jonathanthomson wrote:Okay, I finally bit the bullet and bought Adobe CS4. When I open Camera Raw and view my NEF files the thumbnails are vibrant. But when I open one of those images in Camera Raw the vibrant color is gone and looks flat like I'm shooting in Adobe RGB even though the blue link below the image reads sRGB IEC61966-2.1; 16bit. So, my color setting are already at sRGB. Do I need to change something else in color settings or the preferences menu?
Thanks
Regardless of camera (Nikon, Canon, other) whenever you shoot in RAW format the display on the camera will be a processed JPEG based on your settings. So if you had adjusted the white balance for a cloudy day and tweaked vibrance and sharpening settings, those are what you'll see in the preview. This image may show up as a thumbnail in many processing programs too. When you first import your images to the computer with Bridge you'll see those processed thumbnails... but since the images are RAW the computer will soon "take the color away" and instead show you flat images. These are the actual RAW photos. They're totally unprocessed. When you open the image in ACR you're seeing just what the sensor saw... an unprocessed, uncorrected image. Sometimes it can be difficult to get that same color back. Fortunately nowadays there are a number of options.
One way to begin in ACR is to try the settings found in the Camera Calibration Camera Profile dialog. This wll vary depending on your camera model. Another place to check is the White Balance Presets. This will often get much of your color back. From here you can go back to the Basic tab and continue adjusting.
You also want to check the working space setting. For web displays use sRGB. Most printing processors nowadays also want you to leave the workspace at sRGB. But if you have your own color printer you'll get the best results with Adobe RGB.
Here's the non-ACR solution:
If you want to shoot in raw but get pictures out in a hurry with your camera settings but without spending a lot of time in ACR there's another way. There's a very slick program online called 'JPEG from RAW'. It does just what it says, it takes a full directory of raw images and converts them to JPEGs for you. It doesn't do anything other than get you the same JPEG images you saw on the back of the camera. It's fast and safe and you can find it here:
http://rawworkflow.squarespace.com/inst ... w-utility/Enjoy!
Dave.