Color with the Fuji GFX as Compared to the Hasselblad X1D

[razrblck]

I just have reservations based upon Fuji's apparent belief that what sells cameras (and film before that) was a certain look that emphasizes high contrast and heavy saturation. 

Their Astia profile is much softer, although not neutral (X-T2). It could be a good starting point for a RAW file, at least until someone makes custom profiles.

[Jim Kasson]

The camera should allow you to select sRGB or Adobe RGB. Select Adobe RGB. That's all you need to do for jpeg. But for RAW, it doesn't matter, as all the gamut the sensor is capable of delivering will appear in the RAW.

Raw files don't have gamut in any meaningful sense. The first reason is that the data in a raw file is not encoded as colors. The second is that the range of colors obtainable from a raw file depends on subsequent processing. The raw developer performs conversion of that data to approximate (or not) the colors of the original scene. The gamut of colors in the converted image is limited by signal-to-noise ratio criteria, color accuracy requirements, and other things not inherent in the raw image. Given those limiting factors, the skirt characteristics of the CFA filters which is inherent in the raw image, plays a role.

Jim

[BobShaw]

This is quite the thread in terms of the the amount of blatantly inaccurate information.

Pretty normal actually.
Let's compare two cameras never touched or used without any photos from them.

[melgross]

Could you explain what you mean by that? My current workstation is a 256GB Dell 7910/AMD W8000/NEC PA322UHD-SV running Win 10. All the calibrations work fine. Images in CIELab, PPRGB, sRGB, etc all display fine and spectrophotometric measurements are fine.

Previous Win 7 systems also were fine. There were some color management issues with Vista.

Jim

There has been no built-in color management in Windows previous to 10. In 10, it's turned off because of serious flaws, and difficulty of integration. Software that needed color management needed to implement it itself, such as Photoshop.

The problem with that approach is that you can't view a color managed file, other than sRGB, outside of color managed software. Windows, and Android, both assume a file to be sRGB. Therefore, those files, whether or not they have a profile, will be viewed correctly in any software. But anything else will not be.

[melgross]

Raw files don't have gamut in any meaningful sense. The first reason is that the data in a raw file is not encoded as colors. The second is that the range of colors obtainable from a raw file depends on subsequent processing. The raw developer performs conversion of that data to approximate (or not) the colors of the original scene. The gamut of colors in the converted image is limited by signal-to-noise ratio criteria, color accuracy requirements, and other things not inherent in the raw image. Given those limiting factors, the skirt characteristics of the CFA filters which is inherent in the raw image, plays a role.

Jim

That's the same thing I said.

[melgross]

Yes please explain the part about Windows and a lack of color management?  I guess you know more about it than I do along with NEC, eye one, Epson and Adobe combined.

I love these kind of total BS generalizations.

Windows has excellent color management.

Period

Paul Caldwell

Windows does not have a built-in system wide color management system that is turned on by default, because it is very buggy, and will cause problems with other color managed software that wasn't designed to work with a system wide color managed Windows system. There was a color management system for Win 7, but it was never used, because of serious problems.

It needs to be realized that Microsoft has no reason to care about this. Only a small fraction of Windows users work with managed color. On the other hand, Apple is very involved, because a large percentage of their much smaller sales are involved in this.

I really don't want to argue with you on this, but you are wrong.

[Paul2660]

Windows does not have a built-in system wide color management system that is turned on by default, because it is very buggy, and will cause problems with other color managed software that wasn't designed to work with a system wide color managed Windows system. There was a color management system for Win 7, but it was never used, because of serious problems.

It needs to be realized that Microsoft has no reason to care about this. Only a small fraction of Windows users work with managed color. On the other hand, Apple is very involved, because a large percentage of their much smaller sales are involved in this.

I really don't want to argue with you on this, but you are wrong.

If you don't want to argue, then please don't post inaccurate information about Windows and color management.

Net, since Win7, color management has been excellent in Windows in fact in many ways better than Mac, I use both systems.  Try to get a good screen profile on a retina display.

Windows handles Color management across the OS, just like Mac.  The facts you imply is does not is just one of the age old Mac Vs Win arguments that were so popular, just like CCD has better color than CMOS.   And you imply Mac with Colorsync is better by default?  I can't imaging attempting to work with any of the Adobe products for Mac without using a 3rd party toolset to generate a color profile, such as eye1, Nec spectraview or Eizo's tools for displays.  Colorsync works great when the icc profile is generated correctly just like Windows can.

Run any color management software on windows, I use NEC Spectraview software with NEC monitors.  This software generates a color profile that is immediately loaded into the color management section in windows (under control panel/color management).  Any and I mean any software program that is color management aware will look at this location and use the generated profile for the display, this included Adobe CC, LR, Capture One, Adobe Premier Pro, etc.  I am sure the Corel products work the same way, however I do not use them. 

NET, you can generate a color profile from Spectraview or any other software for display color management and Windows works fine with Color management.  If you feel that Mac by default knows how to profile a modern color monitor without any software I feel you are mistaken.  Mac requires the same process. 

The software profile for the display handles the issues within the display process between applications and the monitor, (note that all of the color aware applications will now look for the generated color profile). 

For printing, yet again, another set of profiles has to be generated or you can use canned profiles from the printer manufacture.  Either way these are again loaded as icc profiles in a very specific location in the windows software, windows/system32/drivers/color and again all applications such as Adobe CC LR C1 will look ask you to look for a specific printer profile in this location.  If another device is used to generate a printer profile, it will also be automatically stored here. 

This allows a very clear process that is "color managed" within windows, that allows you to take a raw file, convert it to a tif, work on it in LR or CC, soft proof it on screen and then print it and at the same time generate a print that is identical in colors within the gamut of stated printer to the original image.

If you believe other wise, then I would recommend reading up on this process and you could start with the "Digital Print" by Jeff Schewe.  Either OS is totally capable of generation of "color managed" environment from initial import of raw to final print.

And by the way, you may want to do a bit more homework on the number of professional users that are Windows vs Mac based.  In the US the trend is still strongly towards Mac, but in Europe and especially Asia, just the opposite is true. 

Paul Caldwell

[Jim Kasson]

There has been no built-in color management in Windows previous to 10. In 10, it's turned off because of serious flaws, and difficulty of integration. Software that needed color management needed to implement it itself, such as Photoshop.

The problem with that approach is that you can't view a color managed file, other than sRGB, outside of color managed software. Windows, and Android, both assume a file to be sRGB. Therefore, those files, whether or not they have a profile, will be viewed correctly in any software. But anything else will not be.

I'm going to ignore the first paragraph. As to the second, this is quite different from what you said earlier: "In addition, if you're using Windows, you have no real color management, and unless the image is in sRGB, you won't be seeing it correctly anyway."

Your first statement said that you won't see the right representation of anything but an sRGB file if you run Windows. Your second statement says that you won't see the right colors if you run Windows and use an app that is color-management challenged.

All the image-editing apps I use do color management just fine under Win 10. They're not hard to find.

Jim

[razrblck]

On top of that, while Windows per se doesn't have 10bit color support, this is handled by video drivers (if you have the right hardware) and is supported by applications. The fact that Windows image viewer doesn't properly support ProPhoto is meaningless for a professional working with color.

And no, the fact that color management at that level is not part of the system but handled by applications is not because of flaws or bugs. They will probably introduce it in the future, if necessary, but right now it works perfectly fine the way it is. It's a design choice, not the result of problems.

[algrove]

I tired of reading this thread after about 4 pages of postings.

Anyone who is sponsored/affiliated by/with any manufacturer is biased. That is the reality of the situation. Are you going to turn way the spoon that feeds you?

Thus I buy the tools that I beleieve will give me what I want in my images. Most of us can adjust any RAW file these days too please ourselves.  Isn't that what it's all about anyway? I got great images from my 645Z which has the same CMOS bayer filter sensor as the X1D and GFX. I do not expect any problems with either.

[razrblck]

Most of us can adjust any RAW file these days too please ourselves.  Isn't that what it's all about anyway?

Spot on, and if you want to apply that to commercial photography you can replace "ourselves" with "our clients".

Sometimes getting the closest representation of reality is the goal, but that is such a tiny niche in the market that the people that really need it already have a comprehensive set of tools and a tried and true workflow.

The Fuji and the Hasselblad are two different tools that just happen to have the same sensor. Will they be able to match in colour? Maybe. Will the tiny differences really matter at the end of the day for almost all uses? Nah.

[torger]

I've developed color-managed software for Mac, Windows and Linux. The special thing about the Mac is that it automatically converts everything to sRGB unless you as programmer requests otherwise, while on Windows and Linux everything is let through without modification to the screen (so you get the screen's full gamut) unless you request otherwise.

For non-color-managed apps that shows images anyway, the Mac approach is handy, you get correct sRGB output while on Windows/Linux you get those oversaturated images with your wide-gamut screen. For color managed applications however, it doesn't really matter.

In Linux/Windows I've for years used Firefox as web browser with color management enabled (many web browsers lack color management) and all photo applications are already color managed, and that's all I've needed.

Android has truly no color management support though, which means that there's no support for loading an ICC profile for the screen. There you need to do everything in the app if you want color management...

[Ancient Tiger]

Spot on, and if you want to apply that to commercial photography you can replace "ourselves" with "our clients".

Sometimes getting the closest representation of reality is the goal, but that is such a tiny niche in the market that the people that really need it already have a comprehensive set of tools and a tried and true workflow.

The Fuji and the Hasselblad are two different tools that just happen to have the same sensor. Will they be able to match in colour? Maybe. Will the tiny differences really matter at the end of the day for almost all uses? Nah.

Hallelujah!

At last someone has said what many of us think. There will be so many more important differences in the two cameras that will make people decide which one they will choose. A tiny color difference which is easily corrected isn't going to be one of them.