Recently I started shooting RAW+JPEG because sometimes I don’t want to post-proces my images and just straight use them. However, when comparing both I find no difference in colors or other adjustments. The SOOC JPEG with Velvia Film Simulation has the same colors, saturation, etc. as the unedited RAW file. What am I doing wrong?
I’ve never known this. This is a very good point. It would be nice if they did this because that would be a great starting point to make further edits on the RAW file.
Since you mentioned Capture One, I used it a lot and yes, they do that. I switched to Darktable a long time ago, so I don’t know where exactly this is, but there should be a drop-down menu where you can select a base curve for the display referred process, and the next menu option should be the base lut for colour, if I remember correctly.
Edit: typo. And so in your case the colour option right under the base curve should say something with “Velvia”
There is an option to select the available film simulations in Capture One. But that needs to be done manually I believe. But if it’s automatically applied on import if you also shoot JPEG, that’s great. I must say that I thought the RAW’s looked really good and was happy with myself that I selected the right exposure to make them look good. Turns out software helped me out again 😅
How do you like darktable? Can it load my Aperture libraries?
I have no idea if it can’t load aperture libraries or not. I have never used it. But Darktable as a photo editor is the by far best one that I’ve used and I used CaptureOne and Adobe Trashroom previously. Short version is that it uses a scene-referred workflow which guarantees consistency between pictures and is basically the same process that colour editing software in the video world uses, while all other photo editing software basically only uses a display-referred process, which is a problem, since it applies a base curve and turns the raw file into a higher quality JPEG and then you only edit said higher quality JPEG, this is horrible for consistency and predictability. If you use the “recovery” option in Lightroom, you know what I’m talking about.
If you start out with Darktable, there will be a slight learning curve because every YouTube video has taught us to use curves upon curves upon curves. Which again is a problem because you’re multiplying errors. But I digress. Give it a try. It’s free to download and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. I gave it a try, and I love it. But well, horses for courses.
That was a brilliant analysis! Cheers!
Thanks. :)
Canon’s DPP4 starts displaying RAW files from Canon Camera’s processed as if by the Canon camera, as a feature, for precisely that reason: a good starting point.
Even if it didn’t, the “ideal” recipe for displaying a RAW file as a JPG is probably relatively straightforward (how to form the luminance histograms, level of noise reduction & sharpening, etc.) and likely to give what appears to be the same results. I’d expect you’d only usually spot this with extreme pixel peeping. If the process was not straightforward, it would slow displaying the JPG in camera, and thus slow down the whole photography experience, so that’s not going to happen!