Should you ask your photographer for the RAW files?
Clients ask for the RAW files more often than they ask any other technical question, and it is usually the wrong question asked for the right reason. This guide explains what a RAW file is, what happens when you try to open one, who genuinely needs them, and what to ask for instead when you do not.
What is a RAW file, exactly?
A RAW file is the unprocessed data the camera sensor recorded, before anyone decided what the picture looks like. Colour, contrast, white balance, sharpening and lens correction are not baked into it. They are decisions still waiting to be made.
That is why a RAW file is described as a negative. The comparison is accurate in the way that matters commercially: a negative is not the photograph, it is what the photograph gets made from.
Every manufacturer uses its own RAW format. Canon writes CR3, Nikon writes NEF, Sony writes ARW, Fujifilm writes RAF. They are not interchangeable, and none of them is a standard image file.
Can I open a RAW file?
Usually not, and this is where most of the confusion starts.
A RAW file does not behave like a photo. Double clicking it may show nothing, or a low resolution preview. It will not display in a browser. It will not drop into a Word document, a slide deck or a website. Email clients will not preview it. Phones often will not either, and the file is several times larger than the finished image you expected.
This happens in practice. On one commercial project the client asked for RAW, repeated the request after we explained what it meant, received the files, and came back the same day to say the images would not open. Nothing was wrong with the files. They were not photographs yet.
To use a RAW file you need software that can develop it, such as Lightroom, Capture One or the manufacturer's own converter, and you need somebody whose job it is to make the decisions the file is still waiting for.
Is RAW better quality than JPEG?
Not in the way the question usually means.
A RAW file holds more information, especially in the brightest and darkest parts of a frame, which gives a retoucher room to work. But an undeveloped RAW opened straight from the camera almost always looks flatter and duller than the finished file delivered beside it. More data is not the same thing as a better picture.
If you want the best looking image, the finished file is the best looking image. If you want control over how it looks, that is a different requirement, and RAW is the answer to that one.
Do I actually need them?
Some clients genuinely do:
- Agencies that grade photography themselves so a campaign holds one look
- In house creative and retouching teams working to their own colour standard
- International brands working with many photographers across different markets, where every location has to match a look held centrally
- Owners building a long term archive of a portfolio photographed by different people over several years
The common factor is not company size. It is that someone on your side is going to make the colour decisions, and they need the file from before those decisions were made.
Most clients are not in that position. If you are commissioning one building, one store or one campaign, and nobody on your team is going to develop the images, source files add work and remove nothing you wanted.
Our brief says "all raw image files". What does that line actually buy?
Procurement templates often carry a deliverables line like that, sometimes next to a clause claiming all files as exclusive property. It is worth knowing what the line does and does not do.
Receiving a file is not receiving rights. In Spain copyright arises with the photographer and is not transferred by handing over data. Possession of a file and permission to use it are two separate things, and the second one is written in the licence, which sets media, territory, duration and exclusivity. That is explained in our guide to image licensing for commissioned work.
So a deliverables line asking for RAW is a production instruction, not a rights clause. If the intention behind it was ownership, the licence is where that conversation actually belongs.
Who owns the RAW files?
Under Spanish law the photographer holds copyright in the images, including unpublished frames and source files, unless rights are transferred in writing. A client who receives RAW files receives files. What may be done with the resulting images is defined by the licence agreed for the project. This is not a Spanish peculiarity, it is the normal position across the European industry.
What to ask for instead
When RAW is not the real requirement, these questions get you what you actually wanted:
- Which formats and resolutions will be delivered, and for which channels
- How many final images, and who makes the selection
- Whether images can be reopened later for a different crop or format
- What the licence covers: media, territory, duration
- Who will be editing the images in future, and whether they need source files at all
Answering the last one usually settles the RAW question by itself.
Our RAW policy
We do deliver RAW and other source files on request, priced separately from the shoot. They can be agreed in the quotation, or released later if the need appears after delivery. What you receive, and what changes commercially when source files are released, is set out on our RAW file delivery page.