viscountdriver Loc: East Kent UK

I would appreciate some advice.being new to Raw and in view of previous correspondence I though I should give it a go so I shot Raw plus JPG Fine. I use Corel Paintshop Pro X6 for my editing.The JPG pictures were good but all Raw shots had a pinkish tone which I could not edit out.I then opened the Raw in Nikon's View NX2 and the pictures were good and I could edit them as I wished.When I tried to save the Nef files they saved to Corel with the original pinkish tone.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Raw files cannot be (should not be) written to. Not sure why you see a difference, but you might want to do your raw conversion in NX2, get them as good as you can, then export a 16 bit tif file for further image refinement in Corel.

Better yet, download PSCC for a month and see if it works better for you. The combination of LR and PSCC is really hard to beat.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Is your camera model raw supported by Corel X6? That maybe the source of your problem. The current version is X7.

I do not know Nikon software (never used the damned thing). But you can export to TIFF (select 16 and highest color depth) That should solve your possible compliance problem. There are rumors that the edits made in Nikon software do not transfer so by-passing NX may be a good idea.

Other solution try RawTherapee (free). I have experienced interesting side effects like PS not wanting a NEF 'touched' by RT. Likely user error.

viscountdriver Loc: East Kent UK

pahtspix

Raw files are NOT an end-result..They are like a "negative" that needs to be thoroughly "tweeked", and then converted to a Tiff or a JPG for printing or email, etc,,When you do the conversion, the RAW file remains like a negative, and you can re-edit it as many times as you wish and do more conversions to you liking..NEVER delete your raw files un less they are grossly fuzzy, or your subject is totally out-of-frame.

Eddie

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Eddie, a better analogy is a raw file being like the image captured on film but yet to be developed aka a "latent image." Unlike a true latent image on film, you can always decide how you want to interpret it - Bibble, Raw Therapee, Lightroom, DXO, etc etc etc. Since raw processing software is constantly improving, one of the amazing benefits of keeping raw files is that you can always revisit an old picture and process it with the new software to open up more possibilities in that image that weren't possible years ago.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Keep in mind that all the "work" you do on a RAW file is non-destructive... meaning that you can always change it back or try other adjustments to it later.

As previously mentioned, you must then "export" the image into another file format, to work on it in the other software of your choice. 16 bit TIFF was recommended and that's what I might use, too. Or, since I use Photoshop, I often use Adobe PSD file format, which is similar to TIFF and 16 bit (or higher).

In the end I often end up saving the finished image as an 8 bit JPEG when planning to print it or share it online.

What you are doing... shooting RAW + JPEG... is a good idea. That way you have the JPEGs now, and can learn to work with the RAW a little at a time. Eventually you will likely find you can work with the RAW to produce better results than you typically get with JPEGs straight from the camera. Meanwhile, for learning purposes it's good to have JPEG to compare with and see if you can improve upon it.

jaygreen55 Loc: Westport CT

The pinkish image you are seeing is because Corel might not support the raw codec for your camera. (it doesn't for my D 810) They may update the camera support for X6 in the future or you might have to update to X7

In any case the raw converter on Corel X6 really sucks. I process all my raws in LR5 and export them as 16 bit Tiffs to X6 if further processing is needed. The problem with editing JPEGs is that they are compressed every time you save the image and if you work on them multiple times you'll lose a lot of info

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

With the ease that you can generate a jpg from a raw file, after you apply a simple preset to resemble camera settings, in any one of a variety of raw converters, does it really make sense to shoot raw+jpg? There are two other considerations. First, why go to all the trouble to duplicate a camera setting that does not exploit the cameras' full capabilities for color depth, dynamic range and detail. Second, in those situations where you need to underexpose the image, protecting the highlights with the intent to do shadow recovery - you will definitely not use the same camera settings for raw compared to jpg. What is correct for raw in this situation is going to result in an unrecoverably underexposed jpg.

I would rethink the benefit of shooting raw+jpg.

fjrwillie Loc: MA

in any one of a variety of raw converters, does it really make sense to shoot raw+jpg?

instant gratification and laziness, at least for me. On a given day I will have shot well over 100 shoots, many of them bracketed. When I get home I download the results to a folder and do not have to go thru the conversion process right then and there to look at some of the photos. Hard disk is relatively cheap. When there is a shot of particular interest I then go back to the RAW file, if necessary.

I don't think of my self as an artist or pro-photographer, just enjoy the entire process.

YMMV

Willie

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Willie, I take it you are not all that familiar with raw processing, and don't have an efficient workflow to deal with large numbers of image files quickly.

I did a wedding yesterday, came back with almost 1200 raw files from the two of us. Had everything culled, quickly adjusted for white balance and contrast, a little extra color saturation here and there, and had 700 proof images up on the website for client review, all done before I turned in for the night - about 2.5 hrs work.

You see, I am probably much lazier than you. And damn proud of my laziness :) And I want instant gratification, but not as much as my clients. When they got up this morning there was an email with a link to their files on my website. It doesn't get any more instant than that.

Seriously, it is MUCH faster to go through a large number of files with far better results when you deal with raw files. I simply cannot justify the time it used to take to come up with something similar shooting jpg.

fjrwillie Loc: MA

Maybe it is time I look at batch processing my RAW files.

Willie

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Don't hesitate to contact me by PM if you need any assistance with this. I do a combination of batch (where appropriate), and individually as well. But it goes very fast.

Kuzano

Not a fan of Corel at any level. Started using Corel products in 1992 when it was strictly an apple/MAC product. It suffered severely the transition to PC software when it was Corel Draw, a very popular product on the MAC.

Corel for the PC, was barely tolerable until it reached Version 6, while MAC users were loving it as before.

However, the products in transitioning to the PC were poorly designed and flawed heavily, depending on who owned Corel at the time. At one time they were even owned by a big network software company, Novell Networks, and since they could not manage to incorporate good word processing capabilities, the company, Novell Networks, who owned them also bought Word Perfect (who was struggling mightily with GUI code). Both of those alliances broke down some years ago.

The change of ownership may be perpetual however.

Corel's biggest problem over time has always been a constant change in parent companies driving their product code. This has remained constant for almost twenty years now.

I don't doubt at all, the incapacity for Corel to render proper RAW conversions. And since you probably set the properties for Corel to open ALL image files, that sets the program up to render the files with Corel attributes, hence the pinkish tint even when you use another post processing or RAW conversion program.

Say good bye to Corel and watch many problems disappear.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Hate to break it to you, but Corel was NEVER strictly an Apple/Mac product. The earliest versions of their software were STRICTLY Windows, starting with Windows 3.1, and currently supported on XP, Vista, Win7 and Win8. There was an attempt to port it to Mac, probably around the time you became acquainted with it. But it was due to the operational issues, and lack of popularity that it was withdrawn from the Mac marketplace. Corel PhotoPaint became part of their graphics suite in 92, but Paint Shop Pro was not added until 2004, 12 years after you started using Corel products.