What are the basic low level steps involved in raw file conversion? In this article I will discuss what happens under the hood of digital camera raw converters in order to turn raw file data into a viewable image, a process sometimes referred to as ‘rendering’. We will use the following raw capture by a Nikon D610 to show how image information is transformed at every step along the way:
I’ve mentioned in the past that I prefer to take spatial resolution measurements directly off the raw information in order to minimize often unknown subjective variables introduced by demosaicing and rendering algorithms unbeknownst to the operator, even when all relevant sliders are zeroed. In this post we discover that that is indeed the case for ACR/LR process 2010/2012 and for Capture NX-D – while DCRAW appears to be transparent and perform straight out demosaicing with no additional processing without the operator’s knowledge.
Continue reading Raw Converter Sharpening with Sliders at Zero?