Unfixable reds...

Oct 26, 2013
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tpatana said:
Red is often tough for Canons. Someone told me it's "feature" on the Canon sensors.

Nothing to do with Canon in my experience. Reds have been difficult to capture with the Olympus cameras I have had, too. Plus, red was difficult to capture with print film as well. Cameras have never replicated color exactly. Reds just seem to be a bit more problematic, in my experience.
 
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Jan 29, 2011
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Khristo said:
Can someone explain why it should be necessary to create a custom colour profile in Lightroom?

As I understand it, when i import a raw from my 5D3 into Lightroom, the software recognises it as a 5D3 file and applies Adobe's standard profile for the 5D3 (unless I have set something else). If that is correct, I'd hope that Adobe's profile has a little more work behind it than I'm likely to get out of my own effort, and even then, a profile created with a Colorchecker is going to be influenced ("coloured") by x-rite as well to some extent(?).

I get that if I am trying to achieve maximum colour accuracy in a specific shot and am concerned about the colour balance of the incident light lighting the scene, then a custom profile for that scene/incident light should theoretically help. But generally speaking, is my 5D3 so different to other 5D3s that a general custom profile for my 5D3 is going to be 'better' that the standard Adobe 5D3 profile?

(I do have a Colorchecker, so I'm not trying to construct an argument not to invest in one!)

The illuminant. The idea of profiling is that you make a custom profile for difficult lighting and or colourful subjects. I have custom camera profiles for each body and each lens with my studio lights with the individual modifiers and also my 600-EX-RT's. The point is different light sources reflect off the subject differently and so the colours appear different under each light source.

The colour patches on the ColorChecker are an industry standard and very carefully printed, that is why they are so expensive, so there shouldn't be a variation of any magnitude to the information the profiling software gets. Also most of the colourchecker style charts have a 'use by' date, they will degrade over time with exposure to UV light.

Obviously Adobe can't profile for the specific light sources you take your images under and the generic profiles are not that good, I don't know why.
 
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OK. That meets with my understanding that it's about the profile of the light rather than any variability within the specific camera or camera model. I thought I must have been missing something from the way people talk about "calibrating the camera" as if it's like calibrating a monitor. In fact it's calibrating the processing software for the specific lighting and camera/lens so the software renders the original scene colours "correctly" based on the Colorchecker chips - except of course where you want the specific lighting characteristics to show (e.g sunsets, golden hour).

Having said that though, I guess there is an argument that if you calibrate for "normal" light, and then take an image in different lighting, the effect of that different lighting might be considered correct depending on what you are trying to achieve in relation to the corrections the observer's eye/brain makes. That also makes x-rite's dual illuminant calibration a little more sensible as a one-size-fits-all solution.
 
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Jan 29, 2011
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Khristo said:
OK. That meets with my understanding that it's about the profile of the light rather than any variability within the specific camera or camera model. I thought I must have been missing something from the way people talk about "calibrating the camera" as if it's like calibrating a monitor. In fact it's calibrating the processing software for the specific lighting and camera/lens so the software renders the original scene colours "correctly" based on the Colorchecker chips - except of course where you want the specific lighting characteristics to show (e.g sunsets, golden hour).

Having said that though, I guess there is an argument that if you calibrate for "normal" light, and then take an image in different lighting, the effect of that different lighting might be considered correct depending on what you are trying to achieve in relation to the corrections the observer's eye/brain makes. That also makes x-rite's dual illuminant calibration a little more sensible as a one-size-fits-all solution.

That is a very good way of wording it!

As for the second paragraph, the eye/brain is incredibly easy to fool and a very unreliable judge of 'correct' colours. My way of thinking most of the time, get it as close as correct initially via profiles etc, then change colours to taste to get the mood or feeling you either want or believed was there.

Output colour is always subjective, but these threads normally start with somebody saying they can't get good/accurate reds, they can, they just have to know how to do it and camera profiles go a long way towards doing that.
 
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Feb 26, 2012
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AB
That coat looks almost fluorescent, which can be an issue too by being redder than normal, especially if you're at a higher ISO (might be the case here?) and you could lose more red tonality if you're shooting under FL lighting with a poor CRI so red gain is pumped and red DR is even worse than usual.
Other than that, I've only had some difficulty with keeping reds from clipping in some instances with peculiar flowers that needed to be exposed with -2EV or more compensation at times to keep red from clipping in direct sunlight.
 
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So I was reading this: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6497352654/get-more-accurate-color-with-camera-calibration-
and this line:
" it doesn't matter which color space - Adobe RGB or sRGB - I select in camera, but I always process the files in AdobeRGB since it gives a wider color gamut. You should use the same color space for both the calibration shot and subsequent images which will use the same profile."
made me realize right away I was in sRGB. I have changed it and we will see where it goes from here. I will also look into the color checker in the future if this doesn't help things but I really think it will. I believe all my cameras except this one are set to adobeRGB and have not had this issue with them.
 
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Unfixable reds...why do you need to fix them? It seems to me that your difficulty is improper exposure.
You have a shown histogram capabilities while in live view...use it...no more blown colors...ever.

I starting shooting in live view-manual mode using the displayed histogram to expose to the right.
One must remember that the LV image is a jpeg representation of the image and you must neutralize your
in-camera picture styles for that histogram to be more accurate representation of the RAW image.

Trying to achieve accurate colors without using that passbook is an exercise in futility.

Dah...
 
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Jan 29, 2011
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Bungle said:
So I was reading this: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6497352654/get-more-accurate-color-with-camera-calibration-
and this line:
" it doesn't matter which color space - Adobe RGB or sRGB - I select in camera, but I always process the files in AdobeRGB since it gives a wider color gamut. You should use the same color space for both the calibration shot and subsequent images which will use the same profile."
made me realize right away I was in sRGB. I have changed it and we will see where it goes from here. I will also look into the color checker in the future if this doesn't help things but I really think it will. I believe all my cameras except this one are set to adobeRGB and have not had this issue with them.

If you shoot in RAW and process in Lightroom or Photoshop, in camera selection of sRGB and Adobe RGB are entirely irrelevant, neither are used at any stage unless you choose for them to be, and why would you!
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Bungle said:
So I was reading this: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6497352654/get-more-accurate-color-with-camera-calibration-
and this line:
" it doesn't matter which color space - Adobe RGB or sRGB - I select in camera, but I always process the files in AdobeRGB since it gives a wider color gamut. You should use the same color space for both the calibration shot and subsequent images which will use the same profile."
made me realize right away I was in sRGB. I have changed it and we will see where it goes from here. I will also look into the color checker in the future if this doesn't help things but I really think it will. I believe all my cameras except this one are set to adobeRGB and have not had this issue with them.

The author of that article is confusing you a bit. He says he processes files in Adobe Lightroom using Adobe RGB, when, in fact, Adobe Lightroom uses the Profoto Gamut in the develop module which is wider than Adobe RGB Adobe RGB is used to display colors in some of the modules but not the develop module where the editing of raw images is done. It can be confusing.

From Adobe:

How Lightroom manages color



Lightroom primarily uses the Adobe RGB color space to display colors. The Adobe RGB gamut includes most of the colors that digital cameras can capture as well as some printable colors (cyans and blues, in particular) that can’t be defined using the smaller, web-friendly sRGB color space.



Lightroom uses Adobe RGB:
•for previews in the Library, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web modules
•when printing in Draft mode
•in exported PDF slideshows and uploaded web galleries
•when you send a book to Blurb.com (If you export books as PDF or JPEG from the Book module, however, you can choose sRGB or a different color profile.)
•for photos uploaded to Facebook and other photo-sharing sites using the Publish Services panel

In the Develop module, by default Lightroom displays previews using the ProPhoto RGB color space. ProPhoto RGB contains all of the colors that digital cameras can capture, making it an excellent choice for editing images. In the Develop module, you can also use the Soft Proofing panel to preview how color looks under various color-managed printing conditions.


http://www.fotospeed.com/pdf/Articles/Adobe%20RGB%20(1998)%20vs%20ProPhoto%20RGB.pdf
 
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Jan 29, 2011
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More reading for those thrufully interested in colour, spaces, gamuts and the like.

http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/imprint_downloads/peachpit/peachpit/lightroom4/pdf_files/LightroomRGB_Space.pdf

https://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/color_managed_raw_workflow.pdf

For those who know, check the authors of the second link.
 
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KeithBreazeal said:
I use the Color Checker for tricky lighting, shade, etc.

A color checker ends all the pain and discussion if color accuracy is important. Just do it!

Due to the awful LR profile for the 5DSR I have built an ever expanding catalog of profiles for various scenes and light conditions including sun height.

Absolutely overkill for most people. But since I expect to be using this camera for the next 5 years or so - and I often take pictures under tricky outdoor light conditions - its worth the effort for me.

Most people will probably get along fine with 3-4 standard profiles and just add an additional one occasionally if they encounter a really tricky light condition (shooting in the forest etc.).

Just added an example of how a color checker can make your life easier. Top original Adobe Standard w/no corrections - below with my own profile w/no corrections. One click I have the deep shadows back, killed the overpowering white and got real red in the shinning sun:
 

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It seems that people just want to snap a picture with a great camera and expect it to produce exactly what their vision was in mind. It doesn't happen like that. No matter how good the camera is, it can only guess what the photographer is shooting. It's not going to know how saturated you want your red to look. Post processing is as important as shooting skill. Jumping ship to nikon doesn't make you a better photographer if you don't know how to post process a picture to match what you had in mind. However, you're free to do so.
 
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