Thanks for the quick replies.

Reading through all of this and taking a peek a the videos I think my normal Workflow is OK,  but I do appreciate the suggestions of using one of my good photos to "batch" apply the WB to the other indoor photos.

I guess the only issue that my understanding of WB in RAW files was totally off.

-Matt

I was always under the impression that when shooting RAW it didn't really make much difference what WB setting you had on your camera because that was only for color rendering on your camera display and it did not get recorded to the RAW file,  or if it did get recorded to the RAW file it was ignored by programs like Qimage, Adobe, etc.   Regardless I have always made an effort to have the correct WB setting selected (cloudy, florescent, sunny, etc),  but today we were outside and it was cloudy so I set the WB accordingly,  then when we went inside it was florescent lights and I forgot to change the camera until my last few shots.  Looking at the pictures in Qimage tonight I noticed that all of my indoor shots, except for the last few with the correct WB selected look very very yellow.   

So I did a little experimenting tonight by taking several photos in my basement under Incandescent lighting and discovered that my longtime assumption is incorrect.  The WB setting in my camera DOES get stored in the RAW file and has a dramatic effect on the photos appearance in Qimage.... 

So my question for you guys is:
1) Is this normal and has it always been this way?
2) How do you deal with WB in your normal workflow?  What if you have the wrong WB selected in the camera?
3) Would it be possible for Mike add a setting to RAW image processing to Ignore the WB values from the RAW File?  Or would this be a bad idea?
-Matt

Terry & Fred,

Thanks for all of the feedback.   
I did a little playing and have concluded that I am going to leave my Raw Options set at 2/200% with the slider around 75% like I have done for the past few years.  That seems to give my photos a little extra "pop"  without making them look overprocessed.
I also played with the NR settings and for now I have settled on using the settings Terry provided above.  That seemed to resolve the noise issues I was seeing in dark areas of most of my photos.  On one photo where the noise was still present I used the "Shadow NR" and that cleaned it up nicely without making the photo too soft.

Now after looking closer at many of my recent photos I need to be more aware of my camera settings.  Due to my aperature I had a fairly shallow DOF and found that there was always a nice "Sharp" area in the photo, unfortunately that area was not my subject on many of those photos     Not much that Qimage can do about the idiot behind the lens

Mike if your listening,  it might be helpful on the Raw Image Options dialog if there were a numeric value displayed for the slider on the Sharpness Equalizer,  just like there is on the image/filter editor screen.  In my way of thinking it would help to correlate the DFS settings found on the Raw Image Options Dialog with the DFS settings in the Filter/Editor dialog.

Fred & Terry,

Thanks for the replies.  I did not realize the NR was essentially auto adjusting...  Good to know.   I am also quite familiar with DFS and have been using it since it was introduced a few years ago.   Just have not had time to really play with it and determine the ideal settings over what I historically used with USM.

It appears that the settings I have been using over the years are pretty consistent with what you guys are using and maybe I don't need to do anything more.   I will try and post a few samples tonight when I am home and get your opinions.... 

However I am always trying to make things "better" so I am wondering if the following procedure make sense to determine a good base DFS & NR setting for Raw conversion?
1) Turn off DFS and NR in the Raw conversion
2) In the filter screen "Play" with a variety of DFS and NR settings on a variety different photos to find a good starting point.
3) Apply those DFS & NR parameters to the Raw Conversion settings dialog.
4) Go back to same photos used in step 2 and remove DFS & NR that was applied in the filter, and then adjust as necessary.

If this procedure makes sense then my only questions  is how to correlate my NR settings in the filter dialog to the slider in RAW conversion settings?

Fred,
Thanks for the reply.   I understand the ability to save different settings for different cameras, that is a nice feature for those with multiple camera bodies.

Regarding your settings, your not far from what I have always used.  What I am curious about is there seems to be a large number of people using  Lightroom USM settings with a .5-.9 radius and 300-500% or even a radius as large as 5.  Your thoughts on this?

I'm also looking for guidance on the NR settings. How do those correlate to the NR settings in the filter screen?   
Even at ISO of 400 or below I find if I have a picture with a large dark area I end up using the high chroma NR to cleanup the noise (at the cost of sharpness).   That approach usually leaves a nice clean image,  Any less NR and there are usually a fair number of artifacts add if I shot the picture at a high ISO. Your thoughts?

Hello,

I have Canon EOS 7D and I am looking for some suggestions on setting the default DFS and NR in the Raw settings dialog. I have been using Qimage since its inception and have been shooting RAW for several years, however just recently I started exploring all of the RAW features again and have concluded that my RAW settings might not be ideal.     

For years my old standby for DFS has been 2/200/~75%  but looking at some recent photos and some some of the posts on here I am thinking that is probably a bit soft. 

So I have a few questions:

1) Does anyone have recommendations for the default DFS and NR settings in the RAW dialog?
2) Is there a good procedure for optimizing those settings?

While I realize that the "right amount" of DFS and NR is subjective and a very personal opinion I am still looking for a starting point as I don't want to waste my time going in the wrong direction.

Fred,

Yes all of the drives are "checked" in the settings dialog.  Interesting that on the Help screen your system only shows the first drive,  on my old XP system they all showed up.  Maybe that is an Win7 issue?

I spent about an hour on the phone with HP last night and they concluded that it may have something to do with the speed of the card.  The Lexar cards which I have having trouble with are quite a bit slower then my SanDisk Extreme cards which work fine so the HP tech might have a point.   

After doing a lot of searching today online I found a fair number of people complaining about cards that won't work in Win7 that work fine in XP.  It seems that they were slower cards that they were having trouble with so again the HP tech might have a point.

Terry,
I don't have an external card reader but I will try and barrow one and see if the problem persists.

Thanks for your feedback.
-Matt

Hello,

I have an odd problem and while I don't believe it is specifically a Qimage / Flashpipe issue I thought I would start by posting here to see if any of your brilliant minds have a solution.

Last week I acquired a new computer system which I am running Qimage Ultimate on Windows 7 64-bit. Yesterday I went to download some pictures off my CF cards (First time) and bumped into an issue where the system would not read one of the cards.  Qimage would recognize that there were 22 pictures on the card but when you hit "go" it would quit responding and if I was lucky it would copy 1 or 2 pictures.   I also tried using Windows Explorer to browse the Card, I could see the 22 RAW files but if I tried to copy/paste them the result was the same,  stopped responding.....  I then pulled the card out, booted up my old WinXP system and was able to copy the pictures off using Qimage on that computer with no problems at all.     

Over the past month I have taken over 1200 RAW pictures on my Canon 7D and used Qimage Ultimate to download them to my previous WinXP system so as a test last night I tried copying the same pictures (still on the CF cards) to the new system and encountered the same problem as above on two of five cards.  When I take those same cards to WinXP everything works fine so I believe the problem lies with the Win7 system and not the CF Cards.  I have tried several tests which included formating the cards in WinXP, runnning a scandisk on them, etc with no success.

I also noticed that Windows Explorer shows Drives F:-I: which are my Media Card Reader drives, but Qimage only recognizes drive F: when I press the "Help-Flash drive diagnostics".   Drive F: I think is the SD slot where Drive G: is the CF slot.  What is interesting is that Qimage doesn't even show drive G: when pressing "Help-Flash drive diagnostics" but if I put a card in it recognizes that there are photos on it.  Any idea why this would be?


Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have.
-Matt