[altopiet]

I've used FastStone image viewer for quite a while, working mainly with DNG files. Recently I had to shoot a few rugby matches of my son, where I had to use Jpeg for the faster continuous shooting.
At some stage I decided to do a bit of RAW+ shooting...Unfortunately, when I imported both the DNG and Jpeg file of the same shot into FastStone Image Viewer, and using the compare function, I saw that there didn't seem to be any difference between the RAW and Jpeg, no matter what outrageous Jpeg settings I use in my camera (saturation, contrast etc).
When I decided to import the same files into Picasa 3, the difference between the RAW file and the camera Jpeg can clearly be seen.

Can anyone explain to me why this happens, and why FastStone Viewer are not capable to do such comparison, or am I missing some sort of setting that would allow me to see the real images.

[stormtech]

My guess would be that Faststone is using the embedded jpeg in the raw file for viewing thus they would be identical.

Edit to add - there is a setting in Faststone to use the embedded jpeg for faster raw viewing which you can turn off. In the top menu, hit "settings", then choose "settings". Then hit the "RAW" tab. The first setting in that window is "view raw files in" where you can choose the embedded jpeg or the actual size. I can guess that this setting in your program is set to "embedded preview image" which will use the embedded jpeg. Change it to ""actual size" and you should see the difference.

[altopiet]

Thanks Stan, that did the trick