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Rob Galbraith now says Macs faster...

Sorry, got to used to UBB automagically making links clickable.

Digital Photographers enjoy the RAW format over JPEG or TIFF for several reasons. A good analogy is to consider a RAW file as a digital negative, or a JPEG or TIFF as a color slide.

RAW images contain more information from the camera - they're unprocessed, like a digital negative. JPEG's will have much of the same information, and with a low compression ratio will often have similar 'quality'. When you bring these into Photoshop and try to modify or play with the pictures, a RAW file will give you more information to fiddle with.

Because RAW photos are mostly unprocessed in the camera, the white balance, hue, contrast, sharpening and exposure settings can be overridden in software after the fact. All but exposure can be overridden completely; that is, the resulting processed photo will look exactly as if the photo was shot on the correct settings in the camera in the first place. Most RAW file processing apps, with most RAW file formats, allow for great underexposure recovery: shoot the picture at ISO 200, underexpose by 2 stops, use the magical software exposure compensation control to brighten the picture 2 stops, and in most respects the processed photo will resemble an ISO 800 photo straight out of the camera.

So, another measure of image quality is the ability to fix white balance, exposure and other errors after the fact, in a manner that is vastly more effective, and quicker, than what could be accomplished in Photoshop with a JPEG or standard TIFF. RAW allows news photographers to continue to shoot colour negative in effect, with the same sort of latitude for various types of technical errors, instead of having to switch to the more unforgiving colour slide, which is what JPEG or standard TIFF conceptually. This analogy isn't perfect, because unlike colour negative film, which doesn't offer the same overall quality of color slide, RAW photos inherently offer better quality than JPEG or standard TIFF.

Digital Photographers enjoy the RAW format over JPEG or TIFF for several reasons. A good analogy is to consider a RAW file as a digital negative, or a JPEG or TIFF as a color slide.

RAW images contain more information from the camera - they're unprocessed, like a digital negative. JPEG's will have much of the same information, and with a low compression ratio will often have similar 'quality'. When you bring these into Photoshop and try to modify or play with the pictures, a RAW file will give you more information to fiddle with.

Because RAW photos are mostly unprocessed in the camera, the white balance, hue, contrast, sharpening and exposure settings can be overridden in software after the fact. All but exposure can be overridden completely; that is, the resulting processed photo will look exactly as if the photo was shot on the correct settings in the camera in the first place. Most RAW file processing apps, with most RAW file formats, allow for great underexposure recovery: shoot the picture at ISO 200, underexpose by 2 stops, use the magical software exposure compensation control to brighten the picture 2 stops, and in most respects the processed photo will resemble an ISO 800 photo straight out of the camera.

So, another measure of image quality is the ability to fix white balance, exposure and other errors after the fact, in a manner that is vastly more effective, and quicker, than what could be accomplished in Photoshop with a JPEG or standard TIFF. RAW allows news photographers to continue to shoot colour negative in effect, with the same sort of latitude for various types of technical errors, instead of having to switch to the more unforgiving colour slide, which is what JPEG or standard TIFF conceptually. This analogy isn't perfect, because unlike colour negative film, which doesn't offer the same overall quality of color slide, RAW photos inherently offer better quality than JPEG or standard TIFF.

What are the productivity gains of perfect networking, great UI, better support for FireWire, BlueTooth, Wireless stuff etc etc etc.? It's not quantifiable but it is much more important than slightly faster processors, so lets just stop the whole thing there.

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I agree with your premise - that in the end, the result is what matters, and if you can save 10 hours of headaches with sacrificing a few seconds here and there, then you are probably better off.

However, to your point above, please see Rob Galbraith's post about 10 down from the top of the discussion forum related to his comparison.

He states that he continues to use Macs as his primary machines. However:

• "In that vein, I think it's a mistake to let Apple continue to get away with saying their computers have an edge in the ease of setup and use department. Especially if you're a pro digital photographer.
• In my own experience of the past year is any indication, Apple's got nothing on Windows XP currently. Yes, you read that correctly, and I'm not currently on medication of any kind as I write this."

  "For a major project that ran through much of last year, I got up close and personal with Windows XP Professional running on the humble Dell box in the speed report. I connected a whole raft of pro digital SLR cameras, over a dozen card readers, plus several CD writers, several inkjet printers, a flatbed scanner and a film scanner. Every device connected and worked without a hitch, many of them sucking their own drivers from the ether and configuring themselves. Way, way cool."

  "On the Mac, it was as it always has been for me dealing with pro digital photography peripherals, whether in OS X or earlier iterations of the operating system. Some devices worked fine, though many required the manual installation of drivers, while some devices, and especially USB and FireWire card readers didn't work at all. Or required a driver for OS X 10.1, then a different one for 10.1.2, then a driver change again in OS X 10.1.3. Ugh. I've had fairly serious ongoing fights with my film scanner, so much so that I only use it on the PC now, where it just works. Where's the true plug and play in that?"

  "Part of this is just dumb luck of course, because with a different PC and different peripherals I could have been given a rougher ride by Windows XP, and an easier ride by the Mac. As it happens, however, life with Windows XP in 2002 was a breeze compared to the Mac. By OS X 10.2.3 things have settled down a lot on the Mac side, but for the speed report I experienced yet again an incompatibility between one card/reader combo that was not replicated on the two PCs. After awhile, these types of experiences make me think that Apple needs to spend more time delivering true plug and play for the pro digital photographer, and less time marketing the notion that they do."

  "Keep in mind, my preference would be to remain on the Mac, and right now, two of the key applications I use everyday are Mac only, so I'll boot up my Mac first every day for a while yet. But I won't stay on the Mac because of what I now consider to be outdated notions about the Macs ease of setup and use, since my experience using the other platform is that life is okay over there, even preferable in certain, specific ways."

Look at real world performance to see how fast the machine is. Because when your working away on an image or rendering process, it matters not how fast your machine should or could be going but how fast it is going. And since apple's machines aren't up to snuff with AMD/Intel they need to do something about it.

Mac/photographer's forum response.

Bleah. "Plain old text" doesn't work that well for links.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2001-10/2001_ 10_18_gear.html
and
http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2001-10/2001_ 10_29_eco_gallery.html

Bleah. "Plain old text" doesn't work that well for links.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2001-10/2001_ 10_18_gear.html
and
http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2001-10/2001_ 10_29_eco_gallery.html