Comments on: Why I Shoot Raw: Recovering From Disasters

By: ari e.

ari e. — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:59:46 +0000

You seem like a technically adept, photographically competent guy, so you’ve probably accounted for this already, but it’s possible you did simply overlook something obvious. I certainly do, often enough.

When you load a raw file into lightroom, it automatically clips shadows with a setting of ’5′, and increases contrast and brightness. If you leave these settings as default before exporting to jpeg, you’ll lose a lot of your shadows. Having read other posts of yours, i have no doubt that you know this… but it’s possible that it just didn’t come to mind.

The data at the low end of the range can often be detail, but also it can often just be noise. Lightroom’s default behavior seems reasonable enough, but it’s just a starting point. Also related, even before you get to the point where you can adjust that setting (the “blacks” setting), is the camera calibration. Since one of the LR2.x updates (LR2.2 or LR2.3), many common cameras now have multiple calibrations to choose from, and the difference among them can be dramatic. I believe that they take effect before the other develop settings are considered, so are now the most basic control, and shouldn’t be forgotten. (They weren’t available at the time I originally wrote this post, and frankly, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned them even if they were because as dramatic as they can be, they’re nothing compared to the huge impact of the raw/jpg choice.) —Jeffrey

By: acl

acl — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:05:41 +0000

Jeffrey,
I have no idea if you’ve resolved this, but it certainly looks like the difference you get when you apply auto tone on the camera’s jpeg and the jpeg from lightroom is due to a different curve used. That is, if the curve used by lightroom pushes the “shadows” (which end up being midtones after autotone, assuming autotone is sort of like autolevels or something like that) lower than the camera does, this should happen. No?

Anyway, I enjoy your blog when I read it (much more than I enjoy fighting with regexps, I could add).

By: Bob Johnston

Bob Johnston — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:25:41 +0000

Jeffrey, believe the difference between the JPG made from the RAW and the in camera JPG, is normal.

When you make a JPG from a RAW, just exporting it, much of the detail contained is lost in the processing and compression. In the in camera JPG, no processing is done, it is exactly as recorded….

I’m not exactly sure what you mean here, but it sounds wrong. The in-camera JPG is not “exactly as recorded” (that’s the raw data), it’s the processed and compressed result of the camera’s sensor-to-jpg engine, and it shares the same data limitations as any other 8-bit jpg (limits that are inherent in the file format).

NOW, if you take that in camera JPG, and convert it to a TIFF file, you can modify it even more, and many times get a better image. Modifying contrast, brightness, color, etc. Then, convert it back to a JPG for display.

Many “bad” JPGs made in camera by relatives, which had no modification, have salvaged pictures many would have discarded. Even large group flash exposures where the foreground were over exposed a bit, and background faces almost unrecognizable. In Photoshop circled the face with a “magnetic lasoo tool” then adjusted them individually, and brought out all the detail.

Sometimes using Dodging and Burn in Brushes to modify small areas, etc..

Bob

Indeed, many seemingly-poor jpgs can be salvaged by good editing; I intended to imply only that the range is wider when working from raw data. —Jeffrey