What are exactly raw images?

[codelearner]

Would somebody explain what exactly are raw images?

[v_kyr]

See for example:  Raw image format

[codelearner]

@v_kyr are raw images the one directly coming from my camera? Please explain in laymans' terms.

[Wikinger]

Bonsoir.

Ce sont les images issues directement du capteur (RAW en anglais Brut). C'est à dire sans aucune transformation. (CR2 pour Canon, NEF pour Nikon etc ....)

Ce sont les images qui contiennent la totalité des informations. On pourrait le comparer aux pellicules argentique . Il faut donc les conserver. 

Faite vos photos en  RAW et non en Jpeg.

Vous aurez tous les avantages au traitement.

Vous traiterez directement les RAW avec Affinity photo.C'est la première étape.

Votre appareil photo peut également produire des Jpeg. Elles sont pré-traitées par l'appareil photo donc moins riches en informations.

 

Voila pour l'essentiel, le premier pas.

Cordialement.

[v_kyr]

RAW images are the pure (full) data comming from your cams sensor, so to say it's like having a digital negative/transparency in contrast to the analog film negatives of former analog camera times. Out of the RAW image data you do then process more commonly used JPG/TIFF images, where the RAW file is kept as the original (your negative).

The RAW image file's data is camera vendor and model specific and in order to process/generate common (JPG, TIFF) bitmap images out of all the information it contains, you will need a RAW processing software (a RAW processor) which can deal with this specific vendor RAW data format.

[jenkm]

Actually, a RAW file is not an image, it's just the recorded data of the sensor. There's no image to see. You can imagine it as the voltage values of sensor pixels.

[HVDB Photography]

Here it is clearly explained : RAW, JPEG and TIFF. What they are and when to use it ?

 

[John Rostron]

1 hour ago, HVDB Fotografie said:

Here it is clearly explained : RAW, JPEG and TIFF. What they are and when to use it ?

 

Yes, very nicely explained.

John