Monitor issues?

[craig_supplee]

<p>I was taking a few test shots with my D7000 tonight shooting in RAW plus JPG. I wanted to see how many times I have to zoom on the camera to have an equivalent 100% zoom in Capture NX2. I had just turned on the computer before uploading the pics. When I first opened up the JPG and RAW file of a pic, the RAW file was noticeably lighter and less saturated looking. I could not get it to match the JPG no matter what I tried. I left the computer running, and about an hour later decided to try it again as I was going to call Nikon Tech support. This time both pics looked identical. I viewed a few more combos, and they all looked the same also. My monitor is an LG Flatron W2252TQ that is about 2 years old. I can't believe it would be a monitor issue, but have no idea as to why the files would appear different. Even if the monitor wasn't "warmed up" I would think both files would still appear the same. Does a LCD screen have to "warm up"? I have the 2.3.1 version Capture NX2 running on Windows 7 64 bit. This is the first time I have tried the two files side by side, so not sure if this has been happening for awhile or not. Thoughts?<br>

By the way, 6 presses of the zoom button on my camera is close to 100% in Capture NX2.</p>

[jenkins]

<p>They won't appear the same, RAW file has minimally processed data the Jpeg doesn't.</p>

[summerleif]

<p>Are you having a dispute with your monitor, or did you actually mean to use the word <strong>problem</strong> in the title to your thread?</p>

[craig_supplee]

<blockquote>

<p>They won't appear the same, RAW file has minimally processed data the Jpeg doesn't.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well the odd thing is, they did appear the same the second time I viewed them together about an hour later.</p>

<p>@ Summer, I meant to use the word<em> issues. </em>In my Midwestern brain, they can be used interchangeably as they can have the same meaning.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Craig, just a wild guess here but is your computer set to auto-update Windows 7? Or have you confirmed any update prompts while on auto-pilot? (For me, that's anytime in the morning before coffee.)</p>

<p>I just recently got a Windows 7 PC, which I haven't yet calibrated for photo editing, and decided to let it auto-update just to see if how it behaved (with WinXP and earlier I never did that - too many problems). Between auto-updates for Windows 7 and a couple of my own auto-pilot confirmations to update the nVidia drivers I've seen some intermittent minor glitches affecting the appearance of raw and in camera JPEGs, and video rendering in other applications.</p>

<p>At the moment with Picasa 3.9.0 (which is prompting me to update) I'm seeing the type of thing you described: the NEFs are pale and less saturated than in camera JPEGs of the same photos. That's typical of image viewers that don't apply in camera settings to raw files. But in ViewNX 2.3.0 (32 bit) my raw and in camera JPEGs are nearly identical, which I'd expect from Nikon's own software set to apply the EXIF data to the raw file.</p>

<p>I'll update my version of ViewNX 2 and try the 64 bit version to match yours and see what happens.</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>This might be a colour profile issue. About 6 months ago I suddenly noticed that my RAW processing had terrible preview colours, this was with ACR and PhotoShop, as well as UFRAW and GIMP. The raw preview looked nothing like the version finally imported into the image editor. Long story short, it turned out that a rogue colour profile had corrupted the colour handling in RAW. Most perplexing thing was that the profile in question was for a colour printer that I don't even own! How it embedded itself in ACR and UFRAW is a complete mystery, but disabling it and sending the entire driver to the recycle bin sorted it out.</p>

<p>Another thing is that the LG monitor in question is only a standard TFT model, which will show a difference in brightness depending on the vertical viewing angle. If you viewed the two images one on top of the other, then naturally their brightness wouldn't appear the same unless you realigned your eyepoint between images. This is why people spend big money on an IPS or E-IPS screen that doesn't show a gamma change with eyepoint.</p>

[craig_supplee]

<p>Lex, I have auto update set to 3:00 am, and as my computer is never on at that time, nothing updates until I manually do it.</p>

<p>Rodeo Joe, It doesn't seem to be a color profile issue. I tried it again at lunch after having just booted up, and both files looked the same. I am now wondering if your theory about placement on the screen could have been it. I don't remember where they were when I was comparing them. The last two times I have done this I made sure they were side by side, and both times they looked the same. I'm just hoping it is something that simple. Thanks to all for the help.</p>