Aperture 2: Nikon D3 NEF Support
Monday, March 17, 2008
...is great BUT has one MAJOR issue for me. It is clipping the color detail too early. This means I am getting monochrome shadow areas on my colored subjects and it looks really bad.
Let me expound upon this and give some examples:
Aperture's raw conversion for the Nikon D3 is clipping the color from shadows.... generally. (About 99% of the time.) It is possible that the couple of images I haven't seen the problem occur in have color detail just above the clipping threshold.
This really makes for some ugly images. I know, I said that already, but now you can see it for yourself.
In the samples below, watch the shadow on the brown wall behind the subject as well as the shadow areas on the neck in the close up. Note that the red strap in the file with the color clipped has almost no red left. (It should still be red!)
I have a couple of sample images side by side here:
Here is the same image, one processed with AP2 and the other through ACR:
- FYI, I don't have any of these issues with D200 NEF's.
This next image I took, I was playing with to see how far I could pull the file and still retain shadow detail (It is grossly underexposed. The pocketwizard batteries had just died). The image is in color and looks alright when opened with ACR but when I open it in Aperture, there is basically no color at all left in the image. This leads me to believe that Aperture's D3 raw conversion is throwing away color information at a specific level. The preview image somehow didn't clip the color information while the actual raw file did.
(The first image is with Quick Preview on and the second is the actual NEF.)
Here is a more recent example. This is a quick shot I took of a friend. Check out his skin tones in the right side of the image.
(The first image is through ACR and the second AP2.)
Now, I have posted about this in the Aperture Discussions forum as well as in the DPReview.com forum and not had much luck as far as intelligent conversation goes. I guess there either aren't many others experiencing this phenomenon, they are too lazy to speak up about it, or they can't see the difference and/or don't care.
Personally, I expect more out of Aperture 2.0. Let's get an update to fix this. I would love to be using Aperture to process all of my files but with bugs that affect my images, I will have to stick with ACR for the time being.
Let me expound upon this and give some examples:
Aperture's raw conversion for the Nikon D3 is clipping the color from shadows.... generally. (About 99% of the time.) It is possible that the couple of images I haven't seen the problem occur in have color detail just above the clipping threshold.
This really makes for some ugly images. I know, I said that already, but now you can see it for yourself.
In the samples below, watch the shadow on the brown wall behind the subject as well as the shadow areas on the neck in the close up. Note that the red strap in the file with the color clipped has almost no red left. (It should still be red!)
I have a couple of sample images side by side here:
Here is the same image, one processed with AP2 and the other through ACR:
- FYI, I don't have any of these issues with D200 NEF's.
This next image I took, I was playing with to see how far I could pull the file and still retain shadow detail (It is grossly underexposed. The pocketwizard batteries had just died). The image is in color and looks alright when opened with ACR but when I open it in Aperture, there is basically no color at all left in the image. This leads me to believe that Aperture's D3 raw conversion is throwing away color information at a specific level. The preview image somehow didn't clip the color information while the actual raw file did.
(The first image is with Quick Preview on and the second is the actual NEF.)
Here is a more recent example. This is a quick shot I took of a friend. Check out his skin tones in the right side of the image.
(The first image is through ACR and the second AP2.)
Now, I have posted about this in the Aperture Discussions forum as well as in the DPReview.com forum and not had much luck as far as intelligent conversation goes. I guess there either aren't many others experiencing this phenomenon, they are too lazy to speak up about it, or they can't see the difference and/or don't care.
Personally, I expect more out of Aperture 2.0. Let's get an update to fix this. I would love to be using Aperture to process all of my files but with bugs that affect my images, I will have to stick with ACR for the time being.
posted by Josh @ 8:08 AM
7 Comments:
Still a problem in 2.1?
Hey Josh,
This is extremely interesting and well documented, thanks !
I use Aperture 2.1 and a couple of D3, being a pro photographer. I really love its RAW conversion, but only after a few tweaks (simple to reach). Then it looks as close as perfection as I could hope.
This is strange : I haven't noticed these desaturated shadows yet. I'm going to investigate further and get back to you - but as for your "skin" (portrait) example, i can tell you I do NOT have the same problem here. I shoot a lot of portraits in available light, with lots of progressive shadows, etc. I NEVER experienced such "flat" areas.
I only shoot lossless compressed-14 bits RAWs. What do you shoot ?
- OK, I'll do my homework and tell you more very soon.
Thanks !
B, I shoot exclusively 14bit RAW as well.
I just did a fresh install of OSX 10.5 and then installed AP2.0 from disk.
I still see the problem in v2.1...
Kind of frustrating.
I have examined exactly the same. D3 and Aperture don't work well together. 14bit/RAW/lossless and shadows look flat. Never have the problem with D200 NEF's. Looks like i have to think about a new workflow:/
Good to know Thomas.
I have an open complaint going on to the Aperture team right now. I will be sure to let them know of another user experiencing the same issue.
I'm so glad somebody else noticed that, too! People used to look at me as if I was crazy when I pointed desaturated shadows.
Do you think the camera will produce same JPGs as NEF's?
I'm going to buy D700 and I don't like to use RAWs very often. I got really scared now!
Follow up:
I also posted this in the Apple Aperture forums for those following the phenomenon there.
I recently picked up a new unibody MBP and went ahead and used the "transfer files from another Mac" feature so that I could start using it right away.
After I let the Xrite run a calibration for the new display and laptop , I went through some of my images to check things over...
I stumbled upon a couple of the images affected by the shadow color clipping issue and noticed that these images weren't clipping color anymore. Even the ones with previews that were generated with the clipped information regenerated corrected previews once the image loaded. All the affected files are no longer affected. They all display and have been processed correctly!
I'm not sure if it was fixed in the recent raw file update or if my original Aperture or raw decoder install was horked.
Anybody else still experiencing the same problem might want to make sure you have the latest raw update and possibly reinstall Aperture.
Good luck.
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