Why can’t I match my phone’s JPEG look when editing the RAW file?
Asked 8/12/2020
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2 answers
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I shoot mostly on a smartphone and usually use JPEG for convenience, but I switch to RAW when scenes have blown highlights, difficult clouds, or strange color. However, with some images I can’t get the RAW file to match the colors, white balance, and tonal balance of the phone’s JPEG no matter how I edit it. In my example, the JPEG has more pleasing sea colors and better whites/midtones, while the RAW looks harder to balance. Why does this happen, and how can I get closer to the JPEG look when processing RAW from a phone?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
2
This is likely due to the AI processing aspect of most phone cameras.
When a phone camera takes a photo its often (Especially on newer models) not as simple as taking a single sensor readout and processing it. They often are buffering frame the entire time the sensor and camera app are open, once you press the image button multiple exposures are taken (Unless you are in a pro mode where you have selected the shutter settings). The powerful processors in mobiles these days are also used to do a form of object & edge detection to do some 'Smart' sharpening around objects the phone thinks are the subject and they often have an option to add artificial bokeh (Defocus of background). Basically, a combination of complex algorithms are used to generate a standard out of Phone jpeg.
If you want to read more about how modern phones process images look up neural processing unit (NPU) Apple & Samsung are big players in this game. Verge Article
Whereas when you take a RAW photo on a mobile you are genuinely taking a single exposure from the sensor. You are limited with the data of that single frame to work with. A comment on why your RAW photo after processing looks different would be what software are you using, I’d imagine you could make these images basically look identical with enough editing especially of the HSL and cures in Lightroom.
Originally by user94406. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user94406
6y ago
0
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This is normal with phone cameras. A phone JPEG is often not just a simple rendering of one exposure: the camera may combine multiple frames and apply heavy computational processing such as HDR, local contrast, selective sharpening, tone mapping, and scene/object detection. That means the JPEG can contain processing choices that are difficult or impossible to recreate from a single RAW file.
RAW also starts flatter and less finished, so if your edit has too much shadow recovery or the wrong gamma/midtone curve, it can look worse than the out-of-camera JPEG even though it contains more editing latitude.
To get closer to the JPEG look, try:
- adjusting the tone curve/gamma, especially midtones
- being more restrained with shadow recovery
- fine-tuning white balance and saturation gradually
- starting from the original RAW in a capable editor rather than expecting a direct match immediately
In short: the phone JPEG may look better because the phone is doing advanced automated processing for you. RAW gives control, but you may need to rebuild that look manually.
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