Learned the Hard Way to Shoot RAW

[lobalobo]

<p>Over this weekend, I had at my disposal only a point-and-shoot camera without a RAW option, Picasa, and the Topaz Adjust plugin (launched through Irfanview)--i.e., no Lightroom or the like--and I had about 12 hours to produce a photo of my kids to upload onto a site that would produce holiday cards in time to send out. This wouldn't have been a problem except that the elements conspired against me. What elements? The only time I had to shoot was a cloudy gray morning and the scene my wife and I agreed to use was the kids in front of the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village, where we live; the arch is white. Those of you who are better at color adjustment than I am, which includes, I imagine, everyone reading this, can guess what comes next.<br>

<br /> When I brought the images back to my computer to process, I saw, unsurprisingly a sea of washed out gray. My kids' faces, which are light in complexion, looked particularly bad, like they were starring in one of those teen vampire movies. Inasmuch as the kids' faces were key for a holiday card, I decided I needed to punch up the color somehow. But <em>no matter what I did</em> the improvement in the skin tones came at a price of turning the sky and the arch either yellow or blue and no adjustment to the temperature of the image could get this right. Three hours later, I gave up trying to get a neutral sky and white arch (and settled on blue).<br>

<br /> So here is my question (for those who might still be reading): Am I right that if I could have started with a RAW image, this problem might have been avoided? My thought is this: If I had made adjustments, even global adjustments, to a RAW file, I could have tweaked the color in the kids' faces without having the tone curves baked into the JPEG exacerbate the color shifts in the background. Is this right, or was the cause lost when I left the scene with a capture of pale images bathed in gray light?</p>

[bgelfand]

<p>Without seeing the image, it is hard to say. It would also depend upon which RAW converter software you were using. Adobe Camera RAW 6 has an extensive set of tools, but so does Photoshop CS5.</p>

<p>Given what I think you are saying, I would probably have converted to black and white and punched up the contrast some (on the other hand, I would probably have been shooting in black and white on film, so take my comment with a grain of salt). Cloudy mornings have a wonder diffue light that is perfect for black and white photography.</p>

<p>Please post and image.</p>

 

[sknowles]

<p>With respect to, "So here is my question (for those who might still be reading): Am I right that if I could have started with a RAW image, this problem might have been avoided?", not really because you can shoot jpeg with the proper exposure for the light and scent to get very good images which require little, if any, post-processing. I agree without seeing the images, it's hard to tell, but I would suspect the point-and-shoot camera was less than adequate for the scene and lighting conditions.</p>

[lobalobo]

<p>Yes, I did convert to black & white at one point, and the image was much improved, but for whatever reason, we decided not to send out a card with a black & white image. (Seemed too serious for the occasion, I guess.) And I'm sure that I could have done a better job with exposure in the first place. But I'm not sure how much better. Hard to get vibrant pictures in poor light, no matter the camera, and I was not going for realism, just a pleasing result. Thus my question of whether in general it's possible to cheat better punching up a RAW file. I realize that it's hard to answer in the abstract, but given that my wife goes nuts when I post pictures of my kids on public sites, I'll have to pass on that. Thanks for the responses.</p>

[lachaine]

<p>Raw or JPEG, you can't do much with dull, flat lighting on a grey day unless you improve the lighting somehow. Poking around trying to put colour in faces that didn't have much in the first place is extremely unlikely to result in a satisfactory photo for a greeting card or anything else. As for B&W conversions, it's still dull, flat lighting... not much use for something like this.</p>

[lobalobo]

<p>Thanks, Pierre. Makes me feel somewhat less stupid for not shooting RAW. Of course, having a real camera would have helped to do it right more generally. What I should have used is an off-camera strobe (not the puny, harsh flash that pops out of the point-and-shoot and that I sometimes use for fill-light). That way my kids might have looked vibrant against the gray background (provided the different temperature of the strobe and the natural light didn't put me back in a mess). The B&W did look better only because it stood up to manipulation without creating a color caste, but you are right, it was not a great image anyway.</p>

<p>So my only remaining question is whether I'm right that RAW would have made the situation at least less bad. Again, my intuition is that in adjusting color in a JPEG created a worse caste than the same adjustment would have in a RAW image because in the JPEG there would be fewer adjustments possible. Or maybe this is wrong and the only cost to editing a JPEG is degrading the image (not an issue for just a few adjustment of an image to become a 4x6 greeting card).</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>Raw or JPEG, you can't do much with dull, flat lighting on a grey day unless you improve the lighting somehow. </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Pierre makes a good point, and understanding the light is more important than RAW or JPEG. It would be interesting to see what the RAW images would look like (after conversion), I have seen plenty of dull images from RAW files due to the light. There are days when I don't bother shooting without a flash since I know the results will be flat and listless.</p>

[lobalobo]

<p>Believe me, Jeff, if I could have waited for better light, I would have. I was aware of the problem even at the time. Next time I have no time, I'll be sure to bring a real camera and an off-camera speedlight and then RAW or JPEG will make little difference. Still I wonder whether under these constrained circumstances, the caste problem I observed and couldn't fix once I adjusted the faces might have been less severe had I a RAW file. But I do understand that I'm not giving anyone anything to go on in not providing the file. Thanks to all.</p>

[bruce_rubenstein]

<p>Shooting with P&S cameras and getting good results, under anything other than ideal conditions, takes better technical chops than it does with more forgiving cameras. They have a limited dynamic range that even RAW won't help. I use a Canon S95 as my take it everywhere camera, and RAW works well for correcting WB, but not much else. P&S cameras really demand getting things right in the camera.</p>

<p>If you are shooting people, particularly Caucasian, then you can't let the red channel clip (over expose) and expect to get good skin tones. You need to know the camera well enough to be able to control the exposure, contrast, saturation and WB. If the camera doesn't explicitly have controls for controlling those things, then it probably has "picture modes" that will get you in the ball park. Almost every P&S camera has a "portrait" setting that will turn down contrast and saturation: those thing are easy to add in post, but hard to remove.</p>

<p>So far as fixing your JPG, you needed a tool that does what PS, LR and probably others have called Hue and Saturation. They let you adjust the individual primary additive and subtractive colors. Skin tones are not in the same color range as the sky or the arch, so even globally adjusting red, yellow & magenta would have almost exclusively effected the skin tones.</p>

<p> </p>

[lobalobo]

<p>Thanks, Bruce. You said:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>RAW works well for correcting WB, but not much else.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>But that's all my question was about. I was surprised how little latitude I had in adjusting the temperature of the JPEG before creating an ugly color caste and I wondered whether a RAW image would have given me more latitude. Some of the answers above suggest that the answer is "no" and that makes sense to me.</p>

<p>The reason I had little latitude is because the image itself was taken in poor light, dull and gray. The image was not improperly exposed. (Even with a point-and-shoot, I capture with a histogram on at all times to be sure of this). Also, I'm aware of the portrait scene mode on my camera, which I know well enough, but didn't want portrait mode (or face recognition) because I wanted the background and foreground evenly exposed. And yes, in an ideal world, not only would I have had an off-camera strobe (or a more effective on-camera flash) but I would have had Lightroom or some other processor that would have allowed me to adjust individual channels. But I used Topaz Adjust to do essentially this, with less than successful results.</p>

<p>I don't doubt that a more skilled post-processor could have done better, and perhaps a more skilled photographer could have gotten a better result right out of the point-and-shoot camera. But I think overall the lesson is that lousy light makes lousy images.</p>

[thomas_abbott1]

<p>A picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand words, however, may not be worth a single picture. You need to upload the picture for the best feedback and suggestions.</p>

[JRCrowe]

<p>If you post an image there are people here that would be happy to work on them and give you a direction to take with your post processing. A large sized jpeg would be the best.</p>

[doc444]

<p>I am sure that you did this to correct the color but just in case. I use Picasa all the time and find I can correct a lot of faults quickly using it. So what I would have tried is using the tuning adjustment I would have use the eyedropper and clicked it on the white post to give it basic color balance then used the slider to do small adjustments for me that usually gets me really close to where I want the color to be. Then using the shadow and highlight sliders I can adjust contrast. </p>

[bruce_rubenstein]

<blockquote>

<p>I was surprised how little latitude I had in adjusting the temperature of the JPEG before creating an ugly color caste and I wondered whether a RAW image would have given me more latitude.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes. The RAW file will keep the full captured range of the red, green & blue channels. Provided you are dealing with a continuous spectrum light source, than a good WB can be achieved in most cases. Keep in mind that not everything in the fame may have the same color temperature light source. A subject in sun light is different than one in a shadow; you can do a global balance for one or the other.</p>

<p>On an overcast day the light is coming straight down as if everything is being lit by a giant soft box (it looks soft, but is very directional) which results in shadows in the eye sockets. Just a little fill flash, from on camera flash, will open the shadows, create some catchlights and warm up the color.</p>

[lobalobo]

<p>Thanks to all, and yes I know that posting the image would help, but my wife has a thing about publicly posting images of our kids. In any case, we just received the cards and the correction I did worked out better than expected. The caste I described showed up on my home printer but not my monitor, and it didn't show up (or at least as badly) in the Shutterfly cards. I had assumed that my home printer (an HP Photosmart printer) was going to be a better indication of the Shutterfly printer's output than my laptop's monitor (even though the monitor is calibrated using Spyder 3). But I guess that HP Photosmart printers are not what they used to be. My previous cheap HP printer produces results as good as Shutterfly (or MPix, for that matter); this one does not. Too bad.</p>

[lobalobo]

<p>Your Picasa White Balance method is exactly the same as mine, Ray. Glad to see I'm on the right path. The problem is that I was trying to salvage a bad picture and the first thing I did was alter and punch up the color of the kids' faces (using a Topaz Adjust preset). Accuracy was no longer possible at that point and my remaining goal was simply to get the ugly color caste out of the sky (and white arch). I was willing to live with the color distortions that would cause, including in the recolored faces, because the faces had color and so a small move to the cold or warm would be less noticeable. That was the theory (and as it turned out, this worked) but every test print I did at home produced either a blue or a yellow caste in the sky--I drove myself nuts trying to find the neutral mid point, but couldn't do it. I gave up and settled for what I thought would be slightly blue caste but as it turns out when the cards came back from Shutterfly, the sky was neutral (light gray). My printer was the culprit here.</p>

[charlie_novice]

<blockquote>

<p>Yes, I did convert to black & white at one point, and the image was much improved, but for whatever reason, we decided not to send out a card with a black & white image.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Make it black and white, then tone it. Not sepia, something brighter for the holiday.</p>

<p> </p>