Short answer: a RAW file records nearly everything the camera sensor captured, while a JPEG is a compressed, finished version that discards much of that information to save space. I shoot RAW on every session because it leaves room to fix real problems in editing: a slightly bright window, a color cast from office lights, a shadow that needs lifting. Those fixes are where a lot of the professional difference lives, long after the headshot session itself is over.
Think of RAW as the full negative and JPEG as a print already made from it. With the negative, I can recover detail in a bright shirt that a JPEG would leave as blank white, or open up a shadow without it turning grainy and grey. Colors can be corrected precisely because the original information is still there. Once a JPEG has thrown that data away to save space, no editor can invent it back.
First pass is selection: out of a session's frames, the keepers get chosen, blinks and duplicates removed. Keepers are then developed: exposure, white balance, contrast and color adjusted per photo so the set looks consistent. Then retouching, which is its own topic, handles skin and distractions by hand. Finally the files are exported in the sizes and formats each use needs, web, print and profile crops from the same master.
You get finished JPEGs, and that is deliberate: they open everywhere, post everywhere and print well, with all the RAW advantage already baked in by hand. The RAWs stay in my archive as the masters. If a year from now you need the same photo in a new size or crop, we go back to the master and make it properly, instead of stretching a file that was never meant for it.
Most clients receive finished, edited files, because a RAW file is an ingredient, not a finished photo: it looks flat and dull until it is processed. If you have a specific reason to need RAWs, ask before the session and we will talk it through.
No. A filter applies one blanket look. Editing your session means adjusting each keeper individually: exposure, color and contrast tuned to that frame, then retouching by hand. It is closer to developing film than to tapping a preset.
Because nothing has been decided yet. A JPEG from a phone has already had sharpening, contrast and color applied automatically. A RAW shown flat is the honest starting point, and the processing step is where a photographer makes those decisions deliberately.
Keep Reading
The rule of good retouching: if anyone can tell it happened, it went too far. Here is what I fix, what I refuse to change, and why that line matters.
Read the guide →Product PhotographyWhen a customer says the color is not what they expected, the photo pipeline is usually why. Here is where color goes wrong, and the boring steps that keep it right.
Read the guide →Tell me what you need photographed and where. I will bring the studio to you and we will make a plan together.
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Your what-if. You pick the number, the math is just arithmetic.
That is the what-if your current photos may be leaving on the table.
Worth fixing first:
