Canon 20D dull images

I also tend to play around more when I do have the RAWs available, I just wanted to make it clear to everyone that JPEG is not really any faster of a workflow for those using Photoshop CS/CS2, and better results can be obtained in nearly the same amount of user time by just defining a simple action that replaces the in camera post processing.

RAW definitely takes me longer, even with CS2 and being quite familiar with it, it definitely impacts my workflow.

Have you set a custom conversion or are you using the auto conversion in CS2? Does it include the camera specific lens color correction?

Second question...do you think the auto conversion would be adequate if the RAW files were coming pretty close.

Last, do you do any sharpening in RAW or do you leave it to PS?

Thanks.

To the OP, try increasing the saturation, and contrast settings in parameter 1. It will give you a bit more pop to your picture. Give it a play, until you get the look you want.

As for shooting wedding in raw, vs jpg, you do get alot more detail in the raw images, which is nice when you want to show the details of a wedding gown, etc. Shooting raw, doesn't always mean that you didn't get the shot the first time,,lol.

Just another question....what was your ISO speed? I've had both problems...over exposure and underexposure. I tested a few things and discovered I relied too much on the Auto mode which has a funky relationship with ISO. Same when in manual modes. I'm learning how to shoot all over again!

one more thing....are you using a polarizing filter? Take it off til you figure out what your problem is.

Most of the time..i shoot raw...but in fast moving sports scene..i shoot with hight jpeg because of fast sequence scene...

When I batch convert a set of RAWs, which again is not something I do often, I use a custom conversion, using one of several actions I defined. They all do a combination of noise reduction and USM with Noise Ninja, brightness, contrast and saturation adjustments, levels, ICC/8-bit conversion, Velvia Vision, and save as JPEG level 12. There's nothing wrong with the auto conversion, but even if you nail the exposure, it will still come out a bit soft that way compared to running a custom action like mine that does noise reduction and sharpening in one step.

It literally takes all of about 5 seconds to kick off the batch, and anywhere from 10-15 seconds per image for the batch to run in the background.

I guess to your last point, I don't do any sharpening in ACR, it's all in PS.