old poet

Thanks to all for advice. Ohhh, I have heard of Google. It is filled with good stuff and trash. But I also want to hear from the brilliant (I mean this in all seriousness) UHHers for advice.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

If you plan to do no further editing on the images, then vivid may be a good choice. However, if you usually edit your images after they leave the camera, a more neutral setting will often be better. Compared to neutral, vivid setting has a greater tendency to clip colors in a not-so-pleasing manner. Through editing, the saturation level can be increased on images shot in neutral setting.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Picture control only works on jpg images for "in-camera" processing of the images. You should have more choices than just Neutral and Standard. Each camera mfgr calls them something different than another mfgr. But for the most part, each one boosts one or more of the colors in a certain range. For instance, for Landscape they usually boost the greens and blues for a better looking sky and better trees etc. Portrait picture style might boost reds and yellows. It's best to experiment with the different picture styles and see what you like best. If you shoot raw, you can ignore the pictures styles because they won't be applied to the raw image. But in many editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom, they will give you those same or similar choices of picture styles to apply to the raw image so that you can see what the image would be like if you had chosen to shoot jpg's and "in-camera" processing.

tommystrat Loc: Bigfork, Montana

I agree with you - the only stupid question is the one that remains unasked.

Ron Dial Loc: Cuenca, Ecuador

Since you are not shooting in RAW, once the image is captured you are Done. Little or no chance to change anything. If you shoot in RAW, then you can change a lot of things before the digital image is "developed" I know RAW creates larger files, but you have way more control over the finished product.

dar_clicks Loc: Utah

- I use fairly neutral settings with my DSLR and even for sharpening because I feel there are programs and plug-ins that can do a more thorough and exacting job of that on a computer, if needed. Besides, the DSLR works great as-is, mostly.
- My flat camera (i.e., cell phone) is a different story. I added a 3rd party camera app with low light and HDR add-ons. The HDR options can produce results from looking quite natural to really pumped up. I also use other apps to edit shots on the phone. Good stuff — better than I thought it would be.

Ron Dial Loc: Cuenca, Ecuador

One last quick note on your JPEG images. All images (except portraits) captured electronically through a sensor, will need a LITTLE sharpening when you are finished editing them. There are several programs on the market that effectively combine various Photoshop tools to sharpen images. You have to use care to not oversharpen. That is a key way that judges can tell if you used a digital or film camera to capture. I use NIK Sharpener Pro and get great results. Just a suggestion.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I shoot RAW, so it really doesn't matter what "profile" I use.

In fact, I use Faithful and have edited it to further reduce saturation, since that effects how the images is displayed on the camera's LCD screen when played back. I've set it that way because it more closely emulates how a RAW file will look before I do any processing on it. I've also dialed up sharpness to the maximum to make it easier to check focus on that little screen.

Neither of these are actually applied to the images, though... since they're being shot RAW. Only image playback is effected (because no camera can directly display RAW... they essentially display a small "preview" JPEG that's embedded in the RAW file).

Note: On the rare occasions when I need to shoot JPEGs, I have to remember to turn these settings off!

Wmetcalf Loc: Rogersville, Mo

👍👍👍

bwilliams

I use vivid because when I used to shoot with film I liked high contrast film.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

In a JPEG workflow, Neutral (Natural on some brands) gives you the most faithful to reality color — provided you NAIL both exposure and white balance by using a target and Custom (Canon) or Preset (Nikon) or Manual (Panasonic and some other brands) white balance.

Standard gives a little more punch (contrast, gamma, saturation...).

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/search?N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search&Ntt=White%20balance

Look for Delta-1 Gray Cards, PhotoVision One Shot Digital Calibration Target, ExpoDisc, and similar tools from Lastolite and others.