One question: Is the JPEG from a RAW+JPEG combo, or the embedded JPEG within a DNG, or did you happen to change camera modes in between? (Sorry if the former two are the case, I’m kind of in a time crunch at the moment…)
I’m not sure if any mobile cameras which do burst stacking + tonemapping will save a DNG that is the result of the burst stack but prior to demosaicing/tonemapping. I don’t know if the Lumia does burst stacking at all, I know Google does it, and I’m assuming Apple is also doing it “under the hood” in some manner.
This is unfortunately one of the limitations of DNGs out of phones - I don’t know if any phone allows you to save a burst of DNGs or to save an intermediary “stacked but not further processed” DNG (sort-of like HDRMerge but instead of merging a bracket, merging a stack to reduce noise). As a result, often all of the processing in the world won’t be able to match what the phone can output as a JPEG because a single DNG doesn’t actually contain all of the information that might go into a JPEG.
@Entropy512@heckflosse@Thomas_Do Thanks Rico. I had subsequently found some complaints about the colors that come from the lumia 640 being dull and brownish…so I think a color profile would help. My question really stemmed from the fact that many of my photos are family shots and vacation pics and really to process them I hit the JPG’s with dehaze and or the equalizer in DT. From there I tweak it with exposure and WB and they are pleasing to the eye to me. I can save this for a series taken under the same conditions and process quite quickly. However when I get messing around with the raw files from these I can spend a lot of time and throw a lot of modules at the image and still I rarely get one that I say ya that is so much better…now maybe if I was printing them or something I would notice that this was the better route but I think the JPG files are usually closer to the actual conditions most often…alas I appreciate everyone’s comments…
Without inspecting the raw file, the op jpg looks like it has been processed by a contrast enhancement algorithm. Its signature is a distinct darkening and desaturation seen in the image. Even without the compression and the other baked in processing, contrast enhancement tends to enhance noise and artifacts in the preexisting image; therefore, some sort of denoising must have occurred prior to its application.
The advantage of in-camera processing is that the manufacturer knows the properties of the signal, noise and distortions of the optics and the rest of the hardware, on which they can make informed trade-off decisions. This is the reason that the jpg looks nice overall. Still, raw files give users the power to do as they see fit given the skill and determination, esp. if they don’t like the manufacturer’s signature look.
So, here is my version in darktable 2.7. As stated above, to match the color is difficult. However, I tried to get good sharpness without to many artefacts. Also, in the original JPG there is not much detail in dark areas. I tried to preserve these, too.
Thanks everyone for your comments…I did actually manage to get reasonably close using WB and changing the method used by DT for local contrast to bi-linear from Laplacian really help to give a similar texture to the image. That gave me the grain. I used a number of sharpen modules from a style I picked up on Tomas Sobek’s blog on de-noise that attempts to simulate a deconvolution (it may have been from Aurelian Pierre??) and then I also used highpass just a touch… I will grab the xmp and post when I get a chance. But the real take away has been to re-evaluate the relationship between shooting the Raw and JPG files. I always looked at it as the Raw had more data so it should end up looking like the JPG just better with the ability esp to use dynamic range to improve tonal aspects like shadows or other lighting related aspects of the image. I have come to realize that this does not have to be the goal or the starting point …RAW merely gives you the senor data un - messed with by the camera and so you have a blank canvas so to speak from an editing perspective …it doesn’t mean that you can’t use the JPG as a guide or if it turns out to be better than what you can come up with so be it but there is not need to be pre-occupied to get back to that as if it is the defacto reference or starting point. This is a better way to think because I have wasted a lot of time thinking that I am not really doing a good job with my images as often they are not ending up as they appear in the JPG esp where sharpness and detail were concerned…SO thanks for all your editing efforts and comments I do appreciate it and the spin off is a new outlook and approach…also I will check out all of the xmp’s that your provided just to look for tips…
Best
Todd
Just stumbled on to Picture Window…it was recently updated …still looks a bit dated but its a clever program and has lots of great tools…the image tree concept of a history is really cool…I am going to start playing with it just to see how it goes…not sure about raw support but it will load DNG’s no problem…
