By John VanSteenberg
Often the reason why images fail is embedded in your camera settings (not your lens or sensor). Simple changes in these settings can result in huge benefits. Let’s examine one reason why your photos sometimes lack the vibrance and ‘punch’ you want but can’t quite achieve.
Even today’s cameras are not perfect and can be fooled by lighting circumstances. Today, we look at the most common camera setting lowering many photographers’ potential image quality: saving files only as jpegs.
A lot of people shoot in jpeg mode. And, that is OK for a lot of situations. Shooting in RAW is exactly like JPEG as far as metering and composition and exposure at the camera. As far is RAW processing software, there is only a little difference between processing a RAW file and trying to adjust a jpeg in the software used for that purpose. But the outcome can be very different. You see, when working in RAW, you have much more data in use as you make the adjustments. You may have a couple more controls working with a RAW file converter, but the process is about the same as post-capture jpeg editing.
For this blog, I took about 40 images. I photographed the scene in the normal manner, saving the shots as both raw and jpeg. Then, I sorted out the images I wanted to use.
Let’s look at 7 pairs of photos comparing the in-camera jpeg vs an adjusted jpeg file made from the RAW data using a good RAW converter. With the very flat light existing during the photography, the sensor was easily able to handle the entire scene dynamic range (the darkest to lightest tones). Even so, problems in the straight jpegs are clear. Highlight and shadow details are lost, blocking up areas of the images. And color was way off, even using AWB.
The shooting situation:
The scenes are in a typical heavy overcast day during a heavy snowstorm. Time is very late evening. The light volume is low and is very flat. The overall scene light is very blue. The adjustments took about 15 seconds per image (after cropping was done).
What I did to the RAW files.
All images were cropped for composition (no different than in jpeg). All were white balanced for the snow under existing light conditions (which brings out much more accurate colors in the rest of the scene objects and which can also be done in jpeg to some extent, but with less flexibility). Most were bumped up just a bit in contrast and saturation to offset the very flat available light. And I added a bit of noise reduction because of the very low light creating noise in the shadows.
The comparisons: L are the ‘straight’ camera jpegs. R are the jpegs from RAW.
Notice the color of the stone walls of the church. And the portico columns. And the detail visible in the shadows under the portico and in the tree bark (R). Note the now visible detail in the bell tower (R); and the elimination of the overall pink color of the shadows (L vs R).
Notice many of the same improvements from the first pair, plus more snow detail, and the reds in the small sign.
Pay particular attention to the difference in the color in the evergreens at the bottom, the visibility of the dead leaves on the small trees lower right, and the stone colors in the tower. Note: this image required an exposure correction of plus 1 f/stop on the RAW which also improved the image’s dynamic range (no exposure correction was done on the out of camera jpeg, as that much change would have degraded the image badly and would not accurately represent the limitation of the out of camera setting). And a slight vignette was added to the RAW to deemphasize the trees and focus the viewer’s attention on the tower and evergreens.
Again, the detail and color in the stone work, the greater detail in the highlights in the snow and bushes under the window.
Enough said..
The warmth and color of the old granite and marble come out, while the uncorrected jpeg has a seriously blue cast, which stunts those red tones and makes the overly blue snow.
The setting of these photos was the beautiful Glendale Cemetery in Akron, Ohio. RAW file processing was performed using Bibble Labs, Bible Pro v5.2.
Good luck.
