Raw and camera parameters?

Reading the manual. page 47 ref RAW. Quiote book. <RAW>images are processed according to the white balance, color space and processing parameters set at the time of shooting. unquiote.

I ran test and white balance setting does affect raw images but you can still change WB in PS. I was unable to prove one way or the other about "color space" but I do believe the statement.

Quiote. and processing parameters set at the time of shooting. un quiote
This I don't understand. Changing contrast, sharpening ets in the parameter menu doesn't affect the raw image in my 20 so what parameters is the manual refering to?

JZ

I think what is being said is that, whatever settings you have chosen in the camera will appear by default if you just open a raw file without doing anything to it.
For example: if you select the black and white effect of the 20D it will appear as black and white by default in the raw converter. You can still change everything though.

The Raw image is only affected by the parameters in the camera if you select "as shot" in the conversion. You are free to change them to any of the other selections.
Scott

Ha Evil, you are in Louisville KY now ? Yea I did knowtice the BW thing but forgot to mention it. Ok Scott I gotta try again. I didn't see any diff with I set contrast, sharp, etc all the way plus then all the way minus but maybe they weren't in "as shot" in the conversion program..I had thought AS SHOT only applied to WB, so back to the drawing board. We seem to keep going around and around about what settings affect raw so I thought I would prove it one way or the other. I now know WB settings will affect raw as shot. Obviously as Evil said BW affects raw and you can't apply color after.

thanks

Jerry

JZaun wrote:
Ha Evil, you are in Louisville KY now ? Yea I did knowtice the BW thing but forgot to mention it. Ok Scott I gotta try again. I didn't see any diff with I set contrast, sharp, etc all the way plus then all the way minus but maybe they weren't in "as shot" in the conversion program..I had thought AS SHOT only applied to WB, so back to the drawing board. We seem to keep going around and around about what settings affect raw so I thought I would prove it one way or the other. I now know WB settings will affect raw as shot. Obviously as Evil said BW affects raw and you can't apply color after.

thanks

Jerry

Bear in mind that when Canon is talking about processing RAW, they are talking about processing RAW using their own software (EVU and DPP). So, what you read in the manual may not necessarily translate one for one when the raw conversion is being done with PSCS.

All RAW conversion software that I am aware of has the ability to read the tags that the camera attaches to the file to indicate settings such as WB, sharpening etc. Remember, these are just tags, the file itself has not been altered. The more sophisticated conversion software allows you to use your own, or as shot parameters for individual settings, so you could accept as shot WB but change the saturation for example.

Although I agree with Kenny,..

I still think PSCS is the issue...

PSCS' RAW converter.. (even when it says camera default) never looks ANYTHING like the camera default coming out of DPP, EVU or Breeze browser. At least this has been my experience.

I understand that it is possible to fine tune the PSCS ACR to your camera so these auto defaults become more accuate.. but I had never taken the time,.. thus any RAW file I ever opened in PSCS ACR looked like "poo" untill I tweeked the hoy hell out of it... (in whcih case I was indeed able to get excellent rseults,.. but I could NEVER just accept the "camera defaults" )

This is part of why I got fed up with PSCS and mostly used C1.. and now BB.

I found this confusing enough that I just bought a book called something like "RAW workflow with Photoshop CS". I'll read it over the next few weeks and report back what I find.

I must say that I prefer C1, followed by BB Pro. My workflow is built around C1 and I have very little to do in PS. I use BB Pro mainly as an image manager with the ability to do the odd quick conversion, but I much prefer C1's background conversion method for speed and accuracy.

Just try taking a shot of a Daglo pink racing car against bright green grass on a very sunny day and see which of the converters copes with the WB. PSCS fails every time. Oh, and yes, there is a team stupid enough to race in Daglo pink.

What brought this up was a recent thread that stated that no incamera settings affected raw images. I am now satisfied that at least WB does in fact affect the raw image. I viewed the image in 2 programs and in both the image was different for each WB setting I set in the camera with out further processing. Yes in PSE3 you can change the WB at will. The statement said "processing parameters as set at the time of shooting". This would seem to imply in camera settings not post processing software settings. Also as Evil said WB parameter setting does affect raw images in the camera. So at least 2 in camera settings do affect the raw image , as I see it. Any more?

JZ

I agree after trying it, white ballance seems to be applied to the raw image. Does anyone know if anything else is applied, like sharpness?

I have noticed that in PSE 3, that the white balancing is slightly different than the camera's balancing. I've compared "as shot" to "flash" on images shot with a flash and they are a little different. And I've seen that PSE 3's autofix cranked all the way to the right will correct white balancing problems in images I shot in JPG mode.

When you view a Raw file in a converter or any program that can view Raw files, it appears with the settings as shot in the camera. Just as Kenny G said above, These settings have not changed the Raw data. You can change them to any WB, saturation you want. The camera settings are only applied in the conversion if you select them for the conversion. The image viewing program has to use some set of parameters to show the image. It can't display the Raw data without some instructions on how to interpret it. By default they show the image with the settings from the camera. That does not imply that the Raw data has been altered. Raw is just what it implies, Raw data. The only exception to this just to make it complicated, is that Canon does some small amount of sharpening to Raw files that can not be turned off anywhere.

Regards,
Scott

Jerry, the WB does NOT affect the raw image in any way. However, it is true that it will affect the image you see when the raw image is displayed on the monitor in that a WB has to be set to something so by default, the shot setting WB is used. But that does not mean that the raw file itself has that WB applied to the image.

It is true that PSCS doesnt show RAW files straight from the camera as they were when they were shot. However, PSCS seems to have MUCH better color representation and RAW flexibility over DPP for me. When I open RAW files in DPP, they are usually underexposed and undercolored, but thats not the point.

From my understandings, the camera applies white balancing to RAW files inside the camera but they are not written in stone as they are in JPEGs. JPEGs are processed in camera and then compressed. RAW files are only processed for incamera viewing, but once the RAW file is extracted into a RAW converter its all open world from there. I could be wrong but Im using my computer knowledge here because I've analyzed this over and over and its ultimately why I shoot in RAW now everytime instead of JPEG unless I necessarily have to.