RAW conversion to color ?

So I imported a shoot from a Canon 5D II, using RAW/JPG into Aperture. I large portion of the shoot was set to Monochrome under Picture Style.
They import fine, but as soon as I click on one in the Aperture browser - it changes into a color profile.
Anyone ?

RAW files are always color. Are you setting the RAWs as the master? You can always apply B/W in Aperture.

Similar Messages

Bad D3 RAW Conversion - Clipped color in shadows...

...and other issues.
Well. My thread was deleted last time and I didn't get any reasons as to why. What is up with this place? Good thing I always copy my message before posting. Never know when the internet is going to go kaboom... (or somebody is going to delete your thread.)
I just shelled out $200 for this product and the moderators are deleting my threads?!
I think I smell fish.
- Issue 1.
Aperture's raw conversion for the Nikon D3 is clipping the color from shadows.... generally. (About 99% of the time.) It is possible that the couple of images I haven't seen the problem occur in have color detail just above the clipping threshold.
This really makes for some ugly images.
Aperture team: How about we get an update to fix this?
I just spent 5 hours importing and organizing ~3k images into my existing library now that Aperture finally supports the D3 but now I can't use it. Unfortunately I have been forced to use Bridge for the last couple of months due to no D3 support. Through this, I have become accustomed to its (Bridge's) speed and ACR's RAW conversion. Now Aperture flies and it is MUCH appreciated but the raw conversions are a little noisy and the colorless shadows is a BIG problem.
In the samples below, watch the shadow on the brown wall behind her as well as the shadow areas on the neck in the close up. Note that the red strap in the file with the color clipped has almost no red left.
I have another image I took that I was playing with to see how far I could pull the file and still retain shadow detail. The image is in color and looks alright when opened with ACR but when I open it in Aperture, there is almost no color at all in the image. This leads me to believe that Aperture's D3 raw conversion is throwing away color information at a specific level.
I have a couple of sample images side by side here:
http://www.uberfoto.com/images/misc/temp/colorclipfull.png
http://www.uberfoto.com/images/misc/temp/colorclipcrop.png
- FYI, I don't have any of these issues with D200 NEF's.
- Issue 2.
The RAW sharpening has absolutely no affect on any of my D3 images. I bring up the camera model because it could be a specific camera issue. I haven't heard of anybody else having this problem.
- Issue 3.
Where are the CA removal tools?
I don't mean this in any sort of rude way. My intention was to bring up some issues that I have come across and see if I could get some feedback.
-Josh

The email I received was strictly regarding my post being deleted. I have not heard anything in reference to the RAW 2.0 problem.
Here is a comparison of the same image. One exported from Aperture and the other opened in ACR and saved as a JPG.
http://www.uberfoto.com/images/misc/temp/colorclipAP-ACR.jpg
http://www.uberfoto.com/images/misc/temp/colorclip_AP-ACRzoom.jpg
Another thing I noticed is that Aperture preview generator does not clip the color data like the raw converter does. Previews created after image adjustments retain their color in the shadows while the full composite view displays in monochrome. This is an image I took in the studio where the PW died and the flash didn't pop so it was very dark. The original image was nearly all black with no discernible details until I pulled the exposure back up. The ACR conversion looks nearly identical (discarding small differences in brand interpretation) to the "Preview" in AP2.0.
http://www.uberfoto.com/images/misc/temp/colorclipraw.jpg
http://www.uberfoto.com/images/misc/temp/colorclippreview.jpg

Exported Raw Conversion Image Resolution and Assigning a Color Profile, etc

In Aperture 1.1, although I set the exported Raw conversion image resolution to 300 dpi in the preferences, it continues to come out at 72 dpi which is something of an inconvenience. Also, is it possible to assign a color profile to the "exported version" so that it is congruent to my PS CS2 color workspace (if that is what its called). Is this program capable of carrying out a conversion as a background operation? Finally, can the layout windows be configured so that they remember how they have been used in the past? Thanks.

Iatrogenic huh! Cool!
Anyway, I'm not real clear on what it is you are trying to accomplish. Despite your obvious vocabulary skills, there seems to be some disconnect relative to what you are trying to accomplish. You are right that "exporting a version" in Aperture is roughly equivalent to what happens in ACR when you "Open" a RAW image into Photoshop. In both cases you have, hopefully, already done the adjusting of parameters you want prior to "exporting", or "opening". When you "open" or "export" you wind up with an "image" composed of pixels, whereas in the RAW adjustment phase you are just working with a temporary thumbnail and a set of mathematical instructions. Big difference, I suppose is that when you "open" and image from ACR into CS2, the resulting image is truly just pixels and has not had a "file type" applied to the file yet, until you "save" it, while in Aperture, if you "export" a file to CS2, or to the desktop, you end up with the file type already applied. Presuming you "export" a 16 bit TIFF or PSD, there is no operational difference.
I could be wrong, but with the new Bayer Demosaicing algorithms in Aperture 1.1, and the Camera RAW adjustments, you should be able to come up with an adjusted image that is VERY close if not identical to one done in ACR, with the possible exception of lens abberation adjustment. I was very critical of the RAW adjustments in 1.0.1, but I am very happy with the capabilites in 1.1. That said, I think there is still some room for improvement in user friendliness of some of the adjustments such as Levels.

Raw Conversion: Colors not accurate. Correction with profile?

Hi,
When I create JPGs from my Raw files, the results don't look natural. Some colors have more saturation, some less. For example, the colors of the KoMi A series look somehow dirty; the reds of the Maxxum 5D seem to be oversaturated (dark reds are to bright, brown faces look rather pinkish).
This is in comparison to the orignal objects, to the JPGs generated from the KoMi Raw converter and to the in-camera JPGs.
Since Lightroom has tremendous color tuning options (under HSL and Color), I wonder whether a camera-specific profile can make the colors more natural. Has anybody tried for the KoMi cameras? Can anybody share a profile?
I don't have a color checker, so this would be a tough one for me. I tried a bit, but whenever one color seemed right, another color had become worse.
Here is my equipment:
Cameras: Konica Minolta A2, Minolta A1, Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D.
Other: My room has fluorescent tubes of type 950 (5000K, highest quality, Philips Graphica Pro) or of course daylight from outside. My screen is calibrated using ColorPlus hardware. I used a grey card for most of my photos. JPGs viewed with IMatch (color-profile aware).
Regards,
Martin

Hallo Uli,
there are two aspects of the color deviation:
1. Displaying colors in LR
This is what you are addressing in the other thread. I can confirm this behavior, but let's not touch this matter here.
2. Raw conversion
This is what I am talking about in this post. The effect is actually larger than the display deviation.
Regards,
Martin

Raw conversion color differences

Yes, I know that Adobe had to guess at how raw files are encoded (I shoot Nikon)a and that perfect color conversion should not be expected but...
I started with Capture NX2 and while I loved the quality of pictures I could get from it, it was very slow and cumbersome, and publishing photos was not possible.
I switched to LR3 and found the photo management (publishing, collections, etc) to be marvelous (maybe other products have it as well, but I found my happy place. However, I noticed that even with a calibrated monitor the colors were not right. Below are two pictures labeled cnx2 and LR3. The CNX2 version was processed to include "bluing" the sky. Not much else was done. The LR3 version (done as a training aid until this was found) is unprocessed except for an X-rite color checker profile applied (more on this later). Notice how the CNX2 red has turned pink or magenta in the LR3 version. To try and fix the pink, I bought an X-Rite color checker and installed their plugin for creating profiles. Made no significant difference. This is really bothering me. Sure with some skills I haven't yet acquired I may be able to target the red and fix it, but to do it correctly I'd need to know what It's supposed to look like, and I had hoped to no longer require the use of CNX2 so that wouldn't be the case. I'm considering going back to CNX2 for raw conversions and maybe capture sharpening (I'm more comfortable with CNX2 capture sharpening numbers than I am with LR3).
CNX2
LR3/ACR 6.x
Thoughts? Suggestions?

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Jeff Schewe wrote:
Really, people tend to give Nikon and Canon far too much credit...in fact, they just barely got this stuff to work. I will say the cameras and sensors are pretty darn impressive...their image processing knowledge, not so much.
Canon does seem to know how to make pleasing images and get the most out of their data.
Some examples: Canon does a better job, in some ways, at rescuing partial overexposure (compare sunset images). And they know how to put a raw converter in a piece of silicon that runs in a tiny fraction of a second.
But these things aren't really important... The real issue is even simpler:
If all you did was make the default profile for each camera produce the same colors the cameras themselves produce, while still providing all the same configurability and features, you'd cease to get complaints about colors being "off".
Whether you think the cameras produce "good" color or the camera company engineers know anything about color is irrelevant.
No one would be harmed by this, but you'd stop confusing customers who expect one thing and see another.
-Noel

Lightroom VS Camera Raw 5.5 (color correction)

Hi, does somebody know if discarding the advantage of making layers of Photoshop, is the Adobe Lightroom color correction controls superiors to the CameraRaw PS Interface correction controls ??? I mean for color correction purposes is Adobe Lightroom better tan PS's camera raw interface ???? because for me both controls seem to be pretty much the same thing, does anyone know something about it ??
Thank you in advance !

They seem the same because they are the same thing. Lightroom is basically an interface built around the camera raw processing core so you will get exactly the same results. The only thing really that you can do in Camera RAW that you can't in Lightroom is point curves (the interface simply doesn't expose them at the moment), which are almost never needed in raw conversion, except if you do special effects. I almost never use Photoshop anymore as Lightroom basically does all I need.
P.S. the latest version of camera RAW is 5.6! Lightroom is at 2.6. The last number corresponds not by accident.

Camera RAW: NEF - JPG color dessaster

Hallo...
I use PS CS4 on my Mac. Normally I use Camera RAW to convert my D90 NEF-files to JPG-files without using Photoshop.
In Camera RAW look all colors great. When I convert the 12Bit-Raw-files to 8Bit-JPG's all colors look sad and gray.
Where is my mistake??
In the export-dialog it's not important if i set 16-bit export or 8-bit export - the colors look like crap!
The only workarround i found is to rise the saturation and dynamic for 15-25 points. Is there no better way?

If you are saving to JPG directly out of Camera RAW and not enhancing further in Photoshop then you should probably save as sRGB, especially if you are putting the JPGs out for people to see on the internet.
What could be happening is that you’re saving as ProPhotoRGB or AdobeRGB but the viewer you’re using to verify the colors is not doing color-management properly so it is interpreting the colors as if the JPG was sRGB even though it’s not.
If you are going to be editing in Photoshop then keep the colorspace in ACR as 16-bit ProPhotoRGB and do the conversion to 8-bits and sRGB in PS just before saving as JPG.

Nikon D3 Raw Conversion difference between ACR4.4 and CaptureNX

Digital Photography Review has just published an in depth review of the D3. In it they compare raw conversions by ACR 4.4, ViewNX 1.0.3 (Capture NX), and Capture One 4.0.1. The ViewNX conversion mirrors the camera's jpg standard; but there are significant differences - to my eye at least - between that and the colours in the GretagMacbeth chart of the ACR result.
Is this sort of thing common knowledge among the LR community?
I would have thought this a rather fundamental issue; but would welcome any thoughts from those more familiar with this level of colour expertise.
Anyone interested can see the dpr result on page 17 of the review at
www.dpreview.com/reviews/NikonD3/page17.asp

It's not unique to a D3. Check out http://www.damianharty.com/Purple.html for my take on it all - including a step-by-step guide to the calibration process Michael mentions.
Others get very uptight about the fact that this isn't a "proper" calibration and I'm sure that technically they're right, but life is short and this route works well for me. It also ends up as an LR preset and is super-fast to apply.
If "accuracy" was the only consideration, the camera wouldn't have "vivid" and "portrait" and all those other settings in it. We also wouldn't have had, in days gone by, the choice between Fuji Velvia and Kodak Portra - see http://www.damianharty.com/Film.html for my take on all that, too.
Both my articles are typically short-attention span things that appear on the net. Try "Real World Color Management" for a genuine guide through it all.
Or else don't worry about it.
Damian
PS I'm sure I used to be able to format links more nicely than that. Where did that go?

Need help with RAW conversion in 1.5

Previous tests on RAW conversion have confirmed that Aperture and CI pretty much all in camera settings except white balance. In my previous tests with everything set to pretty much "normal" in camera Aperture's RAW conversion was close but not exact to the camera produced JPG's of the same exact image (camera set to RAW+JPG). I have no way to test but now the same exact images are no where near the same color balance or temperature.
Does anyone else have this issue with 1.5? What is going on?
I can post some examples if it would help.

Hello, rwboyer
Quote: "[sic with] pretty much all in camera settings
except white balance. In my previous tests with
everything set to pretty much "normal" in camera
Aperture's RAW conversion was close but not exact to
the camera produced JPG's of the same exact image
(camera set to RAW+JPG)."
What are you using as a comparison for the jpegs?
Comparing a RAW photograph to a jpeg duplicate would
not look the same under close examination.
Let's see the examples.
love & peace,
victor
Let me rephrase and provide an example,
I have the camera set to produce a RAW file and a JPG of the same shot. In Aperture 1.1 the way both file looked side by side in Aperture was close but not identical, the way both files looked exported to JPG were close. After switching to Aperture 1.5 the same exact files look completely different.
Here is an example exported from Aperture 1.5
{Moderator note: Links to images were removed. Please only link to images that would be 'family-friendly'.}
Thanks
MacBookPro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Do you change the default RAW conversion settings?

I have used Sony (and formerly used Panasonic MFT) cameras (a900, a850) for two or three years and never had any reason to change the default RAW conversion settings. Five weeks ago I started using Sony's new a77, and for the first time am not satisfied with Aperture's default RAW conversion. (I recalibrated all my monitors -- twice -- thinking that something in my color workflow had got busted.) The default a77 RAW file conversion results in an overly-saturated, "Disneyfied" picture. I have found that by sliding "Boost" almost to zero, and cutting "Hue Boost" by half, I end up with a much more life-like, atmospheric, picture -- and one that closely matches the default rendering of RAW files from the a850 and a900.
1. Do you change the default RAW conversions settings? Why?
2. To what units, specifically, do the scales of these controls refer?
3. It seems that Hue Boost provides a range of settings that corresponds to the print settings "Perceptual" (= zero hue boost) to "Relative Colorimetric" (= full hue boost); does that make sense?
The User Manual, as usual, provides a solid concise explanation of the RAW Fine Tuning Brick.
Any experience you can share is appreciated. Thanks.
(Added:
(It seems conceptually wrong to me to have these controls be part of the RAW converter. Are there other adjustments in Aperture that do the same thing?)
--Kirby.
Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

William -- many thanks for your help. I will almost certainly change the default for my a77 (as well as for the Nex-7 I used for a week).
Are there is any other adjustments mathematically similar to the "Boost" or "Hue Boost" sliders in the RAW Fine Tuning Brick? I ask for two reasons:
- Mostly I'm just trying to figure out what they do, and strengthen with knowledge my quiver of Aperture effects. According the the User Manual, they change the overall contrast, and the amount to which the hue is changed as the overall contrast is increased.
- In practice, it makes sense to me to have the RAW conversion produce the "flattest", least "effected" image possible -- to leave _aesthetic_ adjustments to me. I don't want to use the RAW Fine Tuning controls as part of my workflow; I want to know how to get the same increase in contrast and control of hues using other adjustments (that, specifically, don't require de-mosaic'ing). Apple seems to indicate that the use of the RAW Fine Tuning controls may be the best approach:
For images that consist of saturated primary and secondary colors, such as an image of flowers in a lush garden, shifting the hues to their true values has a desirable visual effect. However, this is not visually desirable for images containing skin tones.
The implication is spelled out in the sentencesthat follow: use the max setting for flowers, and the minimum setting for portraits. Isn't it odd that this recommendation is left to the RAW converter, and is buried deep in the User Manual?

Aperture 2 raw conversion very bad with some subjects (like sunsets)

Please take a look at this composite:
http://amrosario.com/rawsun.jpg
These conversions were done in Aperture 2 using only the three different raw conversion engines and no other adjustments. As you can see, the 1.1 version is more yellow than the other two. What, in fact, the scene actually looked like is closer to the 1.1 conversion. The other two are way off. Not to mention the extreme banding visible. What the heck is going on?
The only way I was able to get something close to the 1.1 version using the 2.0 converter was to whack out some saturation to an extreme with not so goo results. I also processed the pic in ACR 4.1 and, even though I got a little banding around the sun, the initial color was correct. Also, the white balance is the same setting for all three images (including the one I processed in ACR).
I mean, what's with all the red/pink in these conversions. I know Aperture 2 does away with some yellow in pix, but this is crazy. And the banding is quite unacceptable.
Any thoughts?
Antonio

Yeah, thanks for that tip. I boosted and it helped, but I think it could be better. The color still runs a bit on the pink/magenta side. I'll keep trying and see what happens. Still, the change can be a little jarring if not expected.
Antonio

Awful canon raw conversion for photos with dramatic (i.e. underwater) non-standard white balance

I'm shooting underwater (and white balancing as I shoot using a white disc) with a canon s90, and have noticed that the raw conversions done by aperture are way worse than those from jpegs when I shoot in raw+jpeg and those done by raw processing using the canon digital photo professional software. In particular, reds are pretty much lost. It may be a false lead, but I notice that in aperture, the rgb histogram shows a dramatic spike of the red channel on the far right (possibly clipping?) that doesn't show up in the rgb histogram in the canon software.
I'm not sure whether this is related to the plethora of threads about canon raw processing and overly green output. Has anyone else experienced this or have any ideas? I could batch convert to tiff in the canon software but I'd really rather not do that... For one thing the 16bit tiff files are so much bigger than the raws and it is an annoying extra step. Also, note that I can't just batch fix the white balance because (a) I'm having a hard time getting aperture to do it properly (possibly b/c the red channel is clipped as far as the aperture UI is concerned?) and (b) The white-balance changes from picture to picture as I change depth, which is the whole reason I white-balance as I'm shooting in the first place..
I've attached two versions of a picture, one of which I processed the raw in aperture and one of which I processed the raw (and converted to TIFF to give to aperture) in the canon software. I then exported both as small jpegs from aperture.
Canon Digital Photo Professional (correct):
Aperture RAW processing (very wrong):

>Is MS Picture Viewer a colour managed application? I don't know, but don't think so. Lightroom is however which might be the cause of your problems.
Not in XP. In vista it is color managed. From the sound of it, the problem is a bad monitor profile but you might also have a corrupt Lightroom database. You need to recalibrate the monitor and NEVER use canned profiles from the monitor manufacturer. They are almost always corrupt. As a very last resort, you can use sRGB as the monitor profile (delete any profile found in the windows display properties) but only to hold you over until you can really calibrate it. The other problems with weird errors are pretty worrisome though. Do you also get them when you start a fresh catalog?

RAW conversion with Aperture

Has anyone compared the quality of RAW conversion of Aperture vs. Nikon Capture as well as other converters?
I really like the quality of nikon capture and would not want to purchase aperture unless the conversion was at least equivalent.
Thanks for any input.
mark
G4 17" Laptop Mac OS X (10.4.3)

I've compared Aperture's conversion side by side with Adobe Camera Raw's. My method was to do some conversions with Camera Raw and save the result along with the RAW file. Then, in the Apple Store, I performed the conversions using Aperture.
The results from Aperture are not good. They look okay at reduced size, but if you look more closely, the de-mosaicing Aperture performs is quite bad. On some images it is only "somewhat" worse than Camera Raw; on others it is so bad as to be unusable. Shadow detail suffers the most, but highlights are not immune. Some images showed color fringing that was not present in the Camera Raw conversion, even with all chromatic aberration adjustments set to zero in Camera Raw.
I ignored differences in color and tonal rendering because I did not have enough time with Aperture to learn to get the best results out of it in terms of color. It takes a while to figure out how to get good color out of a RAW converter.
In no case was Aperture as good as Adobe Camera Raw in terms of image quality. The difference was immediately obvious at 100% magnification.
I would not use Aperture for RAW conversion.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, in case it matters, my camera is a Nikon D2X.

RAW conversion comments

I respect a photographers personal opinions regarding their perceptions of differing quality levels in RAW conversions but in the commercial world these perceived differences between Aperture and say ACR are so minimal they certainly do not qualify as a deal breaker.
In the real world of commercial photography, design and printing, photo images are ultimately used as 8 bit CMYK files or when used for Giclee printing as 8 bit RGB files. These files go through so much retouching and manipulation after the RAW conversion that the esoteric quality differences talked about in these posts are irrelevant.
The proper use of any Camera RAW converter is to balance the image before outputting it as a 16 bit TIFF or PSD for refined manipulation in Photoshop. This would include refined levels adjustments sometimes with layer masks and appropriate sharpening at the final output size.
We typically use the RAW converter to:
1- Pull back highlights that appeared to be blown
2- Open shadow detail that appeared to be plugged
3- Correct color casts and saturation
4- In some cases add special effects such as conversion to rich B&W
Very few serious professionals in either the commercial or fine arts world are going to use the RAW conversion as their final image.
We can argue forever about the pros and cons of this or that RAW conversion quality, but in the real world Aperture's solution, while not absolutely perfect, does an excellent job within a program that enhances real world productivity.
Dual 2ghz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Tom...
With respect, your logic is hard to accept. You state that in the commercial world, images are typically so heavily manipulated that initially quality of RAW conversion is non-issue.
I am surprised that no one has bothered to challenge this idea. So I'll step up.
If my RAW conversion out of ANY program is going to introduce banding artifacts, 'parquet flooring' patterns, or other noisy type data into solidly colored areas, that will need to be fixed in this manipulation of which you speak. Who could justify having to do this sort of thing when there are perfectly good RAW converters out there that don't add this particular headache to the workflow?
Your message states that "Apertures solution, while not absolutely perfect, does an excellent job within a program that enhances real world productivity."
That statement stands as a contradiction when you consider that extra 'fixing' may need to be done to some images coming straight out of Apertures RAW conversion.
I suspect that you (and others) are not seeing problems because evidence is mounting to support the idea that Apertures RAW conversion works better for some flavors of RAW than others. So, perhaps some people are seeing consisten image trashing, and some not. If this is the case, one could easily understand why some are 'satisfied' and some are positively livid.
However, I digress. I still don't agree at all with the idea that in the commercial world a substandard RAW conversion would make an acceptable starting point for any commercial image, regardless of how much manipulation down the track its going to go through. I can't see any art director being satisfied knowing this was going on in their shop.
"Aperture - sure it mangles your images, but it does a heck of a job keeping track of them!"
Jim

Poor raw conversion from Fujifilm X100 .raf format in Lightroom 3 and 4

I'm seeing very poor results when doing raw conversion from Fujifilm X100 .raf format. Who can I contact about this? Is there anything I can do?
See below for what is supposed to be a white curtain, lit by stage lighting. It results in a blown out blue channel, serious loss of detail, and very ugly gradient.
(Lightroom 4.2, Camera Raw 7.2 on LEFT --- Fujifilm X100 in-camera jpg on RIGHT)
And for more detail:
(Lightroom 4.2, Camera Raw 7.2 on TOP --- Fujifilm X100 in-camera jpg on BOTTOM)
(Lightroom 4.2, Camera Raw 7.2 on LEFT --- Fujifilm X100 in-camera jpg on RIGHT)

The blue light is so intense that it is, or almost is, saturating the sensor.
The camera’s built-in raw conversion handles this by shifting the color to cyan—clipping the blue and allowing the green to contribute more. I doubt there was cyan lighting in the scene, only blue.
Adobe does not shift the hue, but this makes the blue seem over saturated. Adobe’s conversion may be more colorimetrically correct, but less pleasing in this case of intense lighting that the sensor cannot accurately record.
It is a difference in camera profile used between the camera and Adobe. Since Adobe does not supply camera-match profiles for much more than Nikon and Canon cameras, you’re not going to be able to fix things other than managing the over-saturation using HSL or WB or other things like lower-vibrance, higher saturation.
You could try making your own camera profile using an X-Rite Color-Checker Passport or the color-checker and the Adobe DNG Profile Editor:
http://xritephoto.com/ph_product_overview.aspx?id=1257

RAW conversion to color ?

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