Color Fidelity R5 Profiles are a game changer!

[Chris.Chapterten]

I recently worked on a fashion photoshoot and after getting the images back on the computer I was really unhappy with the colours I was seeing from any of the Adobe color profiles for the R5. I was using tungsten lights for the shoot and the 'Adobe Color' profile was behaving really strangely. Pink shadows, yellow highlights and the models makeup also took on a strange hue that wasn't visible to the naked eye when shooting.

By contrast, everything looked great in Canon's DPP4, but having to export TIFFs for every image was going to seriously eat into hard drive space and take way too long (a couple of minutes per image, is just far too long to be practical). Unfortunately with DPP4 I also noticed that the files had less fine detail than with Adobe Camera Raw. And applying any sharpening to the files in the DPP4 just made them look terrible. So all in all, DPP was ruled out as an option.

So with that said, I decided to go ahead and purchase the Color Fidelity (CF) profiles in the hope I could still use Adobe Camera Raw to process my raw files. So far I have been very happy with the results! The 'Standard V3' profile from CF is definitely the best of the bunch. The pink in the shadows is gone and the tones of the highlights on skin now match the darker areas quite well. The makeup on the models skin also now looked seamless with no strange hues. Overall the results are really very close to the 'Standard' profile that is available in DPP4. SO much better than the 'Adobe Color' profiles... these CF profiles have saved my workflow!

My only criticism of the CF profiles is that the 'Neutral V3' profile needs work. Highlights have a pink/magenta shift and the colors in general are just noticeably different to those found in the DPP4 'Neutral' profile. I generally prefer the flatter look of DPP's 'Neutral' so I am hoping the CF 'Neutral v3' is improved in the future, so I can use that instead of 'Standard'. Still, overall, a very minor criticism.

If you're planning to keep using Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw with the R5, I would say these CF profiles are a must. Personally they are going to save me hours of work in post by giving me a much better starting point with my images, and faster processing times than with DPP4.

Once I've finished with the images from the fashion shoot, I will post up an example of how much better the skin tones look with the CF profiles compared to 'Adobe Color'.

Cheers!
Chris

 

[koenkooi]

Are you using the 'Fine Detail' picture profile in camera? I get the impression that DPP4 does a better job with sharpness with that profile compared to the standard one.

Like you, I'm happy with the Color Fidelity profiles, don't forget to email your feedback to Colin, he was very responsive to the questions I had. I've made a few changes to my workflow, moving more towards LR:

• Non-Canon lenses go straight into LR as RAW
• Canon lenses with heavy distortion (e.g. all EF-M zooms) go to DPP4 first, then as TIFF to LR
• Canon lenses that shine after getting DLO (e.g. EF f/1.8 primes, EF-M22mm) also go to DPP4 first, then as TIFF to LR
• Canon lenses 2 stops into diffraction territory get the DPP4 treatment as well
• "Good" Canon lenses go straight into LR as RAW as long as the aperture isn't too narrow as mentioned above

This is all done with a clumsy script that uses exiftool, which also renames the files to "20201006 0650 Canon EOS M6 Mark II - Canon EF-M 32mm f1.4 STM - IMG_2928.CR3" since I recently swapped cards between cameras and ended up with IMG_99xx on all of them leading to conflicts. And they wrapped around to IMG_0000 shortly before I received my R5 which conveniently started at IMG_0000.

So far I'm really happy that I don't have to process most of the 20fps e-shutter pictures through DPP4 first I also turned off noise reduction in DPP4, it does a great job at low ISO (400-ish), but devolves into watercolour mode at high ISO (12800). Topaz Denoise does a great job on those high ISO shots, but struggles with the R5 (DPP4 TIFF) noise pattern around ISO800. But that noise is so nice and even that leaving it in doesn't bother me. Especially when viewed at normal sizes and/or on phones.

 

[Chris.Chapterten]

Are you using the 'Fine Detail' picture profile in camera? I get the impression that DPP4 does a better job with sharpness with that profile compared to the standard one.

Like you, I'm happy with the Color Fidelity profiles, don't forget to email your feedback to Colin, he was very responsive to the questions I had. I've made a few changes to my workflow, moving more towards LR:

• Non-Canon lenses go straight into LR as RAW
• Canon lenses with heavy distortion (e.g. all EF-M zooms) go to DPP4 first, then as TIFF to LR
• Canon lenses that shine after getting DLO (e.g. EF f/1.8 primes, EF-M22mm) also go to DPP4 first, then as TIFF to LR
• Canon lenses 2 stops into diffraction territory get the DPP4 treatment as well
• "Good" Canon lenses go straight into LR as RAW as long as the aperture isn't too narrow as mentioned above

This is all done with a clumsy script that uses exiftool, which also renames the files to "20201006 0650 Canon EOS M6 Mark II - Canon EF-M 32mm f1.4 STM - IMG_2928.CR3" since I recently swapped cards between cameras and ended up with IMG_99xx on all of them leading to conflicts. And they wrapped around to IMG_0000 shortly before I received my R5 which conveniently started at IMG_0000.

So far I'm really happy that I don't have to process most of the 20fps e-shutter pictures through DPP4 first I also turned off noise reduction in DPP4, it does a great job at low ISO (400-ish), but devolves into watercolour mode at high ISO (12800). Topaz Denoise does a great job on those high ISO shots, but struggles with the R5 (DPP4 TIFF) noise pattern around ISO800. But that noise is so nice and even that leaving it in doesn't bother me. Especially when viewed at normal sizes and/or on phones.

Thanks for your reply! I have only flicked between the different colour profiles in DPP to assess colour. I didn't realise there would also be a difference in sharpness. So far I have found the fine detail in a subject's iris to be noticeably softer than in the Adobe programs. Unfortunately adding sharpness in DPP only really sharpens the eyelashes and the iris stays quite soft. I will give 'fine detail' a go in DPP to see if that helps.

I actually emailed Colin back soon after I received the profiles to mention the odd colours I was seeing with 'CF neutral V3'. He replied straight away and said he would look into it, so fingers crossed.

Having now looked through more photos from the shoot and compared the 'CF Standard V3' profile to DPP 'Neutral' I have noticed that highlight areas on the skin also take on a subtle pink hue, that makes the skin look slightly patchy in areas, specifically the cheek highlights. Skin tone is very uniform by comparison in DPP. This particular shoot was using all Tungsten lights so the colour spectrum should be very full (similar to natural light) but I will have to see how the profiles hold up out of the studio.

Sounds like you have a very efficient method going on there! Would make the clunky DPP feel at least slightly better I'm sure. And big thanks to Colin for making Adobe Camera Raw at least somewhat useable again. I still have my fingers crossed that Adobe will one day release camera matching profiles for the R5 to make our lives easier... not holding my breath though.

So for now it looks like I'll be sticking with DPP4 for skin tone critical shoots shot in the studio. Luckily I will only have to convert 20 or so photos to TIFF per shoot using DPP. I would feel royally screwed if I was still working as an event and wedding photographer!

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Thanks for your reply! I have only flicked between the different colour profiles in DPP to assess colour. I didn't realise there would also be a difference in sharpness. So far I have found the fine detail in a subject's iris to be noticeably softer than in the Adobe programs. Unfortunately adding sharpness in DPP only really sharpens the eyelashes and the iris stays quite soft. I will give 'fine detail' a go in DPP to see if that helps.

I actually emailed Colin back soon after I received the profiles to mention the odd colours I was seeing with 'CF neutral V3'. He replied straight away and said he would look into it, so fingers crossed.

Having now looked through more photos from the shoot and compared the 'CF Standard V3' profile to DPP 'Neutral' I have noticed that highlight areas on the skin also take on a subtle pink hue, that makes the skin look slightly patchy in areas, specifically the cheek highlights. Skin tone is very uniform by comparison in DPP. This particular shoot was using all Tungsten lights so the colour spectrum should be very full (similar to natural light) but I will have to see how the profiles hold up out of the studio.

Sounds like you have a very efficient method going on there! Would make the clunky DPP feel at least slightly better I'm sure. And big thanks to Colin for making Adobe Camera Raw at least somewhat useable again. I still have my fingers crossed that Adobe will one day release camera matching profiles for the R5 to make our lives easier... not holding my breath though.

So for now it looks like I'll be sticking with DPP4 for skin tone critical shoots shot in the studio. Luckily I will only have to convert 20 or so photos to TIFF per shoot using DPP. I would feel royally screwed if I was still working as an event and wedding photographer!

You can bulk convert a large number of photos in DPP. File/batch process.

 

[koenkooi]

You can bulk convert a large number of photos in DPP. File/batch process.

And with CTRL+T you can batch edit files. It's a bit crude to make global adjustments in bulk, but it saves a lot of time

 

[Chris.Chapterten]

You can bulk convert a large number of photos in DPP. File/batch process.

My computer needs an upgrade, it's about 7 years old... a single Tiff conversion in DPP takes a good few minutes. But I suppose you could just leave it to process overnight if you were doing a large number of images?

 

[koenkooi]

My computer needs an upgrade, it's about 7 years old... a single Tiff conversion in DPP takes a good few minutes. But I suppose you could just leave it to process overnight if you were doing a large number of images?

That's what I do, having 1500+ images to process after a full day of shooting is going to take a while. My 2015 iMac takes 42 seconds for an RP image to process, my work laptop, a 2020 MBP, takes 20 seconds per image. I haven't timed R5 images yet. Replacing the iMac is scheduled for late 2022, so I don't want to start timing things right now and get frustrated

 

[snappy604]

does anyone have experience with Canon R5 color profiles using the .icc or .icm extensions? I've made sort of ok presets via ON1 and Canon LUTs (meant for video) but they still seem inconsistent.. noticed On1 2021 has the ability to import color profiles but only .icm and .icc. and not the .dcm? that adobe uses. Not sure why its different but certainly would like more consistency in my pics