getting color fidelity from a digital camera?

[bcachot]

I’ve recently been shooting a Gretagmacbeth colorchecker under controlled lighting condtions to get some idea of the color fidelity of my camera. Naturally the images from the camera on screen don’t quite match the actual monitor RGB values from the colorchecker, or a subjective examination of the colors. JPG from the camera seems to be the best match with various RAW converters giving widely differing results. Some colors are almost dead on, but others are way off. What software tools exist that would help me bring my camera’s output closer to real world appearance? I know this is not a trivial task since some colors have to be ‘remapped’ more than others.

[jani]

You need both hardware and software tools.

The hardware tool is a spectrophotometer, which you use to measure the properties of your monitor (and maybe your prints).

You also need a profiler to use with the spectrophotometer (that usually is a part of the package), and colour-managed software such as Photoshop.

While the hardware and software mentioned in Michael's article on profiling are dated, the general principles haven't changed. See also the article on soft proofing.

There's a bunch of articles on the topic on the net, try looking at e.g. Digital Outback Photo's Color Management for Photographers series.

[Jonathan Wienke]

First, profile your monitor with a hardware device like EyeOne, or what you see on the monitor is meaningless. After that, it is simply a matter of getting an accurate profile for your camera. An  accurate profile is the only way to get color fidelity; the main difference between the "look" of one digital camera and another is the accuracy of the profile used to convert the RAW sensor data to RGB. ACR has pretty decent built-in profiles that can be tweaked pretty flexibly in the Calibration tab, and Capture One allows you to use your own ICC profiles. Profiling your camera is not a trivial task, but is the only way to get 100% dead-on accurate color.