I've shot hundreds of pictures from a wedding in sunny Toscana, Italy with a new Sony Hybrid Camera. They're all shot in RAW and looks good in the camera preview. When I import the pictures to Aperture, they look the same in the "filmstrip":
But then, after selecting them, they change into extremely overexposed versions that can't be used.
I don't get the same issue when I open them with Photoshop. What is going on?
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
Thanks for your reply Léonie. I haven't set the camera to anything special. It's default settings. Many of them in automatic (P) to be able to shoot quickly on the go. Both the camera, Bridge and Camera RAW (Opening in Photoshop) shows the images with correct exposure. I can even tune them down a lot when editing the RAW format. But in Aperture it all whiteout. Even pulling the exposure down to minimum don't help. This can't be the cameras fault?
Image in Bridge and then in Aperture (no editing done)
It's default settings.
But check, what the default settings in the automatic program include. This looks suspiciously like the default did include an overexposure of one f-stop.
Photoshop and bridge do respect some of the camera default settings for certain cameras written to the RAW file and correct the RAW, but Aperture will only use the "big three" that Keith Barkley pointed out.
You may want to check Aperture's RAW fine tuning settings, if the "Boost" parameters have been set to high values, but first make sure, that your camera is really not applying any effects at all, when taking raw pictures.
Have you used any in-camera settings, when you took the photos? Something similar to Nikon's "Active D-Lighting"? Aperture ignores most camera specific in-camera setting tags, when developing the RAW and only applies general tags like white balance. This is why RAW images developed in Aperture may look differently from the camera generated previews. Disable all camera effects, when shooting RAW, or what your camera will beshowing you is not the RAW you will be seeing in Aperture.
This is explained in Keith Barkley's user tip:
The Big Three: Setting your camera for the best Aperture RAW results
Here is another example of overexposed RAW with a Sony camera, imported into iPhoto, that uses the same RAW developement as Aperture:
Re: Bad conversion for RAW file with Maverick
In this case the camera is the SONY Alpha A6000, that is not (yet) supported by Aperture/iPhoto, but iPhoto developes the RAW nevertheless.
I borrowed the camera so I can't check it now. But why would the camera overexpose that much and then change the image afterwards, when the the setting was set to auto when I did the shot?
I've just installed Aperture and done nothing with its settings. But the RAW fine tuning was on full Boost! Toning this down to half helped a lot. But now it looks kind of gray.
Anyways, this was not a good start for Aperture and me. My experience is that instead of being a sofware that help make good images great, it ***** them up as soon as it gets the chance. Then you have to do all sort of tweaks and tuning to get them back in decent shape.
But thanks again for your help!
Toning this down to half helped a lot. But now it looks kind of gray.
By default the settings should be o.k. Leave the "hue" boost at a higher value.
It's a pity, that your first encounter with Aperture is this bad.
Then you have to do all sort of tweaks and tuning to get them back in decent shape.
Is this your first encounter with RAW images as well? RAW photos will generally need a lot of tweaking, since the RAW format is the naked data right of the sensor, without any effects and adjustments applied. RAW is the image format for those photographers that want to develope and tweak the digital negative themselves. If you are happy with the RAW developement that your camera does, consider to set the camera to shoot high quality JPEGS or TIFF images. Then you will have the RAW developement of the camera as the starting point for your own tweaking and do not need to start from point zero and do the basic adjustments as well.
First off, Aperture is a professional tool, and professional tools often have a learning curve.
Second, a fully featured high end DSLR is *also* a professional tool, and has a learning curve.
Third, Aperture and the DSLR can interract in unexpected ways, which *also* requires a learning curve.
To answer your question, when set in certain ways, the camera might purposely overexpose, and then darken the resulting data to get better dynamic range (Kind of an ETTR). The raw data - the data right from the sensor - contains that overexposure. Aperture is not privy to all the internal JPEG algorithms in the camera, so all it can do is show the overexposed raw data. If you know the subsequent processing you can get the same results as the JPEG with raw tweaks.
What is the model number/name of your Sony camera?
Yes. That is one of the reasons I asked for the model number.
Why does my photos change after importing them?
