Raw conversion to JPG better with DPP than ARC 5.X

I started testing conversion from raw to jpg with Canon's Digital Photo Professional and ARC 5.x (CS4) and noticed a much better conversion with DPP. At low ISOs does I don't see much difference, however at 800+ it is very noticeable. I hate to give up the work flow of Bridge and ACR and go back to using DPP. Is there anything that can be done to improve this?

Quoting from an old post of mine, with apologies to all who have read it before:
This has been covered ad nauseam here. Please do a forum search for more details.
Camera manufacturers, Canon and Nikon in particular, perform in-camera RAW to JPEG conversions designed to generate the over-saturated, over-contrasty and over-sharpened images that appeal to most amateurs.
Their stand-alone RAW conversion software also performs the same conversion to your RAW images.
Noise is also hidden by compressing the shadows so you don't see much of the noise inherent in the image.
Adobe Camera Raw, ACR, on the other hand, comes with default settings designed to give you the most detail possible
(even if this sometimes means revealing some of the noise hidden by the camera manufacturers in their RAW conversion software), as well as the most natural images.
That being said, you can calibrate your camera to ACR and come up with your own settings to produce exactly what you want, including the JPEG-look of the camera manufacturer, and save that as your profile.
The key is to learn how to use ACR properly and to calibrate your camera to ACR.
The camera calibration refines the settings by letting you adjust for the exact sensor response of your individual camera unit rather than the average of a sampling of such unites provided by Adobe.
The ACR defaults are nothing more than a suggested starting point.
The color temperature won't necessarily match either.

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RAW Conversion to JPG file size question

I'm fairly new to Lightroom and have noticed when I convert from RAW to JPG my approx. 8MB RAW files become approximately 2-3MB JPG files. I have the program set to convert to JPG at the highest possible quality. I've had clients ask about the file size and would like to be able to explain this to them in simple terms but I first need to understand why this is the case myself! When I used a different processing program the converted files were only slightly smaller than the originals. Please explain!
Thanks!

It depends on the quality settings you use. JPEG files have I think 12 quality settings, with 12 being pretty big, and 8-10 being reasonable compromises.
This is lossy compression, so data is thrown away. The quality setting determines how much info is thrown away.
Only thing you can really do is export at a few quality settings and compare them, to see if YOU can see the difference.
For me, I don't really care about minimizing file size so I always choose highest quality.

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.. Is this a function of the two different versions of imovie ..
yes.
iM08 not only imports (which is done in realtime), but also has to create 'on the fly' a preview/thumbnail movie of that import, for usage as reference in editing, realtime 'skimming' etc. ... which needs some extra time ...

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Sharpness of NEF raw conversion for landscape photo is poor compared to ViewNX raw conversion

Raw conversion in ViewNX is far sharper than Aperture for some photos, enough so to differentiate as usable or unusable images. I tried adjusting sharpness and edges sliders in "RAW Fine Tuning" adjustments but even at maximum is terribly blurry compared to default ViewNX raw conversion. Overall color and dynamic range seem better in ViewNX for landscape shots but not critical like the blurriness... the difference is profound so I think I'm doing something wrong or the 3.2 update may have a serious bug. Anyone else have thisissue?
Aperture 3.2:
ViewNX:

I was talking with some others in another forum and someone suggested ViewNX may be automatically applying settings from camera default picture settings. So I just checked and in
menu->shooting menu->set picture control
(Nikon D90)
the standard "SD" setting is set to sharpen value 7 on a scale of 0-9. Sounds like ViewNX is reading that value and applying some very strong sharpening in software on the raw image. However, I'd expect to set the Aperture RAW fine tune sharping adjustment to 100% and get reasonable close to similar sharpness. At this point I think I understand the issue but I also feel that ViewNX is much better able to sharpen the RAW image while introducing less unwanted artifacts. It's a pretty significant point and I'd be quite happy to see improvement in sharpness from Aperture RAW conversion of NEF files.
I don't suppose there is any way I can configure Aperture to use the Nikon RAW converter? I'd love to have the option to choose or switch back and forth depending on the picture and results. There are times I prefer Apertures converter to Nikons.

Canon 50D CS3 raw conversion noisier than DPP

The ACR CS3 raw conversion of Canon 50D files seems considerably noisier than conversion in Canon's own DPP converter. Is this correct, and are there plans to put it right?

ACR pretty much leaves the noise reduction up to you to configure the way you want it. The Canon software applies noise reduction automatically. I don't know if this noise issue has changed in later versions of ACR, but there won't be any more updates for your version. Have you downloaded the profiles that have been provided? Have you updated your ACR to version 4.6?

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

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 bug with Noise Reduction

Hello,
I have found a serious bug in the RAW conversion when noise reduction is applied. When converting from two types of Canon RAW files (a CRW from a Powershot G6 and a CR2 from a 20d) I found that if you apply Noise Reduction to a RAW file on very low settings (the default setting in the NR function will produce this reliably) single-pixel lines appear at regular intervals throughout the image. Here is an example:
You can see several lines in this image:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/3821480263171e76604b.jpg
A 100% detail of which is here:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/382148021af6586d27eo.jpg
Has anyone else had this problem? Can someone from the Aperture dev team fix this?
-Steve G

Well I find this filter is quite good in 'masking' block artifact that codec like xvid, or other low compression codec have. I only apply it if I find the block artifact is too much and I find this filter is less offending to my eyes than the block artifact.
In manual it said that if you have noisy video and want to lower the size then you can use this filter. It also blur the video a bit. But I suspect it is more than blur as I try gaussian blur in time line and the result is not as good. You can see the result as well. There is the tab between source and target and you can compare the result by togling between source and target tab.
BTW, anyone with 1 core, dual, or quad core, can you tried to encode with it? Just cancel it after few minutes as I want to see what is your processor utilization with this filter on. Also you can see how long does it take to process this video from the 'estimation time left'.

A lightroom preset to produce a RAW conversion that always looks like the camera-processed JPG?

Hi,
Any tips on how to make a Lightroom preset that will render the RAW file in a manner that looks remotely the same as the picture displayed when shot?
I'm not talking about camera calibration > camera standed, portrait etc.
With Lightrooms clunky default adjustments the histogram looks correct; i.e. the way it did when it was shot. The image also looks horrible; clipped blacks, too contrasty etc. because it arbitrarily boosts Brightness +50, Contrast +25
When I zero the settings the histogram shifts completely away from the way it was shot, as if it was underexposed, which is not correct. I've tested this with perfect exposures using a GMB colour chart.
I guess the camera is showing me a histogram of the JPEG after it has been processed.
Is there a quantifiable way to replicate this other than playing with the sliders until the RAW roughly matches the JPG and then saving the preset?
Thanks.
Update - I'm using a Canon 5DMkII and a 1DsMkII

Good grief. When I photograph a color chart, under controlled lighting conditions, exposed perfectly, that is what I want to see as the default RAW conversion, with acurate values. In fact with camera calibrations that is pretty much how it works. It's not open to interpretation. Blacks have a certain value, neutral 8, neutral 6.8 etc.
If not, then give me the tools to accomplish this quickly. In Photoshop I can shoot a scene under controlled lighting, shoot a color chart in the first frame, create a custom curve and apply this to every subsequent shot. There is a rough way to do this in LR but it's quite a backward step.
THEN I can have a filed day, changing whatever I want, but I do not like randomly dragging sliders until it "looks ok". I stopped doing that my first year of Photoshop when I learned how to use the color sampler correctly.
"If you shoot raw (as opposed to JPEG) then YOU have the power and capability to decide what stuff is supposed to look like. "
I understand I have the power to decide what stuff looks like. Nothing I have said so far argues against this. I'm asking for an accurate baseline, from which I can let my creativity run wild.
" I encourage people to ignore the LCD and go with your guts", "If you are lazy and don't want to be bothered rendering the scene, yes, I can understand why you would want somebody else to control the interpretation of the scene"
The LCD and the histogram are a quick way of evaluating correct exposure for a shot, so that blacks are not clipped and highlights are not blown out and lost forever. They are standard TOOLs of modern photography. To not use them is illogical. It would be like instructing people not to use the camera's inbuilt light meter, because it's "more creative" without it.
It does not have to be one extreme or the other. People seem to be saying "reject the jpg - it means nothing. Let the artist in you decide" and yet they blithely accept the default settings Lightroom gives. My point is, the camera rendering is a good REFERENCE POINT, far more accurate to what you saw on the day, and far more relevant, than LR's adjustments.
Once I have an accurate rendering, quickly, THEN I can be creative and enjoy the power and flexibility of RAW. If nothing else, it's a much faster way to work.

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)

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.

Aperture RAW conversion colour noise with Canon 1D Mark II

I'm using Aperture 2.1 and am wondering if anyone here is having this problem - basically highlights end up with false colour with this camera/RAW conversion combination. The problems appears to have been introduced with the 1.1 RAW converter as 1.0 conversions don't seem to have the problem. I'm not sure if this is camera specific, or whether there is some tuning which can be done to the RAW converter to minimise the effect - attempts have so far failed with this approach.
The best subject to produce the effect is strong reflections from water - i've attached a crop of an image which shows this problem, and I can supply a RAW with this problem.
Conversion using RAW 1.0 (less or no colour pixelation):
http://www.loftsoft.co.uk/pictures/KC7U5116%20-%20RAW%201.0.jpg
Conversion using RAW 2.0 (colour pixelation):
http://www.loftsoft.co.uk/pictures/KC7U5116%20-%20RAW%202.0.jpg
Any suggestions as to what to do? Is this simply a RAW conversion problem which can be addressed or am I using the tool wrong?
Many thanks,
Cesare

Hmm. I can see some color effects in the 1.0 conversion as well.
Those are some touch photos... you have lots of specular highlights with the sun reflecting off the water and the railing.
Aperture 2.x and 1.x handle the RAW conversion differently. I would suggest you try playing with the RAW Fine Tuning brick, specifically with the Moire and Radius sliders, and try fiddling with the Auto Noise Compensation checkbox.
I don't know whether you'll be able to make the problem go away completely or not.
With my ~30,000 1D Mark II files I've seen something similar to this (though much less extreme) on a couple of them. Always with specular highlights though -- off water or metal objects.
Still, you may wish to submit Aperture feedback and include the RAW file.

Noise issue with RAW conversions

Dear fellow Aperture users,
I have noticed on close inspection of my RAW images that that Apertures RAW conversion is less than poor. I shoot with a Nikon D70 and any dark areas on my images come out very dirty. I have tried correcting this using the new 1.1 controls but this doesnt help. However, when I open the same images on Lightroom, iPhoto or even Preview they come out fine, with a lot of detail!
I love using Aperture, even though it can be very slow on my 1.33 PB G4, but these conversions are not aceptable. I have recently started uploading my images to a stock library, but they have been returned due to noise!
If anyone has come across similar issues, or has any suggestions as to how I could rectify the situation, I would be more than happy to hear from you.
Thanks in advance,
Svendo

Let me prefix this by saying my views are wholly subjective. But...
High ISO ratings in Aperture seem to trade off between color saturation and noise vs. ACR. Aperture seems to go for saturation, which shows more noise chroma noise.
To get around this I created a couple of different profiles for different ISO and lighting/contrast situations. My high ISO800/shadowy profile has:
- Boost of 0.73
- Sharpening Intensity of 0.28
- Sharpening Edge of 0
- Chroma blur of 5.5
- Auto Noise Compensation On
Camera is EOS 20d, so I'm not sure how effective this will be with your Nikon RAW's. This gets me in the ball park for most, and then I tweak from there as needed. These results are similar to those I get with ACR (when viewed at 200%).

Raw conversion to JPG better with DPP than ARC 5.X

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