I shoot RAW well Nikon NEF & never bother with my WB setting.Its always in Auto & I change it PP if needed. Actually I do change it for flash being convinced it makes a difference when 1st imported.
Noticed recently when I did change the WB setting the photo's did show the setting difference. So is Aperture, for display reasons, taking the EXIF data & rendering a jpeg or what.
I mean how can I see a raw RAW as it were.
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White Balance
#1
Tom,
Just to be sure, is there still an outstanding question? Your original post stated “So is Aperture, for display reasons, taking the EXIF data & rendering a jpeg or what. I mean how can I see a raw RAW as it were”and I’m not sure if your question has been answered.
Aperture reads the WB setting as determined by (or manually set) from the camera and renders that to screen as part of the RAW decode, yet can be changed with no degradation to the file. No “baked” file, meaning a permanent render of the RAW decode and WB settings, is ever applied to the file until you export it or open it in an external editor/plug-in. Up until that point, you’re always looking at the original RAW file, with all instructions applied to it and rendered to screen in realtime.
@PhotoJoseph
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Tom,
I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you’re asking. The WB setting in the camera should be communicated to Aperture as part of the RAW decode. What is it that you’re not seeing in Aperture?
@PhotoJoseph
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Tom,
I’m not aware of any RAW decoding software that will not “apply” the recorded WB value when debayering / decoding the RAW file to produce a viewable image.
It’s my understanding that since debayering the RAW data involves colour matrices some kind of “color temperature” or nominal white value is implicit in the process.
Without knowing the actual colour temperature of the light that hit’s the sensor after it’s gone through all the optical components of the lens and UV / antialiasing filters on the electronics I think you’re SOL.
Best bet is to use a good quality white balance card, whibal, macbeth color checker, etc which will do a really good job of “centering” the matrice your RAW converter uses - since this part of the conversion usually happens in linear colourspace data loss is minimal to zero.
You might want to explore dcraw if it’s really that important to you - lot’s of options there but you need to be cmd line savvy and understand linear colourspace and gamma implications really well.
My Tuppence
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Andrew Mumford
AFAIK any WB setting in the camera is ignored for the purposes of decoding RAW files in most applications.
I think of RAW as the negative and WB a component of the resulting ‘print’ (be that a screen image or an actual print) which is added in the ‘darkroom’ by the person making the ‘print’.
Nikon Capture NX may however use the information - it does use the settings for D-Lighting when rendering NEF files, I know, so I suspect it may use WB also.
It’s clunky and expensive though. It probably does produce the best results from NEF I have ever seen however because I know that part of the NEF secret sauce is ONLY read by Capture NX - no other software is granted access to the full NEF file ( or so I believe).
Marcus,
White balance isn’t ignored. All you have to do to test that is shot a series of the same photo with different WB settings and import them into Aperture; they will all look different.
@PhotoJoseph
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The software (the RAW converter) takes the sensor data and renders the image you see on screen. The software uses the tags (Nikon software reads all of the tags including all picture control settings, 3rd party software can only read WB) and any presets that you have set up in the software to render the image.
I was trying to understand the adage ” when shooting RAW it does not matter what your WB setting is, it can be altered in PP”. Asking because what I see in Aperture is as Joseph says does show WB difference according to camera setting.
I have a feeling that RAW convertors create a TIFF like image on screen that you work on. If you save it you then get to work on the original RAW file.
You never have enough gear!
“when shooting RAW it does not matter what your WB setting is, it can be altered in PP”
What this means is the WB setting is not “baked in” to a RAW file. The camera’s WB setting is recorded in the RAW file and Aperture uses that setting for its “as shot” decode. But you can change the setting to anything you want after the fact without any loss in image quality.
With JPEG on the other hand, the WB setting is applied to the RAW decode done in camera to create the JPEG. You can change it later in Aperture but you have less latitude to do so.
When shooting JPEG you should definitely strive to get the WB right in camera. When shooting RAW you should still get it right in camera to save work later in post but if you get it wrong or change your mind you can “fix it in post”. The WB adjustments introduced in Aperture 3.3 really make it easier than ever to fix in post, especially anything with people in it.
Thomas