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08/20/2008 02:30:11 PM · #1
So here's the deal. Whenever I shoot RAW (which is always), the images never come out clear and sharp no matter what lens I use. They are always noisy, somewhat blurry, and lacking in finer details. But the catch is that whenever I first load them into Rawshooter Essentials, they look perfectly fine and very sharp. Upon conversion into JPEG and import into PSCS2, they look all muddled and noisy. Now I'm not sure where the problem in the workflow results because if I try to convert with ACR, I get the same issue.

Also, when I use PSCS2 to edit, it's never what you see is what you get. The photo is always more noisy and just bad looking if any editing at all is done to it (sometimes even if no editing has been done). But when viewed in something else, it looks less noisy...but still not nearly sharp and simply bad.

Before people start to tell me to lower my ISO or something, the specific image I tried was shot at ISO100 and 1/2000th of a second with a Canon 10-22mm lens at ~17mm which should have little to no noise and no motion blur or camera shake.

I'm hoping this is an issue with my computer or me just being stupid as opposed to with the camera sensor...but any help/insight/advice you guys can offer would be greatly appreciated.
08/20/2008 02:32:39 PM · #2
I have a similar problem. Every RAW shot looks soft in DPP (not totally unexpected). BUT, if I sharpen it in DPP so that it looks okay, in PaintShopPro or Elements, it is oversharpened. Way oversharpened.
08/20/2008 02:35:38 PM · #3
Raw files have no noise adjustment or sharpening applied to them from the camera. When you see the "good" sharp and noiseless files what you are seeing is the jpeg preview(which the camera applys it's adjustments) that is imbeded in the raw file, then the raw file pops up with no adjustments waiting for you to maximize all the untouched data. when shooting raw you have to apppy noise reduction and sharpening, amoung any other color or tonal adjustments to fit your needs.
08/20/2008 03:06:35 PM · #4
Originally posted by trevytrev:

Raw files have no noise adjustment or sharpening applied to them from the camera. When you see the "good" sharp and noiseless files what you are seeing is the jpeg preview(which the camera applys it's adjustments) that is imbeded in the raw file, then the raw file pops up with no adjustments waiting for you to maximize all the untouched data. when shooting raw you have to apppy noise reduction and sharpening, amoung any other color or tonal adjustments to fit your needs.


Right, I know that RAW files have no corrections at all applied to the image. But my problem is not the jpeg preview the camera displays, it's with the conversion from RAW to jpeg. When I go from RSE to CS2, the image gets grainy, blurry, and all around crappy looking. When in RSE, while doing the adjustments and corrections, the image looks fabulous. I'm just having some issue with photoshop (I think) making the image look terrible and lacks any and all clarity that most of the images on this site have. And at this point, I don't think it's me anymore.
08/20/2008 03:18:06 PM · #5
Originally posted by SamDoe1:

Originally posted by trevytrev:

Raw files have no noise adjustment or sharpening applied to them from the camera. When you see the "good" sharp and noiseless files what you are seeing is the jpeg preview(which the camera applys it's adjustments) that is imbeded in the raw file, then the raw file pops up with no adjustments waiting for you to maximize all the untouched data. when shooting raw you have to apppy noise reduction and sharpening, amoung any other color or tonal adjustments to fit your needs.


Right, I know that RAW files have no corrections at all applied to the image. But my problem is not the jpeg preview the camera displays, it's with the conversion from RAW to jpeg. When I go from RSE to CS2, the image gets grainy, blurry, and all around crappy looking. When in RSE, while doing the adjustments and corrections, the image looks fabulous. I'm just having some issue with photoshop (I think) making the image look terrible and lacks any and all clarity that most of the images on this site have. And at this point, I don't think it's me anymore.


It would be better to load it into PS as a tiff or psd rather than jpeg. Keep the 16 bits/channel (if your version of PS supports it).

What settings are you using for converting to jpeg? What quality setting to be specific?
08/20/2008 03:22:39 PM · #6
Originally posted by cpanaioti:

It would be better to load it into PS as a tiff or psd rather than jpeg. Keep the 16 bits/channel (if your version of PS supports it).

What settings are you using for converting to jpeg? What quality setting to be specific?


I will try the tiff and PSD when I get home. I'm almost positive that it's set to 100% quality, but I will check that too when I get home.
08/20/2008 03:28:29 PM · #7
you also might want te reset everything back to the default settings.

Check your color space in both applications. sRGB is recommended for web output.
08/20/2008 03:30:31 PM · #8
Originally posted by scarbrd:

you also might want te reset everything back to the default settings.

Check your color space in both applications. sRGB is recommended for web output.


Thanks, I think I'm going to try and reinstall both applications and see if that helps. I'm also looking to get Lightroom to ditch RSE since it's no longer supported...
08/21/2008 03:49:11 PM · #9
Ok so I went home and checked the conversion settings. The colorspace was set to sRGB and the same was set in CS2. The quality setting was "maximum" I didn't try to convert to tiff or psd but I will give that a go tonight as well as the reinstall.

Any other ideas or explainations on why this is happening?
08/21/2008 04:01:12 PM · #10
Check what processing you are doing in the RAW converter as that will contribute greatly to the quality of the image loaded into PS regardless of file format though converting to jpeg means throwing away some info (jpeg is only 8 bits/channel).
08/21/2008 04:02:24 PM · #11
I just thought of something else you might check. In your RAW profile, there is an option to pick what size you want your photo to open up to. For the longest time, I had a setting that opened up my photos too small so that the picture did in fact look icky. When I selected the option to open up the file much bigger at 300dpi, the quality of the photo improved quite a bit.

Also, this is probably way too obvious, you might double-check to make sure that the settings in your RAW profile don't have the sharpen feature set too high, or the noise reduction turned all the way down to 0.

Good Luck. Let us know if you get it figured out, okay?

08/21/2008 04:24:05 PM · #12
Which brings on the age old question of utilizing raw in the first place especially if your output will primarily be for the web. I've found that besides being monster files, the workload associated with conversion, as mentioned below, yields very few benefits for web usage. On the other hand, if you are getting a great deal of your photos printed, you may get the benefit of raw. In most cases, a majority of people will find it difficult to differentiate the subtleties associated with raw files when output to photo paper. I get the feeling, in most cases, it satisfies little more than our ambition to be purists and is only really appreciated by other photo geeks who in most cases cannot tell the difference in output anyhow.

It would be interesting to evaluate the same image side by side where one was captured in RAW and the other in jpeg fine. If the post processing was of an equal effort, I'd bet most would find it impossible to discern between the two.

Unless you have a crackerjack workflow, RAW can be a significant, and unnecessary exercise when processing a whole slew of images. I've found jpeg to work well enough in 98% of circumstances.

Sorry if I digress, but I thought it relevant to the discussion when the problem can mostly be averted by allowing the "camera computer" do do the job it was designed for in the first place. Why the need to manually complete steps that can be automated in the camera?

Just my thoughts.
08/26/2008 07:55:40 PM · #13
Originally posted by SandyP:

I just thought of something else you might check. In your RAW profile, there is an option to pick what size you want your photo to open up to. For the longest time, I had a setting that opened up my photos too small so that the picture did in fact look icky. When I selected the option to open up the file much bigger at 300dpi, the quality of the photo improved quite a bit.

Also, this is probably way too obvious, you might double-check to make sure that the settings in your RAW profile don't have the sharpen feature set too high, or the noise reduction turned all the way down to 0.

Good Luck. Let us know if you get it figured out, okay?


How do you change the size the picture opens up in? And would it be necessary to apply noise reduction to an image shot at ISO 100?
08/26/2008 09:37:39 PM · #14
Originally posted by Ivo:

Which brings on the age old question of utilizing raw in the first place especially if your output will primarily be for the web. I've found that besides being monster files, the workload associated with conversion, as mentioned below, yields very few benefits for web usage. On the other hand, if you are getting a great deal of your photos printed, you may get the benefit of raw. In most cases, a majority of people will find it difficult to differentiate the subtleties associated with raw files when output to photo paper. I get the feeling, in most cases, it satisfies little more than our ambition to be purists and is only really appreciated by other photo geeks who in most cases cannot tell the difference in output anyhow


The main advantage of RAW is during pre-processing. Specifically exposure adjustment, highlight recovery, shadow adjustment, and colour balance. This is because you are making adjustments using 12/14-bits/channel depth instead of the 8-bits/channel that JPG offers. There may be some small advantage when doing sharpening or noise reduction. But there is no visible difference when viewing the final image on a monitor. It doesn't matter if the source was JPG or RAW as the screen can only make use of 24-bits anyway (Three 8-bit channels = 256x256x256 = 16 million colours)

A 16-bit/channel TIFF generated from RAW would require a screen capable of displaying 48-bit colour in order to see the full possible colour range; (65536x65536x65536 = Trillons of colours) The highest bit depth currently available on any monitor is 30-bits here

As far as printed output goes, consumer printers generally offer 24-bit colour depth, although there are now printer+driver combinations which allow you to use 48-bit depth (whether the printer can actually support that gamut is another question!) see here for example

Message edited by author 2008-08-26 21:57:50.
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