What is RAW Imagery and What is It For?

Find out what the main advantages of RAW photography are and why you should consider using it

It is one of the most used image formats by professional photographers because of its great advantages when editing and the amount of information it is capable of storing, but do you know what RAW is and why you should consider using it? Photographer Edu Gómez (@edugomez) explains what its main features are and why it is the format of choice for connoisseurs of photography.

What is RAW photography?

When we talk about “RAW” in digital photography, we are referring precisely to the "raw" files that the camera's sensor is capable of capturing.

This is the digital negative generated by a camera. The camera's sensor captures all the information and stores it in that file, which contains all the data about the image and therefore makes it the most versatile when it comes to allowing us to play with the final result when editing.

This also means the file size will be larger than but, depending on the type of work we are doing, using RAW images has plenty of advantages.

Differences between RAW and JPG

At first glance, you may find that the image shot in JPG is better, because when shooting in this format the camera interprets some parameters automatically, such as sharpness and color. However, working in RAW allows you to use all the information captured by the camera's sensor to interpret it according to your own parameters and needs, to make the picture look much better than if you had taken it in JPG.

How to work with RAW files?

All digital SLR cameras shoot both RAW and JPG. By default, your camera shoots in JPG, so to use RAW you will have to configure your camera.
When we talk about output files, each camera and each brand has its own type of RAW file. Nevertheless, Adobe proposed a universal RAW format, DNG, which has some differences from normal RAW files:

- It takes up a little less space than a traditional RAW image, even without compressing the image.
- Normally, the native file of the camera has a "sidecar" file that includes all the information related to the photo. However, the dng format has the capacity to store all this metadata and does not need a twin file.

Developing RAW Files

Unlike other image formats, such as jpg, which can be read with conventional image editing programs, if you are working with RAW files, you will need specific software: such as Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Camera RAW or Capture One, in order to develop the images and start working with them.


In the course Develop RAW files with Lightroom, Edu Gómez explains what you should know when working with RAW photography and how to develop images and take full advantage of the benefits it offers in your professional work.

You may also be interested in:

- The Best Photo Editing Apps
- What Is Color Grading?
- 13 Free Photography Resources
- Download Free Presets for Adobe Lightroom