Raw picture to resemble camera output

Longimanus

Longimanus

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Lee
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I have been shooting photos in raw with my d7000, they look ok on my rear display and when I import to my iPad, but once I import to my mac and view in aperture they look totally different. I know that there is some processing to be done, but I can't seem to get them looking like I remember them.

Is there any literature I can read to assist, or can anyone point me in the correct direction?

Should I use the Nikon software rather than aperture?

Any help much appreciated
 
AFAIK the image you see on the camera display are JPEGs that the camera produces so that you can quickly review your images. It does this even though you shot the camera in RAW. It's all about processing.

Aperture allows you to make a lot of adjustments I don't think you need anything more advance to replicate the look of the pic on the display.

Have you tried shooting so the camera produces both RAW and JPEG for each image? You'll probably find the jpeg is the look you have on the display and the RAW is the flat image without any processing done by the camera.
 
I would have thought it is more to do with the difference between what is a relatively small and poor screen on your camera compared to a large and better quality Mac screen?
 
The image you see on the back of the camera are jpg simalarizations , when you down load the raw you need to edit it it will most likely need sharpening, and other PP in the software that came with your camera or photoshop or the like, to get what you saw as raw just records all the data in the scene, its up to you to pull it back
 
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Longimanus said:
Should I use the Nikon software rather than aperture?
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Which software application you use is very much a personal choice but something that may help you make that decision is that, only Nikon software correctly interprets and applies your camera settings when importing an image file to your computer. Everything else (Aperture, Adobe, IrfanView, etc.) apply what they think is the correct white balance, contrast, sharpening, etc., to create the image you see on screen.

The image you see on the back screen of your camera is a "basic" quality jpg created from the RAW data with your settings applied. It's a low resolution version of the image you see when importing into your computer via ViewNX2.

Hope that helps :)
 
Cheers for all the comments, I understand what everyone is saying, I think I am gonna give the supplied Nikon software a go and see what happens.

I am relatively new to all this raw processing and am finding it a bit difficult to get it back to the scene that I saw
 
This is a very interesting question. If what Steve says is right, if you shoot RAW, and then chimp and use the back of your camera to make judgements about exposure etc... then you pretty much need to be aware of the other settings too. I have noticed another odd thing with Nikon's and (in this case) Lightroom. If you have Active D lighting on, and you shoot RAW, Lightroom's auto button will then produce you an image that is underexposed. which seems cranky to me. It is like Lightroom is looking at all of the other settings on your camera, and trying to provide you an image to suit, which is entirely the opposite reason many people shoot in RAW
 
Longimanus said:
Cheers for all the comments, I understand what everyone is saying, I think I am gonna give the supplied Nikon software a go and see what happens.

I am relatively new to all this raw processing and am finding it a bit difficult to get it back to the scene that I saw
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You might as well just shoot jpg if you are going to use the Nikon software to apply the jpg settings to the raw file. It's just more work doing it that way.
 
TCR4x4 said:
You might as well just shoot jpg if you are going to use the Nikon software to apply the jpg settings to the raw file. It's just more work doing it that way.
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Exactly.

Either start playing around with editing and understanding the benefits of shooting raw (which is in the editing, nothing else) or you may as well just stick to jpgs.

One way of learning is to shoot raw+JPG and trying to replicate and then better the JPG from the raw file.
 
TCR4x4 said:
You might as well just shoot jpg if you are going to use the Nikon software to apply the jpg settings to the raw file. It's just more work doing it that way.
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I still think it is useful to have the raw for archival purposes. I mainly shoot film these days but I'd rather hang onto the negatives after they have been scanned instead of throwing them away.
 
Nawty said:
Exactly.

Either start playing around with editing and understanding the benefits of shooting raw (which is in the editing, nothing else) or you may as well just stick to jpgs.

One way of learning is to shoot raw+JPG and trying to replicate and then better the JPG from the raw file.
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All I am asking is to get to the jpeg as a starting point and then try and better it, not to completely replicate it. I am new to this and am still trying to understand all the raw adjustments
 
Richard King said:
I have noticed another odd thing with Nikon's and (in this case) Lightroom. If you have Active D lighting on, and you shoot RAW, Lightroom's auto button will then produce you an image that is underexposed. which seems cranky to me. It is like Lightroom is looking at all of the other settings on your camera, and trying to provide you an image to suit, which is entirely the opposite reason many people shoot in RAW
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Richard, the thing is that LR doesn't know that you had D-lighting selected on your camera so it just guesses what the image should look like ... often getting it wrong. Nikon "hide" the camera settings in an area of the EXIF that is only visible to their software - I believe Canon do this too, to some extent.
 
Well, typically JPG engines apply a contrast curve, bumps up the saturation and applies sharpening. They will also do a number of other things depending on how sophisticated it is and what settings you use (e.g. Active D Lighting).
 
Bristolian said:
Richard, the thing is that LR doesn't know that you had D-lighting selected on your camera so it just guesses what the image should look like ... often getting it wrong. Nikon "hide" the camera settings in an area of the EXIF that is only visible to their software - I believe Canon do this too, to some extent.
Click to expand...

In saying that - I have only noticed this in LR4
 
Nawty said:
Well, typically JPG engines apply a contrast curve, bumps up the saturation and applies sharpening. They will also do a number of other things depending on how sophisticated it is and what settings you use (e.g. Active D Lighting).
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, I will go away and play with these items first
 
Nawty said:
Well, typically JPG engines apply a contrast curve, bumps up the saturation and applies sharpening.
Click to expand...

Yep, they all do this to some degree or another - some do it better than others :)

They will also do a number of other things depending on how sophisticated it is and what settings you use (e.g. Active D Lighting).
Click to expand...

Except that unless you're using Nikon's own software it won't know you've got D-lighting set - only Nikon's software can access the bits of the EXIF with that data in it.
 
Ok, I have gone away and loaded the Nikon software on my Mac, exported the photo from Aperture and opened it. Now the layout is not as nice as Aperture, but I did get to the picture that I like reasonably quickly.

I therefore tried to replicate in Aperture, 1 edit at a time, can I get them to do the same, nope! I have both pieces of software open side by side with the picture showing.

I dont seem to be starting from the same place, before any adjustment they look different, is it just a difference in the software, or a view in Aperture?

Not really sure what to do, I would prefer to continue to use Aperture, but the NX2 software seems to get me to where I want.
 
They're bound to look different in Aperture compared with VNX2 because Aperture is "guessing" what settings it should apply to the raw image but VNX2 "knows" what was set in the camera and is applying that.

This isn't only true of Aperture, you would get some degree of initial differences no matter what 3rd party software you use. The only programe that will give you the same initial views as VXN2 is Capture NX2 - another bit of Nikon software :)
 
I get the same sort of thing on the pc with viewnx vs lightroom, it seems some of the "automatic" setting in LR when importing nikon raw files degrade the picture compared to viewnx, but remember this is very subjective, ;)someone else with the same raw files may think exactly the opposite.

Another thing to watch is monitor calibrations.

On my main PC using the main screen, everything looks okay and seems to match my prints okay, but the laptop looks like they are massivly over exposed, and my second monitor is too dark,
until i can justify a spyder pro (probably never :gag:) i'll just have to live with it.

btw in lightroom I have to drop the default "sharpening" to zero and add a small anount of luminous noise reduction to make it look similary to viewnx.
 
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