This is only applicable to Canon Raw files. Select the "Convert Raw Image" menu option or press the "Convert" button to display the Raw convert dialog. Different cameras allow different raw conversion adjustments and so the contents of the raw conversion dialog will vary according to the camera model. The screenshot below shows the raw conversion dialog for the Canon EOS 10D:
The raw conversion method can be set to "Normal", "Linear" or "Combined". All three conversion modes are available for 10D, 300D, D30, D60, G2, G3, G5, S30, S40, S45, S50, S60 and Pro1 raw files but only "Normal" mode is available for the G1 and Pro90. If "Linear" or "Combined" conversion is selected for G1 or Pro90 raw files they will be converted using "Normal" conversion.
Select "Normal" conversion for normal, well exposed shots. This uses the standard Canon raw conversion routines and allows you to set the white balance, saturation, contrast and sharpness.
Select "Linear" conversion to convert the raw file with the minimum of post processing. This takes the raw sensor data and only applies white balance correction. The image will appear very dark because it has a gamma value of 1.0 from the camera and has not been adjusted to a gamma of 2.2 normally used for displaying images on a PC screen. Canon's raw conversion routines do not allow the saturation, contrast and sharpness to be adjusted when using linear conversion. This can result in images that look poorly focused and is simply because the image has not been sharpened. See Post Processing and Linear Conversion for suggested post-processing settings for converting raw files using linear conversion.
"Combined" conversion is useful for shots which are slightly over exposed and shots with a lot of highlight detail. "Combined" conversion isn't suitable for all images but it can be very effective with slightly over-exposed images. It is most effective with G3, G5, G6, S45, S50, S60, D30, D60, 10D and 300D images which contain 36-bits per pixel but it is also useful with G2, S30 and S40 raw files which contain 30-bits per pixel. "Combined" conversion converts the raw file using normal conversion and combines this with the image converted using linear conversion. Linear conversion has a better dynamic range than normal conversion and this makes it possible to extract more highlight detail from the image. One of the problems with only using linear conversion to extract highlight detail is that the shadow detail starts to show noise. "Combined" conversion avoids this problem by combining the highlight information from the linear conversion with the shadow and mid-range detail from the normal conversion. Combined conversion is based on an idea first suggested by Fred Miranda and is used in BreezeBrowser with his kind permission. It is similar in concept to his excellent Highlight Recover action for Photoshop.
Smart noise reduction uses sophisticated image processing techniques to filter out noise from digital images with virtually no loss of image detail. All digital cameras images have noise in them and this noise becomes more apparent at higher ISO settings. The smart noise reduction filter uses the shooting data stored in the image file to select optimal settings for the camera at the given ISO setting and shutter speed. Select "Normal" for most images, "High" for high ISO images where noise is severe and "Low" for images where noise is less of a problem. If you don't require noise reduction the filter can be set to "OFF". The smart noise filter is described in more detail here.
Select a preset white balance setting from the white balance
combo box. A custom whitepoint can be selected by clicking on the
image. The best way to do this is to select an area of neutral
gray as opposed to an area that is white. This is because white
areas may be overexposed and not contain any useful color balance
information. When a custom whitepoint is selected the preview
image is updated to show the new setting. It may be necessary to
try clicking on several different areas to get the best color
balance.
Selecting a custom white point isn't the same as selecting a
custom white balance when the picture is taken. The custom white
point samples a single pixel from which the white balance is
calculated. This can be useful when trying to fine tune the white
balance by clicking on a number of points until the optimum white
balance is found.
When a custom white balance is set in the camera the camera
averages a large area of pixels to calculate the white balance.
This works much better when using a gray card than selecting a
custom white balance. This is because it is averaging the pixels
over an area and minor differences due to noise in the image are
averaged out.
The saturation, contrast and sharpness settings can also be selected from the combo boxes. These settings are disabled when linear conversion is selected. If you intend to edit the image in a photo editor after converting it is probably best to set the saturation, contrast and sharpness to low. This will reduce the amount by which the image is modified during the conversion process and preserve as much image information as possible for editing later.
Canon Powershot S45, S50, S60, G3, G5, Pro1 raw files: Raw files from these cameras have an additional raw conversion parameter called "Photo Effect". The value of this setting effects the other raw conversion settings as shown in the table below:
| Photo Effect | White Balance | Saturation, Contrast, Sharpness |
| Normal | Enabled | Disabled |
| Vivid | Enabled | Disabled |
| Neutral | Enabled | Disabled |
| Low sharpening | Enabled | Disabled |
| Sepia | Disabled | Disabled |
| Black and White | Disabled | Disabled |
| Custom | Enabled | Enabled |
PowerShot S60 and PowerShot Pro1 raw files: You may also set the exposure compensation from -2 EV to +2 EV when converting raw files.
Canon EOS D60: You may also set the exposure compensation from -2 EV to +2 EV and the color tone setting when converting raw files. The color tone setting adjusts the colors of the images to compensate for different skin tones.
Canon EOS 10D raw files (also EOS 300D/Digital Rebel/Kiss): You may also set the exposure compensation from -2 EV to +2 EV and the color tone setting when converting raw files. The color tone setting adjusts the colors of the images to compensate for different skin tones. You can also set the color space to sRGB or AdobeRGB.
Select "False color filter" to enable the false color filter during conversion. This is an additional stage which removes false colors that can appear in areas of fine detail and high contrast (e.g. the branches of a tree against a bright sky). The false color filter increases the processing time for raw files but will ensure the best possible quality.
Select "Use this white balance for all images" to convert several images using the same white balance as the displayed image. This option is automatically enabled when a custom white balance is selected. If this option is deselected when the white balance is set to a custom white point the white balance automatically reverts to the "As Shot" setting.
Press "Convert" to convert the image or "Convert all" to convert all the Raw files in the directory using the same white balance, saturation, contrast and sharpness settings. Note: In thumbnail mode the button is labelled "Convert Selected" and only the currently selected files will be converted when it is pressed.
Converted files are stored in the "Converted" subdirectory unless you have changed the default output directory (see Preferences) or have entered a new output directory in the dialog. The output directory can be an absolute pathname (e.g. "D:\Photos\Converted") or a relative one (e.g. "Converted"). BreezeBrowser will create the output directory if it does not exist already.
Files may be converted to JPEG, 8-bit JPEG2000, 16-bit JPEG2000, 8-bit TIFF, 16-bit TIFF, 8-bit PNG or 16-bit PNG. JPEG uses lossy compression and JPEG2000 images are lossless if the quality is set to 100 and lossy otherwise. TIFF images are lossless and are uncompressed (BreezeBrowser does not output compressed TIFF files because LZW compression is covered by a patent owned by Unisys). PNG files use lossless compression and result in smaller files than TIFF images.
A color profile can be tagged to the image (see Preferences) and if a monitor
profile is also selected in Preferences, the preview image will
be displayed using the selected profile. Click on the
"..." button to change the selected color profile. The
preview image will be updated to show the effect of the profile.
Embedding (or tagging) a color profile in an image does not
modify the image data in any way. What it does is includes
information about the color space of the image which can be used
by other color profile aware applications for accurate color
representation.
If "Open in image editor after converting" is selected BreezeBrowser will open the image using the settings defined in Preferences. A confirmation dialog will be displayed if this option is selected when converting more than one image.
NOTES:
The raw conversion dialog for Canon EOS-1D, 1D Mark II and 1DS raw images is slightly different. The Canon EOS-1D Mark II raw conversion dialog is shown below together with the additional conversion settings dialog (from pressing the the "More settings" button):
You may select normal or linear conversion. The "combined" raw conversion method is not available for EOS-1D images as it has little or no advantage over normal conversion.
The white balance may be selected from one of the preset white balances. Alternatively a custom white point may be selected by clicking on a white or light gray area on the preview image. You may also enter a color temperature by setting the white balance to "Color temp" and entering the color temperature in the edit box. Color temperatures may be set in the range 2800 to 10,000 to the nearest 100.
The color matrix can be selected from one of the four different sRGB settings or AdobeRGB.
Click on the "Sharpening..." button to set the sharpening options during raw conversion. The sharpness level may be set from off to very weak through to very strong. The sharpness object setting (also known as edge frequency) controls how sharpening is applied to the image. Please consult your camera manual for a full description of the sharpening settings.
Click on the "Exposure comp" button to adjust the exposure compensation during raw conversion. The exposure compensation can be adjusted from -2 EV to +2 EV.
The white balance (except custom white point), color matrix and exposure compensation settings are stored in the raw file when they are adjusted and are automatically reloaded next time the image is converted. This feature is not available if the image is read-only.
An additional checkbox is displayed when converting Canon EOS-1DS raw images to allow the "False resolution filter" to be selected. This option is not available when converting raw files from other camera models.
All other settings (e.g. post-processing options and output format) are the same for all types of cameras.
Note: The adjustment of EOS-1D gamma curves is not supported in this version of BreezeBrowser
It is often useful to be able to select a custom white balance from one image and use it when converting several images. One common use of this is when you shoot a reference shot with a gray card followed by a series of shots with the same lighting setup. Another common use is when converting a sequence of shots that make up a panarama.
To use the same custom white balance for several images it is best to switch to thumbnail mode. Select the images to convert together with the reference image. Next right click on the reference image and select "Convert Raw Image..." from the menu. When the raw conversion dialog is displayed select the white balance as required. Then enable the "Use this white balance for all images" checkbox and click on "Convert All" and all the selected images will be converted using the same white balance.
A color profile can be embedded in JPEG, PNG and TIFF images output by the raw converter. The color profile does not modify the image data in any way. Instead it adds information which defines the color space of the image and is used by some applications (e.g. Photoshop) for more accurate color reproduction. Separate color profiles may be assigned for linear and normal raw conversion. Color profiles are assigned in Preferences under the "Raw Conversion" tab.
If a display monitor color profile is assigned in Preferences the raw preview display will use the assigned raw conversion color profile to display accurate colors. This is very useful when adjusting the color balance or picking a custom white point. This is particularly important when converting Canon EOS-1D, 1D Mark II and 1DS raw files with color matrix 4 (AdobeRGB) selected.
A number of post processing options are available after converting the raw image. One advantage of performing the post processing in BreezeBrowser is that it is applied to the 16-bit image data (except G1 and Pro90IS raw files) for the best possible quality even if the final image is saved as 8-bit. To display the post processing dialog first enable post processing and then click on the "Settings..." button.
A histogram showing the intensity (aka luminoscity) distribution of the image. The horizontal axis represents the intensity with black on the left and progressively lighter grays as you move to the right ending up with white. The vertical axis represents the relative number of pixels in the image at any given intensity. Therefore an underexposed image will be shifted towards the darker grays on the left and an overexposed image will be shifted to the right. A correctly exposed image will generally have a full tonal range from black to white.
The histogram can be used to help adjust the levels of the image. Levels adjustment can be turned off, set to "auto levels" or manual. When adjusting the levels it is a good idea to set the contrast raw conversion setting to "low". This is because contrast adjustment is the same as moving the black and white points in a bit and so if you set contrast to "high" some of the image data will be lost.
When manual levels is selected three markers are displayed under the histogram. The left hand marker represents the black point, the middle represents the mid point and the right hand one represents the white point. The markers can be moved by clicking on them and dragging them with the mouse. Normally the black point is moved to the point where the graph just starts to rise and the white point is moved to where it tails off to zero - as shown above.All pixels to the left of the black point are set to black and so if you moved the black point to the middle of the histogram everything that was mid-gray or darker in the original image will be set to black. Similarly everything to the right of the white point will be set to white. Adjusting the mid point has a similar effect to adjusting the gamma: it makes the image lighter or darker while keeping the white and black points the same. Move the mid point slider to the left to lighten the image and to the right to darken the image.
When auto levels is selected the black and white points are represented as percentages. For the black point the percentage represents the percentage of the pixels in the image that are at or below the black point. Similarly the percentage for the white point represents the percentage of pixels in the image which are at or above the white point. Setting both the black and white point percentages to 0 ensures that no shadow or highlight detail is lost and the darkest pixel in the image is black and the lightest is white. In practice most images contain a certain amount of noise which can result in spurious pixels which are outside the range of the rest of the picture and so the percentages are normally set to a low value (e.g. 0.01%) rather than 0%.
Click on the saturation checkbox to adjust the saturation. Setting a value of 100 leaves the image unchanged and lower values reduce the saturation with a value of 0 giving a black and white image with no color at all. The saturation can be increased by setting a value of more than 100, but there is a limit to how high this can be set before the image starts to look artificial. With the exception of linear conversion the saturation value should probably be set in the range 80 to 120.
Click on the gamma checkbox to adjust the gamma. Setting a value of 1.0 leaves the image unchanged. Adjusting the gamma leaves the white and blackpoints unchanged and adjusts the middle values in the histogram. Setting a value below one darkens the image and increases the highlight detail. Setting the gamma above one lightens the image and increases the shadow detail. While it is not possible to recover data that was not captured by the camera's sensor it is possible to compensation to some extent for incorrect exposure by adjusting the levels and the gamma.
Click on the resize image checkbox to resize the image using high quality interpolation. BreezeBrowser uses a sinc filter for resizing images and this gives better results than the bicubic interpolation used by many image editors. Set the maximum size of the image in pixels. This defines a bounding box and the image will be resized t the maximum size that will fit in the bounding box. The image can be resized to make it larger or smaller.
Click on sharpen image to sharpen and then select the
sharpening method from the drop down list. Unsharp mask
sharpening is similar to the sharpening method found in most
image editors. The sharpening amount is expressed as a percentage
in some editors (e.g. 0.7 would be expressed as 70%). The amount
of sharpening required depends on the image but a good starting
point is radius=0.5, amount =0.7 and threshold=0. Generally
speaking images need more sharpening when printed than they do
for displaying on a computer screen. Sharpening is usually
applied as the last step when editing images and so if you intend
to edit the image after raw conversion it is probably best to
turn sharpening off and apply it after the image has been edited.
HQ style sharpening uses the same sharpening method as
BreezeBrowser's HQ display mode. The amount of sharpening applied
is expressed as a percentage and a value between 75% and 90% will
produce similar results to the HQ display mode.
Click on the "Preview" button to update the preview display in the raw conversion dialog or click on the "Auto preview" check box to have the preview updated automatically every time a setting is changed.
This is a shot of St Andrews Church, Sherborne St John, Hampshire, UK taken with a Canon EOS D30 and under exposed by approximately 2 stops. The first step is to adjust the levels:
The result is better than the original, but there is still very little detail in the trees:
The next step is to increase the gamma to improve the shadow detail and a value of 2.0 was found to work well (you can get similar results by adjusting the mid point level instead of the gamma). The image still looked a bit pale and so the saturation was increased to 120 giving the final result below:
Here is the same image using linear raw conversion with the saturation set to 240 and gamma to 2.6:
Notes: The above images were all converted, processed, resized and sharpened using BreezeBrowser v1.4 from a Canon EOS D30 raw file.
The advantage of linear conversion is that the images have a greater dynamic range with more shadow and highlight detail and it gives the user a lot of control in how to interpret the "raw" data. This takes more effort and isn't necessary for most images but can give very good results with some images.
When linear conversion is selected the conversion routines only apply white balance correction. The Canon raw conversion routines do not sharpen the image or adjust the gamma, saturation and contrast when linear conversion is selected. This results in a very dark, dull and sometimes soft looking image. This can be corrected using BreezeBrowser's post processing options to sharpen the image and adjust the levels, gamma and saturation. The settings will vary from image to image and the results are highly subjective, but here are some suggested initial values for different cameras:
D30, D60, 10D and 300D images
Levels: auto, black point 0.01%, white point 0.01%
Saturation: 200
Gamma: 2.2
Sharpening: radius 0.5, amount 0.7, threshold 0
S30 and S40 images
Levels: auto, black point 0.01%, white point 0.01%
Saturation: 200
Gamma: 2.2
Sharpening: radius 1, amount 3, threshold 0
G2 and G3 images
Levels: auto, black point 0.01%, white point 0.01%
Saturation: 200
Gamma: 2.2
Sharpening: radius 0.5, amount 1, threshold 0
As much of the original EXIF data as possible is written to converted files output as JPEG or TIFF images. For best results it is advisable to keep the THM files which accompany the CRW files. This is because the THM files contain the full EXIF data. If the THM file is not available the EXIF data will be recreated from the CIFF data stored in the CRW file and some data such as the subject distance will not be available.
IPTC data is saved in JPEG and TIFF files when converting all raw files.
BreezeBrowser uses Canon's DLLs to convert raw files as these currently give the best available quality. Canon do not state what color space is used but it appears to be very similar to sRGB. BreezeBrowser does not modify the output from the Canon raw conversion routines unless post processing has been selected. The Canon PowerShot Pro 1 and Canon EOS 10D, 20D, 300D, 1D, 1D Mark II and 1DS cameras allow the color space to be set to sRGB or Adobe RGB.
A group of raw files can be converted in a batch using the same settings by first selecting the required images in thumbnail mode and then displaying the raw conversion dialog and pressing the "Convert selected" button.
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