question about RAW to JPEG photos?

Question

So im not sure what it is im doing wrong but after editing my RAW .NEF files from my nikon d3100 to JPEG, the quality gets decreased noticeably. I was editing some 4th of july pics to the way i liked them, but when i convert them to jpeg so i can post them, i notice that the image becomes darker and less smooth than from the raw file i just edited. i edit in photoshop cs6 so im not sure what is going on. I am new to this stuff but i dont see the benefit to taking pics in raw if converting to jpeg will just undo the work i put into the pics.

heres an imgur of what i am talking about. you can see the top is the raw i edited slightly, and the bottom is the converted jpeg.

http://imgur.com/MiJqDLT

any help on how to retain the quality when posting to fb, etc would be appreciated

Answer 1

First, your RAW files were probably 16-bit and AdobeRGB color profile, when you converted to JPG they went to less than 8-bit (JPG compresses color space as well as pixel data) and sRGB color profile, both of which result in less "smooth" images; if you don't specify a rendering intent for the color profile conversion, it's common for the images to appear "darker" as well.



Also, how "smooth" the JPGs appear depends on what size you made them, and how the interpolation to the smaller image is done. Smaller (in pixels) JPGs are never going to look as good as a full-sized image, but if you use an interpolation method that's designed for making images smaller, you'll get better results.



Finally, Facebook does its own image resizing and compression when you post images on it, and their methods are not very good (they're optimized to save space on their servers, not for quality).



You need to do some experimentation to find out which combination of steps, and what image sizes, will give you the best results on Facebook for your JPGs.

Answer 2

For best quality, do not convert the RAW files to Jpeg. Convert to Tiff. Then, if you want to convert the Tiff files to Jpeg for online use, you can do that. For Facebook, or really any online use, the following guidelines will provide an excellent photo.



Pixel dimension to 700 on the longest side.

Resolution (ppi) should be 72

Resample method Bicubic Sharper

Save As Jpeg at quality level of 5



The photo will look fine on the computer and be of a small enough file size that Facebook will not "adjust" it.



steve

Answer 3

They look the same

You have no other alternative, if you handle properly the different variables and your software works fine you must have good files; tiff are ok but too heavy for uploading