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A
Alan Bull
Participant
October 18, 2017
Question

Copying a Jpegs image presets to a Raw file

  • October 18, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 3103 views

Hi

I have just spoken to adobes costumer support who tell me that there is no way of transferring a bunch of jpeg file presets over to the Raw files as a starting point. If like me you shoot both jpegs & Raws.

I understand that a jpeg can be opened in camera Raw, But obviously you then do not get all the information from the raw file.

I find that many times I would like to have the look of the jpeg as the starting point for a Raw file.

How many other people find this, and do you feel adobe should add this ability to both Photoshop & Lightroom.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    A
    Alan BullAuthor
    Participant
    October 19, 2017

    Hi

    Whilst I welcome both of your inputs on this matter. I disagree with both of you that this can not be done.

    My reason for this is both Photoshop & Lightroom do this now up to a point.

    Both apps already give you the ability to goto the camera calibration area and under profile select a preset which ACR has pulled from the image metadata to match the presents on the camera.

    However in my opinion Adobe has again been very lazy and missed adding to this functionally in Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC 19

    It would be a very easy step from here to add functionally like when you change these presets in camera or change from one preset to another during a shoot, to then have an option on import to apply these modified preset to the batch of Raws.

    What I and saying is that if adobe did this, it would immediately make this feature a lot more useable by a lot more people a lot more of the time.

    As many photographer who use these apps are working pros, I fell adobe is missing a trick here. Has this could be a real timesaver.

    The reason I put this question onto the forum is as a working pro i've had several meetings with adobe over the years and fine that they are very very slow to embrace new ideas.

    What I want to find out is how many other user feel this would be a worthwhile feature, and if adobe are not going to offer it, is there not a market for this as a plug in.

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 19, 2017

    You're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

    Of course it can be done - but it would produce completely unpredictable results. Any given adjustment would have dramatically different effects on a raw file and a jpeg,

    This has nothing to do with what application you are using. It is because the data structures are very different in the two file types.

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 18, 2017

    Can't be done. The problem is that numerical adjustments mean completely different things to a raw file and a rendered RGB file. They don't produce the same result. This isn't about ACR or Photoshop, but the "anatomy" of raw vs. RGB.

    This even applies to RGB files in different color spaces. The same adjustment gives different results.

    You can easily verify this for yourself. Just try different adjustments on a jpeg-raw pair, and compare the results.

    Mylenium
    Mylenium
    Legend
    October 18, 2017

    I'm not sure I understand your request. It should not be too much trouble to come up with a preset (or multiple ones) that mimic's the manufacturerers internal develop settings and apply that as a start.

    Mylenium

    A
    Alan BullAuthor
    Participant
    October 18, 2017

    Hi Mylenium

    If like many photographers you shoot both jpegs & raws. Then many photographers would say set the jpeg setting differently for a portrait shoot than say a landscape shoot.

    Portrait would give better skin tones, where as landscape would give better natural colours.

    Or say Black & White, with and without clarity.

    If you could then copy the look and settings of these jpegs as the starting point of the Raw, I think it could save photographer a lot of time.

    But this way your still working on the full raw not a jpeg.

    For weddings say this could be a real timesaver.

    Mylenium
    Mylenium
    Legend
    October 18, 2017

    I'm still not clear how you would imagine this to work. Unless the manufacturer were to convert these settings into color profiles, metadata that can be used by ACR or some other sort of parametric/ formulaic code that mimics the internal processing, all of this is rather meaningless and doesn't go beyond creating custom presets. Of course one could compare the two images and make some sort of educated assumption e.g. based on the histograms or abstract transforms like existing color matching functions already do, but that still doesn't tell PS or any other tool how the internal processing arrived at the look, which seems to me is the actual issue here: There's a million ways to turn a white cat into a black one and get identical results just like there's multiple ways to give raw data a specific "look". toi me it really boils down to that: The manufacturers have to document their settings so they can be replicated to allow an exact reproduction. Everything else is a guess, be that the operator pushing sliders in ACR or some cloud-based KI trying to detect the underlying steps. If you're lucky, you may find some info on that already somewhere.

    Mylenium

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