One Last Argument Against JPG

I’ve been teaching the benefits of shooting RAW (instead of JPG) for more than a decade. About a year ago, while developing the new display engine for Technical Camera and Kuuvik Capture 4, I did discover another strong reason why you should stop shooting JPG if you care about image quality.

Let me review the usual arguments first.

Limited, 8-bit depth. Digital cameras record at 12 to 16 bits per pixel. Even old ones and your iPhone are 12 bit devices, high-end digital backs are 16. Contemporary DSLR and mirrorless offerings record at 14 bits per pixel. Converting these high bit depth images back to 8 will have serious impact on dynamic range and color range. This is because the 256 possible steps in a JPG aren’t enough to describe a huge range of light and color. And then banding rears up its ugly head. For example, colorwise you are limited to the Adobe RGB color space, while your camera is capable of recording much more.

Fixed white balance. Once a JPG is created, white balance is fixed for good, and cannot be modified later on. You can tweak a little with hard Photoshop work, but it’s quite disastrous.

Lossy compression. The JPG format was designed to compress the hell out of image data. Consequently, you lose some data even on the highest compression quality setting. And digital cameras tend not to use the highest compression quality.

And here’s the last argument:

4:2:2 or 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. If you aren’t familiar with chroma subsampling, read the Wikipedia article first. All Canon and Nikon cameras I’ve seen files from use 4:2:2 subsampling, which means that the color information is halved horizontally. iPhone JPGs are even worse with 4:2:0 subsampling, that is, 3/4 of the color information is missing (you won’t notice it, because the heavy-handed over-processing in these files make them look like crap at actual pixels level anyway). As a comparison, the JPG Quarter HQ image quality setting in Technical Camera uses 4:4:4 chroma subsampling that preserves full color information at every pixel. These HQ files also use higher compression quality setting and are usually quite large.

As you see, JPG files are handicapped at every imaginable level. That’s fine for web display, but make this format totally unsuitable for image capture. Storage is dirt cheap these days, for example a high quality 32GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card sells for less than $15, and can store a thousand 26 megapixel images in my EOS RP. In my opinion even lossy RAW compression (such as C-RAW in new Canons) has zero significance in terms of storage. Go with the highest quality, lossless RAW. There will come a time when you’ll be grateful that you did.

Kuuvik Capture 3.2 : The Dual Histogram

The very first Kuuvik Capture release introduced RAW histograms in an attempt to provide a tool for judging exposure more precisely than what regular histograms are capable of. I even wrote an article on the merits of having a RAW histogram. The conclusion of that article was that despite you have a RAW histogram, white balancing could clip channels in the converted image even if everything was fine with the RAW; so you need to see both the RAW and the processed histograms (preferably in your RAW converter) for the final decision on your exposure.

While my former article revolved around the white balance issue, other image processing parameters, like picture style and color space, also have heavy influence on histogram precision and usability. Making to see both histogram types a fundamental need. Not to mention that launching a RAW converter is not always convenient to do.

So version 3.2 sports a new Dual Histogram tool to show Kuuvik Capture’s RAW histogram along the usual one generated from processed data.

For images, the processed part is based on the JPG preview that every RAW image contains (this is what Kuuvik Capture displays, and this is the source of the histogram shown on the camera’s LCD). This represents how the image was processed by the camera. Your RAW converter will almost certainly convert it in a different way, so the final word on exposure still belongs to the converter. But the camera’s interpretation gives a solid starting point.

The processed histogram also indicates the image’s color space. Different color spaces have different clipping points – more on this later.

You can clearly see on the example how white balancing influenced things. You’d be in trouble having made a decision solely based on the RAW histogram in this case – the blue channel would be almost completely clipped. The example belongs to the original of the following photo (that is, before contrast stretching and other adjustments).

Ice Abstract

For live view and movie recording the camera always serves video frames in sRGB – even if you set your camera to Adobe RGB. But why is that important? Well, it’s time to talk about the effect of color space choice on histograms.

Color spaces vs. histograms

I made two photos of a regular ColorChecker chart. One with setting the camera to sRGB and another with setting it to Adobe RGB. Lighting and exposure were the same.

As you can see, there’s absolutely no clipping in the RAW data. And there’s no clipping when converted to Adobe RGB. But in sRGB both highlights and shadows are clipped! So live view (which is always in sRGB) may show some clipping while Adobe RGB not. And even a histogram from an Adobe RGB conversion might show clipping while there’s absolutely no clipping in the image when converted to ProPhoto RGB in Capture One.

I’d recommend to treat these processed histogram clipping warnings as different levels. The sRGB warning in live view goes off first, this should ring a bell in your head to watch more closely after taking the image, as there may be a problem. After taking a picture, if Adobe RGB shows clipping, then it’s time to either check it in your RAW converter or back off a little bit.

But RAW histogram clipping warnings are always hard facts: indicating unrecoverable data loss.

The above example explains why I recommend to set your camera to Adobe RGB: to prevent premature clipping in histograms displayed on the camera’s LCD.

A few words on JPG support

JPG files slowly become a first-class citizen in Kuuvik Capture. The JPG processing engine in version 3.2 is up to 5x faster than previous releases. This speedup is what allows efficient histogram generation and made Dual Histograms possible. JPG histogram display was also a requirement for a JPG-only workflow, which was high on our feature request list. And now it’s fully supported as you’ll see in my upcoming post.

Kuuvik Capture 3.2 is available on the Mac App Store. It is a free update for existing Kuuvik Capture 2.x and 3.x users.

RAW File Bit Depth Changes with ISO

Let’s begin with the fact. The usable bit depth of your RAW file depends on the ISO used to shoot the image.

I discovered this while working on the RAW histogram feature in Kuuvik Capture. To make the RAW histogram usable, we have to scale the data coming from the RAW file. This scaling ensures that the left side of the histogram represents pure black and the right side represents pure white. Technically scaling is done by first subtracting the black level from each pixel, then mapping pixel data from the [0, white saturation] interval into the [0, 1] interval.

Black level is the value your sensor emits when no photons reach a given pixel. This is calculated utilizing a black masked area along the edges of the sensor (see my former post on this).

White saturation is the value from the given pixel when it’s completely full – that is more photons reaching the pixel will not generate a higher value. This depends on physical attributes of the sensor. We do a series of measurements for each sensor to determine its value. The higher the white saturation the more tones your RAW file contains.

What surprised me during the initial white saturation measurements is that with most of Canon’s cameras this value changed as I changed the ISO. Some cameras even present different white saturation in different exposure modes (Av and M for example).

The following graph shows the result from these measurements converted into usable bit depth for four cameras up to ISO 6400.

bit-depth-vs-iso-2For the mathematically inclined, usable bit depth is calculated with the formula:

\(\log_2 (w – b)\)

Where \(w\) is the white saturation and \(b\) is the black level.

The roughly 0.3 bit difference between the lowest and highest values doesn’t seem that large at first sight, but this means that you lose 15% of the tones at ISO 640 compared to ISO 800. To put it another way it’s a 1/3 stop difference.

Implications

Avoid non-full-stop ISOs.

The truth is that both ISO 500 and ISO 320 are exposed at ISO 400, putting a 1/3 stop “digital exposure compensation” value into the RAW file. For the ISO 320 setting this produces an overexposed image, which should be pulled down 1/3 stop. The downside is that you lose 1/3 stop of both tonal and dynamic range. The upside is that there will be less perceived noise, which can be helpful in some situations (and which is the basis of lots of false myths)

Avoid ISOs < 200 on crop-sensor Canons.

As you can see on the graph above, bit depth on these machines are less below ISO 200 than on or above it.

What about the 1D X?

Some of the 1-series bodies are not prone to the 1/3 stop bit depth loss. For example the 1D X starts to show this behavior at ISO 12800. The 1Ds Mark III produces the exact same bit depth at each ISO. And the 1D Mark IV works like the 5D Mark III.

So my practice is to use just full-stop ISOs and forget about ISO 100 on crop-sensor bodies.

The Adventure of the Mendacious Histogram

Digital exposure optimization is a controversial topic. Although the notion of “exposing to the right” is widespread, widely accepted with a large group of advocates, camera manufacturers “doesn’t seem to get it”. But there’s much more technical stuff behind this than simple ignorance. In this post I’ll shed some light on how complicated digital exposure optimization could be.

Let’s start with ETTR. Two of my masters, Michael Reichmann and Jeff Schewe had extensively written about the topic, so instead of replicating it I would encourage you to read the following articles and Jeff’s new book. It is imperative to grasp the idea so that you can understand the rest of the post.

  • Expose (to the) Right – The original article from 2003.
  • Optimizing Exposure – A rather utopistic view of the problem. Reminds me of Adams’ (Douglas, not Ansel) Total Perspective Vortex – as it extrapolates a whole universe not from a fairy cake, but from the fact that increasing exposure reduces shadow noise. Anyway, a good read on what would be really needed from a photographers point of view, even if its not possible with the current technology.
  • The Digital Negative – Jeff’s book collects the majority of information about digital exposure right in its first chapter.

To summarize: increasing exposure has advantages to the shadows and the amount of information retained in the RAW file. That’s great. But here comes the million dollar question: how much one should increase exposure being hundred percent confident that highlights aren’t blown or destroyed (and thus, keeping all the possible information)? You should read Ctein’s article on the dangers of ETTR regarding lost highlights.

I hope you are confused enough about whether to ETTR or not and how can you really assess over-exposure. Don’t be afraid, this is the where our adventure begins.

Before we embark on it, let me rephrase the question: as overexposure is terminal to the data (details) in the overexposed area, how can one avoid it with confidence? Regardless of whether you ETTR or not, this is important. Imagine a bright yellow flower for example. Overexposing one or more channels will destroy fine color variance – which is a bad thing (except if you will run the image through some ugly lo-fi filter, of course, in which case the things I’m writing about is totally unimportant to you). Also, what I’m writing about is for RAW shooters only. JPEG guys only get what they see, so these topics does not apply to them.

Let’s begin!

One Image – Three (Different) Histograms

The histogram is the primary tool for assessing exposure on a digital camera. But what your camera shows has only a little resemblance to the RAW data recorded. This is because all JPEG settings, such as white balance, color space, sharpening, contrast, etc. influence the histogram display. As a result, the histogram on the LCD comes from the JPEG preview of your RAW file. In an ideal world, one could set the histogram into “RAW mode” which would instruct the camera to calculate the histogram from the RAW data instead of the JPEG preview.

Canon 5D III, Auto WB

The majority of the parameters mentioned above can be zeroed (like sharpening, contrast) on the camera. The problem-child is white balance, where we have little influence by default.

Take the image on the left, for example. The RGB histogram shows gross overexposure in the red channel, you can even see overexposure warning “blinkies” in Elmo’s eyes.

Based on the camera’s histogram one would lower the exposure to avoid overexposing Elmo’s… wait! Blinkies warn for overexposure in the eyes, not the red fur, even if the red channel was blown. Something isn’t kosher with this…

Histogram from RAW Data

On the right is a histogram generated from the same image with Kuuvik Capture utilizing gamma-corrected RAW data. As you can see reds are far from being overexposed. You can also see a different distribution in the RAW histogram, with the peaks are being at distinctly different places. This is because the RAW histogram in KCapture is not white balanced.

White balance is set by multiplying data coming from a channel with a number (the white balance coefficient) to “scale” it to reach the desired white point. It is represented by a four element vector (one number for each channel, in RGGB order). You can use exiftool to examine these coefficients, they are displayed as WB RGGB Levels As Shot. The actual values for the above image are: (2185, 1024, 1024, 1526). That is, you have to multiply the red channel by 2185/1024 = 2.13 to get the white balanced image. You can easily see from the RAW histogram that multiplying reds by 2.13 on this image will blow the channel out – in that white balance setting.

Sidebar: white balance is always represented as RGGB coefficients internally, not with color temperature/tint as RAW converters and cameras present this data to you. Color temperature is an “artificial” construct to handle these numbers in a more user-friendly way. And the way these coefficients are converted into color temperature is a proprietary process for each converter. This is why you get completely different white by using the same Kelvin value in different converters.

Now let’s take a look on what RAW converters, Adobe Camera RAW 7.3 to be exact, think about the same image (Capture One displays a similar one).

Histogram in ACR 7

Part of the black magic of RAW conversion is graceful handling of the roll-off into overexposure. The fact that a non-overexposed channel can be blown during white balancing is responsible for the converter’s ability to do highlight recovery. They are mostly taming the data that is blown only by the currently set white balance. As the common myth goes: RAW files have more headroom in the highlights. And as with most of the myths, there is truth lurking behind it: because the white balance is not fixed in RAW captures, converters have the ability to extract more information from it than you would be able to get from a JPEG, where clipped highlights (even if clipped by the current white balance setting) are lost forever.

Above I shown you the case when the JPEG histogram shows overexposure, while the RAW histogram doesn’t. It could happen the other way around, which is even more dangerous. I recommend you to read Alex Tutbalin’s article on white balancing problems for an example. Alex is the author of Libraw, the library Kuuvik Capture is also using for extracting RAW data from proprietary file formats, such as Canon’s CR2.

On Gamma Correction

If you read Alex’s article, you saw the Rawnalyze tool, and if you try both that and Kuuvik Capture, you’ll get different histograms. Why? Because what Rawnalyze displays is the rawest raw data possible. That is, it doesn’t map the camera’s black level to the left side and the maximum saturation level on a given ISO to the right of the histogram (in other words, it does not scale the data). In KCapture I wanted to make the RAW histogram to look familiar to photographers (including myself), so instead of blindly displaying the raw data the app does a little processing. The processing consists of scaling (so black is on the left and white is on the right instead of somewhere in the middle of the histogram), and gamma correction.

By default RAW data is linear, that is the highest exposure stop occupies the entire right half of the histogram, the next 1/4 of it, and so on. The result is that a linear RAW histogram pushes all the data to the left, and makes it hard to judge shadow exposure and see whether we have a clipping there. Instead KCapture corrects this data the same way it happens during RAW conversion: by applying a gamma curve to make exposure stops equal sized on the display.

Mapping Theory to Practice

Let’s draw some conclusions. First, 1) white balanced in-camera histograms are not suitable for checking overexposure. RAW histograms are markedly better in this, but 2) RAW histograms can only show physical overexposure of channel(s), and are blind to white balancing induced highlight clipping. Most of that clipping is curable in the converter utilizing some form of highlight recovery, however. The 3) final word on highlight clipping is said by the RAW converter after white balance has been set.

(2) is why I called Michael’s second article an utopia. When we wrote the specification for Kuuvik Capture back in December 2011, our goal was to implement ETTR optimization described in that article. It turned out rather quickly that you can’t do this unless you have the final white balance set – which will not happen until later in the process. And even if you can do this, you shouldn’t always ETTR. Sometimes artificially overexposed images will push the noise from the shadows into the sky (scroll down to the ETTR section in the linked article for an example). And even ETTR could be behind skies turning purple.

(3) is the real reason why camera manufacturers are unable to show the same histogram as your converter (unless they are using the same algorithms, of course – which is highly unlikely).

So how do I use this information in practice?

When I’m shooting tethered (which is the majority of cases when I do landscape work), I rely on Kuuvik Capture to check the physical exposure from RAW histograms. If your physical exposure is bad it won’t get any better during RAW conversion. What I look for here is potentially uncorrectable overexposure (non-specular highlights) and as a Canon shooter who’s cursed with muddy shadows, I check for underexposure. I usually push the exposure to the right when the shadows are in danger or when there’s plenty of room for the highlights.

Then I pass the image to Capture One for the final decision. Capture One 6 had some issues with highlight roll-off handling with the 5D3, so I had to back-off a bit from extreme highlights, but v7 fixes this problem (be sure to use the v7 process).

Free (that is, non-tethered) shooting is a different beast. One needs a trick to cancel the side effects of white balancing.

Unitary White Balance

Guillermo Luijk came up with the idea of UniWB in 2008. UniWB is basically a custom white balance that sets the WB coefficients to 1 (hence the name unitary). It could be useful in the field if you can live with the ugly green images (to avoid that I usually just use UniWB for exposure tuning and switch back to AWB for the real shot).

The real downside of UniWB was the tedious process of obtaining the magenta target image. Having control over the WB coefficients, you can obtain the UniWB setting in Kuuvik Capture just with two clicks: on the Set Unitary White Balance item on the Camera menu.