As a general rule, for freelance photography assignments I do not submit the RAW files from my shoots; I submit finished, retouched images in an export format. To clear up common some confusion which can commonly arise, here I’ll go over what RAW images are and explain why, for the vast majority of cases, they offer the client no practical benefit whatsoever.
What are RAW files?
RAW files are all the information captured by a camera’s sensor ; think of them as unprocessed film. They contain a great deal of information (hence their file size can be around 30-40 Megabytes) the summary of which - a soft, undefined image - can only be viewed with specialised editing programs, such as Adobe Lightroom.
Why do professional photographers shoot in RAW format?
The advantage of editing a RAW file is that, as it contains so much exposure information, in post-production it can be “pushed” a great deal more than a JPG file. If needed, the photographer can raise and lower the exposure where needed to bring a little more balance to the final image. For instance, often when a photographer captures an image, he’ll set the subject to be perfectly exposed, and consequently, other areas (e.g. the background or foreground) will be over- or under-exposed; in such cases a little correction in post-production can benefit an image.
I want to have the best quality image possible. Don’t I therefore require the RAW file?
There is a common misconception that because RAW image files have a much larger file size, they also have a much bigger resolution than standard image formats such as JPG; this is not true at all. In fact, a RAW file taken straight from camera is less sharp, less defined version of what the exported image will be.
Whatever your intended use of your photographs, whether they are to viewed on high-resolution screens or printed at billboard size, a RAW image, for any practical use whatsoever, must, in all cases, first be exported to a standard viewing format such as JPG.
After I receive your images, what if I wanted to modify or edit them further. Is it necessary to have the RAW file?
Not at all. Any major corrections for which the RAW file would be needed (if at all), will have already been taken care of. For supplementary modifications, a JPG image is absolutely fine (if not better, as you will no longer be starting from scratch).
So why would a client require the RAW image file?
If they were intent on doing the complete editing process themselves, from scratch. That’s it.
A professional photographer will always have their own way of taking a photograph that suits their style and approach to retouch; the two go hand-in-hand; when you pay for professional photography services such as those which I offer, the retouch is a significant part of what you are paying for. If I were to submit RAW files to clients (for them to do their own post-production), I would literally be submitting half-finished work, which I therefore could not stand behind; just as editing can improve a photograph it can also ruin it, hence if I wasn’t to do the editing myself I would no longer be able to guarantee the quality of the final product.
*** There is also a very practical reason for photographers not submitting their RAW files, especially when large image counts are involved, such as with event coverage: given that a standard raw file can be around 40mb, submitting a large quantity of these electronically would great slow the process (400 raw images could amount to 16GB of data to be transferred). ***
