Question on Picasa 3

[lingk]

Hi Guys, need your advice on this...

I had been using Picasa 3 & Canon's Digital Photo Professional (comes with a Canon body) for a while now. As most of my shots are in RAW, I used the Digital PP to make some adjustment first and save a copy before making further adjustments like cropping & Retouch in Picasa.

As Picasa 3 can also open the RAW file, I usually use it to do a quick viewing. But I noticed that the image displayed by Picasa is always darker than when displayed by Canon PP. Does anyone notice this? Can Picasa be calibrated?

Advise appreciated.

 

[catchlights]

is your monitor calibrate in the first place?

 

[ionicbeam]

Hi Guys, need your advice on this...

I had been using Picasa 3 & Canon's Digital Photo Professional (comes with a Canon body) for a while now. As most of my shots are in RAW, I used the Digital PP to make some adjustment first and save a copy before making further adjustments like cropping & Retouch in Picasa.

As Picasa 3 can also open the RAW file, I usually use it to do a quick viewing. But I noticed that the image displayed by Picasa is always darker than when displayed by Canon PP. Does anyone notice this? Can Picasa be calibrated?

Advise appreciated.

Picasa adjusts and uses its own automated perception of how the raw should look like. If i'm not wrong, there's no way it could be adjusted manually. I usually shoot in jpg+raw and review using jpg before selecting raw files to process.

 

[lingk]

Hi guys, thanks for the reply.

My monitor is not calibrated...but even if it is, there shouldn't be a different in brightness when viewed on 2 different Programs.

Maybe its the problem with Picasa...

Thanks again....

 

[sadwitch]

Picasa have its own way of rendering RAW files from different manufacturers. I think picasa tends to 'zero' all processing parameters on the RAW instead of letting you preview the embedded jpeg settings that's why it looks much darker or duller.

Note that picasa is not explicitly a colour managed software but i think the latest version does a much better job at recognising and rendering different colour profiles. Still your images colours might look different if viewed on different computers.

Another thing to note is Firefox and Safari both have built-in colour profile management so using this browsers to view is good for consistency. IE and Chrome does not recognise colour profiles yet i think.

 

[makolit]

it's picasa.

even my B&W RAW as shot in-camera becomes colored when opened in picasa. :sweat:

 

[sadwitch]

it's picasa.

even my B&W RAW as shot in-camera becomes colored when opened in picasa. :sweat:

Yup picasa "zeroes" all shooting parameters in RAW