Not everyone has time to shoot RAW and process their images. Creative Styles offer you one way to change the look of your images right in camera. Here’s how:
My settings
Personally, I shoot most my stills (travel, street, etc.) in the Standard Creative Style, with these tweaks:
- Contrast -3 – to have a little bit more DR
- Saturation 0
- Sharpness +3
If I need a lower saturation, I switch over to Neutral, where the same settings apply. You could also lower the Saturation in the standard creative style, but I like how Neutral looks by default.
Notes
Try to judge the changes on a calibrated monitor. I use an iMac calibrated with an X-Rite i1Display Pro (Amazon, B&H). Don’t rely on the colors you see on the back LCD or viewfinder!
Here are the steps you can take if you’re new to this:
- First, shoot a few scenes in all the default profiles.
- Compare them on a monitor and find the closest to your vision or liking.
- Tweak that in steps. First -3, 0 and +3 on Contrast, then bring it back to zero, and repeat for Saturation and Sharpness. You’ll end up with nine images.
- Study these to find the closest to your liking. Do you need any changes to it?
- If yes, tweak the appropriate value.
- Shoot!
