dark colors in RAW

[coeng]

I'm going thru some shots that were taken in a church (baptism). Everyone that's wearing dark colors looks horrible (their clothes, that is) in the Canon RAW Viewer. When I convert to JPEG they're not that bad. Why is this? Is it the application or the image? I shot in Tv 1/200, ISO 400, with 430EX in full auto flash.

[Hermeto]

All unprocessed RAW files look dark and dull in colors.

[coeng]

Really, I never realized that. I've only been working with RAW since this past March. Kinda scared me at first because it was my son's baptism and I gave the camera to my brother-in-law to shoot.

[coeng]

Anyone else care to comment on this? I really want to know why the RAW image was so bad with respect to the darker colors in the shots. My wife was wearing a navy dress and it just looked so contrasty. Even the dark wood of the church pews looked all contrasty. When converted to JPEG, everything looked fine. The fact that the RAW images looked bad made it difficult to know if I need to adjust exposure compensation and/or color temperature. I wish I could post a swatch of the RAW image and resulting JPEG to show you all what I mean. Is that even possible? I tried doing a screen capture with Windows but that didn't work.

[Jon]

How are you converting? DPP or someone else's application? DPP will apply whatever in-camera processing parameters you've chosen by default. You can choose to override this, and most other applications will ignore Canon's parameters or picture styles.

[PacAce]

Originally Posted by Hermeto

All unprocessed RAW files look dark and dull in colors.

Maybe that statement should be qualified a little. It would depend on the raw converter one is using and, if using DPP or any app that uses the Canon API, how the camera parameters were set when the shot was taken.

But I've never had a raw image, processed or not, look one way when viewed in the raw converted and the converted image look different.

The exception is if what one is looking at are the thumbnails and not the actual image file. Thumbnails can look different because what one is looking at there is usually the embedded JPEG in the raw file.

[PacAce]

Originally Posted by coeng

Anyone else care to comment on this? I really want to know why the RAW image was so bad with respect to the darker colors in the shots. My wife was wearing a navy dress and it just looked so contrasty. Even the dark wood of the church pews looked all contrasty. When converted to JPEG, everything looked fine. The fact that the RAW images looked bad made it difficult to know if I need to adjust exposure compensation and/or color temperature. I wish I could post a swatch of the RAW image and resulting JPEG to show you all what I mean. Is that even possible? I tried doing a screen capture with Windows but that didn't work.

On the PC, hit the "Print Screen" key and then go into Photoshop and creat a new canvas. Then Edit > Paste the screen image on to it.

On the Mac, hit the Shift-Apple_Key-4 keys simultaneously (the cursor will change to a cross-hair) and then use the cursor to select what you want to screen-capture. The image will go to your desktop or your default document folder.

[superdiver]

Taken indoors in a church? Could be that it is dark in there? Where they grainy too? Did you use a flash?

[René Damkot]

Don't know about other Canon programs, but DPP is strange in a way that you need to set the monitor profile in the prefs. If you don't do that, or use the wrong profile, the files are displayed wrong...
When set right, the files should look exactely the same in the Raw converter and Photoshop. That's why you use Color Management

[mackb]

Originally Posted by coeng

Anyone else care to comment on this? I really want to know why the RAW image was so bad with respect to the darker colors in the shots. My wife was wearing a navy dress and it just looked so contrasty. Even the dark wood of the church pews looked all contrasty. When converted to JPEG, everything looked fine. The fact that the RAW images looked bad made it difficult to know if I need to adjust exposure compensation and/or color temperature. I wish I could post a swatch of the RAW image and resulting JPEG to show you all what I mean. Is that even possible? I tried doing a screen capture with Windows but that didn't work.

I've noticed the EXACT same thing. It’s like I typed for you. I open the RAW files in RSE and they look like crap (flat dark colors are bad…) then if I convert it….It’s fine

I’m sure we are doing something wrong ……..good luck

[Palladium]

The article link below may be of some help with your dark images

The Great Color Space Debate (in PDF format)

http://www.digitaldog.net/files/R1-2-rodney.pdf

[coeng]

See photo comparison below. Note the difference in contrast between the RAW and JPEG file. This is what I was referring to in my original post.

[coeng]

Can anyone explain the dramatic difference in the dark colors of the image comparison?

[StewartR]

I'm not sure I understand what the issue is here, coeng. Your camera's sensor does not record the actual colour of each pixel, and therefore RAW images do not record the actual colour of each pixel. That is reconstructed later by the RAW convertor. So you're not actually comparing a RAW with a JPEG - all you're doing is comparing two different conversions of the RAW data into full-colour data.

[tzalman]

Originally Posted by coeng

I'm going thru some shots that were taken in a church (baptism). Everyone that's wearing dark colors looks horrible (their clothes, that is) in the Canon RAW Viewer. When I convert to JPEG they're not that bad. Why is this? Is it the application or the image? I shot in Tv 1/200, ISO 400, with 430EX in full auto flash.

Could you please clarify what you mean by "the Canon RAW Viewer". Do you mean Quick View in DPP? Or EOS Utility that lets you view the RAW in the camera before downloading? Or DPP's thumbnail page? Or ZB's thumbnails? If any of the above, you are viewing the embedded jpg. If you are referring to DPP's Edit page then you are seeing a full size on-the-fly conversion. Do what it says at the top of the page, EDIT it to your liking. The data is there (it must be if a jpg converted from it is o.k.), you just have to push your mouse around a bit to enhance it.
Elie