slickrock Loc: jacksonville

Have a quick turn-around job that necessitates jpegs for same day printing at Cosco. Having never used jpeg settings on the 5D Mark 2, Should I use standard mode and all other variables (sharpness,contrast,etc.) in the middle settings? And will these settings still allow an unadulterated RAW file?
Thanks for any advice.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I shot RAW with Faithful as the Picture style on a 7D. I read once that the LCD will saturate some and if it looks really good with Faithful, it will be better later in PP. My typical first change is then to set to Standard or Landscape in DPP based on what I was working with. If you have a chance to test, see if Landscape is too saturated. It is good for outdoor stuff, but I use Standard more often before starting custom edits in DPP. I do tend to do a +1 on the sharpness and +1 on contrast of both Standard and Landscape although I make the change in DPP rather than within the camera. Your RAW will (should) pick up the camera settings as well although only DPP will see them and you can still completely change them afterward.

This is my experience mixed with my understanding but I haven't experimented directly on these questions.

oldtool2 Loc: South Jersey

Try using standard or faithful. Take a few test shots and see what you like better. If you do not have the time to experiment then use standard but increase sharpness by +1 or +2.

Any of these settings will not effect the raw file in any way. They only work with jpg photos so you will still have your raw file that will need to be PP, just as if you were only shooting in raw.

Jim D

pigpen

Don't the machines most places use (costco??) have some type of "auto adjust" feature that you can use to sorta "edit" the image???

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

RAW files are not affected by any settings that are meant for the JPG processing such as sharpness or contrast. Shoot in RAW+JPG just to make sure you have something good to edit in case the JPGs don't turn out as well as you like.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Yes they do - only on JPG files. But the auto adjust is kind of aimed at P&S users who like eye-popping color, strong contrast, and a lot of sharpness. That may not be suitable for this situation. I was just at my local Costco yesterday and you could either auto adjust or leave the files alone - at least at this Costco. In their favor, they had pretty nice flat LCD touch screen monitors and they also do wet developing up to 11X14 instead of digital inkjet printing.

The machines at WalMart (I did some 4X6 and 8X10 two weeks ago) have the ability to override the auto adjust settings with sliders. Unfortunately the CRT monitors on the machines are so poor that you can't tell if what you changed was enough or too much until you actually print one and see, try again with their satisfaction guarantee by using different override settings and settle for the second one - then print all the rest.

MagicMark

Whatever Picture Styles you set, that's what the JPEGs will look like but the Picture Styles does NOT effect your RAW files.

pigpen

Yes, the machines I've used in the past had the choice to print as is. I always thought , since you'd like to think their equipment is calibrated (?????), that the auto adjust (enhance) would be the way to go.

Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

Noooooooooooooooooo!
The 'equipment' is calibrated, NOT the 'enhancing software'.
If you care at ALL about the look of your prints, you'll turn that 'feature' OFF.

pigpen

I don't use those machines anymore. I've been using Bayphoto for about 4 years now.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Unfortunately many (maybe most) times their equipment is not calibrated well or often enough.

I took an 8X10 file to WalMart two weeks ago. A guy's Border Collie dog had to be put down on Saturday and on Monday he realized he only had one good picture of her. When he took the 8X10 out of the frame to have it duped, the photo's emulsion surface was stuck to the glass and it got really messed up as he got it loose.

He knew me from shooting his home the week before so he called in a panic to see if I knew anybody to fix it. I restored it myself that evening and used WalMart to print two new ones the next day.

I knew the photo was a little faded from UV from being mounted and displayed in sunlight, so I let the "Auto Enhance" do it's thing. That resulted in excessive contrast so that the black dog was so black the individual hairs of her coat were mostly lost, the background dark evergreens became green like palm trees, and a tile house roof in the background went from orange to red. I thought it was vulgar and far too much but then I remembered he (as a snap shooter) would probably think it was intentional and better. So I met up with him with those copies. If he complained I would reprint them at my own expense but he was totally "WOW'd" by the enhancement and thanked me profusely for "bringing the photo to life (?)." Maybe it was his grief talking... I don't know.

As far as the machines being calibrated, I can't say that's true for my two area WalMarts either. I took my 3-year-old son's passport photo in my kitchen with a white wall behind him and daylight CFL bulbs. The background wall wasn't white enough so I actually painted in a pure white wall with no imperfections in Paintshop Pro X6. Thus I knew for a fact the background was going to pass inspection with the passport people. He was wearing a burgundy shirt and a black tie and has brown hair.

When I used the one hour machine at the same WalMart to print 6 little 2X2 versions on one 4X6 sheet of paper plus printed one 8X10 for our wall, I did NOT use the auto enhance because I knew the color, contrast, saturation, and sharpness was exactly what I wanted.

When they printed on their HP printer in the back room, my background had a blue tint and the whites of my son's eyes were almost as blue as Late Night Craig Ferguson's robot's eyes. It was absolutely stupid. So I complained and said I wanted another one.

The female manager heard me and came over. After a bunch of crap about my monitor and theirs not being the same and their machinery being properly calibrated but my monitor wasn't, she said she'd "allow me" to print it over once without charging me but I'd have to use the auto enhance and then take control of blue manually with the blue slider that could be brought up on the screen.

I was a bit snippy and said, "So... you ALLOWing me to print again is what WalMart calls Satisfaction Guaranteed?" She replied that yes, my second print was to create my satisfaction but if that didn't work out I was not going to be printing over and over until I got it right. I said, "It's your machine that's whacked not my file. I am a professional photographer editing photos by the hundred every week and I know the white is pure white because I painted it in myself with Photoshop (so I lied but she wouldn't know the difference)."

She didn't care what I said. So I went back to the crappy CRT monitor that showed me a 1/4 screen version of my photo and reduced the blue quite a bit although the monitor version didn't look blue. The next print was corrected about 90% and that was good enough.

So I'm saying that even without auto enhance their machines are completely out of whack.

On the other hand, I went to Costco yesterday and had (9) 11X14s, (2) 16X20, and (44) 4X6 prints made withOUT auto enhance on their LCD flat touch screen system, and the prints were absolutely perfect - and cost half as much as WalMart! The guy had been in that photo department for 7 years and we talked about them calibrating daily, how they are selling about 1/3 as many prints monthly now as they were two years ago, etc. I came out of there very happy.