Mac's Finder Preview significantly differs from the RAW preview imported to Capture One
I have a setup that is far from being called fancy — just a Nikon D3300 and a stock lens.
I shoot in RAW.
Today I made some pictures, and while not perfect, they are usable (to my standards).
I shoot in Manual, but have the focus on autofocus, and white balance also on "AUTO". Well, today was different than my usual shooting style. While "White Balance" was still set to "AUTO", I fiddled with the "Exposure Compensation" — something I never did before.
Is it possible that the Exposure Compensation is only being visually shown once the RAW file is imported to Capture One, and hence why the image is darker? Or is something else going on?
I personally think that more than just exposure is being changed. If you look at the preview of the RAW file, you will see it has a yellow-ish/green-ish tint, whereas the preview in CO is closer to brown and red.
1. MacOS Finder Preview (compressed the PNG screenshot by 80% with imageOptim)
2. Capture One RAW imported preview (compressed the PNG screenshot by 80% with imageOptim)
System: MacOS Mojave (version 10.14.6)
Capture One 20 Pro (13.1.0)
I'm used to the previews differing in exposure and color, but the difference was never this significant.
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Which way did you adjust the Exposure compensation? Lighter or darker?
Traditionally exposure compensation was a way of telling the camera to change some part of whatever automated numbers it had measured. Or, if shooting with manual settings, to override those settings at least in part.
The OS Finder preview is likely to be showing the jpg embedded in the RAW file (to act as a preview) by the camera internally. One would expect that jpg to have the camera values, adjusted by the Compensation value you set as an override for whatever the camera was set to. If you have manual settings for shutter, aperture and ISO as part of the shot I'm not sure what it would do internally to decide how to apply the adjustment. Applying to the jpg preview would be easy enough but what values would be carried to the RAW I'm not sure.
If you look at the NEF file in Finder can you see the values used to take the shot? Do they differ from the values found in Capture One?
If you apply the same compensation value as you used at the time to the NEW file in C1 does it look similar to the Finder image?
I'm not familiar with what one might expect in terms of differences in appearance for OS projected embedded jpg files compared to C1 interpreted RAW files. Especially not for Kikon cameras.
As Canon user (mainly) I generally know what sort of differences I might expect to see depending on how well the viewing screen can be calibrated. However it is all a bit a dark art certain colours can often be more challenging than others. There are many influences over that.
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I used a negative value for the exposure compensation (to darken the image).
At the time of the shooting, I actually made two shots: one with the exposure compensation, one without. In the camera's preview of the images, they were exactly the same, though the Live View on the camera's screen did show a significantly darker image... this being said, I'm not sure I quite understand its purpose and function.
I had taken three shots (same shots, different shutter speed): the lightest, medium, and the darkest. I accidentally imported the darkest shot (thinking it was the lightest) into CO and was comparing it to the preview of the lightest shot.
The way I unintentionally fixed it to appear close in appearance to the lightest shot was by using Auto Adjust (exposure, HDR, levels) and it did a very nice job. By the time I realized my mistake, I already invested over an hour of editing, so I didn't want to redo it.
With some editing, I got the look I was going for. The final result (93% compression by ImageOptim so it can fit the 2MB upload limit):
Aggressive, high contrast. I tried my best to take care of the overexposed part on the top of the earphones, and its looks just about fine — if anything, it overemphasizes the curves and shape of the earphones.
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Well, I like the result.
I would guess the camera's WB detection might be quite challenged by the subject matter which probably would not help your initial comparison.
I think your Autoadjust decision would be a good starting point here - if for no other reason that it would give you a good idea of how C1 is "seeing" the data.
I tend to run the Levels auto analysis in its separate channels mode rather than RGB. It seems to add something with the files from my Canons but might give a different impression working with Nikon.
Autoadjust is something I have only started to experiment with recently. Earlier investigation on older PCs never convinced me to use it but a notebook update with more recent screen technology seems to produce better on-screen results from Autoadjust, albeit it they tend to be more vibrant than I really want most times. Still, the online screen-based viewing world seems addicted to vibrant (possibly because mobile screens don't really do subtle very well) so maybe it's just something to be accepted.
Also Linear profile may help especially to obtain a reference point for further adjustment.
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Thanks!
The "Auto Adjust" tool really did a great job.
Here's before & after "Auto Adjust" (1.before, 2. after):
Now, here is a comparison of After "Auto Adjust" with the lightest photo which I thought I used:
I could've fine tweaked it, but the project is not of such a great significance, so I left it as is. The darkest photo after "Auto Adjust" is slightly darker and has a less yellow-ish appearance and more red. The final result (the photo I posted in the previous post) turned out satisfactory and all is good.
What I learned: Auto Adjust can fix accidental f**k ups very quickly. From there on, you can fine tweak it to the desired end result.
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