professional - Why is giving clients RAW files such a sensitive matter among photographers?

I've been trying to understand why handing out the RAW files to clients is a sensitive issue among professional photographers.

I've often heard explanations that compares the RAW files to film negatives and that I wouldn't hand them out. The answer to that is no I wouldn't, but that's not a fair analogy either. The main reason that I won't give someone my film negatives is that they're irreplaceable. I can't make copies of them without loosing quality, but I can make 1:1 copies of my RAW files and keep all data. All in all I don't really buy that explanation to why professional photographers don't give clients RAW files.

I wouldn't give a client RAW files either. But my reasons would be based upon things like:

• I want them to see what I had in mind to capture, not halfway through the process.


• I don't want to risk having edits made by others potentially being presented as my work to potential clients.


• I would want to keep RAW files alone to have the possibility to use it to help prove that the photos are mine in court.


• If I've happened to take a keeper that I had to heavily correct in post I wouldn't want my clients to see that. That could make me appear as a bad photographer for not nailing my settings in camera.

Among photographers there seem to be a strong consensus not to give clients RAW files, but I really want to know why. Is there an obvious reason that I've missed?

Just to be clear: This question is not about giving clients RAW files instead of JPEG, but rather RAW in addition to JPEG

Answer

I do offer RAW files for my photos but I don't give them automatically purely because of the size and difficulty to use. A RAW file is substantially larger than even a max quality finished JPEG. Additionally, a RAW file is of no use without a photographer to develop it. It is just raw sensor data and still needs things like color grading and exposure controls and possibly cropping before it is a good photo.

Personally, I offer to give copies of any RAWs the customer wants, but I also preface that with an explanation that the RAW files don't represent final works and are only useful if they are going to touch it up or have someone touch it up.

Many photographers don't like releasing that much control of their images. They may be willing to release a full quality finished product even if that gets mangled, they know it started from a good place. RAW files on the other hand could be associated back to them as a negative thing since they are not finished products and may be poorly handled.

Then there is the photographers who simply want to be able to charge for every use of an image and thus only provide limited quality images to start with so that you have to go back to them if you want larger prints. Personally, I despise that practice, but it is still very common.