Why you should ALWAYS shoot RAW/DNG!

[Landey]

You read it countless times: "RAW/DNG is SO much better!" Blahblahblah ...
Maybe you tried for yourself - and found the RAW/DNG photos looking just horrible!
So you came to the conclusion: "Just steaming bullsh... all those RAW/DNG disciples claim!!!"

Now have a look at the pictures and the two cutouts taken from that pictures - and make up your mind.
This demonstrates just the quality improvements; there's even more benefits RAW/DNG files provide you, like being able to "rescue" underexposed and overexposed picture parts.




In the RAW, you can still see that smokestack is made of bricks; just a blurred mess in the JPG. Plus, there's noise in the sky in the JPG.


Just look at the foliage, big fat "lineart" in the JPG, far more details in the RAW.

 

[Ezzelin]

You know normally I always shoot RAW+JPG on my cameras, but gave up with this drone because the RAWs have weird colors and when you shoot the highest res JPG you can't do RAW. But it looks like you're getting good quality from the RAW files and supposedly the high res JPGs are just upscaled anyway. What do you do to get good RAW colors?

 

[Landey]

You know normally I always shoot RAW+JPG on my cameras, but gave up with this drone because the RAWs have weird colors and when you shoot the highest res JPG you can't do RAW. But it looks like you're getting good quality from the RAW files and supposedly the high res JPGs are just upscaled anyway. What do you do to get good RAW colors?

To be honest, I try to use JPGs for most purposes - as long as I am happy with them. If I don't need to go an extra mile; why should I?
Two exceptions: Astrophotography (IMPOSSIBLE to use JPGs) and infrared photography.
Thus I always shoot JPG and RAW, use the JPGs if they are suitable - but if something's wrong with a JPG (like over- or underexposure or other issues, e. g. detail loss, like in the greenery in the sample pictures) I use the RAWs for plan B.

Preliminary workflow for the Nano's DNGs:
- Develop for removing the vignetting and creating a slight dark/bright reserve for having a safety margin for playing around with e. g. Curves/Contrast adjustments without losing details in dark/bright areas.
- Color correction via "Selective Color" adjustment, allowing to change red, cyan, yellow components of different color ranges - this restores the original colors.
- Sharpening, I tried different methods, found "Highpass Filter" working best.
- Denoise, Luminance denoising works fine for the Nano's DNGs.
- Remove sharpening/denoise from areas if these methods cause an adverse effect.
- Additional adjustments like Contrast, Curves, Saturation.
That's it, the order may change.

It's quite some work, especially color correction - thus I would LOVE Autel to provide a profile for automating that step or an option to output color corrected DNGs.
I plan to shoot some color palettes for getting a kind of color correction template I can use for quick color correction via saved settings or a macro.

Drawbacks of working with RAWs: Takes some effort, that's why I prefer working with the JPGs. I did NOT manage to improve nightshots by using DNGs, yet - in that case, Autel's algorithms just do a better job than me.

So the verdict is: ALWAYS shoot JPG and RAW for having the RAWs at hand if JPGs won't provide sufficient quality.
Doesn't mean you always needs to USE the RAWs - just in case.

Maybe I can do a video showing all the steps in the future.

 

[Paulemus]

I think Photoshop is not compatible with the RYYB color scheme of the Nano Plus. I comes out yellowish, and you need to adjust the yellow. But I dont have the issue with Luminar.

 

[winrose]

As a retired professional photographer who started shooting digital in 2002, I always shoot in RAW. I have found that you can increase the dynamic range of an image easily in Lightroom by reducing the highlights (over exposure) and pump up the shadows (dark areas) to increase the detail in those areas of the photograph. This applies do whether the image is shot with my Nikon D800 or my Evo II Pro. I just took my Myrtle beach photos and processed the DNG and converted them to JPGs. You can see the DNG converted to Jpg along side the unadjusted jpgs here: MyrlteBeachTestShots - ClarityPhotos I am a beginning drone photographer so please excuse the image composition (I am learning).