Aperture 2.1.4 w/canon g10 RAW sunburst render wrong

[jjue]

I've noticed that when Apple's Aperture 2 displays my underwater Canon G10 RAW pictures of sunbursts, the sunbursts look like they are rendered wrong - dark ring around burst and really blown out. See attached photos as it's easier to see than describe.

Both photos use default settings, the "aperture214_g10RAW.jpg" was exported using Aperture 2.1.4 while the "photoshopCS4_g10RAW.jpg" was exported with Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Anyone have problems with this? Is there a setting I need to change to get it right?

Thanks!

jason

 

[M_Bipartitus]

There are quite a few settings that are available in Aperture for RAW conversion. It looks as though the Aperture photo is more saturated, and higher contrast, so I'd start with lowering the "boost" settings and sharpening under the "RAW Fine Tuning" adjustments. If that doesn't help enough, I would use "Levels" setting the channel to blue

 

[jjue]

Thanks. I will try to play around with the settings more. Reducing boost does help but there is still some clipping. I've noticed this problem isn't isolated to just Aperture but is system wide to Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6.

Anyone else have this problem?

 

[M_Bipartitus]

The render system used by all Apple software (Aperature, iphoto, finder previews...) are all the same. The only difference is how much control you have over the process.

I find that I often have to use the "exposure recovery" and/or "highlights" controls unless I set the camera to a -2/3 or -1/3 exposure compensation on the camera.

 

[jjue]

Thanks for the tips. I assume you have similar photos (sunbursts) shot with Canon RAW? And you have no problems like mine?

I was wondering if I can ask you to download my cr2 file and see if you get the same results? I'm trying to narrow the problem down and am almost going to submit it as a bug to Apple.

http://www.jasonjue.com/public/canonRaw.zip

Regards,

Jason

 

[M_Bipartitus]

I can take a look at it. I normally shoot a 5D underwater in RAW, but I have not had many problems. I will often use the recovery and highlight controls to fine tune photos like this one.

A few similar photos from this year (all shot RAW and rendered in Aperture):

This is a similar shot, but not my favorite composition:
Cozumel '09 - _MG_1742

A black and white shot. I don't recall how the color version looked.
Cozumel '09 - _MG_1625

This shot has a tendency to look strange depending on the specific monitor or printer I use for it. The top almost has a sunburst that looks very green on some printers and very light on others. It could be a color gamut issue.

Cozumel '09 - _MG_1119

 

[tunakat]

I seem to recall Eric Cheng at WetPixel mentioning this same problem, with sunballs.

His fix was to use Canon's DPP for the RAW file processing, which gave the best results.

Seeing as you own the Canon G10 you may have already tried this, but I just thought I would mention it.

Good Luck.

 

[jjue]

Thanks guys for the replies. I posted my issue on wetpixel and Eric Cheng said it was just the Apple RAW converter. It does look a lot better with DPP and I think I will just process those particular files with DPP.

I managed to tweak a few settings to make it look decent (boost, etc) but the other RAW converter default settings still look better. Oh well.

jason