Does anyone use set picture control?

I am in the process of going back over Darrell Young's - Mastering the Nikon D7100 and I was wondering if anyone used this feature or is this more a task for post?

If you shoot RAW, the images you will get in post production wont include the picture control anyway.

Used to irk me no end, I would have my camera set to Vivid and when imported into LR it would look awesome for about 1 second and then the image would go completely flat as the RAW file was rendered....

I turn all camera enhancements off for this very reason.

You can set Vivid (or whatever) to be default in ACR, when you open it ( a new file).
Or choose it later, after you've seen it.

Even I shoot RAW, I use it to see the preview on the back of my cam better.

siamthai1 said:

Even I shoot RAW, I use it to see the preview on the back of my cam better.

Click to expand...

That's probably a joke, but maybe not everyone knows.

When shooting Raw, the preview image on the rear camera LCD is an embedded JPG (in the Raw file), and it does reflect the camera settings. Those camera settings are not in the raw data however. This embedded JPG provides the histogram, and perhaps a reasonable preview of course (raw cannot be shown on a RGB LCD screen, and it doesn't have any settings in it).

If you use Nikon ViewNX2 it will show the picture controls applied your raw images.

If you like picture control, then you can set them in NX-D. I like the look of "Vivid", so my default profile in NX-D is set to Vivid, NR off.

kevy73 said:

If you shoot RAW, the images you will get in post production wont include the picture control anyway.

Used to irk me no end, I would have my camera set to Vivid and when imported into LR it would look awesome for about 1 second and then the image would go completely flat as the RAW file was rendered....

I turn all camera enhancements off for this very reason.

Click to expand...

Set your cam picture control to 'vivid' then set your import preferences in LR to automatically open your RAW imports with the vivid setting as well. It's after 3AM here so I'm too sleepy to explain how to do it right now.

kevy73 said:

If you shoot RAW, the images you will get in post production wont include the picture control anyway.

Used to irk me no end, I would have my camera set to Vivid and when imported into LR it would look awesome for about 1 second and then the image would go completely flat as the RAW file was rendered....

I turn all camera enhancements off for this very reason.

Click to expand...

If you use Nikon's software (Capture NX2), it will render the RAW images exactly the way you set them in the camera. And you can easily change and render picture-controls, and everything else that you would expect to be able to change in post.

Bob Rules said:

I am in the process of going back over Darrell Young's - Mastering the Nikon D7100 and I was wondering if anyone used this feature or is this more a task for post?

Click to expand...

I use picture-control all the time. I shoot (RAW) vivid, and process with Nikon's Capture NX2. Sometimes I will change the picture control settings in post, but most of the time vivid is what I want. If I'm shooting people/portraits, etc., I will sometimes change the vivid setting to normal or less vivid in post, which is easily done in Capture.

I also bump up the default 'sharpening' in-camera and sometimes adjust that too.

NIKONIAN_DREAMWEAVER said:

If you use Nikon's software (Capture NX2), it will render the RAW images exactly the way you set them in the camera. And you can easily change and render picture-controls, and everything else that you would expect to be able to change in post.

Click to expand...

Ahh ok - I stand corrected - I use lightroom and that strips out all camera settings the way I have it setup.

kevy73 said:

Ahh ok - I stand corrected - I use lightroom and that strips out all camera settings the way I have it setup.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've heard about that. That's a bummer. Nikon doesn't share it's proprietary firmware or license it out. So, third-party software vendors, like Adobe, have to reverse-engineer everything and sometimes they just 'punt' and don't even try... You can use the free Nikon 'View NX' product also, and that will render all the camera settings perfectly also. The zooming tool is not as good as Capture though.

I always used neutral everything zeroed but now use flat everything zeroed. If there was a disable, I'd use that instead.

Adobe ACR offers both an Adobe choice and camera choices.



I normally choose one of the "Standard" choices.

But I find that my female family complain about their portrait hair color in all choices other than Neutral.

Camera Landscape is pretty much Vivid... it can dress up some scenes, but its not real, and a little goes a long way.