# seeing from RAW what a JPEG would look like



## dtbain (Jan 17, 2013)

Having just returned from India with >5000 raw pics, it occurs to me that it will take _ages _to edit all these from scratch.

With my very best pics, I'll want to spend time editing them, of course; but with others, it would be useful to see what the camera would have produced by way of a JPEG, since that often will suffice, or at least be a good start.

So, questions:

1.  What's the best way of seeing what the camera would have produced by way of JPEG, or at least getting an average raw picture looking ship-shape without too much work? 

2.  A method that leaps to mind involves (i) applying autotone and (ii) applying Canon Standard on the Profile setting under Camera Calibration.  Is that sensible?  Are there other things I might do?

3.  Finally, a more general question:  what does LR do by default to one's raw pics?  I understand that raws can be a little soft; e.g. does LR by default apply a little sharpening, or are they all unsharpened (so usually need a little sharpening) by default?

Thanks VERY much for any advice from you experts.

All best

David


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 17, 2013)

Hi David

Method 2-ii should get you pretty close.  I'd skip the autotone personally, and just do the profile.

Alternatively, you could try pulling the JPEG preview from the raw file itself, and having that imported into LR as a separate photo.  http://michaeltapesdesign.com/instant-jpeg-from-raw.html

LR doesn't turn on the sharpening by default, but I'd put about 20 sharpening on and sync it across the board.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 17, 2013)

Another related suggestion is that you may want to look for long stretches where you have similar situation, for example if you did a lot of shots in a museum, or a lot of shots outdoors when it was cloudy.  If you have a lot and they look visually similar (but not the way you most want them), take the first one or a representative one, change the general settings (exposure, white balance, blacks, whites, saturation) to be roughly how you want it.  Then either copy/paste or sync all those settings to all the images (from the library pane).   

This is mostly useful if you see large numbers of images that look bad, e.g. that you significantly under or over exposed, or where the white balance is wrong, etc.  My wife brought back LOTS from inside a tent at Octoberfest, and the colors were awful -- but I fixed one, then copied that to all the rest, and while not perfect they now became good enough to evaluate to see if they should be kept.

I've found the ability to "sync" photos to be incredibly useful when I've got several hundred from the same environment.   Do that, then build previews, and you can cull quickly with a real good idea of the images.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 17, 2013)

David, your issues are similar to what many of us have.
My approach is simple:
1. Go through all your pics and rate them. Do this progressively by giving each pick one star. At the end of this iteration create a smart collection that will group all the one star pics.
2. Again, go through all the one star pics. Take the standouts and give them two stars. Complete the process and then create another smart collection to group your two star pics.
3. Keep going until you have isolated your very best pics.
4. Review points: delete unusable images such as those that are fatally out of focus or poorly exposed, especially if you have similar images that appropriately exposed.
5. Spend your time in postprocessing only on your best pics.
6. Over the next few weeks and months review all your images. Some that you initially overlooked will subsequently appeal to you. Occasionally images that initially excited you will be found not to be so good and should be dropped in their rating as appropriate.

Generally, it is impossible to edit all these 5000 images from scratch, choices need to be made.
I would not use auto-tone options, the results will be poor.
Also, I am not too convinced that a JPEG preview is necessarily a good indicator of the true merits of a RAW image (I admit that I cannot make this statement as an absolute).

Tony Jay


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## bobrobert (Jan 18, 2013)

Good advice above. Imo at a basic level it is important to sort out the wheat from the chaff and that is a subjective skill that should be developed. Too many people seem to think all of their images are good. I wouldn't create jpegs. Develop an eye looking at the Raws and IMAGINE what can be done to them using your LR enhancing skills. Not what a jpeg looks like if it were shot in camera as a lot of people seem to like.


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## Jimmsp (Jan 18, 2013)

Tony Jay said:


> David, your issues are similar to what many of us have.
> My approach is simple:
> 1. Go through all your pics and rate them. Do this progressively by giving each pick one star. At the end of this iteration create a smart collection that will group all the one star pics.
> 2. Again, go through all the one star pics. Take the standouts and give them two stars. Complete the process and then create another smart collection to group your two star pics.
> ...



Very good advice; except that I find that auto tone does a decent job 90% of the time. I need to correct exposure 10% of the time to get a good first impression. Although if I took enough time to get the exposure right when I shot, I generally don't even need the auto tone to sort out my initial discards.


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## erro (Jan 18, 2013)

Remember that you never actually look at a RAW file. What you see in LR 8or any other RAW converter) is a developed version of the RAW file where various adjustments have been made. Even if you don't manually make any adjustments, LR (and other RAW converters) will make their own default adjustments. This is what makes it even possible to actually view a RAW file on screen.

A JPG file is really no different from what you see in LR. JPG is just a file format, a compression method. As long as you use normal or low compression you will be hard pressed to see any differences from an exported JPG and the developed RAW in LR. If you use to much compression though, you will start getting blotchy or jagged photos.

You cn change LR's default adjustments to your liking, so that you get a "better" view straight away i nLR. If you tend to adjust most of your photos in a certain way, maybe add a little sharpness, some saturation, lighten the shadows slightly and increase the contrast a little, then you can save this as a new default setting. Meaning all your photos will get those settings at import. or you can save a preset, which you can later apply to one or many photos.


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## dtbain (Jan 20, 2013)

Thank you all for taking the time to answer:  all your comments are very helpful.

I agree that it's not strictly necessary even minimally to edit pics to make a selection since one can imagine what editing will do.  And certainly I don't edit all of them and then decide which to keep; that would take years!  My thought was rather that, I tend to keep some pictures of holidays and family occasions not because they're great pics but because they contribute to the narrative, say, and in those cases I might very well be happy with what the JPEG would have looked like, which would save me the time of editing the pic myself (with better pics, of course, I would want to do the editing).

It sounds like applying autotone and canon standard will give me a pretty good idea -- so I'll keep going with that.

Robert, I take your point that JPEG is merely a (lossy) format, but I take it that when my camera produces a JPEG applies various editing options to the pic far more than it or LR does with raws?  When I used to shoot in JPEG+raw, the JPEGS were almost always far more vibrant and acceptable than the unedited raws.  Of course, the raws have more potential, by and large, which is why I shoot in raw, but I take it that, in their virgin state, very little has been done to them?

By the way, two more questions:

1.  I take it JPEGS are sharpened somewhat in camera, whereas raws aren't -- hence Victoria's advice to apply about 20 degrees of sharpening to my raws?

2.  What exactly does applying Canon Standard on the Profile setting under Camera Calibration do?  Does it simply apply the sharpening and saturation and other settings that would, in the case of JPEG, be applied in-camera if set to "standard" picture style?

Thanks again all -- and any further advice very much appreciated

d


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## erro (Jan 20, 2013)

A JPG is procesed in-camera, yes. How much processing is done is determined by the settings in the camera for saturation, sharpness, contrast, picture style and so on. This only affects the JPG, and the built-in preview for the RAW. The RAW as such is not affected.

If you open a RAW in the RAW-developer provided by the camera manufacturer, that program will be able to read the settings you had in camera, and will apply those settings to the RAW, thus producing an image equal or similar to the JPG. LR however doesn't/can't read those settings, so a RAW in LR will be shown with LR's default settings.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to settings, only different versions and personal taste. If you don't like LR's default settings, you can change them to your liking.

Personally, with LR 2.x and 3.x I used to change the default settings so that my photos directly on import got som increased saturation and sharpness, and some highlight/shadow recovery. I found that I would make those kind of settings to the majority of my photos manually anyway, so I could just as well do it automatically at import, in order to make the photos "more ready" to start with. Now, with LR 4.x I find I don't need that anymore, so now I have everything set at default, and most of my photos look pretty OK directly on import. I will eventually tweak something on all photos, but in most cases not straight away.

And to you questions:
1. Yes, and LR will by default apply sharpening automatically. Look at the details pane in develop module
2. No, it doesn't apply any settings, but it applies "behind the scenes" settings that affect the default presentation of a photo, trying to mimic different cameras and settings. Again: it's a personal choice. I use Adobe standard.


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## dtbain (Jan 20, 2013)

Thanks Robert.  And that's interesting that the camera does some in-camera processing even to display the in-camera raw preview.  I was thinking that my raw previews were somewhat lacklustre and that this might be a reason to revert to jpeg+raw setting, i.e. simply to get a preview somewhat closer to what my final edited version would look like.  But it sounds like that is not the case, i.e. that the camera will make the in-camera preview look like the jpeg would (this fits a recent experiment; I switched to jpeg+raw for one shot, and to raw for the next, of the same scene, and in the in-camera preview could detect no difference).

d


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## Glenn NK (Jan 21, 2013)

dtbain said:


> And certainly I don't edit all of them and then decide which to keep; that would take years!
> 
> 
> d



It may not take as long as you think.

With the advent of LR4, I'm going through all my images (presently down to 23,400 or so), and re-editing them because LR4 makes such an improvement in them.  I've been at it for a number of evenings, and am almost done.  The practice has been a blessing - I'm better with the adjustments because of it.  I say down to 23,400 because I've deleted a few hundred at least.

The only adjustment that autotone sometimes misses for me is exposure, but other than that it has a pretty good hit rate.  Oh, and I often use more Shadow reduction, but very often autotone is my starting point - it's easy to revert to pre-autotone by hitting Ctrl-Z.


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