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Infrared JPEG vs. RAW

This is the fun part. This is where we get to play with the images. We've been talking technology. And even though we are going to start off with a little bit more about the concept of white balance, I think that this is gonna be a very fun part just because we get into playing. And that's why we're here, right? This to play. So, um, from that standpoint, I'm very excited about it. And we've pulled together, as was just mentioned, the images from our shoots. That's what I've been doing here is coming up and doing some, uh, organization of our images from where we just were. And that is where we want to be. And while I clean my soccer, yes, I know. As I mentioned before, when you guys, you're always looking at my stuff, Mom, he's looking at my stuff. Tell him to stop. Um, okay, So the concept of white bones we left off with talking about that and that's where I want to start off with and talking specifically about the, um, different options that we have at our disposal in terms of white...

balance. And, um, that is what we're looking at here specifically, what we've got is some of the shots from yesterday and we can start off with a little video clip, which we have Let's do for the one that we're working at the park setting, actually that Let's go ahead. You know what he says that and he immediately goes to another location. So these are all the video clips that we shot yesterday? Well, or a couple days ago, while we were out in Seattle here. This is where we started off the day. Um, again, we're pretty much in the middle of the day. It was mid morning, but not what you would normally look for in beautiful light. We didn't have our sunset. We didn't have sunrise. We're looking. We do have our water escape foreground. But this is actually is a great example of where the benefits of infrared come in because middle of the day, that's not where if we come over here and stop on any of these, that's not the sort of lighting that's gonna float your boat as a photographer, but an infrared. We have this ability to get the drama from our foliage and again from our sky and it's this guy reflects the water, the same sort of thing. So with that in mind, let's talk about this area of white balance and specifically, um, that initial scene as we got out of the car I started shooting shooting with and we'll start off with the Nikon because we can compare this concept of white balance within light room in adobe camera raw with what can be done through Nikon Zone software. Because that really is this issue is how do we get if this is what we saw on the back of the camera, how can we get that as a starting point inside of our manipulation of images? That's that's the topic, because we can, using that custom white balance that we talked about before we can get these beautiful CPS and scions, Whereas this is the image that was actually shot, this is the raw file without any custom white balance on it. That is the raw nef file as is. This is the image shot at the same time in J. Peg. Now, this is what I saw in the back of the camera, and that's based upon the fact that I actually did the custom white balance and had that cooked into the file at the time of shooting. So again, that is a good thing. This is the what I got when the images opened up into adobe camera raw or in light room, and I keep You'll notice that if you weren't with our class yesterday, when we started talking about this creative photography, I mentioned that Adobe has gone to great lengths to make sure that their engine that they have inside their flagship photography enhancing program of light room in their develop module is exactly the same engine that's in Adobe Camera Raw, which ships with Photoshopped proper. It's amazing how many people have Photoshopped and don't realize that they actually have adobe camera raw, because if you were to do a search for dough became a role, you'd never actually find it. It doesn't exist as a separate applications actually built into the bridge in photo shop. See, see, it's actually built into the bridge and inside a photo shop now because it's now a filter that's accessible from within Photoshop. So I will be using this terminology. This is what I got when I opened it up in light room or adobe camera raw, so you'll hear me using that term all over over again because it is the exact same engine. If you're a light room user, that's probably your where you're going to be doing your work. If you're a photo shop user, I'm going to be, as we did yesterday, gonna be trying my best to have you not do very, very little of your image optimizer enhancing ever and Photoshopped ever again. Photoshopped is retouching graphic design, heavy lifting, filtering special effects. It's not optimizing and enhancing. The only time when we're gonna use it in this class as it relates to infrared is as I mentioned, it's going to allow us to swap that color to allow our skies to go blue. But aside from that, I don't recommend, and there's really no need for you to do much in the way of photo shop manipulation of inference. Okay, so back to this image here, this is what was actually shot. This is what was on the back of the camera based upon my custom white balance, and this is what I get in adobe camera, raw or light room and What's going on is if we look at this image here and zoom up on a portion of it. Um, and this is, um, the back of the camera, The J peg again cooked in camera. You're seeing some settles in terms of the blues and the what? I'm calling the science in the foreground. But when we get into that became Iran Light Room, we're not getting that dramatic color difference. We're getting a much more muted rendition of the color because light room in adobe camera raw cannot match the white balance. Then you can get in camera, they adobe. They may change that because there's enough people that are doing this and saying, Please, could you just It's kind of like things like when you wish that you could write volume 11 and 12 simply like Bugs Bunny, right? A larger thing and then just change your dial up. And it would change, actually, how you don't remember that episode of Bugs Bunny, but anyway, in Road Runner and stuff, you'd literally would just draw on their higher setting, and then you could crank it up. That's really what Adobe could do is they could just add more parameters to that because it's possible in camera. It's possible in that it's also possible inside of the software that ships with your camera, because obviously the people will use Nikon as an example. Nikon had the white balance being able to be setting camera toe a certain temperature when they created their software capture annex twos, the current flavor of it. They put in that same parameters for white balance that they have inside the camera. So as an example, here is the J Peg shot. And here is the exact same shot processed in capture and X as a tiff file. And that's what a lot of people do who go. I don't want to muck about with this because I saw this on the back of the camera and the fact that I've got you know, my more colors and different things in there. I want to be able to get exactly what I saw in the back of the camera and in terms of white balance, specifically infrared white balance. The only way you're going to do that perfectly is to use the software that came with your camera. A Nikon also has an icon view, but capture and X two is the big boy software. Let's actually, I can Go ahead will take this raw file. I've got capture in X here. Here is our capture and X. It was closed down and we will come up here and it looks to me like we have that That was the last one here. So, um, what we've got is the file exactly as we saw it in the back of the camera because it has all the parameters that are possible, including things like your active delighting. One of the things that Nikon has is this dynamic lighting a little bit of kind of faux HDR built into it. Where does some special stuff that also is proprietary, Just like it's white balance and that also can't be read by light room or adobe camera raw. So for that reason, a lot of people that are especially Nikon users because they've tended nightgowns a little bit more with their software than cannon has tended to. And some camera manufacturers will have very limited software just because that's not the business that they're in. Um, they will go through capture and X because they will get their active delighting there, get their white balance that get all that stuff set, and then they can save it once they're in here, save it off it into a format that basically cooks the file and allows you to get that as a starting point. And most people still do continue their workflow in light room or a CR because of all the amazing tools that are available in their even though capture in X is a great piece of software does do targeted adjustments and things like that. But it allows you to see exactly what you saw on the back of the camera because of manufacturing. Okay, so with that in mind, back to where we were at the question is, how close can we get in our, um, process files from here to here? Or let's not even say that we're trying to go for that. How far can we push the white balance to be more accurate when it's not, um, what we'd like to weighs One shoot JPEG bypasses the entire process because then what you saw is cooked into the file and you get the exact same thing. You saw your white balance your active, delighting any expects, special effects that are associated with the capabilities of your camera or cooked into the file? What's the downside of that? Well, if you cook the file that's gonna be cooked into, typically your cameras going to do a J peg The olden days Some of the cameras before raw would shoot is a tiff file, which had less compression or no compression but huge file sizes. And that has gone the way of all flesh. There's very shoot camera manufacturers that allow you to shoot tip but the J peg, in addition to cooking in all the settings that are part of your menu of your camera, such as white balance and active delighting. Or if you, what later on will do with the Olympus. Here is the Olympus shot in camera. Here is the raw file, and here is the J Peg, using some of their special effects because they have their art filters. No, in fact, even Nikon now is adding art filter. So if you want to go crazy, that is what I saw in camera using the art filters. So again, if I wanted anything even remotely like that one you'd say, Dude, you need toe. Get out more often if that's what you're going to shoot But it's kind of fun. Have as an option, Um, I would have to cook it in camera. There's no way that I'm going to do that anywhere outside of it. The nice thing is, when you do shoot brought in your camera If you came supports it, you will always get this neutral file and whatever the cooking waas even if it was something not as dramatic is this as we just saw? If I'm shooting this in, um J Peg, I will always get the flattened raw version or the Flatter Neff version as well as my J peg. So this actually brings up the point of as you're shooting. If you are going to shoot J. Peg, cook it in camera again. Was about ready to say the downside of it. Um always shoot J Pagan Rolla. There's really no downside All your cameras that shoot raw gonna give you the option of shooting J pick and roll at the same time. That way you have both options. If you're Jay, Peg is as good as you'd like, meaning you got your exposure set. You don't need to take advantage of the extra latitude that you make it with a raw file. By all means shoot J pic. You've got the raw there. If its the shot, you're going to retire. On you go. There's some fine tuning that I want to dio. Then you have the raw there and that's what we're gonna do in terms of how to customise that I'm raw setting. Once we get into light room, Ordo became a rock back Teoh shooting J peg The downside one in cooking it all those settings in your menu will be cooked. The good side is the white balance will be cooked the bad side things like your color space. If you have that set to adobe s RGB, that's a yucky color space. Small truncated contrast E Make sure that you're setting. If you're shooting JPEG is adobe camera raw? You're shooting raw, then white. Your color space actually can be changed after the fact, but you still I would recommend shooting in adobe RGB, even though that's not a permanent part of your file, because what you see on the back of the camera will be more accurate because Adobe RGB is a less contrast, less saturated, you'll see more of what you're actually gonna get and you're history. Graham will actually be more accurate because it being less contrast. So make sure that your color space is set to Adobe RGB two. The plus side of your white bounds being cooked in the negative is that you're sharpening is also cooked in. And that's probably the biggest issue related to shooting J. Peg. Whether you're shooting color or infrared is the fact that it is processing the image and sharpening it for you as well. So he turned that way down, if not off. In other words, you want to take advantage of the sharpening algorithms built into adobe camera or leg room or Photoshopped. Put. A shop has some great sharpening algorithms in addition to their own sharp mask, but that will allow you to access that information as opposed to what may be excessive sharpening. Because most camera manufacturers are doing stuff for people who don't understand sharpening and won't do post sharpening their trying to do all the processing for you. Hold your hand as it were, so turn your sharpening down. The other thing you may want to do and I mentioned this yesterday is turn your contrast down. If you have a contract setting in your camera, take that down. That will actually give you a greater dynamic range. In other words, it won't be tempted to kind of clip highlights and shadows by increasing the contrast your cameras. The default is probably set to auto contrast, where it's automatically darkening the darks. Lightning the lights if you want that full dynamic range by turning down your contrast special. If you're shooting infrared, that will give you you're cooked in white balance. You've reduced your sharpening so you're not gonna get J Peg. Artifacts related sharpening, and you'll also get a greater flatter range toe work with by reducing down your contrast. Also, RGB Adobe RGB, as I mentioned because it is a greater color space, will have you have give you more colors, less saturated colors, which will give you more range and also less contrast. So those are your settings and that actually, for a lot of the time I'm shooting J pagan raw. All the time is you'll see today, but I'll often use the Jay Peak is a starting point because I'll go in there and there won't be a big benefit for me using the raw file, especially if I like what was happening with my white balance. So that is, um, adobe RGB contrast down, sharpening down. Um, and if you have a saturation setting, turn that down and then shoot JPEG. The other downside of that J peg. In addition, that it's gonna cook all those things into there is it also knocks it down from billions of colors to millions of colors from 60 billion down to 16 million. So again that Presupposes that you're J. Peg is a good exposure to begin with. So those are the things religious J. Peg. Let's see how far we can do with both with the raw, which, of course, the benefit of raw is that when we can change all those attributes and that includes sharpening and saturation things, a swell is white balance, but it also will give us a greater dynamic range if we do need to pull out some excessive shadow detail. Yes, and then that you're talking about using, and I understand why raw plus J peg with infrared. Do you do that? And normal as well. Not usually. Then I'm only shooting raw. There's really no benefit to shooting in that white balance isn't an issue, There's no benefit to shoot JPEG and less. For some reason, there was something like with the active delighting as I mentioned, or I was using some special effect on camera. There are some cameras I know, some people with the Panasonic Lou mix range of cameras. They also have their art filters that do some beautiful black and white and CPS in camera. So again, that would be a reason with your full color camera to shoot J pagan raw because the raw will always never have any of those special effects to them. Because Doe became Iran Light room. Can't doesn't understand that doesn't speak that language. So I shooting J pagan raw. You get to play with your cameras, options, your art filters and whatever you want to do, and you're gonna always get access to your negative as it were. Hence, does use of the term digital negative When you're shooting raw, you are basically getting as close to a negative as you can as you can get great question. Yes, in your infrared. How much does your I s o affect the quality of your image As with color photography? Greatly. So you definitely want to be on the lower end of your I S O. Because you're dealing with large landscapes, Especially if you're doing things like this. Nice, big, you know, solid skies, then you're gonna That's where I s o. R. A noisy situation can be a parent If you get a lot of texture and detail than oftentimes, that detail will hide the inherent noise. You got a nice big sky. You're gonna want to be careful. Of course, the great thing with now the current state of light room and a CR What you can do in terms of noise reduction is ridiculously good, just even in the software. So in the olden days, there are certain things about well, you couldn't pull out shadow detail or you'd get huge amounts of noise and stuff. Now weaken do so much in post and maintain quality through that process. That's another reason why, with these kind of vanilla J pegs, I'm able to do a huge amount of work such as these These are old J pigs virtue. Almost everything that you saw today was probably processed from a J peg rather than from a raw file. So in terms of that dynamic range, as I mentioned, you already have a much greater dynamic range with an infrared, even shooting J peg and with software doing a lot of stuff again. That being said, I bowed to people like Vincent because they just wouldn't even consider. Maybe maybe he wouldn't have to ask Benson if he would ever consider JP, but probably not.