Question about RAW vs JPEG and on-camera processing

embender

I have a Nikon D300 and have been learning how to use it, so this is a basic question that has me a bit perplexed.

I've been playing with camera settings and haven't noticed any change when I set the "Picture Control" to Vivid. This had me confused as to why I wasn't seeing any differences in the resultant images. So I set up a control shot to compare and be sure. I set "Picture Control" to Vivid and took 4 shots:

1: Vivid, Saturation +0
2: Vivid, Saturation +1
3: Vivid, Saturation +2
4: Vivid, Saturation +3

I'm mostly just experimenting, just to see the effects and convince myself it is doing what it is advertised to do. What I noticed was that when shooting RAW, there was absolutely no difference between the resultant images as loaded into both Aperture and iPhoto. I normally use Aperture, but loaded these into iPhoto to see if maybe Aperture was desaturating the colors or something, because I was expecting some differences as a result of the above changes. iPhoto still showed no change.

Then I shot the same images in JPEG, and then I saw the expected changes with enhanced colors at Vivid/S0, and way over saturated at Vivid/Saturation +3. But no change in the 4 images when shot in RAW.

So what's the dealio? I was expecting to see more saturated colors in the image regardless of the format it was saved in. Why do these only show up in JPEG? Of course, one can adjust the colors in software, but if you know you want "vivid" as a working default, seems like it would be nice to have these settings carry over into the RAW file as the starting default for the saturation levels. Or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for any help or explanation.

ziggy53

Embender, welcome to the Digital Grin.

I moved this to the "Finishing School" forum because this is really a software question and a software issue.

There is a difference in RAW files and JPG files in that JPG files are processed by the camera using the personal preferences you described in your post.

The RAW files are simply "captures" that allow subsequent software processing in an independent computer. While the user preferences may, or may not, be recorded as data withing the RAW file, the processing software may, or may not, be able to decode and apply the preferences and may use a completely different processing scheme to that of the camera's image processor.

Sometimes RAW conversion software will honor the user settings and often the manufacturer's software has that capability, along with the ability to override the settings.

Until you output the RAW converter's processing as a hard-boiled file, typically a TIFF or JPG, the changes are not committed and the RAW file is typically not altered, giving you the opportunity for future alternate processing.

Since in-camera JPG processing rarely gives you results equal to the better control of a full-blown computer and software, it is usually your benefit to opt for the RAW files and later processing. If you want the best of both worlds, many cameras allow saving both JPG and RAW files, preserving all of your options.

embender

Thank you for the warm welcome, ziggy53. Also, thanks for moving to the appropriate forum, I'm still learning my way around here. And finally, thanks for the explanation. I'm still learning the intricacies of RAW and the camera itself, this thing has more controls than the Space Shuttle, it seems sometimes. A far cry from my last SLR over 20 years ago and I find myself on the steep end of the learning curve once again. As you can see, I'm still working on the basics ... but I *can* be taught! Thanks!

DsrtVW

Where you will really see the difference is if you try Neutral, Standard or Vivid.
It will make a difference on jpeg out put the saturation control.
If you are just looking at the LCD you might have to go -2 +2 to see a big difference.
You do see the difference when using Capture NX in RAW. But maybe not in Aperture. Never used that software so could not tell you.
But Ziggy is making sense on it.

embender

Thanks, DsrtVW. Seems my trial license for Capture NX has expired and to use it further I'd need to fork over the money and purchase it outright, so I can't try it out just now to see, but I don't doubt what you say. So if Capture NX shows the effects of vivid, etc, for RAW, then the information must be encoded, but as ziggy53 says, perhaps some third party software like Aperture do not decode and use it. Bummer.

arodney

embender wrote:

So if Capture NX shows the effects of vivid, etc, for RAW, then the information must be encoded, but as ziggy53 says, perhaps some third party software like Aperture do not decode and use it. Bummer.

None of the 3rd party Raw converters will utilize these settings as they are proprietary metadata tags. The fault here lies with the camera manufacturers who lock out other converters. That said, you can get close to the effect with other products by creating your own presets for initial importation of the Raw or you can try using an Adobe product which utilizes what are called DNG profiles that are built to attempt to mimic this effect (more or less).

cmason

I believe Lightroom 2 now supports camera profiles, and the Nikon profile does support this or at least come close to the spirit of these in camera profiles

http://blogs.oreilly.com/lightroom/2008/08/adobe-camera-profiles-and-ligh.html

jrogers

I would assume that your D300 is compatible with Nikon's viewer program ViewNX. It came free with my D60, and you might be able to just download it anyway. It lets you tweek RAW images and should show the raw files with the setting that you've applied.