Basic Photoshop settings for RAW JPEG conversion.. EX2F?

Certainly a subjective question.  But regarding any criticism of EX2F camera jpeg quality,  inconsistent, overly/artificially sharpened, and other...  for now I'm going to work with RAW for a while.

First.  Can anyone disabuse me of any facts on this?   Were these the subjective observations of a few reviewers and already not highly reliable?   Was any improvement to JPEG out-of-camera made with the latest firmware?

While I decide to shoot in manual and RAW for a while, to better learn photography and to allay any fears about ex2f jpeg IQ,  can anyone provide me with a good 'starting set' of photoshop adjustments when postprocessing EX2F RAW images?    Something that provides a reliable platform that addresses any known imbalances mal-adjustments in this camera's RAW files?

Or is there such a setting native to PS?  I'm brand new to RAW.

Thanks for any help.  Sorry for any confusion.  I'm just learning the vernacular.

frascati wrote:

Certainly a subjective question. But regarding any criticism of EX2F camera jpeg quality, inconsistent, overly/artificially sharpened, and other... for now I'm going to work with RAW for a while.

First. Can anyone disabuse me of any facts on this? Were these the subjective observations of a few reviewers and already not highly reliable? Was any improvement to JPEG out-of-camera made with the latest firmware?

No idea, I've never owned that particular camera, nor do I really know how reliable the reviewers are.  I didn't hear about any firmware improvement, but there could have been, I haven't followed EX2F.

While I decide to shoot in manual and RAW for a while, to better learn photography and to allay any fears about ex2f jpeg IQ, can anyone provide me with a good 'starting set' of photoshop adjustments when postprocessing EX2F RAW images?

Not me.

Something that provides a reliable platform that addresses any known imbalances mal-adjustments in this camera's RAW files?

I thought the problems were only in the jpegs?

Or is there such a setting native to PS?

I think it has defaults that work out alright?

I'm brand new to RAW.

I actually don't recommend Lightroom, I don't really use it, so someone else could probably be more helpful on that.  RawTherapee (I think on OSX?, Linux, and Windows) is probably what I would recommend for absolute quality, and Darktable (available on OSX and Linux... not so much on Windows) for flexibility in editing with it's advanced masking.

For Darktable... I should really get around to submitting data for the NX lenses to get added to the lensfun database (so they'll get profiles for lens corrections).

Thanks for any help. Sorry for any confusion. I'm just learning the vernacular.

For RAW processing, probably the most basic adjustment you can make that will make a large different is the tone curve, I think LR with have a decent default tone curve, but feel free to adjust it to your tastes.  Play with it a bit to get a feel for how it changes the image, the left side is shadows and the right is highlights with midtones in between.

Something you'll probably notice when looking at the RAWs is both more detail and more noise relative to the jpegs.  So good noise reduction is perhaps the next thing to look into.  Try to find a method in your program of choice that reduces the noise while keeping the details.  I think a heavy criticism of the jpegs is that the noise reduction is used pretty liberally resulting in heavy loss of detail.

Color adjustments, to taste really in my opinion.  Some people like accurate white balance and some like their arbitrary tints.

Sharpening, this can be a tough one to get right, doing so increases the visibility of noise but some should usually be done as RAWs can be a bit soft.  Usually it should be done looking at the image at roughly your intended output size and viewing distance for the final image.  It can be easy to go overboard with it, raising it, "oh, that looks a little better," raising it some more, etc...  Oh, also I think you can use it with a mask in LR that will prevent it from sharpening solid areas to keep down noise in things like skies, etc...

Saturation, can make the image a bit punchier, but like with sharpening, be careful not to go too far.

Skipper494 wrote:

As I've written many times, you don't process RAW files. Use the camera manufacturer's converter to convert to 16-bit tiff, then process the tiff in whatever floats your boat, even free FastStone image viewer, then produce whatever jpegs are required, by resizing and saving as a jpg file.

... Not all tiff supporting editors support 16 bit (e.g. GIMP, it's in the works, but last I heard it's not ready yet).  Also you can't only work at the tiff level if you want to do something like use a different demosaicing algorithm.

I don't own an EX2 but I have two EX1's!

I put most of my shots through the RAW processor of PS CS6, and get better results than from the jpg version of the shot.

There are so many tutorials on You Tube that I would start there for good advice on how to get the best from your shots. And of course practice is the best way to learn.

Everyone has their own way for dealing with raw files. I always shoot raw.

although others may disagree this is the methodology that I utilize.

I bring the raw files into Adobe light room and immediately change them to DNG raw files. This allows me to make changes to how the raw file will be displayed without ever making actual changes to the initial information. This way you can always have your original image to work with yet you can make many different variants of the same image.

by using the DNG raw file format I help assure that future programs will be able to read by raw files. Additionally using this format stores in one file my original image and my listing of changes to that image. I do not need to have a sidecar file alongside of my raw file.

William Hubert wrote:

Everyone has their own way for dealing with raw files. I always shoot raw.

although others may disagree this is the methodology that I utilize.

I bring the raw files into Adobe light room and immediately change them to DNG raw files. This allows me to make changes to how the raw file will be displayed without ever making actual changes to the initial information. This way you can always have your original image to work with yet you can make many different variants of the same image.

... This is not special to DNG.  Maybe LR only supports doing so with DNG though?  I'm not terribly familiar with LR.

by using the DNG raw file format I help assure that future programs will be able to read by raw files.

I'm not sure why DNG would ensure that moreso than many other formats.  If they drop support for the native format... then how would you continue getting your new files into DNG format?  And wouldn't you always have the option of using the old program to do so at a later time if it became an issue?  Maybe not with for favorite software I suppose, if one loses a license key, etc.. it's a non-issue for those using open source software though (e.g. Rawtherapee).

Additionally using this format stores in one file my original image and my listing of changes to that image. I do not need to have a sidecar file alongside of my raw file.

Sidecar files are actually somewhat safer as a failed write would not destroy the original file.  Granted, this is rare and management may be slightly easier without the sidecars.

-- hide signature --

As with many things in life a great photograph has strong appeal for what is NOT in the picture.

frascati wrote:

A different tack on this question. The manual offers precious little on Raw shooting beyond where to find the option to enable it. I searched the web and this forum and am still not clear on how to set up raw for shooting.

Well, that's most of it for the shooting part.

Which settings does RAW override?

jpeg mainly, I like to shoot both with RAW+jpeg

Obviously aperture and shutter speed are in my control. Is that it? White balance? ND filter? Iso settings? Forgive the stupidity here. But I did search and this seems to be one of those questions that most RAW tutorials (all that I found anyway) skip past. Maybe assuming that anyone interested in RAW ought to be sophisticated enough to... "well, if you have to ask, you'll never know". Not the first time I've run into that in web tutorials broadly.

Hmm, well, you can usually still set them all on the camera, of the ones you listed only the white balance wouldn't be reflected in the RAW file.  Some other settings that wouldn't show up in the RAW are any of the arty filters and sharpening.  Just ask on any other particulars.  ND filter, and ISO will apply.  You will notice that the noise initially looks much worse in the RAW file because no noise reduction has been done, the advantage is that you can fine tune the denoising and pick from a range of algorithms to get the right balance between noise reduction and detail retention.

I may be obsessing over this camera since it was, for me, relatively expensive. I researched the hell out of it before buying, and my initial impressions of its EQ are dispiriting.

I'm worried about its IQ compared to my older SL420 right out of the box. In Smart, or Program mode with menu options, white balance AWB, Iso on Auto, etc, pretty much base-lined, out of the box it really frightened me. I've got another thread posted concerning this. Am probably embarrassing myself in the haste to determine whether it's the camera model, me, or a lemon. I need to come to some decision by the beginning of next week.

Hmm, mind posting some samples jpegs?

As that other thread progresses it's mostly me (misapprehending some white balance control in auto modes), but I've yet to be happy with anything coming out of the camera in jpeg, and my first forays into RAW are even scarier.

Mind posting some sample RAWs for me to take a shot at processing?

Again, my only base for comparison are four years owning the smaller sensor, auto only, SL420. Using Samsung's conversion software that came with the EX2F (how bad can it be for comparison's sake?) and selecting from among a few of the drop down options, default, fine street, landscape, etc, the results truly look like hell.

O.o !?!? what software is that?  Filters are probably the last thing to look at for a photo, there's other things that need to be done in the processing first.

I won't embarrass myself further here by posting them. But I'm in a bit of a rush over the weekend to decide what to do with this camera if, despite all advice and input (literal and figurative), it is incapable of satisfying even the SL420's benchmarks... those being a harddrive full of photos from that old camera.

I don't see any reason for the results to be worse than the SL420, that seems really strange to me.  For the samples you post, it would also be helpful if you could say what you don't like about the shot, and maybe a corresponding SL420 shot that you do like?

Thanks

Brad Williamson

Petak wrote:

I actually don't recommend Lightroom, I don't really use it, so someone else could probably be more helpful on that. RawTherapee (I think on OSX?, Linux, and Windows) is probably what I would recommend for absolute quality

I have tested both RTh and Lr5 with my NX2000 files and Lr has both more straightforward interface

Subjective, I don't find the LR5 interface that great either.

and visibly higher quality conversion (better detail, smoother and more accurate colour profile).

Did you only use defaults?  I would like to see some evidence.

Petak wrote:

ttbek wrote:

Petak wrote:

I actually don't recommend Lightroom, I don't really use it, so someone else could probably be more helpful on that. RawTherapee (I think on OSX?, Linux, and Windows) is probably what I would recommend for absolute quality

I have tested both RTh and Lr5 with my NX2000 files and Lr has both more straightforward interface

Subjective, I don't find the LR5 interface that great either.

and visibly higher quality conversion (better detail

I'm not seeing that, see below.

, smoother and more accurate colour profile

They use the same color profiles, unless you're using that as a layman's term.

).

Did you only use defaults? I would like to see some evidence.

Because you did present evidence to support your claim of RT's "absolute quality"?

I wasn't asked to.  Maybe they've made improvements in this from LR4 to LR5, but:

RawTherapee 400% crop CA correction, everything else turned off

LR4 400% crop CA correction (can you turn other things off?, can you use different demosaicing?)

There are notably more "jaggies" in the LR4 image.  This could be due to some default sharpening I don't know how to turn off.  The default tone curve in LR4 is more contrasty and pleasing, but it's just a default.  Also the default jpeg export quality setting in LR4 is 60%.... I did them a favour and bumped it to 100% for this comparison.  The jaggies are not due to the CA correction, I also looked without and that was the same.

You said you already tested them both for your NX2000, so it should have been easy for you to show the results.  I had to go out of my way to do these just now, requiring me to reboot in Windows etc...

Now, it may be that some other things in your process LR does better than RT, a certain kind of noise reduction, etc... but at the very basic conversion stage (demosaicing) RT offers the user more options and the potential for better results.  Unless you (or someone else) can show otherwise I think that this is where the evidence is currently pointing.

Petak wrote:

ttbek wrote:

Petak wrote:

ttbek wrote:

Petak wrote:

I actually don't recommend Lightroom, I don't really use it, so someone else could probably be more helpful on that. RawTherapee (I think on OSX?, Linux, and Windows) is probably what I would recommend for absolute quality

I have tested both RTh and Lr5 with my NX2000 files and Lr has both more straightforward interface

Subjective, I don't find the LR5 interface that great either.

and visibly higher quality conversion (better detail

I'm not seeing that, see below.

, smoother and more accurate colour profile

They use the same color profiles, unless you're using that as a layman's term.

).

Did you only use defaults? I would like to see some evidence.

Because you did present evidence to support your claim of RT's "absolute quality"?

I wasn't asked to. Maybe they've made improvements in this from LR4 to LR5, but:

RawTherapee 400% crop CA correction, everything else turned off

LR4 400% crop CA correction (can you turn other things off?, can you use different demosaicing?)

There are notably more "jaggies" in the LR4 image. This could be due to some default sharpening I don't know how to turn off. The default tone curve in LR4 is more contrasty and pleasing, but it's just a default. Also the default jpeg export quality setting in LR4 is 60%.... I did them a favour and bumped it to 100% for this comparison. The jaggies are not due to the CA correction, I also looked without and that was the same.

You said you already tested them both for your NX2000, so it should have been easy for you to show the results. I had to go out of my way to do these just now, requiring me to reboot in Windows etc...

Now, it may be that some other things in your process LR does better than RT, a certain kind of noise reduction, etc... but at the very basic conversion stage (demosaicing) RT offers the user more options and the potential for better results. Unless you (or someone else) can show otherwise I think that this is where the evidence is currently pointing.

I believe what you call "jaggies" is in fact the inevitable result of up-sizing to 400%

I'm not referring to general pixelation, but rather to the aliasing evident in the tickmarks of the chart as you look to the ones more to the up and right in the LR4 image.  It was enlarged to that level without any resampling (it wasn't done in a resampling viewer, it was done in a program that doesn't screw with your pixels) and was done so to make the difference obvious.

- something rarely anyone does or needs. Below are two 100% crops of the same raw file developed in both LR5 and RT 4.1 with the default settings.

See, that's what I was asking you about.  Default is not best.

To me the one produced by LR is clearly better - cleaner, smoother, with better detail and less magenta and sharpening halo

See, you didn't turn off the default sharpening in RT and probably didn't turn on the CA correction either.  You probably didn't use the same demosaicing I did either.  I in good faith tried to get the best result I could from LR4, so do enlighten me regarding anyplace I can turn off some more default adjustments or try a different demosaicing method.  I'm basically seeing that you like the LR5 defaults better rather than any kind of quality comparison of both program's best case scenario's.  I didn't have issues with magenta or sharpening halo in the RT result I posted.

You should also note that what I meant by "absolute quality," was not quite as literal as you're taking it, but you're certainly not showing any compelling evidence.  Or does bias pass as evidence these days?

around the text and with better colour separation.

Petak wrote:

ttbek wrote:

Petak wrote:

ttbek wrote:

Petak wrote:

ttbek wrote:

Petak wrote:

I actually don't recommend Lightroom, I don't really use it, so someone else could probably be more helpful on that. RawTherapee (I think on OSX?, Linux, and Windows) is probably what I would recommend for absolute quality

I have tested both RTh and Lr5 with my NX2000 files and Lr has both more straightforward interface

Subjective, I don't find the LR5 interface that great either.

and visibly higher quality conversion (better detail

I'm not seeing that, see below.

, smoother and more accurate colour profile

They use the same color profiles, unless you're using that as a layman's term.

).

Did you only use defaults? I would like to see some evidence.

Because you did present evidence to support your claim of RT's "absolute quality"?

I wasn't asked to. Maybe they've made improvements in this from LR4 to LR5, but:

RawTherapee 400% crop CA correction, everything else turned off

LR4 400% crop CA correction (can you turn other things off?, can you use different demosaicing?)

There are notably more "jaggies" in the LR4 image. This could be due to some default sharpening I don't know how to turn off. The default tone curve in LR4 is more contrasty and pleasing, but it's just a default. Also the default jpeg export quality setting in LR4 is 60%.... I did them a favour and bumped it to 100% for this comparison. The jaggies are not due to the CA correction, I also looked without and that was the same.

You said you already tested them both for your NX2000, so it should have been easy for you to show the results. I had to go out of my way to do these just now, requiring me to reboot in Windows etc...

Now, it may be that some other things in your process LR does better than RT, a certain kind of noise reduction, etc... but at the very basic conversion stage (demosaicing) RT offers the user more options and the potential for better results. Unless you (or someone else) can show otherwise I think that this is where the evidence is currently pointing.

I believe what you call "jaggies" is in fact the inevitable result of up-sizing to 400%

I'm not referring to general pixelation, but rather to the aliasing evident in the tickmarks of the chart as you look to the ones more to the up and right in the LR4 image. It was enlarged to that level without any resampling (it wasn't done in a resampling viewer, it was done in a program that doesn't screw with your pixels) and was done so to make the difference obvious.

- something rarely anyone does or needs. Below are two 100% crops of the same raw file developed in both LR5 and RT 4.1 with the default settings.

See, that's what I was asking you about. Default is not best.

To me the one produced by LR is clearly better - cleaner, smoother, with better detail and less magenta and sharpening halo

See, you didn't turn off the default sharpening in RT and probably didn't turn on the CA correction either. You probably didn't use the same demosaicing I did either. I in good faith tried to get the best result I could from LR4, so do enlighten me regarding anyplace I can turn off some more default adjustments or try a different demosaicing method. I'm basically seeing that you like the LR5 defaults better rather than any kind of quality comparison of both program's best case scenario's. I didn't have issues with magenta or sharpening halo in the RT result I posted.

You should also note that what I meant by "absolute quality," was not quite as literal as you're taking it, but you're certainly not showing any compelling evidence. Or does bias pass as evidence these days?

around the text and with better colour separation.

The image I used is the 100 ISO SRW sample available here

I know where to find it ^_^.

- feel free to do whatever you want with it in RT to get the best out of it and show us the result (using the above crop of the image) in 100%.

I personally feel like some of your metrics were subjective rather than objective and that 100% doesn't do anyone favors when they're trying to pick out the very small artifacts/flaws in the renderings.  I don't think my posting another image will wind up being constructive but rather degenerate into subjective measures of image quality.  I can do it later if you insist though.

And BTW LR and RT are NOT using the same camera profiles,

I'm well aware of that.

which is clearly evident once you open the same file in both. RT is also not correcting lens distortion based on the info available in the file itself.

And of this as well.

All in all RT is very good if you like spending time playing with the software itself instead of with the images but if photography is your priority, LR is the better option IMO.

I don't share that opinion, but there's a wide variety of opinions on this topic.  My personal overall preference is Darktable.