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,
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?

For what it's worth, see my settings for a Canon 600D attached.
I arrived at these settings after experimentation with several images taken at different ISO's, lighting conditions and subjects.
I have NR set fairly high but I've not seen any problem with this throughout the ISO range, ie. no obvious NR on the low ISO images and high ISO images (1600-3200) the NR is good without excessive softening.
The QU NR "smart" algorithm works very well for me. 
Terry

Hi Matt
I don't think you'll get very far with NR settings because the raw setting and the filter NR settings are quite different and it's not possible to relate one to the other.
You may get somewhere with DFS; I did try that myself today out of interest but found it a little tricky.
I think what Fred said is right: "I take the approach that raw images are inherently soft. A small boost of DFS puts them into an acceptable condition. I will add DFS in the editor if needed."

If you do change the raw settings as you suggest and exit, make sure you say "No" to re-building all the raw cache. All you need do is select and right click on the appropriate thumb and select "rebuild selected thumb(s)".
Terry

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.

Jeff, good morning
The part that no one seems to absorb is that the raw option settings are a basic very minimal sharpening to get your image out of the soft raw womb so to speak.
It's like I said about adding how much salt to your supper.... you can always add more, but if you have the pre-salting too strong, you cant get the salt back out.

So do not over do and do not fiddle with every batch of shots.

Noise reduction in AUTO mode:
This is controlled by the ISO needed to process the image 
The setting of the NR slider is the threshold. At normal setting it tells you that NR will come on in stages starting at ISO 400.
That is not necessarily the camera ISO 400. That is what Qimage Ultimate needed as a virtual ISO to properly expose your  image.
Please see screen snap
It is the bottom of the REFINE screen.
It is saying that the shot was taken with camera ISO at 100.
In order to properly expose it, Qimage adjusted the exposure to a level that would have needed no exposure adjustment had the camera been set to ISO 980.
Since the threshold for NR is set to 400, above that it begins to apply some.
Look, further at the screen snap and you can see 2/10 applied or 20% NR applied.
It also says that the Chroma filter will begin to apply at 3600. Since we are only at ISO 980, No Chroma filtering is turned on.

The slider in the Raw options for Noise reduction threshold, is now more understandable.
If your camera has a ton of pixels placed on a smallish sensor, it will produce more noise than your old camera with less pixels and the same size sensor.

See Terry's post #4. He set his threshold to allow Qimage to apply some Noise reduction earlier. (Earlier means at a lower ISO than 400)

Another point, to aid in cleaner images, the Smart color in Refine.
I'll ask Terry to address this one.


Hope I helped a little

Fred

I should have added that you can turn smart colour on or off in the Raw Preferences as well as in the refine screen. So, if it's off in Preferences you can turn it on in Refine and visa versa.
I have it on in Preferences but turn it off in the refine screen when I need to.

Also, you can use Smart Colour in the image editor with the Select Colour tab, see attached screen shot. Click the multi coloured button for an auto application and/or the individual channels for manual adjustments up or down. Using auto will add to any raw SC without "blowing" anything.

Terry

If you apply this discourse to a woman, and you get an answer, please post it here.
Fred