Using HIF instead of JPEG for SOOC images

Capturing
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How many people here switched from JPEG to HIF straight from camera? My Sony A7IV supports the format and I found it is a win-win situation. Files are smaller by 2-3 times and still contain more data than JPEG. Darktable handles HIF files really well, I can quickly do minor edits (if needed) and have nice photos.

My current workflow is: I shoot both RAW and HIF, I set colors profile correctly in camera (e.g. landscape vs portrait) along with other settings. Then I use HIF by default and resort to RAW if HIF quality is not enough.

Some people report that DT does not render HIF correctly (https://discuss.pixls.us/t/what-repetitive-photo-work-still-happens-outside-your-main-editor/60563/9?u=tankist02), personally I did not notice that.

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Still just raw for me, no hif or jpeg unless I have to.

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I think it could be a matter of non supported gamut and/or inadequate monitor. I mean, I apply the famous patch for Cairo/GTK when I build locally for the Mac (see elsewhere in the forum, it is automatically applied by ART’s build but for darktable you need to rebuild the patched GTK yourself). However, on the external monitor I still see differences between the HIF visualised in darkroom and in the Preview application. I will have to double check it is still happens on the XDR retina screen of the MacBook. *

On Linux, I use Wayland so probably it’s not even possible to do proper color management and in any case the laptop monitor is not HDR and only sRGB.

Back on topic, with my Nikon I almost always shoot HLG. Especially the monochrome photos, with red filter applied, a slightly higher contrast than default settings and a bit of sharpness, come out so beautifully wide in tone, deep shadows, brilliant highlights (and tremendously dramatic skies when they are overcast and full of clouds…) that I don’t need to go through the raw at all.

Sometimes I do it just to check if I am able to reproduce the same result. Not quite.

I also occasionally use some Picture Controls (equivalent of FujiFilm’s recipes in Nikon’s world) developed by other users. Some of them are very good, but produce only sRGB jpegs, unfortunately.

  • PS.: I have noticed that by default darktable opens the HIFs with color calibration enabled. If I disable that module then the rendering is the same as in the external viewer, at least on a real HDR screen.
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For JPEG only shooters, I think switching could make sense. But I don’t see any point in shooting in anything but Raw.

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Help me understand the RAW purism. If the format was say 99% of the original data for 50% of the size you still wouldn’t use it? Does Nikon publish how much it diverges from the raw data?

The way I see it, the information already passes through many interferences before it is even saved, atmosphere, lenses, bayer, ADC, etc. What is one more process which is supposed to be visually lossless?

Honest question, just interested in knowing why the need towards lossless.

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For me, its about maximizing the amount of data I can collect from the scene. I don’t need any of the benefits of compressed raw (burst speed, storing more shots in the same amount of space) because I don’t shoot in bursts nor do I shoot a lot of frames, so size savings doesn’t really matter. Plus I paid all this money for that capability, so why not maximize it?

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Sometimes! The jpegs that come out of my mid range Android phone (Samsung A54) are horrible: over saturated and over sharpened…but the HIFS are more acceptable.

HEIC out of my Fuji X-H2S are pretty good too, but I usually shoot raw and edit those.

The big problem with HIC (HIF whatever) for me is compatibility with web pages and other apps…most only accept jpegs so HICs have to be converted to JPEG, so I might as well have started from RAW…or shoot jpegs.

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I think that we are speaking of different things. HIF files are not raws, are not to be confused with the NEF HE*. It’s quite established that these are virtually indistinguishable from the lossless ones.

HIFs are an alternative to JPEGs.

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I always shoot raw. Until recently I did jpg+raw. But I stopped with that.

If I need a jpg, in the case a need to share quickly, for my Leica I just use the Leica photos app. It works great and reliable. (I could be a little faster but that is my only remark). The Leica only has one card slot so why waste the storage space on jpgs. So then while sharing I use JPG, then I know for sure people can read it.

For my Nikon, well, it supports USB-C. If I need to share quickly, I connect it with my phone or any other device and use software to convert from raw to jpg.

I have used HIF, HEIC before but I couldn’t see the benefit as there was much less support in the receiving end.

I am fairly enthusiastic about JXL, because the support is getting there: in browsers and on the receiving end. Just waiting for my cloud provider to properly handle it, but then I may look at a contender for my image archive

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JPG, HIF etc have a lot of avoidable processing done to the image, and not necessarily in a way I like. Then, at least JPG is 8 bits/channel, compared to a raw at 12-14 bits/channel. Once that extra information is gone, you cannot get it back.

While retaining the extra information is worthwhile, not having to accept/undo the camera processing is a big reason for me to work in raw. The extra storage room required isn’t that much of an issue. That’s also a reason not to use lossy compressed raw formats…

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I thought they were talking about compressed RAW, not lossy 8bit processed photos coming out of the camera, my bad there.

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When I came back to photography, the film workflow I cut my teeth on was supplanted by digital, so I had to figure that out. I started just shooting to JPEG, rapidly found myself trying to mung the noise out of and sharpness into my captures from a 6MP camera. Generally got good captures right out of the camera, but when things went south of that…

The picayune thing that finally pushed me to raw captures was the desire to make “proof-sized” JPEGs right off the bat. For me, proof-size was (and still is) 800x600, and no Nikon camera (another constraint to my consideration, started with Nikon in the '70s, inertia…) that made such small renditions. That, and my aerospace-influenced way of looking at data, that the raw telemetry is sacrosanct, gravitated my sorry behind to the concept that the raw file is the fount of all rendition.

That thinking greatly influenced my development of rawproc, very much oriented to the efficient processing of raw originals. Later, with a better camera and the blessing that is highlight-weighted metering, that workflow enabled dealing wholesale with the captures from a scene; from the proofs, re-process the first capture from the scene, delete the other proofs, and re-run batch with the first-capture’s toolchain. Yay.

This thinking also influenced my perspective on metadata. That is, the metadata in the raw file is associated with 1) describing the raw file, and 2) what’s needed to process the raw file to rendition. With the glaring exception of the camera color matrix Nikon supports this, so the raw file’s metadata is where I go to look for that stuff. I particularly don’t wholesale copy all that to any rendition, too much futzing for stuff I can get from the original raw. All I send to renditions are the essential capture information: f-stop, shutter speed, iso, focal length. Easily handled with the libjpeg/png/tiff libraries, so I recently removed exiv2 from the essential rawproc build. However, I’m starting to cogitate how to use the Nikon Z-mount lens correction data, and that bolloxes the above. Might try to talk libraw folk into including it in their data presentation…

Anyhoo, coffee-fueled Sunday cogitation …

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I don’t want to be the party pooper, but I still think that we are mixing up 3 different debates here:

  • JPEG vs HIF (or other formats with advantages over jpeg),
  • RAW vs JPEG only (or even RAW+JPEG),
  • lossless RAWs vs compressed lossy-but-nobody-is-actually-able-to-notice-the-difference RAWs.
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Lossy compressed raws don’t tell you how much you lost. And like I said, the gain in storage space isn’t important for me. Lossless compression is of course not an issue.

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This was my original question.

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Oh, sorry.

I guess what I care about is whether the folk I pass renditions to can see them. Pretty sure about JPEG, not so sure about HIF (HEIF?).

But my raw diatribe still stands. Wouldn’t use either as the camera product.

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No need to be sorry, discussions about photo formats are always interesting.

I never had any compatibility problems with HIF files. Fedora and iPhone handle them just fine and I can upload them to Google Photos or Strava (from iPhone) without any problems. Uploading to Strava from computer does not work though.

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It seems everybody: High Efficiency Image File Format - Wikipedia

Alternatively, one can always make an attempt and see if all receivers can see them.

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