Comments on: Canon RAW converter comparison, take two

By: Brian Heath

Brian Heath — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:38:43 +0000

Eric - Thanks for your comments and insights. I will continue to play with the images to see what I can figure out.

BTW, you have some incredible photos in your collection. I'm very jealous of your photography skills and some of the places you've gotten to shoot. I've now added your blog to my Google Reader list so I can keep up with your travels.

Thanks again...

Brian

By: echeng

echeng — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:35:41 +0000

Brian - it doesn't really matter what color space you shoot in if you are shooting in RAW, unless you are extracting thumbnails or shooting simultaneous RAW + JPG.

It sounds like your display is profiled poorly. Firefox doesn't color manage images, and the other programs you mention do. The other apps will read the embedded color profile and try to do a conversion to your monitor's color space. In the case of the Mac, by default, this means a bit more contrast and saturation.

By: Brian H

Brian H — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:20:40 +0000

Hi Eric – Thanks so much for your reply. I hadn’t thought to check to make sure my color space was still sRGB. As it turns out it is (sRGB 1.31 (Canon)), so that doesn’t seem to be the immediate problem. However, one other thing I’ve found since writing yesterday was that the pictures look different in different applictions. I had originally just looked at them in the MacOSX Preview app. where they exhibit the problems I mentioned before. But if I look at them in Firefox, they look fine. Safari and Graphic Converter are both some place in the middle. In these apps, the sharpness seems to be there, but the photos have a lot more red then in Firefox and DPP. I’m sure this is probably something I’m doing wrong, but since I’ve never seen behavior like this before, I don’t quite know what to do to correct it.

Brian

By: echeng

echeng — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:14:58 +0000

Brian -- you should not have any surprises when you export JPGs from Aperture. Be sure you know what color space you are exporting in, and be sure that your viewer supports color profiles.

If you are doing this for screen or web viewing, be sure your export is in sRGB.

By: Brian H

Brian H — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:24:27 +0000

I am relatively new to working with RAW files and tried to use DPP to touch-up and convert a set of pictures a took at an outdoor wedding last week (I was not the official wedding photographer). When I exported the photos as JPEG's, all the sharpness I had added disappeared and the colors in many of the pictures went a little crazy. This was comparing the converted JPEG's in Preview in MacOSX 10.5 to the RAW in DPP v3.4.1. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I am considering getting Aperture since I would like to continue working in RAW, but I'm concerned now that I've seen there are situations where Aperture is actually worse then DPP. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks...

By: echeng

echeng — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:04:06 +0000

I don't have Lightroom 2. I may not ever get it -- we'll see. Also, I am not a Bibble user, nor do I use dcraw. However, if I have time, I'll give them a try.

In general, I am not willing to use one-off programs anymore after the advent of non-destructive editing and organization.

By: Jauder Ho

Jauder Ho — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:55:55 +0000

Eric, Lightroom 2 has camera profiles (beta). Have you tried that in comparison?

Personally, I still prefer RawShooter but it does not handle UTF-8 properly nor GPS EXIF so I have to use Lightroom now.

By: echeng

echeng — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:18:38 +0000

Lest you think I hate Aperture, 99% of the images on ECHENG.COM from the last year and a half have come out of it. I still use it as my main RAW converter.

However, when I need to print something, I will run it through the best RAW converter for the shot -- typically, I use CaptureOne, Aperture, or DPP, depending on shot content.

The conveniences of Aperture make it the best program for me, overall.

By: Mike V

Mike V — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:10:15 +0000

He still talks funny, no matter the converter :P

Hi T! :)

By: Rogier

Rogier — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:44:05 +0000

I agree with Eric. Despite beeing a huge advocate for Aperture I have also concluded that my images look much better in DPP than in anything else. Workflow etc. sucks but the images look great. Now I am shooting much less its not a requirement any more. Currently I am back to what I started years ago. DPP and iPhoto….