Why Do my pics look SO much better on the back of the Camera....

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rabaroo

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... the pictures from the back of my 450D look Awesome, incredible colours, clarity etc etc....

I then transfer them onto my laptop (only tool for viewing pics) and convert the CR2's to DNG (AS I use CS2 that doesnt support CR2) and the pics never look as good....

ive read various things about this, but a couple of questions:

a) can anything be done to my laptop screen to make it show the pics in their "glory" :nuts:
b) Does converting to DNG lose anything in translation?
c) would a desktop PC be better in terms of image rendering etc.

or any other thoughts if/how I can plug this evident gap?
 
It could be your laptop screen that is out! If you post a photo without any alterations apart from conversion, we can see how the colours and clarity look on our various monitors!
 
it because the pictures shown on the screen are being processed by the camera using the camera settings - if you shoot jpg they will look a lot similar.
 
When you shoot in RAW the image on the rear of the camera is a small JPEG file, not the original RAW file. This JPEG will likely be sharpened etc so people often find that the RAW file looks kind off muddy and lacking in contrast.

If you have Digital Photo Professional (which comes free with Canon DSLR's) install it and find your way around it. Give all of your RAW files a bit of sharpening and play around with the contrast / colour settings.

Good luck
 
rabaroo said:
... the pictures from the back of my 450D look Awesome, incredible colours, clarity etc etc....

I then transfer them onto my laptop (only tool for viewing pics) and convert the CR2's to DNG (AS I use CS2 that doesnt support CR2) and the pics never look as good....

ive read various things about this, but a couple of questions:

a) can anything be done to my laptop screen to make it show the pics in their "glory" :nuts: Calibrate it for a start. That may help
b) Does converting to DNG lose anything in translation? No, absolutely not.
c) would a desktop PC be better in terms of image rendering etc. Again,not necessarily unless you get for example an Eizo monitor or equivalent especially designed for photographic applications, but they are expensive!

or any other thoughts if/how I can plug this evident gap?
Click to expand...

Sorry, my replies got mixed up in the text, so look there!!
 
mastertrinity said:
all it is that the image is so small on the back LCD you cant scrutinize minor detail.
Click to expand...

But you can when you zoom in. As others have said, the image on the LCD is a jpeg processed by the camera. When you upload the file to your computer, you have to process it to jpeg yourself.
 
As dogfish says. If you have a picture style setting such as portrait, that will show on the back of the camera, but not in a non-canon RAW processor. If you use DPP, canons supplied convertor, it will use the picture style settings as a starting point.

I've just tried it with my camera. Set to monochrome. When I import into aperture, it shows a mono image on the thumbnails to import. Once imported it is a colour image. It does recognise the colour balance, that seems to be it. With Capture 1, it's a colour image to start with.

So you may want to try using the bundled software to get what you see on the screen of your camera.
 
OK thanks - will give that a go.... to be honest I always discounted DPP in favour of CS2 and Lightroom - I take it thats wrong!?

I'll take a few sample pics tomorrow and shoot in RAW+JPEG and see if the JPEG on my laptop looks like teh one in my viewfinder, and also see if I can replicate the effect on the RAW in DPP to see what the camera is doing to the image....

thanks for the advice, will update with what I learn (if anything!)
 
rabaroo said:
OK thanks - will give that a go.... to be honest I always discounted DPP in favour of CS2 and Lightroom - I take it thats wrong!?
Click to expand...

No not wrong - a RAW image from the camera is just that RAW -no processing, no sharpening , no contrast adjustments nothing you need to do it all yourself using software whereas a jgg is PP'd in camera using all the settings you set via the menu system of your camera, so when you see a image posted as no PP straight from the camera all it means is there using the camera to process the shot rather than a software package on a pc.
 
so... do I NEED to use DPP at all? does it give me anything that Lightroom 2 or CS2 doesnt?

I appreciate that I SHOULD know how to use DPP but to be honest it looked quite basic in terms of the other apps, and I've already had a learning curve and a half to start to find my way around those apps!
 
Just a pointer.
You say in your first post that you use CS2 and it doesn't support raw cr2`s
I'm pretty sure you can get a patch from the adobe site so that CS2 supports the 450d`s Raw format.
 
rabaroo said:
so... do I NEED to use DPP at all? does it give me anything that Lightroom 2 or CS2 doesnt?

I appreciate that I SHOULD know how to use DPP but to be honest it looked quite basic in terms of the other apps, and I've already had a learning curve and a half to start to find my way around those apps!
Click to expand...

I've never instany of my Canon disks - hoewever remote capture looks interesting (if I ever have need for it).

If you have Lghtroom that will do any job you require of it quicker and just as well.

Never use the image on the back of your camera to determine IQ. The only thing I find useful is the histogram. Again this uses the jpg header info so even although tyou may see slight blown highlights at times, this is usually easily recoverable in PP with Lr or ACR.
 
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