shadows on the right side of the cat’s face, not only is it difficult to differentiate the different parts of the cat’s fur, but any changes made will look less natural.

Untouched and Unlimited

A RAW image is so called because it is unprocessed. It’s similar to a filmstrip that’s been exposed, but undeveloped. A RAW file is also uncompressed, leading to the massive file size. This lack of compression may lead to some redundant information, but it also leads to more room to work within the editing phase for a cleaner, more natural edit. An editor has much greater control and flexibility over which parts of a RAW file he can safely alter without the image looking unrealistic. 

Furthermore, an editor can make changes multiple times in a nondestructive manner since edits aren’t made to the RAW image itself and without losing image quality. Admittedly, to achieve this one needs professional editing software that won’t overwrite the information on the original image. Of course, you’ll need that software regardless, since RAW files aren’t standardized and many computers aren’t natively capable of reading the file on their own. 

Once the edits are made, the image is converted and compressed into a format, such as JPEG, that’s readable by the average computer. Below, you can see the differences between a JPEG and a RAW file. Notice how the RAW file has far more information in both the detail and the color of the grass and clouds than the JPEG.

You Need Talent With the Tools

Just because you can capture a RAW photo or video, doesn’t make it a good photo or video. Several bits of knowhow are necessary to achieve quality: lighting a scene, directing the actors, crafting the props, designing the art cards, coding the website, and much, much more. 

Lucky for you, Mad Genius has oodles of both talent and tools. Get in touch, and let’s talk about how we can use them all for you.

If you only leave this blog with one takeaway, let it be this: Medium-rare steaks are the superior steaks. It’s science.