Pictures clear on camera but not on my Mac

I just got done taking some bridal pictures for a friend and the pictures looked great on my camera screen, even when I zoomed in, and I was so excited about them! But when I got home and uploaded them, they weren't as clear on my computer and looked a little grainy when zoomed in....is there any way to prevent that from happening???

can you post one so people can give you a better answer, add you exif details too.

First off, howdy and welcome to Nikonites!!!

Are you shooting in raw or jpeg? From the sounds of it, my guess is raw...in which case you are seeing the camera's processed jpg on the back of the screen, but seeing the raw (unsharpened) file on the computer.


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I am shooting in RAW.....I don't have Lightroom or anything like that so I just edit in the "photos" application. Is there a setting on MacBooks to upload pictures in the clear JPG format that I'm seeing on the back of my camera? I'll go in and change my camera settings to take off the RAW format so that it's just shooting in JPG.

Kristinw said:

I am shooting in RAW.....I don't have Lightroom or anything like that so I just edit in the "photos" application. Is there a setting on MacBooks to upload pictures in the clear JPG format that I'm seeing on the back of my camera? I'll go in and change my camera settings to take off the RAW format so that it's just shooting in JPG.

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First off Welcome to the forum.
RAW is by design not sharpened. You have to sharpen in post processing. I would advise switching to JPEG in the future until you learn about post processing. That does not help you now though. I would suggest downloading ViewNX-i from Nikon and use it for processing the RAW files you have already shot now.

Also what camera are you shooting and also upload a photo so we can see if that is the only problem you have.

Guidelines to adding a photo to your post.

1. Resize photo to 1000px on the long side.
2. Resolution set to 72ppi (Pixels Per Inch)

These guidelines will be good for viewing on a computer but will not be good for printing. This will help safeguard your copyright.

Here is one of the pictures I took tonight. It looks alright when it's not zoomed in but once you do zoom in on it, it is looks very pixelated. It was just a lot clearer on my camera screen :/ I am using a d7200

Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.
We look forward to seeing more posts and samples of your work.

Yes, posting a sample would help us help you.

Opps, passed in the night! However EXIF data would also be helpful.

You can do a lot of processing of your RAW files using Nikons free Capture NX-D. It will get you a long way down the road in processing your RAW shots into some decent photos. Did I say it is a free download from Nikon?

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the forum.
First thing to say is you do not need to come off raw,while your learning use this Nikon program and download your images into it.
Your camera will need its jpeg settings sorted, like upping the sharpening to maybe +7 and contrast maybe +1 or 2,not sure now of the full range of adjustments to make but they will help.

Now what will happen is you will still shoot raw but when you download into the Nikon program you will see a full file size jpeg image with your camera adjustments showing,you can do some slight editing in the Nikon program or you can save the jpeg out as is.
The beauty of this is you will have a jpeg and the raw file will still be in the Nikon program for you to move to any editing program you want at any time in the future.

Nikon | Download center | ViewNX-i

To give you an idea this is the image i have in Nikon view with my camera adjustments, i would still want to do do more PP but as you can see its better than the straight from camera raw,i use this for viewing and then edit the raw but just saving this image would be better than a none edited raw.



This is the same raw file with no PP

I don't know how much processing was done on the final image you posted, but something is off before it is zoomed in. Do you have Dropbox? If you are able to link a RAW image for us to look at, maybe we can help you out.

I have a Mac and put a RAW file into Photos and cropped it. No other edits were made.

Things can look great on the little camera screen, then when you see them on a much larger computer screen you are much more able to see noise, blur, and any other imperfection.

In the long term, I highly recommend using processing/organizing software like Lightroom. It does take a while to learn, but it makes all the difference in the world. The shots you took might look great with a few clicks of the mouse in Lightroom.

Welcome to Nikonites!