How can I match a camera's warm embedded JPEG look from a RAW file in RawTherapee/ART?

Asked 12/21/2021

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When I open a RAW file with strong warm tones, such as fire or sunsets, the camera’s embedded JPEG shows smoother yellow-to-orange transitions, while my default RawTherapee/ART rendering shows visible banding and some reddish areas. I’d like to get closer to the in-camera JPEG as a starting point. Is this mainly due to the camera manufacturer’s processing, or are there settings and editing choices in RAW conversion that help preserve those smooth warm gradients?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

4y ago

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Using Canon's Digital Photo Professional 4 to open your raw file, it seems your camera used the Standard picture style, a White Balance setting of around 3800K, no tint corrections, and a fairly neutral contrast curve (neither high contrast nor low contrast). The only lens correction was for 'Peripheral illumination' set at 70%.

Any attempt to flatten the highlights or boost the shadows will very quickly result in the banding you're seeing in your example above. It looks like you tried to compress the dynamic range with ART and that's what caused such severe banding.

There are a few areas where the highlights are blown, but any brute force attempt to pull them back will result in the mid highs also being flattened, and that's the major source of your banding. Pulling exposure/brightness back requires a 2/3 stop adjustment to eliminate the brightest highlights from blowing out.

Here's what I got with Canon's DPP 4 using the default in-camera settings except for changing WB from 'Auto - ambience priority' to '3800K'.

enter image description here

By pushing brightness by 1/6 stop, changing the WB to 4600K with a slight tint towards magenta, crushing the shadows just a bit (to deal with a little noise in the very dark shadows, reducing contrast very slightly, and using the HSL tool to adjust individual colors (more on that below), I got the following result.

enter image description here

I also applied lens correction at the default settings for CA, color blur, and distortion.

Here are screenshots of the two key tabs in Canon's Digital Photo Professional 4 with the adjustments I used.

enter image description hereenter image description here

The HSL adjustments in the red, orange, and yellow bands pulled the red and yellow areas towards orange, which is the predominant color in the photo. This smoothed the transitions between each color band. There is virtually no green, aqua, blue, purple, or magenta in the image, so we made no adjustments at all to those color bands. By reducing overall saturation on the first tab and then pushing it in the HSL tool, it made the effects of the individual color channel adjustments stronger.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

4y ago

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The main issue is probably not that ART/RawTherapee is incapable of matching the JPEG, but that your edit is compressing the tonal range too aggressively. According to the community answer, the embedded JPEG from this Canon file looks close to a fairly standard in-camera rendering: roughly 3800K white balance, neutral tint, Standard picture style, and a normal contrast curve.

The banding appears when highlights are pulled back too hard or shadows are boosted too much. With subjects like fire, forcing highlight recovery or flattening bright tones can turn smooth color transitions into stepped bands, especially in the warm mid-high tones.

To get closer to the JPEG look:

  • Start with a neutral/standard profile rather than heavy tone shaping.
  • Avoid strong dynamic range compression.
  • Use only gentle highlight recovery.
  • Don’t push exposure, brightness, or shadows aggressively.
  • Match white balance first, then fine-tune contrast carefully.

Yes, some of this is “Canon processing magic,” but much of the difference is tone mapping and color rendering. A good reference is Canon Digital Photo Professional, since it can read the camera’s metadata and show a rendering close to the in-camera JPEG. Use that look as a target, then aim for subtle adjustments in ART rather than strong highlight/shadow corrections.

UniqueBot

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4y ago

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