Do any of the custom functions affect raw images?

I see that there are some custom functions that can be set to create different looks in pictures taken with my 5D mkiii, such as landscape, portrait, sharpness, etc. Do any of these settings affect the raw images?? I am thinking that raw is raw, meaning straight from the camera without any "in camera" manipulation. Since I basically only shoot raw, do I need to even think about where any of these settings are set? Never really thought about it until now.....hmmmmmm

I believe that the Highlight Priority feature affects the ISO of the image, which can't be changed after the fact.

No they don't affect the raw image. the Highlight Priority actually reduces the dynamic range of the image which can't be recovered - but I've never used it really.

Using the presets will affect how the embedded JPG image will preview on the screen and how the histogram looks.

But the RAW is unaffected by that.

As others said, the custom functions do not effect raw, only the jpeg. But the in-camera histogram is from the jpeg, so those custom functions are critical in getting a histogram that matches as close as possible the real raw exposure.

On all my Canons, I've set a "user defined" style to Standard with all 4 controls to their max negative value. That gives me an in-camera histogram closest to the raw.

However, that's assuming the white balance is close to accurate. Different white balance settings will skew the histogram much more than any of the jpeg picture control settings.

Point-n-shoot-n wrote in post #16876093
I see that there are some custom functions that can be set to create different looks in pictures taken with my 5D mkiii, such as landscape, portrait, sharpness, etc. Do any of these settings affect the raw images?? I am thinking that raw is raw, meaning straight from the camera without any "in camera" manipulation. Since I basically only shoot raw, do I need to even think about where any of these settings are set? Never really thought about it until now.....hmmmmmm

You ask about "Custom Functions", which are a special set of settings that you can get to via the Menu, but then you mention "landscape, portrait, sharpness, etc.", which are totally different settings.

Please go in your manual to the Custom Functions, and you will note that these functions determine different ways that you can set your camera to operate. One that can be interesting when actually shooting (and can affect your Raw, for sure) is the Long Exposure Noise Reduction, since it can prolong your time for a shot, but again, it is determining how the camera acts...

The settings you actually mentioned, though, are not Custom Functions, they are Picture Styles, which, together with the White Balance settings determined how an image is "processed" after the capture/exposure. As you noted, part of the Picture Style setting is to determine/tweak amounts for Contrast, Saturation, and Sharpening, they can be different for each Picture Style, and in fact if you look/compare the settings for the various Picture Styles, you will note differences for the different values.

But, as you suspected, Picture Styles do not apply to Raw captures. They (as well as the White Balance setting) are only applied to the image in your preview/Live View (as well as the in-camera Histogram) and in the "embedded" jpeg that is saved into the Raw file (and can be used by some software to "view" a pic from a Raw file without actually processing/rendering the Raw data).

So, for us who shoot Raw, how might we handle these things?

For much of not most of our shooting, it may not matter if we leave the camera to the default Standard Picture Style. However, a lot of us who shoot a lot of scenes with a high dynamic range (such as outdoor scenes with bright highlights and/or dark shadows) find that the "standard" settings for Contrast can "throw off" both your Histogram and your warning "blinkies" and so can mislead you into thinking you are overexposing/clipping highlights or underexposing/clipping shadows when in fact the Raw data has more "range" than the jpeg conversion would offer using the "standard" settings. This can get worse with the Landscape Picture Style...

And then, there is the Saturation setting and how it might affect/reflect colors, especially when viewed using the RGB Histogram, although there is a whole other subject also, dealing with White Balance issues, which gets a bit complicated...

Anyway, many of us actually use either the Neutral Picture Style or the Faithful Picture Style, since they are more "toned down", and also we will crank down the Contrast and Saturation settings for what we are using, to as much as possible get a Histogram and preview that will be more accurate as to the Raw data.

Know, though, that the Canon Raw processing app Digital Photo Professional (DPP has the unique feature (because it's Canon) of reading all those in-camera settings and then applying them to the initial rendering of a Raw file when opening it. It's actually pretty nice, because you can go into DPP and change all of it around, and another cool thing is that when you have your settings as I described, Neutral/Faithful and all that, the DPP preview is actually quite close to what we see in Lightroom (or Camera Raw) in the default/standard view without any edits done in the Develop module, so it can make it interesting if you are using one of the Adobe Raw processors but want to play with DPP as a comparative reference!

Highlight Tone Priority is kind of a special case: The way HTP works is that the camera uses an ISO that is half the strength of the one you have set. If you set 200, the camera actually uses 100. This produces an image that is underexposed at the Raw stage by one stop. Then during the in-camera processing of a jpg the image is brightened, but on a curve. The shadows are raised by a whole stop back to what they should be, but the brightening tapers off as the tones get lighter until the highlights are raised only slightly. If a Raw file is exported, this processing is not done, but a flag is attached to the file. When DPP sees the flag it applies the curve, just like the camera.

When HTP was first introduced in 2007, Adobe products where not programmed to recognize the flag, so the image remained underexposed, but faced with large numbers of LR/ACR users who couldn't understand why their photos were dark they were forced to react. Their solution, however, was to apply a linear across-the-board one stop increase, thus effectively canceling the HTP.

The problem with HTP as I remember is that the Raw processing is done "under the hood". Raw shooters really are better off having it off and having more control of your exposure and processing!

I agree Tony. HTP will affect your RAW images. The effect is a one stop loss of Dynamic Range. So best thing to do is just turn it off.

HTP has already been covered by everyone else here, but all custom settings do still affect the jpeg preview image on your LCD, and in turn your histogram data!

So if you turn your contrast way down in picture styles or do something similar, it will alter the image you get when previewing the image, even if you shot it only in Raw. It's a good idea to keep this in mind, because you might look at the image and think your highlights are below clipping, only to load the image in Raw and see that you over-exposed.

EOS_JD wrote in post #16876827
I agree Tony. HTP will affect your RAW images. The effect is a one stop loss of Dynamic Range. So best thing to do is just turn it off.

Agreed. I wrote above that LR cancels HTP, but that is not quite true. Under exposing analogically and then raising ISO digitally is a bad idea - it is exposing to the left and all the good things ETTR does, the opposite will happen with "ETTL".

Well, let's back up because we have a couple different viewpoints:

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #16876892
So if you turn your contrast way down in picture styles or do something similar, it will alter the image you get when previewing the image, even if you shot it only in Raw. It's a good idea to keep this in mind, because you might look at the image and think your highlights are below clipping, only to load the image in Raw and see that you over-exposed.

This is a different viewpoint from what I said above (in Post #5):

I do assert that the Histogram you get if you dial down Contrast and Saturation more accurately reflects the Raw data. If you want to take advantage of the "latitude" that your Raw captures give you in maximizing detail, especially using the ETTR approach to "bump" the exposure up enough to maximize the highlight detail without clipping those highlights, since in the Raw processing you have the data to pull those highlights back, then you can in fact benefit from dialing back the Picture Style setting and then exposing "To The Right" to a point that with "standard" Picture Style settings you would show clipping, both in the Histogram and the warning blinkies and, if converted directly to a jpeg, would result in clipped highlights. But with Raw, if you push the exposure against the toned-down histogram, those highlights can be "recovered".

This can be demonstrated if you set your Picture Style to Standard and then expose a bit beyond "clipping", try a stop beyond (for starters) and then, in your Raw processor, pull back your Exposure (in DPP it's Brightness) by a stop and see how those highlights respond!

It's true, though, that we don't want to over-do it specifically where those highlights are important to us. Take a nice white bride's dress: the last thing you want is to push your exposure to the point where that dress is rendered as "clipped", with no detail showing. So if you want to "play it safe", you can leave the settings to the standard ones and keep the histogram so that the bride's dress will show the higher contrast but as I have said, you do have more latitude than the standard settings will suggest.

I'll just add that the "playing it safe" approach that keeps the settings to "standard" and has you keeping the highlights of, say, the bride's dress a bit (a stop) below the "optimized" white exposure will be "safe" for that bride's dress (or other highlights) but then you won't have as much brightness as you might wish in shadow areas, and the result will tend toward more noise if you need to bump those shadows in post-processing. The "ETTR" approach is aimed at maximizing the exposure in Raw so that you have more light for the shadows, while still not clipping the highlights.

Thanks for the info guys!

Long exposure NR will also affect raws (as opposed to high ISO NR) since it takes a dark frame and subtracts it.

But I think that is about it.