Bruce Schultz wrote:I haven't found that a "baked" ISO/WB/Exposure from Canon, Sony, Panasonic RAW is easily reversed in post. Baked is baked, only Red R3D is truly fluid and changeable in all those parameters in my post experiences.
"Baked ISO" means that the linear raw values are multiplied uniformly before tonal compression. Note that it is a much simpler operation than tonal compression itself (which all BM, Canon and Arri cameras do, for example). It is easily reversible -- you simply divide the linear values after tonal expansion (linearization). Same for WB -- it is very similar to ISO except that in native camera space it does per channel multiplication (still a much simpler operation than tonal compression). In contrast, tonal compression will lose precision in the highlights, which is irreversible. Yet, people will object to the benign operation, and won't care for the lossy operation. (And I am not saying that tonal compression is bad, on the contrary -- it is very useful. But it is lossy.)
In post, the Gain control in a color corrector will manipulate both "ISO"/exposure and WB when working on a linear image. You don't need specific controls to adjust both of these in post, as long as you have a linear image (which doesn't mean that a good raw processor can't provide explicit controls, it certainly can).