Question on RAW conversion

[147798]

I'm using Canon and DPP. Trying to learn a little about RAW -- I really don't know too much about it.

Took a nice picture of my dog. In DPP, she's got a great looking catch light in her eye, but when I convert it to quality 10 jpg, the catch light comes out pretty much gone. Even when converting to 16 bit tiff it still looks halfway between te RAW and jpg. I brought the .cr2 file into iPhoto (I don't have ap or lr) and it's still there when viewing, but upon export to jpg, it's gone again.

Does this seem right or am I doing something wrong? I can't even take a screen cap, because the screen cap also comes out looking duller.

 

[jaduffy108]

A great resource for you is:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/index.html

 

[Digital Skunk]

Bring us the photo, and/or check the link above.

It'd be easier for some of us to see what's going on even if you uploaded or linked to the bad photo.

 

[147798]

I'm sure I don't know what I'm doing, but here's a link to the picture. Please not critique of the picture. I was out walking the dog and getting some RAW shots just to play with RAW processing.

http://picasaweb.google.com/t.blog.w/RAWVsJPEGConversion#5303206790276221378

Not sure if any of this is making sense, but any help is appreciated.

I also found a book I think I'll buy -- The Complete RAW Workflow Guide by Phillip Andrews, unless someone has something else to recommend.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I'm sure I don't know what I'm doing, but here's a link to the picture. Please not critique of the picture. I was out walking the dog and getting some RAW shots just to play with RAW processing.

http://picasaweb.google.com/t.blog.w/RAWVsJPEGConversion#5303206790276221378

Not sure if any of this is making sense, but any help is appreciated.

I also found a book I think I'll buy -- The Complete RAW Workflow Guide by Phillip Andrews, unless someone has something else to recommend.

Any book will do, and as for the photo, it may just be that you didn't do any editing on it whatsoever.

Did you? Just checking because:

When you shoot RAW, the camera takes the RAW information and pairs it with a tiny processed JPG that is embedded in the RAW file for previews and thumbnails. When you use apps like iPhoto and browse the photos in the Finder and such you will see only the thumbnail JPG (which by the way may have some adjustments in it).

If you open the file up in Photoshop Camera RAW, or export the JPG or TIF or whatever file it won't have any conversion or adjustments whatsoever, and will most likely look flat and show you your true exposure nine times out of ten.

Work on the photo in iPhoto if you haven't already done so and try to bring out that catch light in the eyes of the dog.

 

[147798]

Thanks, and I won't pretend to know exactly what I'm doing, but I opened the photo in Digital Photo Professional, and applied some adjustments -- mainly around sharpening contrast and exposure. Just slight tweaks.

Then I did a "convert and save" to create a jpg from within DPP. Then, when I open the jpg, I get this flatter image w/out the sparkle in the eye that is evident from looking at the photo in DPP.

I also brought the CR2 into iPhoto and did similar adjustments, and the sparkle is still there, but not if I drag the photo to the desktop (creating a jpg).

Maybe the catch light is just too small, and the jpg processing swallows it whole (is this where PSE might come in handy?).

I won't lose sleep over this, but I'm just trying to understand how to convert from RAW that I see (and like) in DPP, and preserve it in the resulting jpg.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Thanks, and I won't pretend to know exactly what I'm doing, but I opened the photo in Digital Photo Professional, and applied some adjustments -- mainly around sharpening contrast and exposure. Just slight tweaks.

Then I did a "convert and save" to create a jpg from within DPP. Then, when I open the jpg, I get this flatter image w/out the sparkle in the eye that is evident from looking at the photo in DPP.

I also brought the CR2 into iPhoto and did similar adjustments, and the sparkle is still there, but not if I drag the photo to the desktop (creating a jpg).

Maybe the catch light is just too small, and the jpg processing swallows it whole (is this where PSE might come in handy?).

I won't lose sleep over this, but I'm just trying to understand how to convert from RAW that I see (and like) in DPP, and preserve it in the resulting jpg.

I would say then that maybe, just maybe the light in the eye is too small.

Try exporting, or sharing I think it's called in iPhoto, the file as a JPG at the highest settings instead of dragging it over. I know that with all the other iLife apps, dragging and dropping does create a JPG, but it's still just the saved preview/thumbnail image. What makes the iLife & iWork apps so great for some photogs is that those previews are usually full resolution, but stripped of their metadata completely.