Why can white balance be changed easily on RAW files but not as accurately on JPEGs?
Asked 9/24/2012
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2 answers
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I understand white balance as a mostly global color correction. If that’s true, why can I freely change white balance later when editing a RAW file, but get worse results when adjusting a JPEG after the camera has already applied white balance? I’m asking specifically about JPEGs from cameras or phones, not changing white balance settings before capture.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
5
It depends if you are shooting jpg or raw. If you are shooting raw, the image that is shown on the LCD of the camera is just the jpg contained within the raw: but when you open it with a raw capable editor you still have room for setting the white balance. You still have to interpret the value of the raw data pixels and white balance is simply establishing what is to be interpreted as a 18% gray.
If you shoot with a jpg, this interpretation is made by the camera when you are shooting: you don't have the raw data any more but you have a finished image and you lose the latitude to decide what is gray.
DSLR always give you the chance to record your photo in raw format. By the way, often when you open the raw file, which is usually rather large, you see a flashy image, which disappears when the raw is loaded and is often replaced by a duller image. This is because the first image is the (already developed) thumbnail jpg within the raw, with a bit of processing already applied (saturation, contrast, whatever). The "dull" version is waiting for you to be processed.
On the contrary, the iPhone typically doesn't allow for raw shooting, so you are "stuck" with the jpg that it has produced. You can check this link for a possible approach.
Originally by user5032. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user5032
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
White balance is much more flexible with RAW because RAW still contains the sensor data before the camera fully interprets it into a finished image. The camera’s white balance setting is usually just stored as metadata or used as a starting point by RAW software, so you can still change it later with minimal loss.
With JPEG, the camera has already processed the image: it has applied white balance, tone and color rendering, and reduced the data to an 8-bit final file. You can still shift the colors afterward, but you’re editing an already-compressed, lower-precision result rather than the original capture data.
That means further white balance changes on JPEG are more likely to cause rounding errors, loss of subtle tonal steps, and artifacts such as banding, especially in smooth areas. So it’s not that white balance is impossible to change on JPEGs — it’s that the adjustment is less accurate and has less latitude than with RAW.
If you want maximum freedom to correct white balance later, shoot RAW. If you shoot JPEG, it’s best to get white balance as close as possible in camera.
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AI13y ago
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