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Enhancement jpg with lightroom
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Aug 25, 2019 00:49:27   #
tenny52
 
Recently I took a 20days trip to a few countries in Europe and brought my Fuji-XT10. I decided to shoot jpg with a single 64G SD.
I found more than half of the pictures were too dull so I use Lightroom to enhance every one them and the result is somewhat similar to my usual enhancement to raw file shot with my heavier D610.
I wonder if this is commonly practiced by some of you guys, or I am just overpainting my jpgs.

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Aug 25, 2019 01:27:06   #
lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA
 
tenny52 wrote:
Recently I took a 20days trip to a few countries in Europe and brought my Fuji-XT10. I decided to shoot jpg with a single 64G SD.
I found more than half of the pictures were too dull so I use Lightroom to enhance every one them and the result is somewhat similar to my usual enhancement to raw file shot with my heavier D610.
I wonder if this is commonly practiced by some of you guys, or I am just overpainting my jpgs.


I always intend to shoot Raw, but if I do get a JPG with a DSLR or more commonly a JPG with a PnS or SmartPhone that do shoot RAW as well, I can usually use or save the JPG. If shot well they do not differ from a RAW too extremely, even with the loss of a majority of the data.

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Aug 25, 2019 01:49:02   #
JD750 Loc: SoCal
 
Hmmm. You will get many answers and strong opinions to your questions.

I will ask you, why are 1/2 of your jpegs dull? What factor is making them dull? Can you do something different in camera to prevent the dull jpeg?

Yes absolutely, a JPEG to can be enhanced, to make it less dull. Shhhhh. Dont’ tell the raw snobs about this. They will not receive it well.

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Aug 25, 2019 01:58:52   #
duckfan48
 
Ok as I read the comments I think I understand, and I’m thinking that doing a ‘one time’ enhancement or correction to a jpeg will be ok. Any additional would then compromise the photos quality. Correct?

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Aug 25, 2019 02:13:19   #
tenny52
 
you can easily tell which one is enhanced


(Download)


(Download)

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Aug 25, 2019 02:16:38   #
tenny52
 
More question: can a better camera/lens/technique capture a similar enhanced picture?

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Aug 25, 2019 05:26:31   #
BlueMorel Loc: Southwest Michigan
 
tenny52 wrote:
More question: can a better camera/lens/technique capture a similar enhanced picture?


Simple answer: Yes, of course. In camera you can adjust aperture, ISO, shutter speed, depth of field, etc, before you click the shutter. Oh, and compose the shot. Better in means better out.
You might need some processing, but you'll have fewer corrections, whether RAW or jpg.
As far as jpg, my old digital shots pre-2016 were all jpg. I still go back through them to make enhancements. Jpg doesn't mean you're stuck with what you get, it just means you can't fine tune as much.

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Aug 25, 2019 10:30:14   #
via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP
 
In LR simply click on auto for processing and the application should then improve the image. You could also simply run a slight tone curve on the image and see if that does it for you. Having said that, a sky is particularly vulnerable for a JPEG when trying to process it. Too much "enhancement" will cause banding in the sky, this is called an artifact and is why RAW can be a better choice. It's not really about how many times you might do something with the JPEG, it's about what you do with the JPEG. Check it at 100% to ensure there are no artifacts anywhere, especially in a shot with lot's of sky.

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Aug 25, 2019 13:31:45   #
Ysarex Loc: St. Louis
 
duckfan48 wrote:
Ok as I read the comments I think I understand, and I’m thinking that doing a ‘one time’ enhancement or correction to a jpeg will be ok. Any additional would then compromise the photos quality. Correct?


I'd say incorrect. This all hinges on what does "OK" mean and what are you doing with the photo. Any edit of a JPEG compromises quality and causes damage. It doesn't matter if it's a "one time" edit. It's a common myth that opening and re-saving a JPEG is what has to be avoided. It's true that opening and re-saving a JPEG isn't good but that's a minor concern. The real cause of damage is editing.

If you make a tone response and/or color change to a JPEG even if just "one time" you're going to cause damage that wouldn't be caused if you made those edits to data that hasn't bee JPEG encoded. Can you see that damage on your iPhone? No. Therefore the damage isn't real -- be happy.

Everybody does it of course so it must be OK. Well that sounds reasonable -- be happy.

Here's an example: In the first illustration below you see on the left the camera SOOC JPEG, in the middle the processed raw file and on the right the SOOC JPEG edited to better match the processed raw image. I deliberately reduced resolution because the damage caused by editing the JPEG disappears with the resolution drop. In other words you're going to look at it on your phone so there is no problem -- be happy.

The camera was set to auto-WB and no effort was made to adjust the JPEG settings from default. That explains the need to edit the JPEG. Auto-WB screwed up and those baptisia are not that color seen in the SOOC JPEG. So all I did using Photoshop ACR was adjust the color and contrast to better match the processed raw which has accurate color and better tone response. The edit is one time only with only that one save when I saved the illustration. The edited JPEG looks fine -- be happy.

The 2nd illustration shows an out of focus region of the image from all three files and at 100% resolution. OUCH! The edited JPEG is badly damaged. That's a one time edit and one only save of light editing of the SOOC JPEG. So don't pixel peep!!! -- be happy. This example shows the worst that can happen. That kind of damage won't show in areas that are in focus. So avoid out of focus backgrounds and don't pixel peep!! -- be happy.

NOTE: I edited the JPEG parametrically using ACR. That generally works better than doing the edit with a raster editor like PS proper. Can the damage done editing the JPEG be avoided? No. But if you can't see it's not real -- be happy.

EDIT: Worth noting that although you can't prevent the damage to the JPEG from editing there are things you can do to repair or cover-up that damage. If you find yourself doing that it might be appropriate to ask what the bleep you're doing trying to fix the screw-up you caused by trying to fix the screw-up you caused....

Joe


(Download)


(Download)

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Aug 25, 2019 14:03:14   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
duckfan48 wrote:
Ok as I read the comments I think I understand, and I’m thinking that doing a ‘one time’ enhancement or correction to a jpeg will be ok. Any additional would then compromise the photos quality. Correct?


Don't know what all you're read related to your comment, but as soon as the OP stated they're using LR, you should have recognized they can edit and edit and edit and edit some more without ever impacting the original image. Why? Because Lightroom is a non destructive editor never touching the original image beyond recording the location on disk and recording the technical attributes and creating an internal copy of the image within the LR catalog. That is, unlimited editing with the caveat of always staying within LR.

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Aug 25, 2019 14:18:32   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
tenny52 wrote:
Recently I took a 20days trip to a few countries in Europe and brought my Fuji-XT10. I decided to shoot jpg with a single 64G SD.
I found more than half of the pictures were too dull so I use Lightroom to enhance every one them and the result is somewhat similar to my usual enhancement to raw file shot with my heavier D610.
I wonder if this is commonly practiced by some of you guys, or I am just overpainting my jpgs.


Editing your JPEGs is what LR exists for too. Do pay attention to the questions about 'why' some of your images have issues, in case there are opportunities to consider in your shooting technique.

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Aug 25, 2019 23:10:36   #
JD750 Loc: SoCal
 
duckfan48 wrote:
Ok as I read the comments I think I understand, and I’m thinking that doing a ‘one time’ enhancement or correction to a jpeg will be ok. Any additional would then compromise the photos quality. Correct?


Not exactly. Every time you open change and save a JPEG you lose some S/N ratio. But if you open it then save it to a lossless format, like TIF or PSD, etc, then you can re-open and re-edit the saved lossless file without degradation.

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Aug 26, 2019 01:47:56   #
Ysarex Loc: St. Louis
 
JD750 wrote:
Not exactly. Every time you open change and save a JPEG you lose some S/N ratio. But if you open it then save it to a lossless format, like TIF or PSD, etc, then you can re-open and re-edit the saved lossless file without degradation.


This is not correct. Changing the file format to other than JPEG does not remove the original JPEG encoding. Re-saving an edited JPEG is not the primary cause of degradation to the image. The degradation derives from any editing of the image tone and/or color interacting with the original JPEG compression grid -- altering the file format does nothing to prevent that as the original compression grid is saved intact in the new file format.

Joe

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Aug 26, 2019 09:18:47   #
imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida
 
tenny52 wrote:
Recently I took a 20days trip to a few countries in Europe and brought my Fuji-XT10. I decided to shoot jpg with a single 64G SD.
I found more than half of the pictures were too dull so I use Lightroom to enhance every one them and the result is somewhat similar to my usual enhancement to raw file shot with my heavier D610.
I wonder if this is commonly practiced by some of you guys, or I am just overpainting my jpgs.


If you did not compensate in your camera settings for low contrast subject/lighting, then yes, they will look flat and need curve adjustments in PP - the same as a raw would !
.

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Aug 26, 2019 09:24:58   #
gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast
 
tenny52 wrote:
you can easily tell which one is enhanced


I think that the second one is "over enhanced". I wouldn’t even do that to a RAW file. You could just bring up the shadows a bit.

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