Alternatives for adjusting RAW photos.

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MAMF

Senior Member
Hello, I take one or two B&W RAW photos and process them in NX-D.

NX-D is cr*p and turns most photos into a pixelated mess which renders the photo useless. With a family to run I can not afford to purchase Photoshop or anything like that.

Is their anything out there in internet-land that is free and will allow you to work on RAW photos?

NX-D is good except it turns good photos into **** ones.

Thank-you in advance.

Lee.
 
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WayneF

Senior Member
I use Adobe raw, but I seriously doubt Nikon NX-D is this problem. A "pixelated mess" sounds like a user problem...that is not a property of raw. To solve it, we need more details and to see an example, but it sounds like it was resampled way too small for the size of the print.
 
Dawg Pics

Dawg Pics

Senior Member
Is the photo pixelated in final form? The reason I ask is because my Photoshop Elements sometimes looks pixelated until the photo is saved. Then it looks normal.
 
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Englischdude

Senior Member
for all my raw processing I only use Darktable. Is not ported to windows though. I tried Rawtherapee for a time but prefer the UI and options Darktable has to offer.
If you are a windows user then Rawtherapee is going to be your best bet.
 
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M

MAMF

Senior Member
I do not know how to describe it, I say pixelated but it is just wrong.

Look at the left hand side of this photo off the people walking by, it was not there until I changed it from RAW to jpeg???

a1ce8fb9-7fa4-4abe-a46e-7c14cc6a555f.jpg
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
MAMF said:
I do not know how to describe it, I say pixelated but it is just wrong.

Look at the left hand side of this photo off the people walking by, it was not there until I changed it from RAW to jpeg???
Click to expand...
I can't be 100% certain based on this one small JPG posting, but that looks posterization to me; also known as "banding". Posterization occurs when the bit depth is insufficient to accurately sample a continuous gradation of tones. The result is distinct jumps from one tonal value to another (bands of color or tonality) instead of smooth, graduated tonality.
 
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M

MAMF

Senior Member
Horoscope Fish said:
I can't be 100% certain based on this one small JPG posting, but that looks posterization to me; also known as "banding". Posterization occurs when the bit depth is insufficient to accurately sample a continuous gradation of tones. The result is distinct jumps from one tonal value to another (bands of color or tonality) instead of smooth, graduated tonality.
Click to expand...

This sounds about right, how do I eradicate/prevent this?
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
MAMF said:
Right, I just took a colour snap in my room in RAW.

I did nothing with it, went into NX-D and converted it to jpeg. So why does it come out like this? What am I doing wrong? Sorry for the state of my room. :)

View attachment 195057
Click to expand...
Wow!

Short answer, I'm not sure why NX-D is doing that to your RAW files, but wow... That is NOT right.

Did this posterization start happening recently? Have you made any changes to your computer lately that might be related? I might consider un-installing NX-D and re-installing to see if that solves the problem. That, or maybe someone more familiar with the application can be of more help.
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Okay, the only thing I can think of is maybe, for some, reason NX-D is not converting your RAW file to 8-bit JPG's (as it should be) but is instead using a lower bit depth which in turn is causing the posterization.

In all honesty, though, I'm at a loss here... I really don't know why this is happening.
 
M

MAMF

Senior Member
Horoscope Fish said:
Wow!

Short answer, I'm not sure why NX-D is doing that to your RAW files, but wow... That is NOT right.

Did this posterization start happening recently? Have you made any changes to your computer lately that might be related? I might consider un-installing NX-D and re-installing to see if that solves the problem. That, or maybe someone more familiar with the application can be of more help.
Click to expand...

More or less from the start and I have not made any changes???????????????
 
W

WayneF

Senior Member
MAMF said:
Right, I just took a colour snap in my room in RAW.

I did nothing with it, went into NX-D and converted it to jpeg. So why does it come out like this? What am I doing wrong? Sorry for the state of my room. :)
Click to expand...


I would not call it pixelization (posterization yes), but yes, that last image certainly has some very serious JPG issues. :) Normally this banding is only seen in GIF files when the color depth (bits per pixel) is greatly insufficient, it's pretty hard to create it otherwise. I've never seen it in JPG, JPG issues are different issues. Having no explanation about what might cause it, I can only agree that NX-D did in fact seem to be a problem.

The histogram of this image shows extreme processing, and now does show 16 bands. This is an EXTEMELY ABNORMAL JPG histogram, but it has had extreme processing. NX-D was NOT designed that way.

banding.jpg



Increasing brightness greatly also shows many square blocks, similar to 8x8 JPG blocks, but significantly larger than 8x8, and oddly in an alternating grid pattern.

My opinion is that you must have some strange option turned on that causes this (some fancy filter effect probably), and surely it can be fixed by turning it off, because this is very far from any normal processing. I just don't know what it is to tell you. If you have some ND-X option to Reset All Defaults, try that.
 
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MAMF

Senior Member
I have deleted NX D and loaded NX2 which is uber confusing. Tomorrow I will delete NX2 and reload NXD. Ta for help.
 
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