Do we get all the raw photos as well as the edited ones? (2024)

FAQs

Do we get all the raw photos as well as the edited ones? ›

Most professional photographers will retain all copyright and artistic license over their images, so wont give you their RAWs. You are paying them for their professional expertise to edit your photographs - so that's what you get provided with professionally edited JPGs.

A RAW file ALWAYS remains untouched. Any editing you do with a RAW file is saved as a separate file in a format you designate (e.g., TIFF, JPG). TIFF and JPG files can degrade in quality if they are edited multiple times, although some forms of TIFF files can remain lossless (but the file size would be much larger).

The fine tuned editing, the color correction, the skin retouching, those are all equivalent to preparing and cooking those raw ingredients. Simply put, you don't ask a professional photographer to give you their RAW photos because that would be giving you only half of an unfinished work of art.

Tl;dr. Photographers don't give RAWs because they're unfinished products. We're far too proud of our work to put it out into the world without our finishing touches on it. If you dislike your photos, share your (appropriate) feedback with your photographer and see what adjustments they're willing to make.

One reason why a photographer may not want to give their clients the RAW files is that they represent the raw, unedited material that is not representative of the final product that the photographer intends to deliver.

Since RAWs are read-only and can't be edited directly, the edits must be saved to a mediator file which is . PHOTO, in the case of Pixelmator Photo (other editors may also use sidecar files such as XMP, for instance).

Giving you every single photo does not accurately reflect the finished product, and giving you any unedited shots (the "RAW files" / unedited images) certainly does not reflect the finished product.

All the editing and retouching are part of that “cooking” process. Just like a chef's pizza is best when cooked and finished, so is a photographer's image. Essentially, asking for the raws is saying you don't like their work/the way they edit.

You can certainly negotiate with a photographer for raw files and an accompanying license for whatever purpose you plan to use them for. It's a relatively big ask, and you should be prepared to compensate them accordingly.

What not to ask a photographer? ›

Most professional photographers will retain all copyright and artistic license over their images, so wont give you their RAWs.

So yes, you are right - RAW files are duller and not as sharp as JPGs out of the camera. But that's good, as it gives you complete control when editing. RAW files also have much more information than JPGs — so your ability to edit and extract information is far greater than from a JPG.

Any raw file has to be processed to result in a usable image. What you see is a result of that processing of the sensor data. The difference is that what you see on the camera LCD has been processed automatically, with fixed parameters that you have no control over.

One of the largest benefits of RAW is the ability to recover shadows and highlights in post-processing without bringing in the grainy noise usually associated with high ISO settings. RAWs are very forgiving if you have severely underexposed or overexposed areas.

As a photographer, you develop your own way of processing your images, and in reality, this is what the client will have booked you for in the first instance. Unless you are passing the raw files across for processing by a retoucher, then the RAW files should stay with you.

RAW Archives: The Professional Responsibility

Simply put, yes as a professional photographer I hold onto all RAW “keeper” images forever. Why? Because hard drive storage costs about 5-10 cents per gigabyte these days, and so per-image we're talking about fractions of a penny here.

Most videographers won't keep every clip from your wedding day saved forever, but if you purchase your raw footage, you can. Your raw footage consists of all of the clips that your wedding videographer shot that day, so you could watch the entire father-daughter dance, toasts, etc.

However, if you shoot both RAW and JPEG, your camera will produce JPEGs with the effects added, as well as RAWs without the effects. So if you want to see the effects while maintaining the integrity of the RAW file, then capturing both can be beneficial.