With Canon, Does Neutral picture style gives me what I need?

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

I´ve been reading lately that many photographers who use Canon set their cameras to Neutral and adjust it a tad to try to get a close representation of how the RAW file would look when open in a RAW converter.
I have tried this latedly but find the post processing a bit of headache as I have to boost the contrast and saturation sliders way more that what I would typically would do.

Does any one have the same problem?

I would love to hear your take in this :)

[Don Lacy]

Juan, Not only do I use the neutral style I further customize it in camera by turning the contrast to -5 and the saturation to-3. When converting the Raw file my first step is to change the profile from neutral to camera standard, then I will adjust from there. You do not have to stay with the picture style you use in camera I only use the neutral style in camera to get a more accurate representation of the Raw data so I know how much headroom I have before I blow the highlights since I ETTR most of my images.

[Mike Milicia]

When shooting RAW, I also set my Picture Style to Neutral and Contrast to -5. The objective is to get the histogram and highlight alerts (which are based on an embedded JPEG) to more closely reflect the contents of the RAW file. I don’t do the Saturation tweak just because it does not seem to make as big a difference but there is certainly no harm in doing that as well.

Note that Lightroom Develop and ACR have no idea how the Picture Style was set at time of capture, and, even if they did, they do not have access to the Canon algorithms to implement those Picture Styles. You can shoot with 5 different Picture Styles and they will all look the same when you open them in Lightroom Develop or ACR. Adobe will initially render them all according to whatever you have chosen for the default method in the Camera Calibration tab. Note also that even though Develop and ACR use the same names as Picture Styles found in your camera, these are just Adobe’s attempt to simulate the Canon Picture Styles since, again, they do not have access to the exact algorithms used in the camera.

In contrast, when you open a RAW file in DPP, the initial rendering will look exactly as it did on the back of the camera and the Picture Style will setting will be whatever it was at the time of capture. In addition, you can change the Picture Style in DPP and get exactly what you would have gotten had you done so in the camera.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

When shooting RAW, I also set my Picture Style to Neutral and Contrast to -5. The objective is to get the histogram and highlight alerts (which are based on an embedded JPEG) to more closely reflect the contents of the RAW file. I don’t do the Saturation tweak just because it does not seem to make as big a difference but there is certainly no harm in doing that as well.

Note that Lightroom Develop and ACR have no idea how the Picture Style was set at time of capture, and, even if they did, they do not have access to the Canon algorithms to implement those Picture Styles. You can shoot with 5 different Picture Styles and they will all look the same when you open them in Lightroom Develop or ACR. Adobe will initially render them all according to whatever you have chosen for the default method in the Camera Calibration tab. Note also that even though Develop and ACR use the same names as Picture Styles found in your camera, these are just Adobe’s attempt to simulate the Canon Picture Styles since, again, they do not have access to the exact algorithms used in the camera.

In contrast, when you open a RAW file in DPP, the initial rendering will look exactly as it did on the back of the camera and the Picture Style will setting will be whatever it was at the time of capture. In addition, you can change the Picture Style in DPP and get exactly what you would have gotten had you done so in the camera.

Mmmmm that´s pretty interesting Mike. I will give this a try one more time with your suggestions and see If I can get better results. By the way, I am using DPP and I like it quite a bit, the only problem I have been facing is when I apply NR in PS the grain seems to be a stuburn one, what I mean is that before with DPP I used a stardard 3 for chroma noise and 3 for luminance noise and it was all fine in PS, now with more aggresive values in DPP I find PS struggling to render a smooth area after the NR.

In any case, many thanks for your time and input.

Juan

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Juan, Not only do I use the neutral style I further customize it in camera by turning the contrast to -5 and the saturation to-3. When converting the Raw file my first step is to change the profile from neutral to camera standard, then I will adjust from there. You do not have to stay with the picture style you use in camera I only use the neutral style in camera to get a more accurate representation of the Raw data so I know how much headroom I have before I blow the highlights since I ETTR most of my images.

Hey Don, it sounds good to me, I guess I can try to do this as well and see what I can taking your suggestion. Do you edit using DPP?