RAW converter

Modern digital photography is very much associated with image processing programs. Sometimes, just the photo editor creates exactly that photo, which we ultimately consider the work of the photographer.

RAW converter

RAW converter


Modern digital photography is insidious, sometimes it turns into ordinary mathematical tricks, which I already wrote about in articles'Subpixels', 'Gigapixels', 'JPEG", "Tricks with RAW'and'RAW setup'. Any photograph taken in the so-called raw format - RAW, for printing or viewing on a computer must be converted (converted) into a simpler format with an unambiguous representation of the data. This program is usually called a RAW converter ('rav-converter'). There are just a lot of such converters, but due to the specifics of the raw files of each individual camera, the converters sometimes cannot recreate the “correct” photo from this raw data. It is often said that for the best results you need to use only the “native software” that sometimes comes with the camera.

Below is my experiment that everyone can repeat. The essence of the experiment is very simple - you need to convert the same raw file with different converters and see what happens :) The photo from the experiment was taken on Nikon Nikkor-SC Auto 1: 1.4 f = 50mm, I specifically chose a lens without microprocessor contacts to exclude any specific image enhancement by the converter by correcting lens imperfections from the database. The picture was taken in difficult lighting conditions: very cloudy weather, two flashes.

Link to the archive with photos. (The archive takes 96.9 MB to view the packed files, the archive should be unpacked). Attention: the photos are not for the faint of heart, they are especially dangerous for scammers and pixel worms :)

The archive contains the following files:

  • DSC_5549.NEF - original RAW file obtained during shooting. Nikon D700, 14bit, lossless compression, control vignetting, ADL, noise reduction at slow shutter speeds, noise reduction at high ISO - were off. All shot in Picture Control mode SD (standard mode): contrast correction - 0, brightness - 0, saturation - 0, hue - 0, sharpness - position 5 out of 10. White balance - "flash". If you turn on all the native "improvements", then third-party software copes with displaying data even worse. EXIF You can look at any available program that you are used to. If there is no such program, then it is easy to do using the service on http://regex.info/exif.cgi.
  • DSC_5549.JPG - original JPEG file obtained during RAW + JPEG shooting, settings are described above. JPEG L with quality priority.
  • DSC_5549 (acr-original) .jpg - file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 6.0 (ACR 6.0) in default mode.
  • DSC_5549 (acr-auto) .jpg - file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 6.0 in auto mode.
  • DSC_5549 (capturexn2-original) .jpg - file converted with CaptureNX 2 v 2.4.5 in default mode.
  • DSC_5549 (capturexn2-pt) .jpg - file converted with CaptureNX 2 v 2.4.5 with PT selected capture mode.
  • DSC_5549 (lr-auto-tone) .jpg - file converted with nude Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.2 using the 'Auto tone' command. When exporting to JPEG, the quality was 100%, other settings were default.
  • DSC_5549 (lr-original) .jpg - file converted using nude Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.2 in default mode with standard profiles installed along with the LR setting. When exporting to JPEG, the quality was 100%, other settings were default.
  • DSC_5549 (photoshop-from-original-jpeg-with-auto-levels) .jpg - this is how the processed on-camera JPEG looks like with Photoshop's “auto levels” command.
  • DSC_5549 (viewnnx2-after-quick-adjust) .NEF - this is what ViewNX 2 did from the original RAW when installed white balance 'Calculate automaticaly' and PT mode is selected.
  • DSC_5549 (viewnx2-auto-pt) .JPG - ViewNX 2 on install white balance 'Calculate automaticaly' and PT mode is selected.
  • DSC_5549 (viewnx2-original) .JPG - ViewNX 2 by default
  • DSC_5549 (inverted original jpeg) .JPG - original JPEG rotated 90 ° for viewing with built-in utility for Windows OS
  • picassa-view-original-nef-file.jpg - this is how the original RAW file looks when viewed by Google Picassa, a screenshot of the program window.

No comment.

Configuring a converter is a very delicate and necessary task.

I would like to share some experience of using converters. I really like the way native ViewNX and CaptureNX display a photo. In order to reproduce the image as accurately as possible - since I saw it on the camera display and in real life, I use the “native” converters. Refinement (retouching, color correction and other boring routine) is done in Photoshop. I like a bit of a sadistic mechanism: first correct the original RAW (NEF) file using ViewNX, export the result to TIFF (16-bit uncompressed), and then finalize it in Photoshop. Thus, I get the parameters of the photo closest to the original. ViewNX has three very strong negative aspects:

  1. changes the original RAW file, after which the camera will not see it
  2. no noise reduction function, which greatly limits ViewNX when converting images at high ISO
  3. requires tremendous computing power

CaptureNX is also a very interesting and very useful converter with many subtle "native" settings that other converters do not have (for example dust removal function) But for some reason, he didn’t take root with me, I use it only for very thoughtful picking in RAW files.

Well, of course, Lighroom comes in handy when you need to deal with large file sizes. Nothing better for batch processing RAW has yet been invented :) I already began to notice that I behave like a gamer - when working in LR, I keep my left hand near the 'asd' keys for quick access to some functions. There is nothing better than turning on LR in the evening, pressing the letter 'F' twice (switch to full screen mode) and starting to fancy a photo.

My usual job at LR

LR load when processing photos in the Develop tab. Processor I3-3240, 8GB DDR3

Leave your thoughts about converters in the comments.

Thank you for attention. Arkady Shapoval.

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Comments: 249, on the topic: RAW converter

  • anonym

    Interestingly, after all, which option from the presented photos do you think is the best?
    I did get a better result at acdsee by playing a little with the sliders.

  • Sergei

    Hello Arkady! Once (recently) I asked you how to find out the mileage of Nikon on the camera; learned and became its owner. Nikon D3200 with only 1500 frames mileage! I looked at the official website for all firmware and programs; downloaded ViewNX-i & Capture NX-D Full
    Ver. 1.19.010; installed without problems; imports files, viewing in all modes is normal, but when trying to correct NEF files, the program does not work, that in ViewNX-i, that in Capture NX-D the function is activated (the icon turns yellow), and the sliders are not active, nothing with the file going on ... What am I doing wrong?
    PS I sent the same question to the support service, while there is no answer.
    Best regards, Sergey.

    • Anatoly.

      Sergey, lately I prefer Capture NX-D. Two or three times a year, Nikon removes glitches, with each update it works better, minus the processing speed is lost. Requires a more powerful multi-core computer. When loading NEF all engines work, when loading JEPG something does not work. Maybe you should demolish everything and reinstall it when there is a connection with Nikon and recommends disabling the antivirus. You nikonist read an interesting article http://fotokto.ru/blogs/active-d-lighting-v-kamere-i-v-capture-nx-d-27338.html

      • anonym

        How can you use this? On the four cores, intel is stupid, probably in half a second.
        Poor tools. The distance between the sliders is huge - you have to scroll - moronism. When crawling moves, the image jumps and rebuilds, which somewhat interferes with perception. It is impossible, by moving the slider, to see a smooth change in the result, only tryk ... tryk ... tryk ...

        • 1D $ _mk3

          Everything flies and works conveniently in both Capture NX2 and Capture NX-D.
          What do I need to do?
          1) Throw away your old PC / laptop / monitor on the TN matrix in the trash.
          2) Install a clean 64-bit OS on a modern PC. Preferably 8 or 10.
          NX-D is faster than NX2.
          What kind of iron do you need?
          At least the old Core i7 4790k or 6700k. And 16GB of memory, as well as SSD on 480-512GB.

          • anonym

            Well, yes, schazz. For the sake of this slag editor, you also need a top system?
            Acdsee on i5 sandy and HDD for some reason works and does not stupid like this ...
            Yes, you forgot to mention the licensed maximum Windows ...
            It's funny).

            • 1D $ _mk3

              You have a PC almost 10 years ago and you are surprised that everything is slow.
              Wow. How old are your smartphones?
              You try to pick up a phone 6-7 years ago and climb through it on the Internet. The Core i7 4790k and 6700k are cheap at flea markets. Now the 9th generation of Intel processors is already in the yard in 2019, and not 2011!

              • anonym

                Yes, pc is ancient. I looked at the graphs, the percent is not loaded so much, but does not use more than 4 memory.
                Do you think the performance of modern pc processors is a big step forward? Smart is a separate topic ...
                Just Nikon need not be greedy and make a well-functioning software for their customers.

              • Arkady Shapoval

                My View-NX easily swallowed 12 GB, link.

              • BB

                Well, I'm sitting on the phone 6 years ago, and?
                Gig of RAM, two cores. For normal sites - quite fast.
                And if the software manufacturer does not think about optimization, then whether you have at least 32 cores, 192 gigabytes of RAM, and a RAID array from an SSD, it will still slow down.

              • Pokemon

                Nobody thinks about optimization, because there’s nothing for it.
                As well as small% of those who sit on 6-7 year old phones.
                Software for a long time in the Western world does not seek to optimize for iron 6-7 years ago. On the contrary, they push that everyone dumps everything in a landfill in 2-3 years.

              • BB

                Exactly: they got crazy and got drunk. And in collusion with the inventors of iron ...

  • Alexey

    I noticed the following situation that when editing photos in Camera Raw or directly in Photoshop itself, the colors are less saturated. When I export to TIFF or JPG, saturation increases. That is, the picture that I see when editing, and the one that is obtained at the output, are different. It really bothers this. Please advise how to fix this?

    • Anonymous

      Probably, different color spaces: the file has its own, the editor has one when editing, and another when converting.

      • Alexey

        First of all, I checked it, everything is the same everywhere - sRGB both in the camera and in the editor, and when converting, we also specify it. Everywhere I reviewed everything, I broke my whole head ((

    • BB

      Photoshop can work with the color profile of the monitor, if it is connected. Check the settings.
      The photo viewer can also be used to decorate. Well, sRGB is also different.

  • Ali

    Nikon's programs have always been buggy. But, recently a new version of Capture NX-D 1.5.3 from 2019/05/16 has been released. It works really well. Stopped hanging and flying. Works very, very well. Looks like a flurry of criticism influenced and the company made conclusions. The fact is that Nikon uses Fujitsu, which writes all the software for Nikon. I have tried various Nikon NEF development programs. And only native programs allow you to correctly "develop" native Nikon files. Moreover, Capture NX-D allows you to do batch processing no worse than lightroom. And the selection and sorting, in my opinion, by rating, label, by focal length, by shutter speed, by ISO, by aperture, etc., for a free program is simply excellent functionality. If you need deeper processing, then open from Capture NX-D in RAW Camera with conversion of 30 files from D800 and 50 files from D700. The computer works fine, does not hang. OS 64 bit.

    • Alexey

      I do not quite understand about "If you need deeper processing, then I open it from Capture NX-D in the RAW Camera with conversion." Please explain.

    • Alexey

      Convert RAW to Capture NX-D to TIFF and rip them to Adobe Camera RAW?

      • Ali

        That's right. This eliminates all kinds of mismatches of color profiles and the like. A powerful computer allows you to do this without problems, no glitches and freezes. After processing, I delete the cache and TIF files from the folder for this purpose. For a long time, I tried various kinds of developers and combinations of their use. I came to a convenient option for myself. I forgot about all the problems and a headache. For a more thorough processing of portraits, I use Photoshop. Capture NX-D is enough for reportage shots.

        • Alexey

          Thank you for sharing your invaluable experience !!!

  • Oleg

    Good evening Arkady! I first tried this sequence of working with RAW files. Opening in Adobe Photoshop CS6 with Adobe RAW CAMERA. First, create your camera profile using Adobe Lens Profile Creator and Adobe DNG Converter. THOSE. convert the resulting RAW file from your Digital Camera to a DNG file, then open the DNG file in Adobe Lens Profile Creator and create a Profile (for your camera and the lens used). Next, opening the file from the Photoshop menu, Adobe RAW CAMERA opens and there, using Profile, you can correct both distortion and XO, using the joint developments of ADOBE with manufacturers of cameras and lenses!

    • BB

      And in the lightroom in any way?

    • First name

      but you can put the latest version and not burn your brains with fsh 8 years ago ...

    • Vitaly N

      Or even easier - use DXO if the lenses are not native. Maybe a Komsomol member not looking for easy ways?

  • Andrei

    Tell me please. Are native RaV converters in English only?

    • Maria

      No, considering that the main firms from the market work in Russia tightly.
      If you download the latest versions from the site, he suggests choosing a country and the language automatically changes.
      The last program I downloaded was a processing package for Canon from their website, the converter was russified there.
      Although it’s not very comfortable for me to use it. Many well-established expressions are not translated very well, in my opinion. History as with the Russification of Sonya's products (veguses, etc.)

  • Alexsandr

    I started to master Capture One Pro and I can’t save the watermark in the photo. In the editor, it is visible, and when exporting a photo without it.

  • an256

    Hello, you need to process a lot of ravak, but there is no time, if using the auto mode in ACR during processing will turn out okay or not?

  • Denis

    Yes, my life has changed and it will never be the same again) I never really thought about the problems of color rendering until I became interested in CCD and began to use old Nikon cameras. Here I noticed something was wrong. So there is always one lightroom for all occasions, it is convenient, I got used to it, there I showed it, and cut it, pressed Q and removed all unnecessary, levels, light, color - and a ready-made burn at the exit. The beauty.
    Yesterday I spent the whole evening doing the same Raw development test, and after that I came across this article (thanks to Arkady !!). Moreover, I have both systems, and canon, and nikon. Tried different lightroom camera profiles, tried Capture One, compared - none showed the same colors as my D80 and its native Capture NX. No one! Somewhere closer, somewhere further - but the colors are different!
    With Canon and its DPP, exactly the same situation, but it seemed that a little better, the difference is less, but it is there. Nikon is in general trouble.
    And how to live now?) It turns out that there is no universal and ideal developer
    -editor for all occasions and all cameras. We'll have to use the same sadistic scheme: development and initial edits in DPP, Capture or View NX, translation into huge 16-bit TIFF files, bringing them to mind in Lightroom or Photoshop. I checked that in this case the color remains exactly chamber.
    Or never fool around at all, forget about the raves and shoot in a jpeg)
    How did this happen? Nikon or Canon can't share their exact color profiles with the same Adobe? ..

    • Michael

      They do not want to rather. Nikon generally ignores a lot of things

      • Denis

        As a result, unfortunately, the user suffers - the one for whom they all, in theory, work, who feeds them.
        So now, instead of one lightroom for all occasions, you will have to fool around with double conversion, allocate space for huge 16-bit tiffs, etc. (But there is no other way. Once I see this distortion of colors with my own eyes, I can’t forget it and accept it anymore)) I shoot camera nikon (or canon) and I want the colors to be the same as I saw them in my camera, and to make a start from them. And not from who knows who invented profiles.
        In the course of testing, in between times, I noted that Capture One, when developing, is many times better than lightroom in color. And after digging into its depths, I found a certain profile Dx1_NEF, with it the colors came as close as possible to the chamber ones. Almost straight. But still not that)
        There is another problem. For example, lightroom with tiffs works worse. In particular, more than half of the lens profiles that are available when developing in lightroom are lost somewhere (How to get them back? In general, a complete headache (MacBook dock is now replete with icons DPP, Capture NX D, ViewNX, C1 ..

        • Michael

          Yes. c'est la vie. If you chase the Kamdzhipeg, you will have to torment your own converters. You can score and do color correction based on your preferences (very painstakingly) or use AI. If you are on MacOS, you can try RPP again. The colors will not be the same, but the thing is interesting.

          • Denis

            Tried AND RPP, of course. Yes, an interesting thing, but, to be honest, somehow I didn’t taste it to the end, it didn’t go well with him.
            I still want to get exactly chamber colors. Okay more cmos, but for unique CCD colors this is especially important. There should be some single point of reference. And then you can have fun as you like.
            By analogy with film: when I bought some Fuji Velvia at one time, I was sure that I would get the color of Fuji Velvia, even in Africa, even in Kolyma) With a digital photo, you can no longer be sure of anything - it all depends on , through the meat grinder of which program the photo will turn, what the programmers screwed up there and how they see the color. Since the Nikonokanons do not want to share the exact algorithms with anyone.

  • an256

    Hello, such a question when processing a photo in ACR, choosing a standard camera profile or a portrait camera in a photo, a woman's black hair turns into purple-green spots, when choosing an Adobe standard or Adobe portrait profiles, there are no such problems hair without spots, I tried to develop these raw files in the camera works better, but the spots are also noticeable. Camera NIKON D3200, which is interesting before there was camera NIKON D3100 and there was no such problem.

    • Arkady Shapoval

      try disabling ADL in the camera

  • an256

    ADL is disabled, here are a couple of photos of the difference I think is visible.

  • an256

    One photo was uploaded for some reason.

  • an256

    This is a profile adobe portrait

  • an256

    I figured out the problem, one might say by accident, turned on the Color Moire Reduction item in the Capture NX-D program and the colored spots on the hair disappeared, but I still have two questions: the d3200 camera itself must somehow deal with this and ACR has a similar function for elimination of these artifacts?

  • Jury

    Dear Arkady, First of all, many thanks to you for this site and information ..))) I have a question for you on the topic of the article. A couple of days ago I took NIKON Z 50 with whale 16-50. I have had a NIKON 2009 since 3100 (I took a carcass), then I bought 18-200 ... When I took the body, the View NX 2 program was included in the bargain. Z 50 ... And this is what the program writes:
    Distortion control lens profiles missing

    'These images can neither be displayed as a RAW image nor edited
    because the distortion control lens profiles used on them are not found.
    ===============
    No lens profiles to control distortion

    “These images can neither be displayed in RAW format nor edited.
    because the distortion control lens profiles used on them were not found.
    ------
    ... accordingly, all editor sliders are inactive (((
    The question is - how can I overcome this problem?
    Thanks in advance for your answer))
    shl. I am subscribed to your mailing lists.

    • Arkady Shapoval

      You need to download a new version or update the current one. The program was released before the appearance of 16-50 and does not know how to correct the image from this lens correctly

      • Jury

        Thanks for the answer .. but the trouble is that I have already reinstalled the program version 2.10.3

  • Yura

    Arcadia, your article is up to date. You can re-upload the photo, for now access to the archive is inaccessible ((

    I, one more. I’ve sent myself for photo packages I’m darktable )) , I don’t know how your games in Lightroom are.
    Tsіkavo will honor the article, imovіrno, not only me

  • Andrei

    Native of course, non-natives read the source code crookedly, especially C1.

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