Beginner In camera picture settings

doublem1

doublem1

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Does the in camera picture settings (sharpness, contract, vibrancy etc) affect the RAW image if you shoot in RAW? I've always wondered this. And it may be helpful to people new to photography.
 
Don't affect the raw file, but can affect the jpeg preview, displayed on your camera lcd.
 
If you use the camera manufacturers conversion software, it will take those settings as default, you can change them later though.

Other Raw conversion software can try to emulate the settings too.
 
Thanks chaps. One of the reasons I ask is because surely some of the in camera settings affect the RAW image, for example White Balance.
 
ISO, WB, shutter speed, F stop, expsoure bracketing/ compenstaion all affect raw images. creative features are generally for jpegs, picture styles ( landscape, portrait etc also only affect jpegs
anothe rone is auto lighting optimizer.. again this has no effect on jpegs.

so to clarify the only functions that affect your raw images are ISO, shutter speed, Aperture and white balance ( and even WB can be altered by a simple click in LR or photoshop ). Bracketsing and Exposure compensation can have an effect ont he image in relation to other settings above.
the rest are all for jpegs:- picture styles, optimizers, black and white and otehr such features
 
doublem1 said:
Thanks chaps. One of the reasons I ask is because surely some of the in camera settings affect the RAW image, for example White Balance.
Click to expand...
Nope, a raw image doesn't have a white balance. When you open it in Lightroom it will usually default to "as shot", i.e. the setting on the camera at the time, because it needs to display the file in a useful way. But as such, the raw file itself doesn't have a white balance value. This is one of the very useful features of a raw file - it gives you full rein to adjust the white balance for yourself later. Very handy when the lighting source are mixed, or if the ambient light source is beyond the range of the available white balance settings in the camera (aquarium photography is a good example that can sometimes contain both mixed white balance and out-of-range white balance light sources).
 
ahh right i wasnt 100% on WB. i know anything set in camera can be adjusted in PP with the WB.
what i will say though is some of these features such as WB, picture styles etc will show as adjusted when you view them on your cameras LCD ( take a shot on normal and then Tungsten WB and compare them on your cameras lcd and you will see what i mean. same as if you take a shot even in raw using black and white and it will show as that in camera but when you come to process it the raw file will revert to full colour. so essentially your camera in playback is giving you what you can view as a JPEG version of the shot .
 
Anything that effects exposure - shutter speed, aperture and ISO - is always recorded on the Raw. And as a rule, nothing else does...

...though that's only 99% true. In fact, there are all sorts of small changes that manufacturers apply to the Raw without telling us, but they're mostly tiny calibration type tweaks that nobody needs to bother with so all is well. However, Canon applies Highlight Tone Priority adjustments to the Raw (because it's effectively a selective ISO adjustment) but not Auto Lighting Optimiser (because that's a JPEG tweak) and other makers do things like apply lens distortion corrections to Raws, and CA and vignetting reductions too (including the Leica T!).

Picture Styles (contrast, sharpening, saturation etc) are not applied to Raws, though they will show on the LCD image even when only shooting Raw - because the LCD shows a small JPEG tagged to the Raw file (which it has to, as you can't actually view a Raw). Many post-processing programmes will pick up the Exif data on a Raw file and apply Picture Styles as a starting point, but of course you can change all that.
 
I think that the white balance statements may need qualifying. The camera's presets don't seem to affect the RAW file (other than to record the value) but custom WB does change things.
I hadn't realised this until using my IR converted 5D2's......they generate considerably larger RAW files when using custom WB. I checked this out by using the same target at the same exposure settings and it seems conclusive that there is more than just a 'tag' being altered.

Bob
 
hence why i wasnt 100% about WB however having done 3 test shots the raw files do seem to show differences.. however a simple click can adjust them in post processing
 
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