Colours help please.

I am posting these pics for advice if possible please.

I shoot in Nikon 12 or 14 bit RAW. I have Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom 2.5. If I open any picture using Adobe’s Raw handler, I lose saturation. If I open them in Nikon ViewNX, they are fine. I can convert them to Jpeg and then open the jpg in Photoshop and work with it, and the colours are as seen in ViewNX.

The first shot was just resized in ViewNX.

Am I doing something basic that is wrong?

Nikon D300 with Nikon 80-400/F4-5.6 @ 400mm/F8. 1/250 sec, ISO 400, EV -0.67 FF

This shot was simply resized in CS3. No sharpening has been done in either, no change of Colour space (It wasn't "saved for web").

Hi Mike,

If you shoot a Nikon camera and open the image in CaptureNX, the in-camera settings will remain visable because it's a Nikon program. Your in-camera settings will not be seen by any other program that is not Nikon.

So, your in-camera settings like saturation, contrast, sharpening will be seen by any Nikon program but not by any Adobe program.

Try this... open your image in CaptureNX and after this send it to photoshop CS. You will know see the same image as when you opened it in CaptureNX.

If not, blame me because I have no idea what I'm talking about

Edwin Kats

Mike, view your images in ViewNX then right click on one you want to open - you'll get a dropdown menu - choose Open With...and select lightroom (if it's not there then you'll need to select the "register" option from the same menu and follow the prompts.

Work the image in lightroom then right click in the workspace and choose "edit in Photoshop CS3" - you will get a dialogue box, make sure Edit a Copy with LR Adjustments is selected and also the check box at the button labelled "stack with original" - then click edit.

When posting to the web you need to change the colour profile of the image from Adobe1998 to sRGB.

Hope this helps

Its shot in RAW so it doesn't matter what the camera settings for saturation and colour are - those are the in camera jpeg conversion parameters, RAW files are straight off the sensor

Is there a mismatch of the colour bit depth in the CS raw conversion setting parameter compared to ViewNX, ie is CS opening as a lower 8 bit compared to NX 14bit file? - it looks like colour info is being lost and more like a compressed sRGB conversion compared to a full colour depth RGB conversion

I don't have CS3 but CS2, its the drop down box bottom left in CS2 that controls the colour bit depth and colour gamut in the Adobe RAW conversion process and Edit/colour settings/ for the working space ie the way CS opens files, ensure this is Adobe RGB and grey gamma 2.2 and colour management policy "RGB" set to preserve embedded profiles

The same thing happens with my canon software compared to lightroom, cs3 etc, nobody knows what the camera produces better than the manufacturers software, try converting to 16bit tif for post production instead of jpg, as jpg is an 8bit format file type.

Thanks for the advice folks. This has been driving me mad for months, and no-one I have spoken to seems to have noticed a problem.

I'll explore the advice given and come back to you.

Many thanks.

The point is that the manufacturers have their own preloaded profiles that in their opinion best suit their cameras and these are what you see as the default when you use their proprietary software. Lightroom and the raw convertor in CS are more neutral wrt to the camera unless you download a profile for your camera (some are available for free from the Adobe web site). So what you are seeing is the camera manufacturer's optimised view of how the image should look ( which may more closely match your perception of how the image was at the time of taking) and comparing it with a less processed view of the file ( which may be a more accurate view of the scene, may not match your perception of it, but may be a better starting point for image optimisation). It's a common complaint from people that their images look flat and lifeless when they switch from jpg to raw shooting as well. In many ways they're meant to be !

You may be better off creating an adjustment curve and playing with the saturation controls to create a standard development method that you can apply to every image before doing any fine adjustments.

While the comments about 16 bit versus 8 bit are technically true, for images destined for the web I doubt whether you would see any real difference. It is extremely difficult to see any difference between 8 bit printing and 16 bit printing on normal size prints (i.e. up to a 16x12). It can help sometimes give you smoother transitions in areas with blocks of colour like skies for example whenn editing but we got by with 8 bit for many years.

Overall it sounds like you need to think a bit about workflow and I'm afraid you could get lots of conflicting advice.

I work on a three folder system. Raw files in one, master files in the second and output files in the third. Convert your raw file into a TIF or PSD file using either Adobe or ProPhoto RGB colourspace, make adjustments in photoshop on separate adjustment layers (don't flatten them !) and save this in the master file folder. Now flatten the layers, resize this file as appropriate for your output method, sharpen, convert to the colourspace (sRGB for web, preferably a custom colourspace if printing) and save this either as a jpg or a tif if you prefer. The principal is to create a non-destructive workflow where you can always go back and adjust something without having to remember what you did. In particular try and avoid multiple cycles of modifying jpgs as that will lead enventually to image degradation. And make sure that the colourspace always is correct for the output device - it makes a huge difference.

There are lots of good books on Raw file conversion and workflow (Kelby or Evening depending on whether you like humour or not) and lots of stuff on the web (Kelby's blog often has tips on workflow using lightroom for example).

Hope that helps and isn't too confusing.

You've had some good advise already!

The Woody looks a bit oddly dark under the bill, I had one like this visiting my feeder site last year and the black, upon closer inspection, was a very bad Tick infestation!