topic Re: Picture Styles in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Picture Styles

AaronD — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 03:04:37 GMT

I don't understand Picture Styles. The contrast, saturation, and color are all 0, all styles. But the sharpness settings change from one style to another.

I read that Standard has more sharpening than Faithful, 3 and 0 respectively. This makes sense.

I read that Standard is more saturated than Faithful, both are 0. This makes no sense.

If the styles have hidden values, and the 0 means "default" for each style, then why is sharpening a non-zero value?

Re: Picture Styles

Ray-uk — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 14:41:24 GMT

The settings in each style is meant as a starting point, you modify the settings to your personal taste. The idea behind having Landscape, Portrait etc is just a convenient place to store each setup so that you choose a preset style quickly without having to change 4 settings each time. There are no hidden values.

It looks far more complicated than it is. Personally I never use them because I shoot in raw.

Re: Picture Styles

ebiggs1 — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 15:30:10 GMT

"I don't understand Picture Styles"

Shoot in Raw foramt and set it where ever you want it in post. Raw does not use Picture Styles. Much better to do this way.

Re: Picture Styles

AaronD — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 15:45:35 GMT

Yeah I shoot RAW too, but I gotta pick a picture style--even if it is just "nuetral". And if I leave it on "auto" the camera or DPP chooses one for me.

The "starting point" idea seems right, but Canon only shows us the starting point for sharpening. They tell us strength, radius (I think it is) and threshold. Which is really useful because those values can be borrowed if we want to create our own custom picture style using those values with some other color values, maybe.

But they really do hide the values for saturation contrast and color because the starting point is always 0--even though we know full well Standard has more saturation than Nuetral. I don't suspect they hide this stuff out of malice, I think it's more likely they use curves and algorithms that don't lend themselves to menu sliders like sharpness does.

It would usefull to know what they're doing in Portrait for example, so that you can mimic that syle for its color, but Landscape for its contrast. Just picking out random variables...

And now I should stop fooling around and get to work...

Re: Picture Styles

Ray-uk — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 19:56:34 GMT

I will have to withdraw what I said about "no hidden settings" now that I've studied it a bit more.

I have noticed that in DPP 4 when you change the style even though the sliders do not change there is quite a drastic change to the histogram so something is certainly happening.

I played with Canons (very crude) picture style editor program and can see that you can change Hue, saturation and luminance together with selective colour changes and curves so changing to one of the preset styles could be doing almost anything, but whatever it is Canon isn't telling us.

Re: Picture Styles

ebiggs1 — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 20:38:19 GMT

" I shoot RAW too, but I gotta pick a picture style--even if it is just "nuetral"."

There is no Picture Style when shooting Raw format. Doesn't matter where you set it. It is meaningless.

Re: Picture Styles

Ray-uk — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 20:52:34 GMT

"There is no Picture Style when shooting Raw format. Doesn't matter where you set it. It is meaningless"

It's not meaningless if you use DPP.

Re: Picture Styles

AaronD — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 20:53:12 GMT

True there is no picture style "baked in" when you use raw. But you really do have to pick one from the list - DPP or ACR, neither of which includes "no picture style" - when you process from raw to ANYTHING else. Do you never make JPGs or TIFs?

Re: Picture Styles

nearibris — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 22:43:50 GMT

the best setting in my opinon is Neutral. It gives you a nice flat image that always the most freedom in post production.

thats what im using.

Re: Picture Styles

ebiggs1 — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 02:02:37 GMT

"It's not meaningless if you use DPP."

"...you really do have to pick one from the list"

You have to pick one for your computer. Not the Raw file. You can not view a Raw file as is, so a viewable copy is made for you by the conversion process. It is meaningless to the Raw file. Noting is changed, nothing is altered. You can't even save the Picture Style in your Raw after you view it. Only the viewable copy, likely a jpg, maintains that info.

Don't like the Picture Style, change it as many times as you wish. Still the Raw file is unaffected.

Re: Picture Styles

AaronD — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 02:08:43 GMT

Couldn't agree more ebiggs! Well put.

Re: Picture Styles

njc99 — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 14:15:09 GMT

I have seen this comment before, i.e. using a "neutral picture style". I am happy to be corrected but as I understand it, the latitude for post production would only apply if the image was only recorded as a jpeg.

For RAW shooters the picture style gives a starting point for processing, as ebiggs1 said. You could have the camera set for landscape and in DPP choose neutral and process from there.

An interesting idea I read online recently from a professional photographer was to choose "monochrome" merely for the image on the camera monitor screen, which would allow for easier judgement of tonality. A subtle but possibly useful strategy.

Re: Picture Styles

RobertTheFat — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 14:53:34 GMT

njc99 wrote:
I have seen this comment before, i.e. using a "neutral picture style". I am happy to be corrected but as I understand it, the latitude for post production would only apply if the image was only recorded as a jpeg.
For RAW shooters the picture style gives a starting point for processing, as ebiggs1 said. You could have the camera set for landscape and in DPP choose neutral and process from there.
An interesting idea I read online recently from a professional photographer was to choose "monochrome" merely for the image on the camera monitor screen, which would allow for easier judgement of tonality. A subtle but possibly useful strategy.

I hear what you and Ernie are saying, but I'm less than 100% convinced. If I use a sub-optimal picture style and/or white balance setting and have to correct for it in post-processing the RAW file, it invariably leaves the image underexposed, forcing me to turn up the brightness more than I otherwise would. That suggests that the camera is taking the WB and PS settings into account when computing the exposure. And since turning up the brightness seems bound to reduce dynamic range, using wildly wrong PS or WB settings (more the latter than the former, I think) cannot be said to be fully correctable in PP. Am I missing something with that line of reasoning? Or am I right, but the effect is normally too small to worry about?

Re: Picture Styles

njc99 — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 15:30:20 GMT

This is intriguing. I will investigate this by setting different picture styles and WB in camera, shooting RAW (might as well shoot jpeg too) and check exposure settings and histograms in DPP. I have read that if the histogram on the camera monitor is showing blown highlights they may actually be fine on the RAW file. Some people use faithful or neutral with contrast turned down to make this less of an issue. The histogram is taken from the jpeg data. Busy time of year for all of us but I will post my findings if and when I have some.

I know there are people out there who understand this far better than I do.

https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/13271/do-different-picture-styles-affect-raw-output

https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/39061/what-settings-are-ignored-while-shooting-raw

https://www.slrlounge.com/camera-settings-raw-outdoor-photography-picture-styles-picture-controls/

Re: Picture Styles

AaronD — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 17:10:52 GMT

I think what you're saying is definitely true of using Highlight Tone Priority, but not at all sure about the rest. I experimented a little with the "overexpose and adjust in post" idea (or whatever that's called) and I didn't notice any improvements that were visible to my eye. Seemed more like I lost the richness in medium an darker tones. Not exactly what you're saying but similar maybe.

Re: Picture Styles

Waddizzle — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 19:17:00 GMT

@RobertTheFat wrote:
@njc99 wrote:
I hear what you and Ernie are saying, but I'm less than 100% convinced. If I use a sub-optimal picture style and/or white balance setting and have to correct for it in post-processing the RAW file, it invariably leaves the image underexposed, forcing me to turn up the brightness more than I otherwise would.

That suggests that the camera is taking the WB and PS settings into account when computing the exposure.

I have noticed that there seems to be a connection between WB settings and exposure, too. I have never taken PS into account, because I never change it from Standard, in the camera I mean. I no longer use WB Auto.

I used to get the occasional under/over exposure when I had WB set to AUTO. I began dialing a temperature, or using a fixed setting like “Daylight”, and the under/over exposures have all but gone away. When I do get one, it seems to have been because I had decomposed a shot, and did not lock exposure.

Of course, it should not make a difference where WB is set, because I am shooting RAW. But, there seems to be something going else on under the hood, that is related to WB and Exposure.

Re: Picture Styles

AaronD — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 19:40:19 GMT

If Canon is reading this:

I wish they would show in DPP what Color Temperature their Auto White Balance has chosen and what Fine-tune settings (B--A and M--G sliders). I'm always stitching exposures together and it would valuable to read what the settings are for the look I like best and then make both exposures the same. I can do that by choosing something other that Auto, but sometimes their algorythims pick a better, more subtle reading of the light than Daylight. As it is I just leave them both in their auto-selected default and adjust one or the other in photoshop--which is tedious when you do it every friggin photo.

I'm dragging my own post off topic..........

Re: Picture Styles

Waddizzle — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 20:34:35 GMT

@AaronD wrote:
If Canon is reading this:

I wish they would show in DPP what Color Temperature their Auto White Balance has chosen and what Fine-tune settings (B--A and M--G sliders). I'm always stitching exposures together and it would valuable to read what the settings are for the look I like best and then make both exposures the same. I can do that by choosing something other that Auto, but sometimes their algorythims pick a better, more subtle reading of the light than Daylight. As it is I just leave them both in their auto-selected default and adjust one or the other in photoshop--which is tedious when you do it every friggin photo.

I'm dragging my own post off topic..........

When you capture a series of exposures for Photostich to create a panorama, you want all of the exposures to be identical. You want to set everything manually, particularly WB. This helps to make the final image more uniform. If you had a wider lens, then the entire scene would be exposed the same way. So, when you capture pieces of the final scene, you want to sue the same exposure.

Additionally, you do not want to do a lot processing on the images prior to using Photostitch. Processing creates distortions and differences at the pixel, which your eye may not see but the software can. Process the output image, not the images that you send to Photostitch.

If you are shooting a panorama, then it works best if you allow successive shots to overlap by 1/3. This gives the software plenty of image to work with to create an accurate alignment. Also, I would advise rolling the camera to portrait orientation when shooting a panoramic sequence, still allowing for the shots to overlap by 1/3. I like to use a focal length of 50mm, 85mm, or 100mm, when I am creating a panorama.

Re: Picture Styles

AaronD — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 20:45:18 GMT

Yep. Most of mine are vertical "panoramas" using a TSE 24 mm or sometimes the 17 mm, sometimes side-to-side. You see that in most of these: http://www.aarondougherty.com/Architectural-Photos/Cultural When I occsionally do a regular sweeping panorama I do as you say, though I still wish Canon would let me know what settings their algorithms come up with so I could choose one of theirs if I like one OR just set them all to Daylight after the fact.

Re: Picture Styles

Parkersspace — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 14:06:51 GMT

Okay i know this is old, but, I haven't used DPP in some time and DPP 4 is only on my lap top, I have the older dpp on my main pc that came with 60D. So YES< i see everyone below is whinging at you but DPP in the old version shows what settings are in the picture style and changes them as I go standard, landscape, neutral, etc. People can like and start with Neutral if they wish but Neutral has 0 pop so depending on the photo i like to start with their lens optimizer and turn it down from 50 to 30 to get rid of CA and give the raw a basic sharpening. Then i do to picture styels. I don't like landscape it over sharpens and saturates with an orange hue BUT I do like to put it in and adjust from there instead of nuetral as its base is closer to what i want. I also have special affect color picture styles downloaded that i love like Portrait studio is an excellent start for basic photos from a photo shoot, then pick the photos worth editing further. The picture styles are indeed just showing 0 on all settings unlike they used to change in the old one. I have never been a fan of DPP 4 over the older version on my desktop pc. The older version gives me a quick edit to just show someone their photos in batch fast to pick out what they like best so I can edit from there. It does the same to give me a base on my land scapes. I can take and edit one and all done in the same light i can just apply the recipe to have a first look.