Answering the question I posed two days ago: is a Fujifilm JPEG image good enough to fulfill my needs?
Yes, it just might be.
I shot a bunch of photos in different conditions the past two days in RAW+JPEG Fine.1 I then imported them into Lightroom treating the JPEGs as separate photos next to the RAWs.2
Editing the RAW to my liking first and then comparing it to my SOOC JPEG, the JPEG might benefit from some light editing to create that pop you want in a photo. After that quick edit though, I might even prefer the look of the JPEG. After that I tried editing a JPEG first and applying the edits to the RAW. Even that worked fine. Guess what, I still preferred the look of the edited JPEG.
What is happening? Have I been doing it wrong all this time?
To support my point, here is the same shot three times. JPEG with basic edits, a JPEG with basic edits + exposure adjustments and a RAW with editing to my liking. Which basically is the same editing as the JPEG with basic edits + exposure adjustments. Oh, and they’re not in that order. Or maybe they are. Will you be able to tell which is which?