I recently returned from Australia & got some great shots- I saved my Canon 7D's RAW AdobeRGB files directly to an Epson P4000 photobank while I was abroad and when I returned yesterday I loaded them from my photobank onto my PC and I have been using the 7D's bundled Digital Photo Professional (DPP) to open each RAW file. Everything is going fine but I do notice some slight differences from the Camera's viewfinder of the images to the DPP presentation- the colors aren't quite as vibrant. I'm curious if this has something to do with the AdobeRGB color format or if it's simply the 7D files themselves don't process as well with this software. They by no means look dull, but I was using the "cloudy" white balance much of the time to make the yellows on the Saltwater Crocodiles really "pop" (which the viewfinder shows did indeed work) but for some reason they don't pop nearly as much when viewed in DPP. Anyway, please let me know if there is something I am missing...I am totally unfamiliar with AdobeRGB & this is my first time using it because I was told it was the best & that I really can't lose! Anyway, thanks for the help in advance- Brandon
Posted by David Bostedo on August 21, 2010 at 2:53 PM
Canon 7D's RAW AdobeRGB
Actually, the "AdobeRGB" setting in your camera in no way affects the RAW file, except to note that setting in the EXIF. RAW files don't have a color space. They also don't have a white balance, so the setting in the camera for white balance also doesn't directly affect the picture data (although it also get recorded in the EXIF).
What you see on the camera screen is the internal JPG representation of the developed RAW file. So Adobe RGB might make a slight difference there. So what you see on the screen isn't actually captured in the RAW file - it's had color space conversion, white balance, contrast, sharpening, etc already applied.
When you pull a RAW file into software (be it ACR, DPP, or any others) it has a set of defaults that get applied for development. If these are different than what the camera was doing internally, you'll see a difference. (DPP probably reads as much as it can about your camera settings from the RAW file and tries to replicate them - you might want to check your settings there.) I actually don't typically expect a RAW file to look exactly like the in-camera JPG. If that's what you want, it might be worth considering shoooting JPG; Or, as I said, see if the software can be set to exactly replicate what's done in the camera.
Even given that, when you add in the fact that the little screen on a camera doesn't have the same capabilities as a real monitor, that could cause more differences, so it still may not be exact.
Hello Brandon,
If you are shooting in raw, what you are seeing on the camera is a sRGB interpretation of the raw file. Raw files have no color space assigned. When you open a raw file you can put it into any color space you like. sRGB is the smallest and the default space for the internet, Adobe RGB is larger and Pro Photo is the largest of the three commonly used for photography. The advantage to working in the largest space possible is that you can always convert down in space without loss of small nuances of color. Going the other direction (small space to large) may or may not cause a visible color degradation and has no advantage for the image.
When I work on an image in PS, I open it in 16-bit Pro Photo. Make all the adjustments I can before changing to 8-bit color because some plugins I use only work in 8-bit. Once I'm done I will save the image as a layered Tiff or PSD. I will flatten, resize and convert to sRGB for web use. Then do a "save as" before posting so that my original stays in the largest space available. If you use the save for web function in Photoshop, it will do the color space conversion for you, But you can do it yourself in the edit menu of PS under the "convert to profile".
You can do a web search for "color space chart" for more information and I have included a chart that I found several years ago that shows sRGB as the smallest triangle and Pro Photo as the largest. The color shown is what the human eye can see.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the tips guys...another prob though- for some reason Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom 2.0 won't open my 7D raw files....and I can't find a plugin to remedy this. The only program that has worked for my 7D raws has been DPP.
I had the same problem when I upgraded cameras for LR1 and CS2, Brandon.
Easy fix however. Adobe has been trying to standardize the raw format for all the camera manufacturers. Read that as a work in progress. The format they came up with is called Digital Negative and has the file extension .dng . They have promised to support DNG as long as Adobe is in business. They have a free, downloadable converter here. http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/?promoid=DTEHA .
It requires a little time and another step, but I can still us my G4 laptop for imaging with 50D's. I rename the images in Bridge (you can't see the images at this point). Run them through the DNG converter to a separate folder (about 10 seconds per image on G4) and then import them to LR1.
Hope that helps.
Neil
Scratch that guys...I downloaded Photoshop CS5 and it reads the files perfectly & the RAW files look exactly like when I shot them when it processes them. The colors are WAY more vibrant in CS5 and look the way they should. I think maybe the older products didn't know how to handle the 7D's files properly. Anyway, I got an eye-level close-up of a 5 meter saltwater crocodile on the Adelaide River with croc expert Adam Britton as my guide for the day...will show you some of them soon!
Thanks Neil...I must have been writing my reply at the same time as yours! haha
Posted by Bill Brennan on August 22, 2010 at 11:21 AM
Thanks for the discussion. Educational. Interesting ending with CS5 as the solution.
Bill Brennan
Posted by David Bostedo on August 22, 2010 at 6:34 PM
To expand on what went on above, CS5 wasn't exactly the solution - the solution was to use a RAW editor that understood the 7D files properly, and had defaults set up for it. This could have been accomplished by converting the RAW files to DNG as stated above.
For Adobe software, Adobe never supports new cameras in old version of ACR, so unless you have the newest version, your new camera will always require either a conversion to DNG, or a purchase of the newest version of Elements or CS (which is what Brandon chose).
Or he could have bought any other RAW editor that had 7D support - like Capture One, or Aperture, etc.
What I'm curious about, Brandon, is why you were getting bad results from DPP. Did you have the newest version installed? Did it come with your 7D? I'd be surprised if that had problems, since it's Canon's own software.
If you upgrade to LR 2.7 or higher (I'd go with 3.0 since it is out now), it will read 7D raw files. The reason 2.0 didn't is that that 7d did not exist when that software was released. The updates ( the .3 or .5 etc) are often released to address this. The easy thing, since you know and use LR, is to upgrade to 3.0. I have it and love it. It uses new algorithms for raw conversion, and has improved sharpening, noise reduction, and interface functions.
If you use DPP, you can have it apply what Canon calls "Picture Styles" to the raw files, thereby getting a one-click adjustment that applies all those in-camera Jpeg processes like wb, sharpening, contrast, saturation, etc. The pictures styles are NOT scene modes, but rather Standard, Neutral, Landscape, Portrait, etc (each affecting primarily contrast, sharpening, saturation, not shutter speed or aperture like scene modes).
DPP is pretty decent, but I did an experiment a couple of years ago with my 40d. I did the best post-processing I could with DPP and then the best I could with LR on Raw + Jpeg files. LR won hands down. I no longer shoot Jpeg at all, and I don't use DPP, especially now that LR 3.0 supports tethered shooting.
Discussion
9 repliesWhat you see on the camera screen is the internal JPG representation of the developed RAW file. So Adobe RGB might make a slight difference there. So what you see on the screen isn't actually captured in the RAW file - it's had color space conversion, white balance, contrast, sharpening, etc already applied.
When you pull a RAW file into software (be it ACR, DPP, or any others) it has a set of defaults that get applied for development. If these are different than what the camera was doing internally, you'll see a difference. (DPP probably reads as much as it can about your camera settings from the RAW file and tries to replicate them - you might want to check your settings there.) I actually don't typically expect a RAW file to look exactly like the in-camera JPG. If that's what you want, it might be worth considering shoooting JPG; Or, as I said, see if the software can be set to exactly replicate what's done in the camera.
Even given that, when you add in the fact that the little screen on a camera doesn't have the same capabilities as a real monitor, that could cause more differences, so it still may not be exact.
If you are shooting in raw, what you are seeing on the camera is a sRGB interpretation of the raw file. Raw files have no color space assigned. When you open a raw file you can put it into any color space you like. sRGB is the smallest and the default space for the internet, Adobe RGB is larger and Pro Photo is the largest of the three commonly used for photography. The advantage to working in the largest space possible is that you can always convert down in space without loss of small nuances of color. Going the other direction (small space to large) may or may not cause a visible color degradation and has no advantage for the image.
When I work on an image in PS, I open it in 16-bit Pro Photo. Make all the adjustments I can before changing to 8-bit color because some plugins I use only work in 8-bit. Once I'm done I will save the image as a layered Tiff or PSD. I will flatten, resize and convert to sRGB for web use. Then do a "save as" before posting so that my original stays in the largest space available. If you use the save for web function in Photoshop, it will do the color space conversion for you, But you can do it yourself in the edit menu of PS under the "convert to profile".
You can do a web search for "color space chart" for more information and I have included a chart that I found several years ago that shows sRGB as the smallest triangle and Pro Photo as the largest. The color shown is what the human eye can see.
Hope this helps.
Easy fix however. Adobe has been trying to standardize the raw format for all the camera manufacturers. Read that as a work in progress. The format they came up with is called Digital Negative and has the file extension .dng . They have promised to support DNG as long as Adobe is in business. They have a free, downloadable converter here. http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/?promoid=DTEHA .
It requires a little time and another step, but I can still us my G4 laptop for imaging with 50D's. I rename the images in Bridge (you can't see the images at this point). Run them through the DNG converter to a separate folder (about 10 seconds per image on G4) and then import them to LR1.
Hope that helps.
Neil
Bill Brennan
For Adobe software, Adobe never supports new cameras in old version of ACR, so unless you have the newest version, your new camera will always require either a conversion to DNG, or a purchase of the newest version of Elements or CS (which is what Brandon chose).
Or he could have bought any other RAW editor that had 7D support - like Capture One, or Aperture, etc.
What I'm curious about, Brandon, is why you were getting bad results from DPP. Did you have the newest version installed? Did it come with your 7D? I'd be surprised if that had problems, since it's Canon's own software.
If you use DPP, you can have it apply what Canon calls "Picture Styles" to the raw files, thereby getting a one-click adjustment that applies all those in-camera Jpeg processes like wb, sharpening, contrast, saturation, etc. The pictures styles are NOT scene modes, but rather Standard, Neutral, Landscape, Portrait, etc (each affecting primarily contrast, sharpening, saturation, not shutter speed or aperture like scene modes).
DPP is pretty decent, but I did an experiment a couple of years ago with my 40d. I did the best post-processing I could with DPP and then the best I could with LR on Raw + Jpeg files. LR won hands down. I no longer shoot Jpeg at all, and I don't use DPP, especially now that LR 3.0 supports tethered shooting.