ViewNX Picture Control

When you shoot Nikon RAW, the picture control that you have specified is not applied to the raw image. It is only applied to jpeg images. The picture control can still be applied using ViewNX. I downloaded Fuji Velvia, Kodak Ektachrome, and Kodak Kodachrome 2 pictures controls and installed them on my D90 and ViewNX.

You can create your own Picture Controls using ViewNX and you can find some on the web. I use the ones created by Jake Khuon. A website that goes more into the theory of it and has links to Jake's picture controls is: http://esfotoclix.com/tech/picctrl/. The url to the picture controls is: http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/photography/NIKON/CUSTOMPC/.

I have taken a RAW picture that I took using a D40 and applied each picture control. A lot of the time I couldn't see much difference, but occasionally the difference was dramatic. Looking at the following images, it is difficult to see the differences between the different Picture Controls. To see them better, you can open a couple of browsers on this blog and then select the various pictures to view them side by side. Here are the images.

Standard

Neutral

Vivid

Monochrome

D2XMODE1

D2XMODE2

D2XMODE3

Portrait

Landscape

Fuji Velvia

Kodak Extachrome

Kodak Kodachrome 2

D40 Recorded Value


Picture Controls can be used to produce a certain look automatically or allow you to wait until you start processing RAW files to see which Picture Control looks best.

With ViewNX there is the ability to create you own Picture Controls. There are a number of sites on the web that describe how to do this.