I did this step one by myself and I feel good that I did it.
I started some photos RAW plus JPEG Fine. Loaded them in my LR and I tried to pp the RAW file to similar look as the JPEG. This was the way I learned (still learning) pp besides watching VDO's.
I tried JPEG pp as well but never got satisfied anymore since the RAW opened lots of possibilities creating a photo.
You just have to remember that you must do sharpening and post processing if you shoot in RAW. That is not hard to do and it can make your photos much better once you learn how to process them.
So after years of habit--shooting in jpeg, I've finally gone to RAW and convert in NX2. I realized that for me it was the difference of listening to elevator music or a symphonic orchestra. So to those of you that are as noob as me and haven't tried it, go on!
View attachment 152123
from RAW to jpeg.
Not if you use Nikon's software. It will render all the in-camera settings exactly as you set them in the D7100. So, you can set your sharpening the way you want it in-camera, and shoot RAW, and bring it into Capture and then save as JPEG and you'll get exactly what you set your camera for.
But that's pretty much the problem (same as the JPG problem). The settings we made in the camera a few months ago have no bearing about the exact scene in front of us right now. Even if we try to set them each time, the camera white balance settings are rather simple (crude, offering only a few fixed possibilities), but the scene lighting can vary all over. There are many colors of incandescent and fluorescent, and flash color varies with power level. Even daylight includes bright direct sun, sunset, cloudy, etc. One size does not fit all.
So the huge advantage of raw is to be able to forget about the camera settings (except exposure and focus of course), and simply make them after we can see the image, when we can know what is needed, and know what we are doing.
Auto WB is poor accuracy, but it is an approximation, and I use it with raw, just to see the rear LCD preview a bit better than not. It does not affect the raw data, but the rear LCD and the histogram are based on the camera settings from a JPG image also embedded in the raw file. But while knowing that it really doesn't matter what the WB was, I'll fix it right later, after I can see it. There are easy ways to approximate WB closely, and also easy ways to do it precisely. White Balance Correction, with or without Raw
The Nikon software does know how to access the camera settings in the Exif (of limited value, see above), but it loses the Adobe advantages of working on several/many/all of the images in the same one click (if in the same lighting). That's a very big deal for me. It really speeds things up.
I would offer Why shoot Raw? for anyone interested... esp the video near the top there.
I find that, on the D7100, auto white balance is excellent. For me anyway. I don't fuss with it at all.
Actually, the Nikon Capture NX2 software can do batch/mass changes very well. I prefer to work on
one picture at a time though, and give individual attention to each image.
I think it's actually "Nik".
Guys dont meant to hijack the post but what RAW option do you use, 12 or 14-bit?
Does it give better colours and quality, sorry but only just got my Nikon D7100 and am looking at shooting Raw.