Manual fine tune vs. auto fine tune

[Ilan]

First I want to remark that I'm amazed how powerful Neat Image is! Making more than acceptable results out of obsolete noisy digital captures!

Now, exploring it I've some questions regarding my workflow
1. I made a "rough profile", then manual fine tune procedure, then auto complete, & save image...
I've noticed 3 things when executing auto fine tuning instead of manual fine tune
(of the same selected area, and after rough profile)
1-the noise qualty note is higher 94% vs. 83% as well the fine tune quality
88% vs. 75%
2-I get more green shades than yellow shades on the sliders values (less interpolated data)
3-the Noise reduction is stronger than in manual fine tune
after inspecting the 2 images in PS CS2 I found the manual fine tuned image having a better look to my eyes, although it gained a lower quality
note in the profile viewer.
What is your opinion?

second, regarding the exif data as embedded in the camera raw memory card database
it has no evidence of the altering setting(wb, sharpening, contrast, etc') made latter at the processing stage in Nikon Capture 4.3 raw convertor (and I suppose so its should be)
So I wonder what happens if the "auto profiling" or "auto match"
take in account the EXIF info (which is not relevant anymore after the settings were altered in the raw converter)
it can be easily fooled and end up with less than optimal results.
That is one reson why I stick to manual profiling.
Please enlighten this issue for me.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[NITeam]

Thank you for your kind words, I appreciate that.

I will try to answer your questions below:

Now, exploring it I've some questions regarding my workflow
1. I made a "rough profile", then manual fine tune procedure, then auto complete, & save image...
I've noticed 3 things when executing auto fine tuning instead of manual fine tune (of the same selected area, and after rough profile)

Please note that you don't need to select anything to use Auto Fine-Tune. This function is trying to find all necessary featureless areas automatically. In manual fine-tuning, you do this by hand.

1-the noise qualty note is higher 94% vs. 83% as well the fine tune quality
88% vs. 75%
2-I get more green shades than yellow shades on the sliders values (less interpolated data)
3-the Noise reduction is stronger than in manual fine tune after inspecting the 2 images in PS CS2 I found the manual fine tuned image having a better look to my eyes, although it gained a lower quality note in the profile viewer.
What is your opinion?

Your eyes are the best criterion in this situation.

I'll try to explain the results you observe. First of all, Auto Fine-Tune tried to find some flat featureless areas automatically. That process was potentially less accurate than your manual work based on visual assessment of manually-selected image areas because it is generally difficult for software to be more accurate than a human eye when trying to draw the distinction between featureless areas and area with features. In your test, this resulted in more areas selected by Auto Fine-Tune (you don't see them, Auto Fine-Tune does all this internally) than by yourself, and some of the selected areas could contain some fine details. Auto Fine-Tune analyzed more areas and, therefore, marked more sliders with green shadings in the equalizer, which amounted to a higher quality mark given to the profile. However, since some of these automatically analyzed areas could contain some fine details that were considered noise, this resulted in higher noise levels and stronger noise reduction in the very end.

So, the lesson is that manual fine-tuning may be more accurate than automatic one (which is to be expected, otherwise there wouldn't be manual fine-tuning in NI). However in most cases, the automatics works very well and there is no big difference between its results and results you could achieve by manual profiling. You still can control the results of auto fine-tuning by applying some manual fine-tuning using a couple of areas in the input image to see whether the equalizer values change a lot after each manual fine-tuning analysis. If they don't change then the auto fine-tuning results looks accurate.

So, manual fine-tuning is more time- and labour-consuming but potentially more accurate. Auto fine-tuning is faster and automatic but may produce slightly less accurate noise analysis. Auto fine-tuning usually works well on most images, and manual inverventions may only be required in some rare cases.

second, regarding the exif data as embedded in the camera raw memory card database it has no evidence of the altering setting(wb, sharpening, contrast, etc') made latter at the processing stage in Nikon Capture 4.3 raw convertor (and I suppose so its should be)
So I wonder what happens if the "auto profiling" or "auto match"
take in account the EXIF info

Actually, Auto Profile does not need to take into account the EXIF information. Auto Profile makes noise analysis based on the image content only (though the resulting profiles does include the EXIF data). Auto Match does need accurate EXIF information to do accurate profile matching. This matching difficulty can be resolved if you build and use profiles using images produced by exactly the same RAW conversion workflow and exactly the same converter RAW settings. In this case, your profiles will correctly match converted RAW images. If this is not possible to achieve with your RAW conversion workflow then you still can use Auto Profile and, of course, manual profiling.

Hope this helps.
Vlad