@SaturnusDJ
I’ve played with the uploaded png, and it is difficult to get the colours correct, but who knows what has already been done to it! You need to provide a raw file to get more help, other than the general advice already given.
Your 1:1 sample clearly shows more contrast in Aperture, this would also help the image appear sharper.
Is there a setting to take away saturation from low saturated color areas and at the same time enhance the saturation of areas that already have quite strong color saturation?
I had the same experience as you. When you use RT “out of the box” and open your first raw photo you become disappointed, and it is absolutely not easy to adjust your photo to something pleasing using all the different sliders and tools.
In fact in the beginning I found that RT was much more suited to process jpg photos simply because you are almost already there, so you just need a little fine tuning.
To me the breakthrough was to get an input profile under the colour management section as described in Rawpedias paragraph “General Photography”. And while you are at it get a lens correction profile too.
I use a Nikon D7100 and a custom input profile does wonders for you - but remember to disable auto levels or the result will not be useable.
Then you should create your own raw default profile. I adjusted the following for a low ISO profile:
• Exposure
• Shadow/highlights – local contrast
• Sharpening
• Input profile (as described above)
• Lens correction profile (as described above)
@gaaned92
Agreed. Maybe in a later stage. I have a bit trouble with the idea of the whole world wide web getting one of my nicest photo’s in weeks. Although I understand the pros of doing so.
Don’t you think that the buildings in the downtown area are leaning backward? A probable cause is that the lens is not exactly parallel to the ground. It might be better if you do some `perspective correction’ in addition to improving colour and contrast.
I followed the guidelines in “How to get Nicon ICM-profiles” and used one of the profiles, the “D7100 Camera Neutreal.dcp” as Custom Input Profile and checked the Tone curve and Look table under the DCP section. You also get a landscape, portrait and standard profile. Try and see what you like the best.
These profiles are created when you open a photo using Capture NX-D, Capture NX 2 or ViewNX as described in the Rawpedia documentation . You can download these programs at no cost from Nikon.
Ok this topic is getting a bit out of hand. It’s really cool how much activity this site has, very helpful and thanks everyone, but let’s go step by step.
First Sharpness/detail
As far as I know I tried everything I can think of. Profiles, all kinds of contrast settings, sharpness, noise reduction. But it’s still noisy, dirty, no smooth colors. The only way to get it clean is by using a lot of noise reduction which removes ‘the dirt’ but creates so much unsharpness that the main goal of getting more detail still isn’t reached.
Here is a different RAW/NEF from the same shoot. A bit different but the same things considering problem of missing detail apply. With the wide building above the train as reference.
Have you tried the Final Touchup panel in the Wavelet tab to increase apparent sharpness via local contrast?
Be careful not to do too much or halos may occur as I recently discovered (and almost got my head chopped off for it)
Ok I have got the neutral icc profiles from the Capture NX 2 software following the Wiki instructions.
One of the profiles gives the photo a red glow and extremely flat contrast, the other makes the photo really bright and without contrast. Adjusting seems very difficult and they just destroy the photo.
I gave it a try … applied a neutral input profile, did some highlight recovery … what is your problem? Is it possible that you just forgot to set a monitor ptofile?
Here is a combination of RT and GIMP. To get some three dimensionality I made the railway tracks a bit more brown so that the cool colours of the sky and buildings look distant. 5addaa20a006c519760a52b8ff59589676118625.jpg.out.pp3 (11.7 KB)
I am sorry. I forgot that I got the profiles from installing the Adobe DNG converter as described in Rawpedia under the paragraph “How to get LCP and DCP profiles”.