Photographic Notes 50- Why do professional photographers keep the Raw format?

First of all, raw format pictures are not compressed, and some cameras have compressible raw format pictures, which are also lossless compression. Jpeg format can be straight out, but raw format needs to process the image, which is inseparable from shooting and post-production.

Raw format pictures have a larger dynamic range than jpeg pictures, which means that more picture information is recorded, and the details that were invisible to the naked eye at that time can be recovered later.

Raw format pictures also have more color information, because these pictures have higher digits. Different cameras have 12 bits or 14 bits, and jpeg is usually 8 bits. More color information means more later space.

There is also one of the most important and irreplaceable reasons:

For example, if you take part in a competition, how can you prove that the submitted jpeg is your photo?

Raw format pictures can be proved to be the original pictures, with original data. A picture in raw format, no matter what changes you make to it, as long as it is not saved in other formats, will not damage the picture quality. If jpeg is modified and saved, it will become a new file and cannot be returned to the original image.