Raw Conversion Challenge!

[drisley]

Ok, I'm just curious to see how everybody's raw workflows differ.
I have a raw 20D file available HERE.
It's approximately 7MB.
Please feel free to download, and give your best effort at conversion.
Then post back here and give a detailed (or brief) description of what you did.
No prizes, but I thought this might be fun, and I bet we call can learn a lot.

This is my original, converted with PS CS2.

http://210.245.164.161/albums2/sharpnsmart/streetfest2005/IMG_9236.jpg

[CyberPet]

That zip-file must be corrupt, I keep getting an error... it seem to unstuff about 80% then stops. So could you upload it again and we can have a go at it? :)

[drisley]

Thanks for the heads up Petra.
I think I know what happened. :o
Anyway, I just uploaded again, and tested, and this time it should work fine.

[CyberPet]

I'm not friends yet with "save for web" in Photoshop CS, so I think the colors were richer on my screen... oh well... now that I look at the image is looks a bit too bright.

The major thing I did in raw was to warm up the colors a bit.

http://the-halls.se/edited/IMG_9236_testraw.jpg

[PhotosGuy]

OK, here's mine. The facial tones are just as they came out of RSE, but I just had to soften parts of the face a bit & play in PS. ;)

The RSE screenshot shows the settings used & the arrow shows where I set the picker to read the brightest highlight.

One thing I would do differently would be to ignore the Filter> Extract "easy" way to remove the background (I lost part of her nose! :D ) & should have used my tried & true selection method with the Polygonal Lasso Tool.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39994

[jfrancho]

I did everything in ACR. Here are the adjustments I made in order:

Adjust
Exposure: -.05
Shadows: 0
Temperature: 5500 K
Tint -1
Brightness: -68 (Auto)

Details
All values: 0

Lens
Vignetting: -77
Midpoint: 44

Calibrate
Red: +5

Notes: I usually set the temp after getting the exposure and shadows. I sometimes readjust exposure, if necesary. I set shadow at 0 to get some of the details back, it appeared to be cliiping on the left. I think this slider is too coarse anyway. I rarely use the sharpening tools in ACR. The lens settings are just to add a slight personal touch to photo. I think it helps set the subject apart. The calibration is another personal touch, to add a tiny bit of sat to the red piping on her shirt, it didn't really affect the rest of the picture, so I went with it. I just saved this as a jpeg-12. Normally I would save it a 16 bit tiff, but we are just looking at the RAW part of the workflow. This capture didn't really need much; a great example, and testament to your skills Drisley.

OK, here it is:

http://plan-b.smugmug.com/photos/24726018-M.jpg

[schmoelzel]

Here's my take on the RAW conversion:

Temp - 6100
Tint - +7
Exposure - 0
Shadows - 7
Brightness - 56
Contrast - +25
Saturation - 0

Vignetting Amt - +21

Red Hue - -22
Red Saturation - +45

I guess I warmed up the overall colour a bit and boosted the reds to make the pink stand out a bit. Cropped and did a quick clone job on the legs in the top corner (not really necessary).....framed and USM for the web.......that's it!! Seems to have a little more pop at least to my eye!

http://theteahaus.netfirms.com/DRebelPix/nfpicturepro/albums/userpics/10001/DrisleyChallenge.jpg

[PhotosGuy]

I just noticed that I lost the reddish highlites in her hair. Damn! Should have caught that!

[Hellashot]

Original poster's still looks the best. The last one is way too warm. It's made her blush.

[BlueTit]

OK here is my humble effort, I used ACDSee 7.0 I usually use PSE3.0 but ACD did a better raw conversion for this photo. I did:

In exposure increase RED a tiny bit (it does not give numbers - that I could see)
Also in exposure I reduced GREE a tiny tiny bit and increased BRIGHTNESS +1
I increased SHADOWS +10 and LIGHTNESS -3 and finally SHARPENING 100/6/1

I did this without looking at what others did, so my first look will be when I post this message, this could be a laugh!

http://photos12.flickr.com/18924217_b7e6a63252_o.jpg

[BlueTit]

Oh not tooo bad. I like Schmoelzels best so far. I didn't crop, was not sure if that was allowed.

[Dew]

Well here's my attempt! Only just started using RAW.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15/Dewspics/IMG_9236_small.jpg

Done in DPP, resized with Irfanview (edit... + USM PsE2)

[drisley]

All very good! I really like the skin tone on yours Dew. Excellent to my eyes.

Petra, yours is very close to mine, just a little brighter.

Schmoelzel, yes, yours has the usual pop. I love the overall color. And I love the square cropping.
I always keep my crops at 4x6 so that if I want to print later, it's easy. However, I've been considering adding square cropping.

Photosguy, yours has very nice skin tone too, imho, much like Dew's. Nice cropping of the subject. I don't think it would be that easy with all that stray hair.

Jfrancho, I like how you used the vignette in Raw (as did Schmoelzel). I always forget about that tool in ACR. I usually try to add it after for b&w, but the results (and process) is much better doing it in ACR. Also, thanks for the nice compliment :)

Thanks again guys for taking part. Please, if others want to try, keep on going.
One thing I've learned is that my attempt is probably a little too cool. I have always found that ACR tends to add a slight "orange" cast to conversions, I think. So, I usually try to compensate by reducing colour temperature slightly.
It's really interesting to see the different attempts. Would you guys say this image is fairly difficult as far as colour goes? The day was COMPLETELY cloudy, not a single break for the sun. And I used fill flash on the face, and that tends to cool things down even more.

[R1 Kid]

Heres my 1 o'clock in the morning attempt.

[jfrancho]

I agree Drisley, Dew managed to strike a balance between skin tone without losing the hair color. Hair is what I was really watching, but I think my efforts were at the expense of her skin tone. For just starting out, I think Dew has it down. I know when I firststarted RAW, I had the tendency to over exert the control that RAW offers. I've found that if you get a good exposure, with a nice histogram, subtle changes are the way to go. We should try another with a poorly exposed capture, maybe an under exposure since it would be interesting how people handle the loss of detail in the shadows.

[PhotosGuy]

Would you guys say this image is fairly difficult as far as colour goes? The day was COMPLETELY cloudy, not a single break for the sun. I don't think so. Not much correction needed for the face. If I'd noticed the hair color, it would have been an easy local fix in PS.
IMNSHO, Cloudy is good for portraits - even light, gentle shadows, low DOF.
We should try another with a poorly exposed capture, maybe an under exposure since it would be interesting how people handle the loss of detail in the shadows. Here's one where you can look at the results. I don't have anyplace to load a file that big online.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=43761&highlight=sunliner

[drisley]

R1 Kid made a nice attempt here too. What program did you use R1?

Jfrancho, I found this image interesting because it was rather "flat" due to the prevalence of ambient only lighting .
The exposure was almost perfect, but it was very hard to give the image some clout (had to find a synonym for "pop").
So, I was curious to see what others could come up with.
But yes, trying a difficult exposure might be fun. Perhaps I will post one of my bodybuilding images for you guys to try.

Btw, after playing with Capture One again, I was able to get some nice results.
I just ordered the ETC profiles for the 20D, and I can't wait to see what I can come up with in this image. I discovered why I began to dislike Capture One so much since they came out with a 20D compatible version. The noise reduction has become very aggressive, which caused weird banding and loss of detail. By turning noise reduction right down, and increasing banding reduction, I can now get results I really like. And with the ETC profiles, I should be able to get excellent colour again.
When my profiles arrive, I'm going to give this image another go.

[drisley]

Ok, here is my attempt using C1 Pro and my new ETCETERA 20d profiles.
I have heard people say "it doesn't get much better than this" when describing these ETC profiles. I have to say, it really does a good job.

http://images2.fotop.net/albums2/sharpnsmart/miscellaneous/IMG_9236.jpg

[R1 Kid]

R1 Kid made a nice attempt here too. What program did you use R1?



I just used regular PS CS. Tinkered with some settings. Color levels were pretty good so not much, but some adjs there. Cropped out th cotton candy. I was going to crop out the lady behind her but at 1am I quickly had second thoughts ;). Cleared up some facial spots. Used magnetic lasso around the face with soft edges to darken just the face and neck area just a tad. Took about 10 minutes. It was fun. Thanks for posting.

[BlueTit]

All very good! I really like the skin tone on yours Dew. Excellent to my eyes.

Petra, yours is very close to mine, just a little brighter.

Schmoelzel, yes, yours has the usual pop. I love the overall color. And I love the square cropping.
I always keep my crops at 4x6 so that if I want to print later, it's easy. However, I've been considering adding square cropping.

Photosguy, yours has very nice skin tone too, imho, much like Dew's. Nice cropping of the subject. I don't think it would be that easy with all that stray hair.

Jfrancho, I like how you used the vignette in Raw (as did Schmoelzel). I always forget about that tool in ACR. I usually try to add it after for b&w, but the results (and process) is much better doing it in ACR. Also, thanks for the nice compliment :)

Thanks again guys for taking part. Please, if others want to try, keep on going.
One thing I've learned is that my attempt is probably a little too cool. I have always found that ACR tends to add a slight "orange" cast to conversions, I think. So, I usually try to compensate by reducing colour temperature slightly.
It's really interesting to see the different attempts. Would you guys say this image is fairly difficult as far as colour goes? The day was COMPLETELY cloudy, not a single break for the sun. And I used fill flash on the face, and that tends to cool things down even more.


Think you missed mine in your reviews, would be interested in what you think... new to photography and even newer to PP

[drisley]

BlueTit, sorry about that!
I think the colour on yours is excellent. It may be a wee bit dark though. Perhaps brighten it up a little to make it almost perfect. Thanks for trying btw. :)

[BlueTit]

Drisley - no problem, I was just interested to know. I agree about being dark, only now when you mention it. I looked at the concrete ground in the background in all the versions posted, mine is almost brown - not good. I think I was concentrating too much on the subjects face rather than the picture overall, thanx for pointing that out.

[wintoid]

Mine was done using C1Pro and the 20d profiles. I did the following:

1) Set white point to part of the trouser leg in the top right of the image
2) Dragged the shadow slider up to 11 and the highlight slider down to 233
3) Switched to "Film high contrast"
4) Put a very slight curve using 2 points at 70.5,61.5 and 192.2,190.5
5) Set the focus to Standard look, Amount 204, threshold 3

[drisley]

Nice, did you use the ETC profiles, or the regular 20D profile?

[lostdoggy]

Heres 5 minute I'll never get back, it faded during conversion to fit the 100K limit

[wintoid]

I used the ETC profiles. Maybe my monitor is a bit bright, but I found a lot of these a little pale and bright, so I wanted to try to get some colour back into her cheeks and a darker overall look, although her blusher now looks a little over-pink I guess.

[mgbeach]

I'm sorry, but I can't remember exactly what my conversion settings were. I always pretty much just try and get the different color histograms to line up with each other without clipping at either end. Not very scientific, but it seems to work most of the time. After that, some cloning on the skin and background to even things out a bit. A bit of selective sharpening on the hair, eyelashes, lips and clothing. A crop and a run through Neat Image. My aesthetic leans towards being overboard for some though.

[drisley]

Lostdoggy, I like the blur. I was shooting at 35mm at f2.8, and the only way to get real blur like that would have been to use the 135L.
MGbeach, very nice. Curious, why do you run thru NI? Is that to smooth out the skin? It actually does look really good, and not overly done at all.
Wintoid, I just love the ETC profiles. After doing my conversion again with C1 and the ETC 20D Hi Sat profile, I was much more pleased. The original sure did look too bright and pale in comparison.

[tim]

I like mgbeach's attempt best so far.

[Panza]

I like cyberpet's try. I feel the others take away too much of the personality of the girl.

[Goofup]

What the heck, here's mine.

Basically I opened it in CS2 and let it do it's Auto thing. I did change the color temperature from 5000 to 5350. The auto settings it picked were: exposure +10, shadows +8, brightness 68, contrast 48, saturation 0. Resized it.

Next, a bit of Neat Image, cloned the spots on her forehead and chin, and then good ole Smart Sharpen at 100%, radius .5. Still didn't have enough "oomph" so I added +10 Saturation. That's it.

EDIT: I also fixed the white line outlining her forhead, and cleaned up those stray eyelashes.

http://www.pbase.com/goofup/image/44843299.jpg

[GyRob]

not into raw but used rawshooter for my attempt.intresting post btw.it will show if im any good at raw .

Rob

[GyRob]

i thought you mean't just raw convertion, this one has been photoshoped and filtered as well .
Rob.

[drisley]

Actually, raw conversion and photochopping is good.
I'm just interested in seeing the best picture that can be produced.
Some real interesting results thus far. Thanks guys.

[Meerkat17]

Here's mine,

Open in DPP, adjusted white balance, adjusted tone curve to custom and also hue to custom.

Adjusted the brightness and contrast using the RGB curve in DPP and added a little saturation to the image.

Used the Stamp Tool in DPP to remove the facial blemishes and the Trimming Tool to crop the image down.

Converted it from RAW to TIF and resized.

In Photoshop 7 Used the patch tool to remove the legs and other distractions.

Re-sized and saved as jpg for the internet.

David

[blue_max]

My we have had some variations!

How much is down to monitors is the question though.

I work on a mac with a calibrated lcd cinemaview screen, which may make a difference – or look rubbish on other peoples monitor!

Hope it looks alright.

I went through DPP and added a little sharpness and took the 16bit photo into photoshop and compressed the levels (they was no data at either extreme). Then I added a little more sharpening. I didn't think the colour was at all bad as it was, so left it.

I am actually a little colourblind, so please make allowances (and a graphic designer to boot).

Cheers.

Graham

[blue_max]

Mine was of course the middle of winter version. Guess only the op knows which was faithful to the original –*if that was the intention.

Truth is – with digital, it can be whatever you want it to be.

Graham

[Goofup]

My we have had some variations!

How much is down to monitors is the question though.

I work on a mac with a calibrated lcd cinemaview screen, which may make a difference – or look rubbish on other peoples monitor!

No kidding! Now that I look at mine, the colors are fine, but I assumed that she had pretty fair skin. and she's a little "pale" but still quite close to the original. BlueMax, your's, on my machine, has a definite bluish-gray tinge to it. Others are too dark, too red, too saturated, etc. CyberPet's, PhotosGuy's, jfrancho's, and Dew's look good to me. Again, this is on my machine, I have a LCD (love it!), and everything, monitor, programs, etc, are set to sRBG (I gave up on all the color management stuff- just didn't work out).

Just goes to show, it may look fine to you, but no telling what other people see.

[blue_max]

No kidding! Now that I look at mine, the colors are fine, but I assumed that she had pretty fair skin. and she's a little "pale" but still quite close to the original. BlueMax, your's, on my machine, has a definite bluish-gray tinge to it. Others are too dark, too red, too saturated, etc. CyberPet's, PhotosGuy's, jfrancho's, and Dew's look good to me. Again, this is on my machine, I have a LCD (love it!), and everything, monitor, programs, etc, are set to sRBG (I gave up on all the color management stuff- just didn't work out).

Just goes to show, it may look fine to you, but no telling what other people see.


Bluish grey hey? I knew it was cold as soon as I had posted it, but that seems it might look even worse. When reduced and put up on the site and surrounded with white, it does look different again.

I might cheat it to make it look more acceptable, but this has nothing to do with raw conversion, does it? The holy grail would be to convert without giving a second thought and always being happy. Where did I put that cup again!

Graham

[drisley]

Goofup and gyrob both have really nice exposures, but one decided to go warm,and the other decided to go cool.
Meerkat, I really like the colour on yours. Very nice.
Blue Max, yours is definately cooler than most. Not bad at all, just different. Nice exposure too.

[yb98]

Here is my attempt using C1 and generic 20D profile then some post-processing in photoshop.

http://bellik.free.fr/drisley.jpg

Yacine.

[Miika]

Here's my quick attempt:

DPP 1.6

- Brightness: +1 stop
- Color balance: Cloudy
- Dynamic range adjust: left slider to 50 (-2,8)

Converted to TIFF 8bit (no sharpening, no ICC profile)

Photoshop LE 5.0

- Resized to 600x400
- USM 0.3 / 300% ( treshold 0)

[drisley]

Yb98, very nice. There is a slight diff compared to the ETC profiles, but it still looks great.
Miika, I like the colour, but I think your effort is a little "washed-out".
I'm not sure, why, I haven't used DPP for a long while. I wonder if the brightness of +1 might have been a little too much?

[Miika]

Drisley, I agree the +1 stop with brightness is probably too much -- I made the adjustment by looking at the histogram and avoiding overburning.

At least the pink shirt has gone too light -- hard to tell though because I haven't seen the original scene!

It could be my monitor settings as well - many of the versions posted earlier seem oversaturated to me. Maybe a cultural difference as well?

Here's an other attempt, but this time I leave the brightness as it is.

DPP 1.6

- Dynamic range adjust: left slider to 20 (-4,1)

Photoshop LE 5.0

- Resized to 600x400
- USM 0.3 / 300%

My usual settings would be resize widest side to 800 pix and USM 0.2 / 500%. For smaller image it seems to need a little bit larger amount of USM.

My idea is to try to do as little processing as possible - it saves a lot of time to get things right on the camera. I'm quite new to RAW -- it clearly has its advanteges, but if I feel that if something goes very wrong with white balance the best way to go is black'n'white. I remember someone told me back in mid 80's (just before desktop publishing was introduced) that bad color prints are very good source for rasterized half tone pictures for offset printing.

With grayscale the DPP is strong: you can set saturation to 0 and adjust curves of each channel separately - something that PS 5.0 and Elements 2.0 can't do.

Miika

Hmm... now that I see both of my versions, maybe the ideal would be between these two. (Just tried with PS: I would go 25% brighter adjusting opacity, when pics are stacked using layers. I won't post it here, though.)

[drisley]

Yup, I like this much better! :)
Thanks for taking the time to post.

[blue_max]

Ok drisley,

Spill the beans, which is colour accurate?

Bet you can't really say! So it's down to personal preference (or screen rendition).

I do accept that mine looked cool, which is good, 'cos it is cool on my screen!

I imagine if you showed them all on a black background, you may have differning opinions.

Good fun though.

Graham

[jfrancho]

Ok drisley,

Spill the beans, which is colour accurate?

Bet you can't really say! So it's down to personal preference (or screen rendition).

I do accept that mine looked cool, which is good, 'cos it is cool on my screen!

I imagine if you showed them all on a black background, you may have differning opinions.

Good fun though.

GrahamSomeone is gonna have to spring the $$$ to have them printed....then we can mail them around to eachother for comparison.

[rabidcow]

Well, I just joined the forum, I like what I see here so far.


Here is my conversion. BreezeBrowser and Photoshop CS.
http://www.3dfightclub.com/~sgt2187/uploads/IMG_9236.jpg

[drisley]

Rabidcow, that is VERY good too! Many many good post processors here!
I honestly can say that the most colour accurate is my second attempt with C1 using the ETC profiles :)
However, it's not really fair because I'm the only one who was there in person. When you consider that, and that almost everybody here is EXTREMELY close, I say everybody did an outstanding job!

[rabidcow]

Thanks!

I think that there is too much red in the pavement, but it was a sacrifice that I made in order to keep that beautiful red hair in proper contrast with her skin. It's nothing that a lasso selected color correction couldn't fix, but I wasn't sure if we could do that here or not.

[drisley]

Rapidcow, good eye!
You can do whatever you like. I'm just curious about the finished product.

[drewmk2]

I find it funny. I'm color blind but very mildy, so in some of the conversions i can actually see the pink shirt, but in others they approach white.

[Huckaback Photo]

Hi Drisley

thought I should have a go at this, used Raw shooter plus a bit of work in Photoshop including crop.
thought i would lose some colour in background, used an action called paint back colour.
have got much more muted colours
Martin

[crc95]

Hi

This is my first post here so not quite sure if the photo will upload.

Used

Capture One LE Tweaked the levels and put in a shallow 's' curve. White balanced by using picker.

Some USM in CS

http://www.pbase.com/image/45479385.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/image/45479043/original

[JMHPhotography]

I just wanted to throw my attempt into the mix... Some here have better results, but I think I'm happy with mine as well. I started out picking a very close to 18% gray area in the picture from the pavement to do a color balance and level adjustment. To me this looks natural. I did some various retouches such as darken her eyelashes and lips and so on. I didn't do much in the way of changing the contrast... +3 and I sharpened it a tiny bit with usm... at 56 1.1 1. That's pretty much it.

[drisley]

Thanks for trying. Your attempt is definately less saturated than most.
I really find this picture is tough to make it "pop" for some reason.

[JMHPhotography]

Thanks for trying. Your attempt is definately less saturated than most.
I really find this picture is tough to make it "pop" for some reason.

It was fun and it's actually my first attempt at RAW conversion. Really not too different than scanning in my negatives... lol. So in the interest of helping me improve on this before I get my D20, do you think it would look better if it were more saturated?

[bryno74]

Heres Mine

[drisley]

Huckaback Photo, your attempt, although less saturated, is very nice. Good control of the dynamic range. I think the reason this image is so tough is because the skin (forehead) is amoung the brightest part of the image. So it's hard to get the image to pop without making the skin washed out.

Bryno74, very nice too, but I think it may be a tad on the warm(yellow) side. Or, it could just be my eyes right now. ;)

[bryno74]

This might be better.

[Huckaback Photo]

Drisley thanks for the comments
I cheated a bit with my version in as much as I dropped out the background to mono and also cropped to emphasize just the face.
some colour versions on here look far to vivid, whilst i don't think mine to be correct, I do feel we all need to consider how all people look at colour differently.
what is right for one may not for the next person add to that the fact of all our monitors will show vastly differing images/colour. There are to many variables.
whenever i get a chance in front of someone elses computor I will bring up one of my images off my Gallery to see how it looks,
put 10 dif computors/monitor set ups in the same room and view all that really would be an education i think.
in my view the only real way is to produce the final prints and then study in daylight

Cheers
Martin (Huckaback Photo)

[drisley]

Bryno, much better imho :) Really nice!
Huckaback, I am often surprised at how bright most people run their monitors.
It really brings out things (like noise) I don't notice on my calibrated monitor.

[JMHPhotography]

Here is attempt #2... I used my RSA color correction filters and gave it a touch more saturation. Overall I think the results are good. I also imported the 20D profiles into my neatimage plugin and applied it. Dris... tell me what you think of this? Does it pop a little more now?



Thanks for trying. Your attempt is definately less saturated than most.
I really find this picture is tough to make it "pop" for some reason.

[drisley]

Yup, looks nice. I like the effect of neatimage on her skin.

[JMHPhotography]

Awesome... thanks for your input.

Yup, looks nice. I like the effect of neatimage on her skin.

[Rigrider]

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/731/img92362qo.jpg


This is all of my third week working with Raw so be gentle! lol

Here's what I did (and BTW, I seem to have lost quite a bit of saturation in the "Save for web" so....)

Adobe CS2 Camera Raw:

White Balance: Temp: 5750 Tint: -26
Exposure: +60
Shadows: 12
Brightness: 55
Contrast: +5
Saturation +24

Sharpness: 27
Colour Noise Reduction: 25 (Default)

Vingnette: Amount: -50 Midpoint: 26 (did this to add a little focus to the girl)

Red Saturation +12


Let me know what you think.

L8r,

[drisley]

I think you should increase the tint value a little, and maybe cool the temperature slightly.
It looks a little on the warm side.
As far as losing saturation, it's probably because you are working in the AdobeRGB colour space in Photoshop. If so, you can either change your colour management to sRGB, or convert the image profile to sRGB before you save for web.