I’m quite new to Photolab, and even RAW editing in general. I have a question about presets. Is there an option to keep the camera preset? I played around with the correction settings but can’t find that option.
I know that’s probably not the best method, but I’m not very good at editing and would rather adjust the preset than plain RAW. Thanks!
Welcome to the DxO User forum, Alt.
It’s not clear to me what you mean by your question …
What are you wishing to achieve ?
When I view my RAW files in PhotoLab it briefly shows me the colour/whitebalance/sharpness adjustments that I had the camera set to then when it loads it removes all that and just has the basic RAW information leaving the images bland.
You can have it set to automatically apply a preset, or not, but I was hoping to keep the original way the camera had it. Sorry if that also doesn’t make sense.
What you’re seeing briefly in the image preview is the JPEG image that’s embedded in the RAW file. PhotoLab can’t replicate everything the camera does from RAW data, though it can come close with the right settings. You can create your own preset and have PhotoLab apply that to RAW files by default when they’re first loaded.
White Balance is one of the camera settings that PL is able to replicate for you (in its rendition of the RAW file) - - - You can set the RAW White Balance tool to “As Shot” … or simply deactivate the RAW WB tool, and it will default to “As Shot”.
Otherwise;
Experiment with the various Presets provided with PL …
And, you can adapt any of those Presets to suit your personal preferences, and then save the result to be applied to all newly encountered RAW files (via Menu: Edit/Preferences)
Okay, I see. I thought it would be able to. Thanks! I’ll try out making a preset. Shouldn’t be that hard to replicate what the camera did, hopefully.
The point and advantage of PL’s tool-set is that it provides you with ability to apply corrections and enhancements to your images that greatly exceed the out-of-camera result.
Yes, I’m aware. But being new to this I’m struggling a bit and find it hard to start from super neutral colours. I’ll learn.
If you just want to replicate what the camera produced then there’s no reason to shoot in raw. What you were seeing straight out of the camera is the pre-programmed in camera settings applied to an image. If you’re happy with that just shoot JPEG and tweak your JPEGs a little bit in a variety of difference software development programs. Most high-end most processing programs do not simulate the look of the images straight out of the camera.
Mark
I don’t want to replicate it, I was just hoping I could work off it. I still want all the benefits of RAW. If that’s not a feature, that’s fine, I’ll figure it out.
I just assumed I could because of the way they loaded quickly changing from what I shot, to Basic.
In my experience it is. Apart from my other photographic work I’ve been wanting and trying exactly what you want with my Nikon D5000 images. It’s an old camera but I like the colors and the ambiance of the in camera processed images, and I just want to improve on that. I’ve been using it for a very long time and I want to keep the same feel in the series I use it for.
For as much as I can see, the picture as Faststone Image Viewer displays it from the RAW file is exactly the camera generated JPEG.
But what Dxo Photolab shows me -without corrections- is not the same image.
There are color settings that should mimic the camera settings but they are not the same. Just roughly pointing in the direction. For my D5000 I worked out color tweaks that come a long way, but do not work in all situations.
With Dxo I can gain on sharpness and details, or smoothing a skin, but always have to use local adjustments because there is not one good setting. Very helpful I find the graduated filter to even out uneven daylight as it comes through a window.
I shoot RAW + JPEG with the Nikon where I use the JPEGs as a reference, and it does happen that after all hard work in Dxo I actually like the camera JPEG better…