Anyone go back to JPEG after shooting in RAW?

I am a believer in shooting the highest quality jpgs for almost all uses. If you blow the exposure or get the colour balance badly out of whack, then raw....boiled....or fried....will not recover the image.
Assuming that you have some input to your cameras controls, such as sharpening, noise reduction etc, then the camera will do an excellent job of rendering the image.
Yes, the camera CAN screw things up.......but so can a human being. Not so long ago the camera computer was a lot less able than it is today, and raw was an answer to that. The problem is largely absent today and for most things I believe raw is un-needed, and perhaps even worse than jpg depending on the users computer skills.....regards, Bob

Wow you should try Lightroom, its like picasas grandady.

For Weddings my RAW files are edited by a third party. BUT all else I shoot, is with with the intention of using the only the JPEG, and with minimal PP, so I apply the same scrutiny and methods to my Wedding shots as if I were shooting for the JPEG only. However, I still always shoot RAW + JPEG (L), for all my work.

I have found, after extensive tests, the JPEG out of the box still requires some attention in Post Production, mostly always Sharpening.

I exploit, to fairly rigid formulae, the JPEG manipulations in camera. I use specific JPEG parameters for a set of three general lighting conditions I have determined as requiring differing attention: and each are different, for each camera.

I suggest if you do not already have a set of similar guidelines which you have adapted to suit what you want as an end result in your prints / files, you might run some comprehensive tests yourself: in the end, it might save a lot of time in PP, if JPEGs only is your desire.

I tend to frame in camera to a particular crop, usually to 7 x 5. But I can easily adjust to 10 x 8 (6 x 4), which is another print I use often – I think that too, saves a lot of PP time.

I am fairly critical apropos exposure and quite anal retentive about testing and analysing results - so I have fairly rigid in camera metering methods and again I have found each DSLR is different.

The point is, I used to pay a lab technician by the hour, so I guess I am of the school of thought whereby I want to nail it as close to perfect in the box, rather than pay for any adjustments later, but with digital the “later” being I do not want to pay with my TIME.

Picasa 2 is too rudimentary for my liking. I find CS3 quite quick to work for what I do on my JPEG files.

WW

RAW vs. JPEG is similar to the difference between kit lenses and pro level lenses. sure, you can take great pictures with either one. but to get output of the utmost quality and precision, you want to stick with RAW [and pro lenses] because these don't degrade the quality of your images.

I've never tried Lightroom....need to look into that.
I'm afraid I'm just being lazy...which is terrible of me.

William- The only thing I prefer Picasa for is cropping and their sharpening tool. I just like it. It's quick and I like the result. I also like their batch renaming ability and their quick DVD burning. But if I can find another program that works in a similar way and can support RAW files, I'm all for it.

On occasion, but was always unhappy. Hard to put my finger on what is wrong, certainly not exposure or color bal or too small a file. RAW seems to give me a better pic even if i do minimal work on the file.

Workflow is exactly the same as I open JPEGS in the RAW converter same as RAW. I don`t care about file size. Storage is cheap and this preserves options for the future.

I also shoot RAW and use Lightroom since there is no difference in workflow what-so-ever ... but there is a huge difference in flexability, WB options, and ability to crop after the fact and interpolate up using the most image data available (RAW).

Batching is no brainer with LR, and you can set a crop ratio (even a custom one) and apply it to every image or any set of selects in seconds. You can rearrange the images and batch re-name them, and open individual images in PS for effects and other retouching, you can select individual images in a smart collection for further work ... like your album selects. Once LR features are understood, there is no reason to use the slower, more finicky Adobe Bridge application at all.

I recently switched to outputing jpgs when finished because the files are getting so huge they eat DVDs and burden the client's computing power. Once you burn the jpg files to a "read only" DVD, they are pretty difficult to tell apart from Tiffs., and can't be altered nor recompressed. I also output a set of DNGs ... where you have the option to embed the original RAW file for future extraction if you wish.

Lightroom saves all adjustments but is non-distructive ... with RAW you can return to the original and start over if a new set of creative demands need to be addressed.

I simply have not found anything faster than LightRoom for this sort of work.

Why choose?

Memory is cheap nowadays, and RAW + JPEG gives you the speed of processing of JPEG, with the option of RAW fall-back if a critical image isn't up to scratch.