Posted by Barry Vangrov on January 8, 2010 at 3:57 PM
Since I bought the D90 a couple of months ago I've been shooting with the picture control setting on "Standard" and haven't played with the other settings. I shoot mostly landscapes and the results are great but I'm wondering what some of you other landscape photogs set your control at? Do you tweak the standard settings or use the "vivid" for landscapes? I shoot RAW so the selection can be changed in Capture NX but the less processing I need to do the better.
Also I'm not entirely happy with the sharpness of the RAW image - I have to add more sharpening in processing than I think I should need to. The sharpness setting in Standard mode is 3. It can be set between 1-9. Obviously I don't want to over sharpen in the camera but what's a good sharpen setting?
In-camera picture controls only affect images processed in camera. So if you are shooting raw, the only settings that will be reflected in the image will be color space and white balance. Sharpening, color saturation, brightness, contrast, hue and noise reduction will only be adjustable in post processing.
The big advantage in shooting raw is that the process of creating a jpg image from the sensor data will result in data loss as the camera takes a large image and applies these adjustments and compresses it according to your quality settings. Subsequent adjustments in post processing will further degrade the image, introducing undesirable effects such as posterization, color depth reduction, etc.
Processing a raw image in your computer with a raw converter such as NX2, Bibble, ACR, Raw Shooter, Capture One, Lightroom, Picture Window Pro, etc will allow you to make these adjustments with minimal negative impacts, resulting in greater color depth and smoother tonal transitions.
Typically I shoot with custom white balance set using a gray card whenever possible. If my circumstances do not permit me to use a card and it is day time, I will use auto white balance. I also set my in-camera color space to Adobe RGB, the largest possible color space in camera. sRGB is a lowest common denominator, and should be used only as an output color space, ie for print, email or web.
Once the image is in my computer I will use either NX2 or Phase One's Capture One. NX2 has a funky interface, but is the closest to Nikon's intent in terms of subtle color renditions and overall image quality, but it is slow and clunky. Capture One is extremely fast, allowing me to start processing even before all my images have been transferred to my computer from my card. I first evaluate the histogram to correct any exposure issues, then adjust the shadow/hilights, then levels to ensure that the image is full-range (blacks, whites and everything in between, provided the scene has all that information). Then I adjust the saturation and contrast to get the image where I like it. Once I've done that, I add some sharpening, noise reduction and convert. Capture One allows you to copy any/all image settings to other images as necessary - if you take a series of images under similar lighting, you can create the adjustments for the first image then select all the images you wish to adjust then apply the adjustment to all. Very fast. If I am converting for web display, I choose a smaller lower quality jpg setting and sRGB color profile. If I intend to do additional post processing, then I create an uncompressed tiff and pro-photo RGB. And if I am simply going to print without further processing, then I pick highest quality jpg, sRGB.
Search on this and other forums for raw processing to see how others manage their workflow from raw to final image.
Hope this clarifies things a bit.
Posted by Nancy Elwood on January 16, 2010 at 10:40 PM
Barry I have the D300, but I think similiar would apply. I downloaded the landscape control and use that with in camera sharpening set at 3. Then I use NX2 to post process and keep the 3 setting but also use a final step of 50,5,4 with unsharp mask. I then save it as a 16-bit tiff. Then before I print I use Nik sharpener, by Niksoftware, to output sharpen to the paper type I am using. Hope that helps.
Discussion
2 repliesAlso I'm not entirely happy with the sharpness of the RAW image - I have to add more sharpening in processing than I think I should need to. The sharpness setting in Standard mode is 3. It can be set between 1-9. Obviously I don't want to over sharpen in the camera but what's a good sharpen setting?
Thanks!
In-camera picture controls only affect images processed in camera. So if you are shooting raw, the only settings that will be reflected in the image will be color space and white balance. Sharpening, color saturation, brightness, contrast, hue and noise reduction will only be adjustable in post processing.
The big advantage in shooting raw is that the process of creating a jpg image from the sensor data will result in data loss as the camera takes a large image and applies these adjustments and compresses it according to your quality settings. Subsequent adjustments in post processing will further degrade the image, introducing undesirable effects such as posterization, color depth reduction, etc.
Processing a raw image in your computer with a raw converter such as NX2, Bibble, ACR, Raw Shooter, Capture One, Lightroom, Picture Window Pro, etc will allow you to make these adjustments with minimal negative impacts, resulting in greater color depth and smoother tonal transitions.
Typically I shoot with custom white balance set using a gray card whenever possible. If my circumstances do not permit me to use a card and it is day time, I will use auto white balance. I also set my in-camera color space to Adobe RGB, the largest possible color space in camera. sRGB is a lowest common denominator, and should be used only as an output color space, ie for print, email or web.
Once the image is in my computer I will use either NX2 or Phase One's Capture One. NX2 has a funky interface, but is the closest to Nikon's intent in terms of subtle color renditions and overall image quality, but it is slow and clunky. Capture One is extremely fast, allowing me to start processing even before all my images have been transferred to my computer from my card. I first evaluate the histogram to correct any exposure issues, then adjust the shadow/hilights, then levels to ensure that the image is full-range (blacks, whites and everything in between, provided the scene has all that information). Then I adjust the saturation and contrast to get the image where I like it. Once I've done that, I add some sharpening, noise reduction and convert. Capture One allows you to copy any/all image settings to other images as necessary - if you take a series of images under similar lighting, you can create the adjustments for the first image then select all the images you wish to adjust then apply the adjustment to all. Very fast. If I am converting for web display, I choose a smaller lower quality jpg setting and sRGB color profile. If I intend to do additional post processing, then I create an uncompressed tiff and pro-photo RGB. And if I am simply going to print without further processing, then I pick highest quality jpg, sRGB.
Search on this and other forums for raw processing to see how others manage their workflow from raw to final image.
Hope this clarifies things a bit.