6 useless camera settings when you shoot in Raw

Monday 29 September 2025, 16:32 by Nando Harmsen | 7,193 views | 7 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

A camera has a huge number of settings. Are you a Raw photographer? Then there are quite a few that are of no use to you. These are six useless camera settings for a Raw photographer.

A camera is, of course, not intended exclusively for photographers who shoot in Raw format. Many photographers prefer to leave the processing to the camera. They are happy with the Jpeg photo from the camera.

Are you a Jpeg photographer? Or a Raw photographer? Some settings are specifically for the Jpeg photographer. They are pointless for the Raw photographer.
To make the Jpeg photo from the camera look as good as possible, there are specific settings available. If you shoot in Raw, they are of no use to you. You can ignore them or switch them off. The latter may be more important than you think.

I have listed six camera settings that are virtually useless for the Raw photographer. They are not in any particular order.

1. White balance

White balance provides the desired colour balance in the photo. You can set this automatically or manually. For the Raw photographer, it is easy to adjust later, meaning the selected value has no effect on the photo.

Regardless of which white balance you have set, you can always adjust it later.
Even so, having the correct white balance can be useful. Incorrect colours make it difficult to check a photo on the camera's LCD screen. So the correct or almost correct setting is handy.

2. Colour space

The colour space can usually be set to sRGB or AdobeRGB. This colour space is linked to the photo file. For Jpeg, sRGB is the only good choice. But for a Raw file, it makes no difference what you set.

The colour space is not important on a camera. You set it, automatically, when you open the photo in your photo-editing software.
The colour space is assigned by the photo-editing programme you use. This is completely separate from the settings made on the camera.

3. Highlight priority / Active D-Lighting

With highlight priority, the camera deliberately underexposes the photo. The shadows are then lightened to achieve a greater dynamic range.

This uses the available brightness levels in the Raw file. If you shoot in Raw, you do this in your photo-editing programme. The setting then has no effect. This is exclusively for the Jpeg photographer.

Highlight priority is only for the Jpeg photographer. The Raw photographer has no use for it.
If you shoot with Nikon, be careful. Active D-Lighting, as it is called, can result in an underexposed Raw file. That is not what you want. So always switch this function off.

4. HDR

High Dynamic Range (HDR) creates a greater dynamic range by combining several photos with different exposures. If you have this function in the menu, do not use it when shooting in Raw.

Every HDR setting in the camera is intended for a Jpeg photo.
The result of the HDR function is always a Jpeg file. As a Raw photographer, you would rather have the option of doing this yourself. So choose exposure bracketing instead of HDR.

5. Picture style / Picture control

The picture style, also known as picture control or film simulation, gives the photo a particular appearance. It is essentially a preset in the camera. This is exclusively for photographers who shoot in Jpeg.

Picture control is applied to a Jpeg photo. Not to the Raw photo.
Although the picture style does not apply to a Raw file, information about the picture style is included. You can often call this up in the photo-editing programme you use.

Sometimes a picture style can be useful, for example black and white. You can then better judge what the photo will look like in black and white. However, the Raw file will never have that setting.

6. High ISO noise reduction

When you often shoot at high ISO values, noise can occur. The camera can partly remove that noise. But the result is only useful for a Jpeg photo. In Raw, the setting is saved but not applied.

Pay attention to the difference. High ISO noise reduction is not the same as long exposure noise reduction. The latter is useful when you shoot in Raw.
Many cameras offer two noise reduction functions. Long exposure noise reduction can be useful for the Raw photographer. It is high ISO noise reduction that is pointless for the Raw photographer.

Do you know of any more functions that are pointless when you shoot in Raw? Let us know in a comment below this post.

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About the author

Nando Harmsen has been photographing for more than 40 years. He specialises in wedding photography and landscape photography. Nando also gives talks, workshops, masterclasses and photo trips, and regularly reviews new and interesting equipment.

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7 comments

Jan Kleinjan wrote on Tuesday 30 September 2025 at 10:42 | reply
Thanks Nando for your RAW tips.
I only shoot in RAW with a Nikon Z8 and find my shots on the dark side. What did you expect? Active D-lighting was turned on!
Turned it off right away. Tomorrow I'm going mushroom hunting, let's see if your tip works. Thanks again.
Translated from Dutch.

Rob wrote on Tuesday 30 September 2025 at 14:28 | reply
What are the best settings on a Canon R5 where the photos are saved in RAW on the CF Express card and also simultaneously (as a backup) in JPG on the second SD card?
Translated from Dutch.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Tuesday 30 September 2025 at 15:28 | reply
Nando, I thank you for writing this article. Still, I have another question about it that ties in with Rob's question.
When photographing in jpg, it is important to use the right Picture Style. I then wonder whether in that case you are not constantly busy adjusting a Picture Style. One time you photograph a landscape with the 'landscape' Picture Style and the next moment you photograph a portrait. If you don't change the Picture Style, you may not get the correct skin tones. I could go on giving examples, but you understand what I mean. To be honest, that seems a bit impractical to me and I also think that most jpg photographers are not constantly busy adjusting Picture Styles. How would you deal with it?
You will say: photograph in RAW. Indeed, I've been doing that for years already??
Translated from Dutch.

Eddy wrote on Tuesday 30 September 2025 at 16:02 | reply
What about the Vignetting correction ? Presumably only useful for jpeg ?
Translated from Dutch.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Tuesday 30 September 2025 at 18:26 | reply
Eddy, vignetting correction is a lens correction and lens correction applies to both jpg and raw
Translated from Dutch.

Peter Heins wrote on Wednesday 1 October 2025 at 15:39 | reply
Why do you make a backup in jpeg if you photograph in RAW by default? The point of that escapes me. Suppose something were to go wrong with your RAW card, then you have jpeg as a backup, but those have already been edited. So there isn't that much latitude in the jpegs that you can still edit them. A jpeg doesn't have 5 stops of latitude in the exposure, that you could still save. Then I would put RAW on both cards. I myself never make backups, I have 2 sd cards in the camera and another 10 in a little box with me, I switch a lot. In Iceland I had a different sd card for each day and immediately made a backup at the hotel on my La Cie external drive with sd slot. Then the card went into the box and that way I used a different card every day.
Translated from Dutch.

Mac wrote on Thursday 2 October 2025 at 08:13 | reply
@Donald,

lens correction only applies to jpg as well, and not to raw.
Because vignetting and distortion are indeed properties of a lens, but the correction is applied to the image, so a jpg is created. A raw will never have lens correction, the only thing it does contain is the lens information, so that the correction can be applied automatically in a raw converter.
Translated from Dutch.

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