RAW-jpeg sharpness comparison

M

mulderstu

Suspended / Banned
Messages
6
Edit My Images
No
Hi,

I recently purchased a canon 50d. At the moment i am using the DPP software that came with the camera to show/edit the photos.

I am shooting in RAW and jpeg format simultaneously to compare sharpness after i have adjusted the in camera sharpness setting from 3 to 7. When the two formats show up on DPP the RAW format is in my eyes considerably sharper than jpeg. I can adjust the jpeg sharpness on DPP from 0 where it is at the moment all the way up to 500 but i would of thought by setting the in camera sharpness to 7 i would not have to do this.
I want to shoot in jpeg in the future as i dont want the hassle of spending time in front of the computer post proccesing RAW files but i am having trouble with the jpeg sharpness being much softer than RAW which means i have to manualy sharpen every jpeg image.

If anyone can help me to get the sharpness more closer to RAW quality it would be much appreciated.


Stu
 
Does DPP add some sharpening to the RAW files on import? I know Lightroom does this?
 
From what i understand a RAW image is like a digital negative which is why the file is so large. No proccesiing is done in the camera and it is up to you to make the image better by editing it using a software program. With jpeg the image is much smaller as it has compressed the image in the camera and done all the saturation,colour tone,contrast..... which makes post editing a trouble as you will lose quailty everytime you edit the photo.
 
Seems odd that the RAW is coming out much sharper than the jpeg, I was always under the impression that it should be the other way round?!
 
The best thing to do with JPEG is just try and get everything as spot on as you can IN CAMERA, as as has been said, you lose quality every time you edit.

What I would say, just as a test, is print out a JPEG and a raw image at 7x5 and 12x8, and see if there is any discernible difference between them.
 
Indeed. The RAW file has no sharpening applied to it in camera (or any other processing for that matter), so if you're seeing your RAW files sharper than JPG's, DPP HAS to be applying some sharpening to the image. I don't use DPP so I'm afraid I can't help you with where you'd find the setting to verify this.
 
mulderstu said:
I want to shoot in jpeg in the future as i dont want the hassle of spending hours in front of the computer post proccesing RAW files
Click to expand...

With the right software you won't! I process RAW files in Lightroom - can take less than 10 seconds per image if you're doing a lot of files!
 
Are you just looking at the thumbnails in DPP? These show a blurred picture of the jpeg image while the RAW is shown sharp. When you open up the jpeg file it should look like the RAW file.
 
It is not just the preview images. That is what i thought at first but with a closer look you can clearly see the jpeg photo are softer. Grendel must be correct in saying that DPP must be applying some sharpening to the image. Just wish the jpegs were that sharp.
 
Well i travel quite a bit and after getting back after a few weeks away i normaly have a ton load of photos. So i dont want to be editing the majority of them to get the best pictures possbile from what i understand is required if you shoot in RAW. Could be wrong as i will state once again, new to the slr world so i could be talking utter rubbish.

Quite happy to rely on my camera settings and in camera processing.
 
I'm unsure how cameras do it but is the RAW photo and JPEG photo taken one after the other, i.e. two shutter clicks or are they processed from the same file?

Only it could be possible the JPEG pic is taken first and you get the initial blur from pressing the shutter down where as the RAW is once the camera is steady?!

Just guessing, I really should know about this sort of thing lol.
 
grey.squirrel said:
I'm unsure how cameras do it but is the RAW photo and JPEG photo taken one after the other, i.e. two shutter clicks or are they processed from the same file?

Only it could be possible the JPEG pic is taken first and you get the initial blur from pressing the shutter down where as the RAW is once the camera is steady?!

Just guessing, I really should know about this sort of thing lol.
Click to expand...

It's one image. It's just that the camera will process the jpeg but keep the raw intact as well.
 
mulderstu said:
which makes post editing a trouble as you will lose quailty everytime you edit the photo.
Click to expand...

Not quite true, DPP and most other post processing software does not lose quality with successive edits unless you use "convert and save". Save just puts the recipe that you have developed into the header of the existing file - which is why there is a button called "revert to camera settings" which it could not do if the original data was lost.

Also, editing a raw file in DPP takes no more time than a jpeg - you can always use the RGB tab instead of the raw tab if you prefer. TYpically I spend less than a minute editing a file - exposure, contrast, white balance, saturation - then proceed to correct for lens aberations and noise (very rare) and tilting horizons (too frequent!).

then I can print from raw on my Canon printer or (batch) convert the raw files to jpeg for sharing.
 
Thanks for your reply. Once I have finished editing a raw file and then "save and convert" to a jpeg or tiff file the sharpness is no where near as sharp as the original raw file. I have to the manualy up the sharpness meter from 0 to around 350 to get the sharpness levels back.Any reasons why this could be?

Thanks again for your help.
 
Hi mulderstu

I have just been looking a DPP processed jpg and RAW image side by side and to be honest even at 200% I can only see a slight difference but that's because I save my Jpg files with level 7 compression to save file space.

At 100% or whole screen - no difference.

This is at 200%



Whole image



You must be doing something odd if you are not seeing them with equal sharpness.

WRT making adjustments to lots of images have you seen the "recipe " feature?

HTH

David

PS jpg is on the left
 
Its a Canon camera ;) Now if it was a Nikon camera this wouldn't occur :thumbs:

Realspeed
 
bearing in mind the software you're using to render the raw will affect the sharpness not the actual raw itself

as it stand the raw is just the data, it's like having a martian speaking to you (the raw) and two interpreters (the software) telling you that he's either saying "hello" or "greetings" (the image you're seeing)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top