NEF files quality

Hi everyone!
Just recently started shooting both NEF with a copy of JPEG.
Installed NX2 to be able to read them, and quickly noticed there is a huge quality drop, when comparing the JPEG to the NEF of the same image!.. shouldn't be the other way around?
I retouched some images with the same software and saved them in JPEG excellent quality, but the bad quality persisted!..

Cheers

You are probably using some camera settings that are applying processing to the JPEG, where the NEF files are essentially unprocessed. Hence the term RAW.

You can post process the NEFs and make them similar and in most cases improve the quality of the final image over the camera processed JPEG.

When you shoot JPG you give up most control over the processing and instead let the camera do the post-processing for you.

When you shoot RAW you take complete control over the final product by doing your own post-processing.
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Continue to shoot in both for now. It will pay off on down the road when you learn Post Processing. Once you do learn the RAW will be much better in many instances. Just remember what Horoscope Fish said. What Post Processing software are you using now?

Welcome to the forum

Welcome. Raw almost always looks worse than jpegs to begin with. Once you begin to post process you find you can get a lot more out of the raw shot.
Don't be put off with how the unprocessed shots look.

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome to the forum. One thing one must not forget is that you have to apply some sharpening to the nef file. It's part of the essential post processing that is automatically done by the in-camera jpeg conversion. Where Nef files shine is for highlights and shadow recovery. There is no way you could go back and recover as much with a jpeg file than a Nef file.

Hummm,

First of all I have to mention, I'm a newbie. I've bought D3300 the last December and initially used the NEF + JPEG mode. When I compare the both files I can't notice any difference so I've started to shoot NEF only. It's surprising for me that you find any quality drop?!

Thank you everyone for all the help and welcoming in my first ever forum trend!
So i understand NEF does have more information than her sister jpeg photo, though that only shows after proper post processing.
I will be using PS or Lightroom 4 in the near future. I noticed this big quality gap in NX2.
I will leave here an example just so you guys can tell me if its normal, or if the NEF image shouldn't look so different and "pixelizated" (sorry).
Again thank you vey much all the repliers

I personally see little difference between the two larger shots. The larger versus small I can't say anything about since differently scaled images always appear different in quality.

I think what you might mean is posterization; pixelation is a deliberate blurring usually used to censor images.

In short, those shots look like they were taken in very low light which can increase digital "noise" even at low ISO. I have a feeling that might be your issue with these shots. Even so I zoomed in to 300% and they were looking pretty much like what I would expect based on the EXIF data and noise looked pretty well controlled to me.
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Horoscope Fish said:

I think what you might mean is posterization; pixelation is a deliberate blurring usually used to censor images.

In short, those shots look like they were taken in very low light which will increase digital "noise" significantly, even at low ISO. I have a feeling that might be your issue with these shots. I zoomed in to 300% and they were looking pretty much like what I would expect based on the EXIF data.
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Click to expand...

Are you talking about the contrast fringe around the tree branches? I occasionally even suffer those during daylight shots, especially with a blue sky. They very often appear in bird shots. I still don't know the actual cause.

J-see said:

Are you talking about the contrast fringe around the tree branches? I occasionally even suffer those during daylight shots, especially with a blue sky. They very often appear in bird shots. I still don't know the actual cause.

Click to expand...

Well the shots look pretty good to me overall... They're certainly not pixelated or showingng any posterization. I thought they looked a little noisy, but when I zoom in I'm not really seeing that either. I'm not being very clear in my first post... I made it sound like shooting in low light will make your shots noisy, that's not what I meant. Gah... Still waking up over here.

There is definitely some contrast halo around the branches but I have to zoom in pretty hard to see it. I see the same phenomenon in my photos as well from time to time and I think that must be something similar to chromatic aberration only contrast-based; like... Contrast Aberration.

In short I'm saying the shots look fine to me... They're not great shots but there's nothing technically wrong with them that I can detect.

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I see the same; when I zoom in to pixel size I see a pixelated area there where the outside of the tree meets the background which is completely normal at pixel size. But all in all the shot looks pretty ok technically.

It's something like aberration indeed, I call it contrast fringing since I didn't yet find a technical description or an explanation for the phenomena. All I know is that it has less to do with the cam or lens since I had it with both and about all lenses. I suspect physics has more to do with it than imperfections in lenses. I gave up trying to correct it in post since it is very resistant.

Horoscope Fish said:

There is definitely some contrast halo around the branches but I have to zoom in pretty hard to see it. I see the same phenomenon in my photos as well from time to time and I think that must be something similar to chromatic aberration only contrast-based; like... Contrast Aberration.

Click to expand...

I found the culprit that causes the contrast fringe/aberration/halo. It's sharpening. I reset my shot in LR and it was still there but when I also disabled LR's minimal sharpening, it was gone.

In those cases we have to pick the best of two bad options.

yeah sorry for the double post of the images, and for the different sizes!
So the bigger is JPEG out of camera, and the smaller is the NEF saved as JPEG in NX2. It is smaller but i believe the difference is noticeable.
nothing to do with the lighting conditions i believe, considering all images show this quality difference between JPEG and NEF.
will put my head around NX2 and show you 2 exactly similar crops of NEF and JPEG from one image.

feeling really glad for your help and analyses of examples i send!
good thing i joined this community

I also can not notice a difference in quality between the two. I even took test shots. I expected the image would look the same looking at them from the rear display on the camera but would have thought diff once in lightroom. Not the case. From what I understand the camera is putting the settings I have into the RAW as far as WB. That's the only setting I choose to apply seeing I prominently shoot that way. Applying any more adjustments wouldn't make sense unless shooting J-pegs. Although once in lightroom the adjustments is what differs between the two as you all know. There's only so much you can do with a J-peg file. Only thing I'm confused about is the fact that you stated the RAW file to you looks worse?

manolobartolo said:

feeling really glad for your help and analyses of examples i send!
good thing i joined this community

Click to expand...

The difference between a JPG and a RAW file coming straight out of the camera is the JPG has already been processed (by the camera) using things like the Picture Controls. The camera automatically applies adjustments to things such as white balance, saturation, contrast and sharpening; then the file is drastically compressed.

The RAW file has had none of those adjustments performed on it; the file is exactly what the sensor recorded and requires processing. RAW files are not "image files", they're data files that you need to process into image files. RAW files will always need adjustments to things like white balance, saturation, contrast and sharpening. It's more work, but the file in UN-compressed and has a LOT more flexibility when it comes to processing, which is why most people who shoot RAW choose it over shooting JPG. Shooting RAW gives you a huge amount of control over the final product that JPG files do not. JPG's will always look better right out of camera, though, because JPS's have been processed while RAW files have not.

Helpful link: RAW vs JPG: The Ultimate Visual Guide
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