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I just started playing around with raw images. When opening the raw image in Raw Therapee, it looks completely different than the JPEG produced by the camera:

Raw vs. JPEG

(left is raw, right is JPEG)

I figured if I was able to reproduce the camera-internal postprocessing, I would get a better understanding of what the camera does and what information is lost in the process. The problem is, I can't even get close to the JPEG!

So here's my question:

Is there any way to figure out what settings (roughly) in e.g. Raw Therapee correspond to the automatic postprocessing done by the camera? Or am I stuck with trial and error until I get a better feeling for the individual steps?

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I've always wandered if there was a Lightroom preset that reproduce the same processing as the Canon Standard, Landscape, Faithful, etc. picture styles. Having that will partially render useless the RAW&JPG mode (partially, of course). – Andres Jun 16 '11 at 18:05
You might want to see this question which I asked which is similar: photo.stackexchange.com/questions/10715/… – ChrisFletcher Jun 16 '11 at 18:44
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Which is which? I would assume the first is the raw image, but maybe not. – John Cavan♦ Jun 16 '11 at 23:44
2  
Have you tried the software that came with your camera? If anything gets close, that should be it. Otherwise, I do not think it is possible because the processing controls and algorithms may be entirely different as the ones in your software, so it is possible that NO combination of settings will give you comparable results. – Itai Jun 17 '11 at 13:07
@John Cavan: You guessed right (and I added that info to the question, thanks) – blubb Jun 17 '11 at 13:13
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1 Answer

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Well, I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to do that if that's the outcome! Itai's point is valid, but there are a few immediate things that are happening there:

  1. Noise reduction, quite heavy from the result.

  2. It's less bright and appears less contrasty.

  3. It's been sharpened, but the noise reduction on that has definitely lost detail to sharpen.

I think, just as matter of practice, I would probably worry less about getting it like the camera and more about getting it looking good. Which is not to say that the camera can't do that, but I find it's never quite what I would have chosen.

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Of course I do want to get good images instead of reproduce the camera's processing, but with the overwhelming number of options, I thought it might be a good idea to try to reproduce the camera and start from there with minor variations. – blubb Jun 18 '11 at 19:48
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@SimonStelling - I wouldn't bother, especially if the camera outcome is, well, not that good. I realize that you had an extremely noisy sample there, but the result out of the camera looked like someone dumped mud on it. Just let your eyes guide you, you'll do fine. – John Cavan♦ Jun 18 '11 at 20:45

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