RAW photography and the meaning of "Set Picture Control"

DW_

Senior Member
I've a question that concerns both RAW data and the "Set Picture Control" option in the D7000 menu. If I set the option to Vivid and bump up the sharping 2 or 3 ticks, does this have any meaning whatsoever if I'm shooting in RAW format? In other words, is the data in anyway tweaked by these settings or is the data from the camera the same and the tweaking applies only to rendered images?
(ps - I know "RAW" is not an acronym nor is it initials for anything however but writing it in lower case letters just doesn't feel right)
 

gqtuazon

Gear Head
RAW or Nikon's NEF files doos not keep or preserve any of your camera settings if you use other softwares like lightroom or Adobe photoshop.

It will preserve your picture control settings if you open the RAW files using Nikon NX2.
Your camera picture controls will reflect the jpg files.
 

crisscross

Senior Member
If you do use Capture NX2, you get the best of both worlds: you preset your most usual preference in the camera, in my case Neutral with Advanced>sharpening up a bit. When you pick it up in NX2>Camera Settings, you can either leave it be, turn it off (=NEF as read by non-Nikon progs) or change your mind to eg Vivid. NB leaving it 'UNCHANGED' does not give you access to the 'advanced' settings, but going to NEUTRAL (even if you set it in the camera) does. PC is great; quite often no further editing is needed.

If using View NX2 for transfer from camera and pre-sort, there is no point in having NEF+jpg, as it reads the NEF anyway and upgrades it to show the latest Capture NX2 edit as soon as one is saved
 
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