Lightroom + JPEG

[cdifoto]

I tested out the LR white balance tool just to see if it really works on JPEGs like it does RAW. I deliberately set the wrong white balance when I used flash here, and I "recovered" it by hovering over the white boxes in the background. I could tweak it further but this isn't really an important image.

Straight from camera:
20555

After edits:
20556

Here's a 100% crop of the image. It's ISO400 on a 10D. LR Noise Reduction set at the defaults.
20557


Oh and by the way the lens used was Jamie's freebie: Lentar 135mm f/2.8 M42 mount @ f/4.

[forno]

Its looking like a really good bit of software, good test that one

[cdifoto]

I'll have to play around a bit but I might go back to JPEG. RAW was pretty much just a safety net for white balance for me. But it's moot now. I don't give a rat's behind about all that 16 bit vs 8 bit yadda yadda yadda hoopla. I can never see a difference as far as that goes.

[forno]

All you will need to do is take a shot of something white for each different set of conditions

[RichNY]

Do you have the same degree of control fixing exposure errors in Jpeg as you have with Raw?

[cdifoto]

I've been making a point to carry around and shoot a small gray card that fits in my pocket and do a custom white balance. I try to do that everywhere I go but if I forget and leave it on AWB it usually gets close...easier still to fix than something crazy off like the test shots above. Those are extreme.

RAW is becoming more and more of just a power/speed drain than anything else. But I'll still shoot around different things and see what comes of it. You can only get so much out of a test shot.

[cdifoto]

Do you have the same degree of control fixing exposure errors in Jpeg as you have with Raw?

Yeah no controls that I've seen so far are exclusive to RAW. Everything you can do with a RAW it appears you can do with JPEG. Unlike DPP that blacks out some/most options.

I had actually overexposed that shot somewhat, and it was more obvious in the original white balance corrected image. I kicked it down in LR before moving to PS for my usual USM treatment.

You can also recover highlights and shadows and such with just a couple sliders. Very easy.

[boog]

Nice test Don. I imported some jpegs and pretty amazed at the white balance tool on the jpegs. Anything short of forno. What the heck are you guys doing up this early(maybe never went to bed...Don)? I'm at least working graveyard. I hope someone is having fun and enjoying a cold beverage:D !

[RichNY]

What the heck are you guys doing up this early

It's not early, it's late ;)

[aparmley]

Don - I planned on doing a similar test. I wanted to shoot with a "Wrong" WB setting in RAW + Jpeg mode and then correct both and see if there are any variabilities. I found it scary as hell you thought along the same lines as me (j/k bro).

[cdifoto]

Don - I planned on doing a similar test. I wanted to shoot with a "Wrong" WB setting in RAW + Jpeg mode and then correct both and see if there are any variabilities. I found it scary as hell you thought along the same lines as me (j/k bro).

No kidding. It IS scary. :eek: :D I didn't to a RAW+JPEG...just JPEG. I can't figure out how to get my 10D to do both (even though I think I have it set to RAW+JPEG in the Custom Function) and I was too lazy to bust out my 30D and switch lenses around and all that crap just for this.

I've switched both my cameras back to JPEG at least for now. Maybe I'll come across a situation that makes me wish I was doing RAW again but in my limited experience with LR, it seems wasteful of disk space and conversion time, as well as camera processing power.

[aparmley]

No kidding. It IS scary. :eek: :D

I've switched both my cameras back to JPEG at least for now. Maybe I'll come across a situation that makes me wish I was doing RAW again but in my limited experience with LR, it seems wasteful of disk space and conversion time, as well as camera processing power.

You know I'm not quite convinced its time to abandon RAW right now, but I see one main advantage to shooting jpeg and that is in-camera sharpening. :D

[cdifoto]

You know I'm not quite convinced its time to abandon RAW right now, but I see one main advantage to shooting jpeg and that is in-camera sharpening. :D

Well for RAW, LR has a default sharpening of 25, as well as a few other non-zero defaults. For JPEG they're all zeros, including sharpening. I'm not sure why that is though.

I'm keeping an open mind on RAW but I figure I'll do JPEG exclusively for at least a bit here to see if I miss RAW at all. Even exposure recovery seems kinda moot too. This shot was almost a full stop overexposed as a JPEG:

20559

Is it perfect? No but I didn't really spend any time on it.

[cdifoto]

Here's that same shot (sortof) in a closer to correct exposure:

20560

[adam75south]

lightroom won me over with the white balance eye dropper. and i especially like the curves adjustments with sliders. makes it harder to screw up than in photoshop. before the only reason i found to shoot raw was for the white balance, but i really don't know what the advantage is anymore...unless you just want to keep it as a negative...because god knows editing style changes from day to day.