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Author Topic: Integrated camera + raw converter calibration  (Read 1990 times)

A_Kovacs

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Integrated camera + raw converter calibration
« on: July 11, 2008, 03:15:41 pm »

Hi,

It is my pleasure to join this forum and I wish good shooting luck to all members.

I am far from being an expert in colour management, but I am aware of its importance and struggle quite frequently with setting the right colours of my pictures. I have Colorvision Spider 2 Pro and Huey (plus Printfix Pro but this is irrelevant for the issue raised below). However, I am still not sure of having a good enough colour reproduction.

I have a Nikon D300 (which will be replaced with a D700 soon) and an Eizo 997 monitor.

My question is the following: Is it possible to calibrate the colour reproduction of the whole chain of camera/row converter/monitor in the following way:

• Calibrating the monitor in the usual way for the given light environment of the “dark room”. (I think the well known monitor calibration process can be handled separately, because – at least in my understanding – its role is “only” to present “ideal colours” on the screen with due consideration of several factors, although this issue obviously much more complicated. I intend to focus rather on the next steps.)

• Taking pictures of a colour checker chart lit by light sources of different colour temperatures, with the camera.

• Opening the pictures in the raw converter, preferably with the built-in (camera-specific but generic) camera profile switched off and all parameters are set to neutral. If the camera profile cannot be switched off, a kind of “differential profile” will be the result.

• Measuring the colours of the chart on the screen, one-by-one (similarly to the measurement of printed charts), for each picture (taken at different colour temperatures).

• Let the camera profile editor process all the values read from the screen to generate a custom camera profile.

At the end of the day, I would like to see the same colours on the screen that have been shot.

Is it possible to set of such a calibration work flow, and with what calibration tools?

Your input would be highly appreciated.
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Schewe

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Integrated camera + raw converter calibration
« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2008, 04:46:52 pm »

Quote
• Opening the pictures in the raw converter, preferably with the built-in (camera-specific but generic) camera profile switched off and all parameters are set to neutral. If the camera profile cannot be switched off, a kind of “differential profile” will be the result.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


If you are talking about Lightroom, no, you can't NOT use the camera profile...you'll NEED to build a custom calibration on top of the profile to make the required adjustments in the calibrate tab...als since Lightroom's eyedropper is designed to shot relative not absolute color numbers, you'll find it difficult (read impossible) to know what the color numbers are supposed to read. You would be better off trying this procedure in Camera Raw where you CAN specify a color space and then read the color numbers...

Bruce Fraser wrote about this process for Photoshop CS but it's still useful in the current version. See: [a href=\"http://www.creativepro.com/article/out-gamut-calibrating-camera-raw-photoshop-cs]Calibrating Camera Raw[/url]
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