stumbling in my first RAW effort
debloois
Registered Users Posts: 12 Big grins
Hi,
After (happily) shooting JPEG for two years with my 300D I wanted to try out this RAW 'thing' to see if it's my cup of tea.
So at the end of shooting some macros of red tulips I changed the settings on my camera to raw and took a picture.
I have used the Canon FileViewer Utility (comes with the 300D) to view the raw file and save it (without making changes to the 'as shot' settings) to an 8-bit tif file.
When the RAW file was previewed in the FileViewer Utility and when I open the 8-bit TIF in ACDSee, the color matches what I expected (the same color as the JPEGs I shot in the same session). However, when I open the 8-bit TIF in Photoshop CS2, the color is different.
This image is a screenshot showing the same 8-bit TIF simultaneously in ACDSee and in Photoshop CS2. As you can see, colors are not the same, those in the lower version (the ACDSee window) are what I expected them to be in Photoshop also.
http://debloois.smugmug.com/photos/56655282-L.jpg
The camera was set to Parameter1, which uses sRGB colorspace.
I'm probably making some basic mistake of forgot to set some important preference somewhere, who can help me out here?
Greetings,
Karen
After (happily) shooting JPEG for two years with my 300D I wanted to try out this RAW 'thing' to see if it's my cup of tea.
So at the end of shooting some macros of red tulips I changed the settings on my camera to raw and took a picture.
I have used the Canon FileViewer Utility (comes with the 300D) to view the raw file and save it (without making changes to the 'as shot' settings) to an 8-bit tif file.
When the RAW file was previewed in the FileViewer Utility and when I open the 8-bit TIF in ACDSee, the color matches what I expected (the same color as the JPEGs I shot in the same session). However, when I open the 8-bit TIF in Photoshop CS2, the color is different.
This image is a screenshot showing the same 8-bit TIF simultaneously in ACDSee and in Photoshop CS2. As you can see, colors are not the same, those in the lower version (the ACDSee window) are what I expected them to be in Photoshop also.
http://debloois.smugmug.com/photos/56655282-L.jpg
The camera was set to Parameter1, which uses sRGB colorspace.
I'm probably making some basic mistake of forgot to set some important preference somewhere, who can help me out here?
Greetings,
Karen
0
Comments
Malte
Those Parameters in your camera are for JPEG processing. They do not apply to RAW. RAW is unprocessed, and typically in your RAW conversion, you do some processing: White balance, sharpening, bright/contrast. This is exactly what your camera does with Parameters, but with RAW, you can choose them after you take the photo.
So, I think you are looking at unprocessed photos...not sure about the TIFF differences...
Hi Malte,
I just checked and the second page shown in the ACDSee window is an embedded thumbnail, so your theory doesn't apply.
Thanks for trying though!
Greetings,
Karen
Shot RAW opened and edited using CS2 and Bridge, 16bit TIFF saved. Then saved that TIFF as a JPG and the colours are different. I edited the colours of the tiff quite a lot (more red and green saturation) and the difference was obvious on the TIFF but when saved as JPG it appears that these changes haven't been made. Note, the JPG was saved off the TIFF.
More playing needed!
~Morihei Ueshiba~
The profile embedded in the TIF is sRGB IEC61966-2.1.
When I set the working space to something else and try to open the TIF, Photoshop comes with a warning about this and tells me that de embedded profile is sRGB IEC61966-2.1. My default setting in Photoshop uses this same profile for the working space (see image of Color settings: http://debloois.smugmug.com/photos/56714039-L.jpg), and yet the color is displayed different!
I'm confused...
Karen
I know that the RAW file itself is unprocessed, but when I have opened it in Fileviewer, and saved it as TIF with settings 'as shot' then I would expect it to be processed about the same as is would have been 'in camera' when shooting JPG.
What's puzzling me is that the preview in FileViewer and ACDSee show me what I expect and Photoshop does not.
BTW, I have never had these kinds of problems with JPEG images, they always look the same (color wise) in ACDSee, Photoshop and other apps.
Thanks for trying to help!
Karen
It's important to realize that the color rendering performed by RAW processing tools is not an absolute science and will vary among different RAW utilities. One would expect the output of a Canon utility to most closely match the JPEG output of the camera, but there's no guarantee. Search around and you'll find some good comparisons of how different RAW utilities compare in the output they produce.
As a RAW convert myself (using a 20D), I strongly recommend downloading RAWShooter Essentials from pixmantec.com. It's free and is an outstanding tool for RAW processing. I use their premium edition which does not differ in the output, but includes some nice features, like curves, missing from the Essentials edition. I also own Bibble Pro, but find I use RAWShooter almost exclusively because I've compared the JPEGs and TIFFs they produce and find that RAWShooter produces colors that I find more accurate and appealing to my eye. Bibble has some very nice features that I hope make it into RAWShooter someday, but for now the quality of the files generated is the most important thing to me.
My suggestion is to just bite the bullet and turn off JPEG completely. Once you get used to the advantages RAW provides you'll never go back and there's no point wasting space on your memory card storing JPEGs that go unused.
Feel free to message me if you have questions.
Just my opinion,
Rick
I have created a gallery to show some more screendumps (of color management settings).
http://debloois.smugmug.com/gallery/1211186/1/56655282
I have enabled color management in ACDSee, set everything to the same sRGB profile and working space (in ACDSee, Adobe Gamma and Photoshop Color settings).
All applications show the working space / profile to match the embedded profile of the image.
But alas... the problem is still the same!
I like the extra options RAW offers, but I do not want to have to start adjusting a lot just to get the initial colors a JPG version of the image would give.
Furthermore, I'm concerned about the difference between one app (ACDSee, FVU) and the other (RSE, PS), I have never experienced this with JPG images.
Karen
Hi guys and gals,
Just letting you know the results of some more trial and error:
I have discovered that setting my monitor profile to a common sRGB Color space profile (and rebooting) helps reducing the difference between how the images are shown in Photoshop and otherwise (e.g. in ACDSee).
I have also installed DPP from Canon and did a new conversion from the original RAW file in DPP, RSE and FVU.
Both Canon products have created a file with colors I expect, RSE has not but the color it shows in PS is the same as shown in the RSE application, so I expect it has something to do with a camera profile (which I don't have).
I think I will stick with DPP when I want to do something with RAW files, at least that application will 'know' my Canon camera profile...
Although this first RAW adventure has not been without some troubles, I can see the added value of the extra control. I'm not switching over completely, but I will try it out some more.
For action photography RAW does not really help the speed of my 300D, so in those cases I will definitely stick to JPG...
I want to thank everybody who has taken the time to think about my problem (especially Rick)!
Greetings,
Karen