Tim Grey (http://www.timgrey.com/), another Photoshop Guru like Robert O'Toole, and someone working with Artie at several of Artie's workshops, has a daily newsletter entitled Ask Tim Grey. If is free! You can sign up for the daily email in a box provided on the front of his home page.
I receive the Ask Tim Grey everyday and, trust me, there is lots of good stuff - especially for us students.
Today, the following appeared; I do believe my reproducing it here will cause a problem because the information is disseminated for free, and I am not providing it in a commercial endeavor - only my personal endeavor to continue to learn and improve.
PS: I sent Tim an email directing his attention to this thread.
While I have know that the in camera settings do not directly impact the RAW settings, I had previously attempted to make the preview "hot"; perhaps it should be "not" for the reasons suggested by Tim.
Today's Question: I have been told that it is important to control how your JPEG settings are set in the camera. Since the histogram is showing a JPEG conversion of the RAW data, it makes a difference what JPEG settings I have in my setup. For example, if I have a heightened contrast setting in the JPEG I am using it will distort the ends of the histogram in a way which doesn't reflect the RAW capture.
I have chosen to make my JPEG settings completely neutral which means that I have adjusted the camera's neutral JPEG setting to further reduce contrast. Ostensibly, I am getting a histogram which more closely reflects my RAW capture. This helps me to "expose to the right" and not get unrealistic overexposure warnings. Is this correct?
Tim's Answer: Yes, indeed, you are absolutely correct. The vast majority of in-camera settings don't affect a RAW capture at all. However, they do affect JPEG captures, and by extension they affect the preview you see on the LCD (at least with the cameras I've tested for this purpose). In other words, by adjusting the color space on your camera you can influence the histogram displayed for captures.
Of course, this creates a bit of an issue related to your priorities for previews. If you want the JPEG image to look as good as possible (especially as it relates to color saturation), you may want to set the color space in the camera to sRGB. If, on the other hand, you want the preview (and histogram) to better reflect the potential of a RAW capture, you should set the color space to Adobe RGB.
But more to the point of your question, if you adjust the settings in the camera that affect JPEG captures but do not affect RAW captures, in most cases those settings will affect the histogram and preview of RAW captures, and so will enable you to better evaluate results achieved with RAW capture. Specifically, I suggest using the Adobe RGB color space, and setting all image adjustment controls to their neutral value.
You can also experiment to determine if a further reduction in the Contrast setting might produce a more accurate histogram relative to what is possible. To do so, you'll want to compare the histogram of a RAW capture on the back of your camera to the histogram shown when you adjust the RAW conversion settings to those that produce a maximum tonal range without any clipping. If the histogram on the camera shows clipping while the histogram for the RAW conversion does not, then you should reduce contrast further on the camera if you want to produce a more accurate histogram relative to the potential of your RAW captures.
So, teach US all/share with US all - what do you do, what are your settings, and why?
Thanks in advance for participating in what should be another interesting discussion.







, there is lots of good stuff - especially for us students.
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