Converting RAW to JPG photos and editing WITHOUT losing quality?

Question

Hello,

Newish to photography.  I shot on RAW+JPG, so now I have a RAW file that's say 40mb and a JPG that's say 13.2.

If I edit that JPG in lightroom, it goes down to 4ish MB.  
If I take the raw and convert it to JPG in lightroom, it still goes down to 14ish MB, and then I still have to crop and adjust lighting from there.

So my question is, how do I convert, crop and edit these raw images without losing all of this quality?  Like what's the point of a good camera and lens if this is what happens?

I'm willing to pay for something to convert, but it has to be web-based as I can't install software on my work laptop

Also, sorry I'm sure this is a basic question, but I keep googling and I don't find the answer I'm looking for.

Answer 1

You can convert the raw images into TIFF or BMP format, and then editing the TIFF files or bitmap files (BMP). Those are lossless formats. After you are all done editing, convert the TIFF or BMP files to JPEG or other file formats so they are much smaller in size and can be uploaded or printed.

Answer 2

Editing a JPEG is not generally a good idea. You will have better results if you work in a raw work flow then convert to JPEG for general viewing pleasure.



You work on the raw file in a program such as Lightroom. This gives you extra latitude to make minor adjustments. If you have Photoshop, you can use Adobe Camera Raw which comes with Photoshop. After you make adjustments, convert to JPEG so you can enjoy your images.



If you don't have a program like Lightroom, then use the program that comes with your camera which allows you to work in a raw work flow. After adjusting your image, convert it to JPEG.



If your camera manufacturer doesn't have a program to deal with raw files, then convert your raw image to 16-bit TIFF. Use a program like Photoshop or GIMP to edit the image, then convert to JPEG.

Answer 3

jpeg is a lossy format -- it's intended to keep the files small. That's why you can get the files down to 14 megs from the 40 megs RAW file. You'll notice that it's hard to see any difference between the images in any viewer. You can play with the jpeg images and get the size down even more, with no apparent loss of quality -- the difference really becomes obvious when you print in larger sizes.



If you look back at ISO film days, if you wanted a very large picture format (bigger than A4 sized paper, like A3 or even A0), you could get that is you used low ISO numbers, But ISO 2000 worked reasonably well up to A5 size. 



You get the same with digital stuff - the bigger the file, the larger you can print it.



However, nowadays, most pictures are sent to others via e-mail. the pictures are intended to be seen on a comparatively small screen and something like 90 pixels per inch. the jpeg format works well for that size. So, amke sure you back up the RAW images at full size, but use the jpegs for almost every other purpose, even at their smallest size.

Answer 4

The proper technique for the best possible result is to do all of your editing on the RAW file, save the result as a new version of the RAW file (so you still have the original RAW file to rework in the future). If you want to keep as much data as possible when you convert from RAW, convert to a lossless format like TIFF instead of JPG. JPG is a compressed (lossy) format which was created to make image files smaller so they take up less space and can be more easily sent over the internet. Since the purpose of a JPG is to compress the file, every time you save a file to the JPG format, you will lose data. I never save as a JPG except for those times when I need a small file to show clients, and would never save the same file as JPG more than once.