Converting RAW

[patticakes]

I have recently made the move to shooting in RAW and I love it, while it's still in the camera RAW in CS2, but as soon as it gets transferred to a JPG, it becomes ultra grainy!!! ARGH I'm ready to pull my hair out! THe image doesn't look as sharp as it does in RAW too... HELP?? I have tried the various noise reductions options in the menu on the d200, to no avail. What am I doing wrong??
Am I missing something?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
patti.

[tcadwall]

Can you post a sample, along with the EXIF info?
Also what is the resolution you are converting to in Jpg, and what is the compression setting? Might just be using too high of compression.

[Esoterra]

Patti,

CS2 is a great program, but for best results converting to JPEG I ALWAYS use Nikon Capture NX. I know it costs more money, but it does the best job converting NEF files to JPEG hands down. Also, when you shoot in RAW, Capture NX recognizes in camera setting changes that you make (sharpness, saturation, contrast, hue, ect.) so that you dont have to make these changes later in post processing. And this is why you could be having issues. In CS2, even though you make setting changes in camera, will not recognize the changes you make (Shooting in RAW) and so you have to make the changes you want post processing and it adds more time.

So, in my situation, for all my weddings, I have my in camera D200 settings as such:

Sharpening: +1 Medium High
Tone Comp: A Auto (default)
Color Mode: I Portrait (default)
Saturation: A Auto(default)
Hue: 0 (default)


Now, when I go into Capture NX and load up my raw flies that have been shot with the above in camera settings, the images look crisp, clean, and well saturated without having to make any adjustments aside from exposure from time to time. It really saves on the post processing time.

Shoot me an email and I can send you an excel spread sheet that I use to customize my D200 banks A,B,C,D and I can also help you with Capture NX.

Chrisrossphotography@gmail.com

Hope this helps.

[patticakes]

Chris you have made my day!!! thank you so so SO much! email coming your way!!! I knew someone here would be able to help! Y'all know so much!!

THanks again!!!
patti

[TNB]

Esoterra,

Will you post an example of each using the same photo, i.e. NX and CS2?

[Esoterra]

Sorry Darrel. it will take too much time, and I am lazy!
But check out this link and see for yourself

http://www.nikonians.org/dcforum/DCForumID36/16777.html
:)

[wh0128]

I see the difference, and I may have to ask for Capture NX for christmas instead of more photo gear.

[TNB]

I noticed a difference too, but the differences were between Nikon Capture 4.4.1 and Bibble Pro 4.6 photos. Also according the what I read on the thread, the Nikon program defaults to turn on some features while some programs do not, yet some can be set to turn on the same features.

[wh0128]

Well today I took a photo of a trail with trees as the frame, and in the viewfinder it looked great, but once I put it in Photoshop CS2 and loaded it, it seemed to be really over exposed, with alot of the settings on Auto. I think Adobe PS:CS2 does this automatically because once I unclicked the Auto Exposure, and drug it down a few units, the picture looked mighty fine. This also happens with Shadows, Contrast, Temperature(White Balance), and Tint, for those of you who use CS2 Raw you'll know what I am talking about...but I would like to see an example of Capture NX and Photoshop compared, now that would be interesting to see which one produces better quality. The only reason I could see Capture being slightly better is because it is a Nikon product and nobody knows Nikon cameras better than Nikon themselves...

[tcadwall]

ok - you guys probably knew I would jump in here to defend the Bibble. 8o)

When I looked at that link my first thought was - "ok, so they have shut off all of the defaults (auto leveling which does a great job for instance) of Bibble, and it is a comparison of a non-current version." I may actually give NX a shot, but honestly, it is not nearly as tedious to convert with Bibble as that thread makes it sound. It also doesn't mention the white balance setting in Bibble. I haven't used 4.6 since I bought in with 4.9 - but the default white balance is "as shot" taking the white balance info from the camera. It appears to me that in the comparison white balance might have been one of the main problems (since color hue seemed bad). 4.9 also includes Noise Ninja which is a highly regarded noise correction tool.

Lens correction: While I don't have a huge array of lenses (far from it), the software does read the exif information and gleams the camera model, and lens. What I do like is that it *doesn't* automatically correct for it - most shots don't require it, so why do a manipulation that is not required? If you would like to apply the correction - check the box. Also - there are variances between individual specimens of a particular lens. If you take that into consideration, why would you want it to correct something that might not apply to your particular specimen exactly? I think I have had a total of 3 shots so far (out of several hundreds) where I have actually checked the box.

Ok... don't want to sound like Bibble is unequivocally the best, but I am not sure that it is a good current comparison. I am open to checking out others, but I have already been through that once.