Stephen I opened both files directly with cs2 and just did a crop and save as. I didn't do any editing. When I viewed both files in Capture one and rawshooter where I can see both side by side without any conversion the raw file to me looks better.

Now I'm really confused :confused:
Which program converted the RAW file?
Did you use C1 and RSE to view both files, no that can't be right, RSE doesn't show JPEG files, so was it the raw file you compared in both C1 and RSE.
Perhaps you converted in ACR, were the default settings boxes unchecked?
Oh heck too many progs, so many variables :D

Stephen. My mistake it wasn't rawshooter it was FSviewer it allows you to view both raw and jpgs side by side. I only posted the photo's to show the output from my canon no other reason.

Nice choice of subject Christine, lots of fine detail.

I have very limited skill in the digi darkroom and have both your images up side by side in Paint Shop Pro 7. I added 15 to brightnes and the same to contrast on the JPEG. I now cannot tell them apart. Viewing both at 200% I cannot see any difference in recorded detail.

Are you able to view the RAW and converted side by side to see if the conversion affected the brightness levels.

Don

I could not disagree more with this statement.

For me the art is getting as much right in camera. There will obviously be occasional times when it is easier to fine tune WB and exposure on the pc, then I will shoot RAW.

Perhaps this is why I have still lots to learn about the digital darkroom.

Don

Hi Saphire
In your PS Canon Plugin which opens the Raw file, there are a number of Default settings in it which will display the Raw file on screen. These boxes showing the default settings (which are very simular to the cameras in house program, which gives you the Jpeg Pic) can be unticked to show the actual pic of the Raw file.
Take a note of the opening setting numbers, untick the boxes - then open the file as a Jpeg - you will then see a marked difference.

Obviously no in camera processing here. LOL :D

Don

Hi Don
The only settings which affect the Raw file in the camera are - The WB, ISO, Shutter speed, Appature and of course Focus - All the instructions regarding density of color, sharpening etc., etc., are ignored when producing the Raw file.

Prostie
All boxes were un-ticked. second photo was in Capture 1 top image is the raw bottome is the jpg.

Absolutely - Get it right at the camera stage makes it a whole lot easier.
This thread is about discussing output from camera JPEG V's RAW with no adjustment, assuming its spot-on from the camera.

In the camera all I did was make sure all the perameter settings were turned off sliders were at bottom. same white balance for both same f stop, same speed.

These two pics taken this morning, ( should have said One Pic)
Shot1
Temp 5550
Tint -3
Exp +1.10
Shadows 5
Brightness 77
Contrast +50
Saturation 0

Shot2
Temp 5550
Tint -3
All other boxes unticked 0

Christine, the ACR picture shows a good histogram showing a full range of tones. (However it is set to 16bit :( ) The Histogram from the JPEG is well out however. Proof perhaps that the in camera processing didn't do a great job.

The check boxes in the ACR will endeavour to keep the curve within the bounds of the histogram, similar to Auto levels.

May I also mention to Don that is altering levels it's best not to use Brightness & Contrast as you said you did :) Levels or Curves is the best way. Apologies if its something you already knew

A classic example of where personal choice controls the end result. I would have chosen somewhere in between the two. ;) Using in camera JPEGS you would not have had the choice and probably have had to attempt an adjustment anyway, arguably then degrading the image further

Stephen,
Will give that a go. As I said I am not profficient in digi darkroom and it is here that I will learn a lot. With this post done I will give that a go. Thanks

Christine,
While I give my eyes a rest I am returning your 2 pics with arrows marking the area's of difference I have found. I'll have to get my workshop magnifier in if this keeps up. :D

Don

From the look of the histograms there appears to be a slight adjustment somewhere - the two peaks are the same shape but with a slight movement towards the right. Probably means you have pretty accuratley set WB ISO etc. and so the difference between the look of the Jpeg and the Raw will be very slight - to the eye.

Your right Stephen - I only opened this pic for this debate to show the difference between actual Raw and Raw Opener default settings.
I am with you - when I start to work it will be somewhere in between

Don, I can see a difference if only slight, I just thought I would do a sample because I had this dilemma when I first bought the camera. I had to make a conscious decision as to what I was going to set things at and stay there, not keep swapping between the two. For me personally whether there is a big loss or not I feel more confident that I can get the best from raw if I make a mistake on settings.

Christine,

This is not to suggest that anyone use anything but what they prefer. It started in my head when I thought of upgrade the D100. To do that I would need to up the PC as well, ( budget implications ) certainly to handle the RAW file sizes. A trawl around the net was really inconclusive as no pics only talk. I also considered that people new to the hobby might go with jpeg for an easier learning curve. A lot to take in if you have to understand a camera and digital processing. Anyway part of the result of that look was the suggestion that different cameras processed the 2 image versions in different ways. Stephen and I did a few tests that confirmed that. Not to any great degree but its there. So here on WPF we may have one source of unbiased info that those seeking similar info could rely on.

Once we know the limitations of our chosen method of working we are into what you digi darkroom wizzes do, to finish our image in the pc. Re Stephens comment to me. Just given it a go .... excellent.

Don

I agree Don its a personal thing but once it has been put in your head that something is inferior it sticks and that is what made me change I couldn't shake it. every time I had a bad photo it was niggling as to whether I would have got a better photo shooting raw, utter nonsense I know, so decided, I wanted to be in control and not the equipment deciding for me.

Not really nonsense Christine as RAW does give you that greater degree of control.

If you go back to the total newbie part the whole thing is quite daunting. In the days of film it was just a matter of understanding how the camera worked ..... and how many books have been written on that subject !! Now if you have to learn both it is a very steep learning curve. Quite natural for any newbie to use jpeg while they learn the camera. If someone then says jpeg is rubbish and lots better results from raw, then the gloss starts to be taken off the new found hobby, ( see post 75 ). Now probably too much to take on board. In time as knowledge increases so people may well move to raw for that level of control.

My case was purely budget driven. A move up could involve a new PC and camera in one go. LOADSA MONEY ££££££££££££££ so could this be spread in favour of camera first rather than last.

Don

Don, I can understand your desire to trade up and consequently the need to do the same with the PC, I have been there too :) However if funds are limited it seems to me that the best bet is to go for the PC first. It will improve your digital experience with the post processing and software 100% The D100, though long in the tooth perhaps, still takes as good a picture as it always did, and will continue to do so. If its more pixels you want it is possible to achieve this in the Raw conversion without a discernable loss in quality. The power of a new faster PC is going to make it more pleasurable to do so. Only my opinion you understand :)

It's all about the trade-offs you are willing and not willing to make. Raw and JPEG both involve making a trade-off, and it is up to all of us to make our own decisions as to which is the lesser of two evils.

For me, most of the time, I stand a better chance of getting better pictures with JPEG - raw doesn't allow me rapid enough shutter repeats, and puts constraints on the time I can spend in the field (because of the vastly increased processing time and the storage problem).

For the next person, the opposite applies. If, for example, I mostly did landscapes, I'd mostly shoot raw for the extra flexibility it allows in PP. But for bird work, especially action shots, the ability to ripple off a long series of frames without delay is crucial. Yes, I have to get the white balance and exposure right first time but that is, in my case, the lesser evil and results in fewer missed shots. Your case may differ, of course.

Summary: don't stress out about what other people do and say, just find out what works best for you and get on with taking great pictures.

Stephen,

Another thing I do not understand here. ( Relativly new to digital - lots to learn )
When Stephen ( Fox ) and I were doing tests on how colours are processed he fired me 2 pics. D2X ( 12mp ) and D70 ( 6mp ) included in the shot was a pilots map. The fine detail in that map is more detailed from the D2X as expected. If these images contain all the information that the sensor can record how can this be increased.

Coming from the world of film it is to me like moving to a finer grain film. Finer grain film = more resolution. ( ie I used to shoot Technical Pan a lot on 6x6 )

So is what you describe just an upsizing of the image o/a dimensions, or an image quality improvement ?

Don

Don I too came from a world of film, using 6x6 a lot of the time, however I used mainly ISO400 film. I'm a real world photographer :) and I knew that medium format images printed to the sizes that most customers demanded were fine on such film. No one was ever going to tell the difference at say 7x5 or 10x8 ISO400 gave me the flexibility I needed to fulfil most work. If I was using transparency film on a brochure shoot then ISO 100 would have likely been used. In the studio too 100 was the norm. However being a real world photographer I knew that 99% of the time no one needed the quality afforded by MF and fine grain films. Doing product photography, which I rarely do however, and it may be a different case.

Now thankfully I haven't used film for about 7 years now. I never want to go back to those days when I lost control of the process after pressing the shutter. In the case of B/W, I don't want to spend hours in a darkroom, enjoyable as it occasionally was. I am using an 8.2mp camera atm. and I know because I'm a real world photographer ;) that most of the time the file sizes I produce are far bigger than is really needed. The photosI take contain all the detail that is needed, prints are pin sharp, colours vibrant and accurate etc etc. I have been in full control from visualisation through to the finished product.

However if the circumstances dictate that I need that extra resolution, as happened the other week where I need to crop some images, I can then upsize the image in the raw conversion which will give me the larger file size I may need. Because I'm a real world photographer ;) I know that so far as the client is concerned the end product is all that matters and so long as they get a quality product they are happy. I know I can do this upsizing and have a print produced poster size with no dicernable loss in quality. I don't need to look at pixels and 200% crops to know what is good and what is not.

For me the workflow is to use PS CS2 and Adobe Camera Raw. The screen grab attached shows the ACR dialogue with the resolution menu open, and you can see the options available when processing your file. My theory is that its better to upsize in ACR or at this stage, because you are interpolating effectively a file that has still not had its final condition decided. Whilst if it was upsized from a jpeg this is another stage. I've not personally tested the theory, but then I'm not a 'measurebator' I just know that this works for me and the end product speaks for itself. Its what being a real world photographer is all about :)

OK, I'll bite on that one. Assume, for the moment, equal detail in your JPEG and your raw (and for that matter your BMP and your PNG and your TIFF) versions of the image. So far as detail goes, you cannot get a better upres from any of those formats than you get from any of the other formats - the information that is contained in the image is the information that is contained in the image. End of story.

The real question, then, is do the different image versions contain equal detail or not?

:D Its a difficult one innit ;)
Personally I think your original premis is flawed. A jpeg file does not necessarilly contain the same detail, as we know up to 75% of the pixels have been chucked away, only to be put pack as a best guess when reopened.

If you upsize this then logically you are in theory interpolating data that wasn't in the original file. Upsizing during the raw conversion is, it seems to me, interpolating data that the camera created and recorded, and consequently it follows that potentially it will retain more detail.

I suppose an alternative method would be to convert to a TIFF then upsize from that. I really don't want to get into the physics of it too much though. I'm more bothered about what works for me, I'm not suggesting that all 6mp raw files should be upsized as a matter of course, that would be a nonsense. Fujifilm of course designed cameras round the principle :D

An interesting discussion, Stephen.

Ahhh ... but that's the thing: a JPEG doesn't throw away 75% of the pixels. JPEG compression, at least as as I understand it, retains every pixel. What it does is throw away some of the colour information (on the theory that the human eye is quite good at telling the difference between different brightness levels, but not very good at detecting fine graduations in colour).

So have we lost information? Yes.

Have we lost useful information? Probably not. After all, our output devices (graphics cards, screens, LCD screens in particular, printers, and projectors - especially LCD projectors) are not very good at reproducing fine graduations in colour in any case.

I guess the next step is to try an actual experiment. (And I won't for one moment criticise what works for you - if it's working, don't even think about changing it!)

But speaking of beautiful colours, I think it's time I posted a picture of the Gang Gang Cockatoo I saw the other day, just because she was indeed so beatiful. I'm off to the gallery.

Ah you are right, wrong use of techical terms on my part :o What I should have referred to is the loss of data as in bytes. It is this of course that allows the file to be reduced in size. The fact is as well that this loss will lead to jpeg artefacts etc over time. I did read however that someone had opened and resaved a jpeg file many many times at max quality 12 in PS and had not found any dicernable loss in quality.

I see we are sliding back into the realms of rhetoric. This statement maybe fair if the jpeg encoder is set with co-efficients to give extreme compression but in our case we are talking about using the best quality setting available. (it is possible to have finer setting but this would not give any worth while compression and lossless techniques would be better) For my sins I have had to get my head around the internal workings of the jpeg encoder in my line of work.

My interest in this thread had been to gain enough insight to see whether it is worth investing in more hardware to use RAW effectively. Does it give me enough latitude to correct problem shots. Many have talked about the improved sharpness which has not been my experience. I can see from some examples in this thread there is a difference but I believe some models of camera seem to blur the image before passing to jpeg encoder. This approach would achieve smaller files. I have dabbled with RAW and to date I have not been that impressed. I downloaded a freebie RAW converter that crashed all the time. I now have PS CS1 and with blown highlights on bird shots it failed to improve. The other pain was the Canon 300D it did not save RAW + jpeg. Because small birds move so quickly many shots are trashed and a quick method of proofing was required. So I reverted back to using jpeg. Now I have the 20D which will save RAW + jpeg I am willing to try RAW again but need to be convinced by example that it is really worth the effort and expense.

The jpeg process works by splitting the image into it’s chroma and luminance components ( colour & B/W). A transform is performed on these to determine how many levels of detail are in the image. This is similar to determining what sound frequencies exist in a piece of music. Depending on your jpeg encoder settings it first removes the high frequency components from the chroma and then as the level of compression is increased to extreme levels it starts to work on the luminance channel.
The remaining data is then compressed using standard lossless compression methods.

I have attached an example created in PS of low (fine)(top), medium and extreme (bottom) compression settings. I have zoomed the image to show the jpeg artifacts at each level. The low-fine setting usually uses co-efficients that give a useful compression before the jpeg artifacts start to show. I have compared the colour accuraracy between the original and the fine version and the difference in pixel values is about 0.5% with no noticeable overlap in colour.

Stephen,

Just to get the real world photograher part behind us - my experience and hence choice of film was quite different from yours. I worked in manufacturing, and other than standard products we made ' specials '. As it was never known if a repeat order would be forthcoming for a special they were photographed in detail ( Tech Pan B&W for its resolution ) and ISO 100 in colour. This was far more effecient than creating a set of drawings and method sheets for something that might never be produced again. For product shots ISO 50 was used as the competition was using 5 x 4. I am not a ' real world ' photographer now and have gone digital as an affordable option to keep photography as an interest. My view of images in digital is quite naturally tainted by my years of film involvement but I am not a pixel counter. If, as in yesterdays example, an image is put up for comparison I will look at it with high magnification but I would not otherwise.

Now with that behind us.

It is from people such as yourself that I hope to learn more of the digital world. I have found so much conflicting information on the net and I hope we can do better than that here.

It seems there is a lot to catch up on from today which I will now do. My version of Nikon Capture will not allow the same degree of interpolation. Save as JPG ( various compression levels ), NEF 8bit or TIFF 16bit only. Tried several times and ways of getting a screen capture but each time the Tool Boxes vanish so I've given up for now but I can take a pic later if it is any use.

Don

Rob,

From what I have read this is so on the D100. There is a sharpness in the RAW that is not there on the JPG, yet I have not found that a sharpened JPG contains less image info. Some of this may be down to what was going on at the time of release. Again I have heard this was put down to the strength of the anti alaise filter ( not well up on this electronics tech stuff ) People have commented on the large difference in out of camera JPG's from the D70 in comparison. Most of which has been put down to a less agressive ( if thats the word ) aa filter rather than changes to in camera processing. Once again though no comparison pics have been found.

Don

This thread is a reminder of just how different RAW converters can be.
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...read.php?t=401

Don

This filter is to overcome moire patterning. If a pattern in the subject image is close to the pitch of the sensors pixels it will product a beat pattern. I don't know if you remember the days of news readers on the TV wearing check jackets and ties ? If the camera caught it right it would give a jazzy effect. The technical reason for this was down to the quaility of a notch filter in the TV set. The video frequency produced by the jacket matched that of the sub-carrier radio frequency the colour was modulated to. It amasing the stuff you never forget - LOL

Rob,

I would guess that in 2002 and Canons position in the market, I think D10, Nikon may have been very cautious. Seen all this stuff on D200 banding going on now.

As for the jazzy effect I think Micheal Fish springs to mind. :D

Following my last post referring to Stephen's experience ( with 2 Stephens here perhaps I will have to refer to him as FOXY BOB :) ) I have just downloaded Corels Raw Shooter. Tomorrow I will give that a go and if it works I can compare 2 different RAW converters side by side. Going back to Foxy Bob's experience I think Bibble had an effect on colour as well as the 1/3 difference.

I feel am going to learn a lot through this thread. Thanks for the explanation.

Don

I have just been running some tests on the above quote. Whenever I had to resize an image I would just resize in CS with image resize in small increments on a jpg image. I have just done a resize using the above method and the method I normaly use, I am very surprised at the diference at the same magnification. I have put a sample so you can see the diference.
The left hand of the pair is the Raw upsized and the right is using the image resize

Thanks Stephen for sharing that one I didn't know about it.

You certainly do not have to look hard to see the difference Christine :)

Don

LOL - Your up against a bunch of Real World engineers here who like to make improvements through science and measurement. The empirical approach can be very hit and miss and just lead you around in circles.

I down loaded Capture One yesterday (db version if I recall ) I don't know if it's because it's demo but half the tools don't seem to work. I may have to start reading the manual :( - LOL

My son is doing a Uni programming course with a local camera shop manager. It appears that a lot of folk don't reckon the D200 because of these problems.