With storage costs being so idiotically inexpensive and generally huge when compared with real world numbers of still images that can possibly be taken with any thought process at all I would tend to question why not shoot RAW. If you like the way that your camera processes images just shoot RAW+JPG. The JPG files are tiny compared to the RAW file. Heck a couple of readers have informed me that even that blabbering yo-yo Ken Rockwell is starting to back pedal on his “You are an idiot if you shoot RAW” nonsense. Here are some opinions I have and some facts that you can verify yourself.

• More bits per channel is a big big deal if you are going to manipulate the image in any significant way. Check out the photos included in the post and the article that I posted on the Aperture highlights and shadows tool.
• Processing WB in post gives you infinite color flexibility – also a big big deal.
• I have personally seen a huge improvement in individual RAW image files processed in new software vs. processed in older software/in camera JPG files. Why limit yourself to one rendition?
• There has never ever been an occasion that I shot RAW where I thought at a later date – “Hey I wished that I shot JPG”. There have been a lot of occasions that I choose to shoot JPG where I thought “Man I wish I shot RAW” down the road a bit.

Okay so here is the example – it’s clouds. Hey tell me every photographer doesn’t shoot cool looking clouds. Most of us don’t do anything with them but we all shoot them – come on admit it – come clean. Here is the camera JPG with auto WB nice and neutral – how boring.

Here are a couple of manipulations to get closer to what I saw versus what the camera thought I saw. Check out the cool magenta hues in the distance. The only thing that I screwed with in all of these is contrast, brightness, levels, and WB.

Now let’s take the in camera produced JPG and screw with the WB and levels to get it anywhere close to any of the above images and see what happpens.

Yuk – see what happens to the photographic subtleties when you only have 256 values in each color channel and throw a bunch of them away.

Thoughts?

RB

To match Capture NX or NX2 NEF files generally need:

• Increased brightness
• Increased contrast
• A little bit of definition
• A small amount of warmer white balance
• A small shift from green towards magenta in the white balance as well

After playing with it and trying 103 different ways to get there the simplest approach that I have found is to literally use the brightness, contrast, definition, and white balance controls. As Bernard alluded to in his comments sharpening is another story but NX2 and Lightroom2 are generally more aggressive with the default sharpening (regardless of camera setting) than Aperture is.

Without further delay here is my simple but not perfect simulation of NX2 picture control – portrait mode for D2H NEF RAW files.

• White balance Temp  6222 Tint -3
• Brightness +0.25 to +0.30
• Contrast +0.15 to +0.20
• Definition +0.20

That’s it – not perfect but darn close if not a tad “better” If you would like to try it yourself here is the NEF DSC0012 RAW NEF (341).

JPG rendered by NX2

JPG rendered by Aperture2 with the settings described above.

JPG rendered by Aperture2 with default settings.

Here is the bottom line – I would never want to pooh-pooh those out there that love the way NX2 processes their NEF RAW file but I feel that you can get similar results and sometimes better results with Aperture. Not quite as convenient and you do need to play around with recipes when you get a new Nikon body but if you keep a project file filled with “prototype” images with the baseline settings that you like the pain can be minimized without resorting to a really convoluted and inefficient work-flow. Heck I want Apple to do a better job. I want the camera profiles that Lightroom2 now has but I am not willing to give up all of the things that I love about Aperture2.

Let me know your thoughts and if you have a simpler or more accurate approach feel free to share it. Based on the number of emails that I get from Nikon shooters about this subject I am confident that any thoughts or opinions will be appreciated by everyone.

Happy Holidays

RB

If anyone would like to post the results please do so in comments on this post – may be just a link to the JPG along with your approach in Aperture. I will do the same as soon as we get a couple of adventuresome soles to kick it off. I am positive we will all learn a thing or two even if it is different approaches to get to the same/similar places.

RB

Now here is the deal, given that I hate to spend time in post and have twiddled away far far too many hours in Photoshop since the mid-1990′s doing things to people that I have no taste for (Is this supposed to be a photo or a cartoon?) but hey the customer is always right. I will do anyting I can to minimize spending time fiddling with images on the computer, maybe I am just old but I have way more fun doing what I can while shooting than afterwards. This is one of the reasons that I really like the Picture Control concept that Nikon has developed. I know exactly what I am going to get right out of the box – hey that gets me half way there. Heck the results are nearly identical if I apply the same Picture Control to two different cameras, say one from 5 years ago and one that I just got today. Cool. Very Cool. You can even make your own. Enter Adobe’s camera profiles for DNG (they work on your NEFs and CR2s as well) – these take the whole picture control thing to a whole new level. They give you a set of tools that let you pretty much map any camera RAW to any rendering so theoretically if I wanted to do the work I could make a camera profile for say a Canon 5D that matched a Nikon D3 using a Nikon “Portrait” picture control. To prove that it works Adobe gives you the same exact renderings that Capture NX2 supports with the camera profiles for all of the supported Nikon NEF files – and they are very very close.

Ok so back to Aperture and why this is a pain in the a$$ for lazy people like me. Well I happen to like to know what the color is going to look like when I am shooting and not have to fuss with it afterwards (much). The way Aperture deals with color/WB info makes this a federal case. I wouldn’t mind at all if there was a stock set of adjustments that I could just slap together and use for every shoot but that is not the case. The adjustments are way different depending on the camera you shoot with, the color temperture of the light sources, and the WB that you set on the camera (preset, fixed, auto, whatever) add to that that I like to gel my lights with CTBs and CTOs while manipulating my film (preset WB) and you have a different set of monkeying around that you need to do for every situation. Like I said I am lazy and I hate things that slow me down.

Here is an example (a simple one) of what I am talking about.The following images rendered from my trusty old D2H with the default camera settings (all flat – normal, normal, normal, you get the idea) rendered from left to right by NX2 with camera settings, NX2 with portrait picture control under the develop settings, and Aperture:

What was the camera setup? Like I said all flat and the camera WB was set to 6300K to warm it, sort of like a 85B filter back in the old days. Want to try it for yourself – Here is the NEF RAW file – DSC0106 RAW NEF (349). Go ahead match the colors. It’s a challenge for you. Let me know how long you spent or if you gave up. – not just one of the colors all of them. If you need a reference download Nikon View NX and use the portrait picture control under develop, it’s free. I am not saying that you cannot get good results, you can it just takes a bit of fooling around, actually a lot of fooling around – get a new camera – fool around some more.

Did it take longer than 5 minutes? Was that a piece of cake, ok here is another one for you to take a crack at if you are up to the challenge, I just added a color or two to the equation. Again from left to right – NX2 camera settings (same as last time), NX2 portrait picture control, Aperture. Here is the RAW NEF – DSC0029 RAW NEF (339).

Hey where else and what other photographer would let you see his NEF files? Only here. If you care about this, I implore you to let apple know what you would like to see in Aperture3. How about just using Adobe’s DNG spec? License the whole thing? RAW processing plug-in architecture so that maybe you could someday choose the manufacturer’s engine, DNG, Adobe’s, Apple’s little experiment (or big one) What are your thoughts?

RB

Ps. I did gild the lily a little bit – I took exactly 6.3 seconds and added one little tiny embellishment to the center image in NX2 besides choosing the rendering intent. Can you see it? Special prize to the first reader to get it right.