Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?  (Read 11502 times)

Andrew Fee

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 87
    • http://
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« on: June 27, 2009, 01:28:21 am »

First off, apologies if this is in the wrong section of the forum, I wasn't sure whether it should be in Lightroom, ACR or Colour Management. I did a few searches before typing this up and didn't find an answer.

Didn't realise how long my post was getting, so I've summarised it at the top if you don't want to read the whole thing.

Short version: I'm having trouble accurately reproducing colour (particularly saturated reds/yellows) with my Canon 1000D (Rebel XS) especially under artificial lighting. Monitors are profiled with an i1Pro & ColorEyes, I shoot RAW and I white balance my shots with a WhiBal card, so that's not the problem.

I'm having hue/saturation issues with various colours when using the Adobe Standard profile for my camera. The Canon Standard one looks better most of the time, but still isn't right. (note: I'm not trying to match the Canon JPEG/DPP look, or the camera's screen, just get colour closer to how things look to my eyes) Under bad lighting (e.g. halogen lights) neither looks any good.

Is it worthwhile buying a ColorChecker (£60 here, ≈$100 not exactly cheap) and creating my own profiles, or are they going to suffer from the same problems that the Adobe Standard one does? For people that have done profiling, how close were the results? Was it worthwhile?

I'm just concerned that the problems I'm having might be with the profiling process itself, rather than the profiles Adobe supplies. As it's a low-end camera I have, it wouldn't surprise me if there maybe wasn't as much care taken profiling it compared to something higher up the line though, or perhaps its colour response is more varied under different lighting conditions.



Long Version

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time with Lightroom trying to create a new default setting for my camera (Canon 1000D/Rebel XS) that works well with the majority of images I shoot, as I've been getting fed up with having everything zeroed and making a lot of adjustments for each image by hand. I get better results that way, but it's pretty tedious. I know I can sync my settings across a batch of images, but I then find myself trying to undo some of what I just did for one image as it doesn't necessarily work on another.

I've been reasonably successful with this, creating a new default along with a handful of complimentary presets that suit most of my images and means I don't have to do a lot of basic adjustments, just fine-tuning now, if anything. I still find that I'm having to make a lot of manual colour adjustments to get things to look right depending on the lighting conditions though.

My monitors are completely profiled with an i1Pro & ColorEyes Display, and I white balance my shots with a WhiBal card (and I've verified its accuracy with the i1Pro) so that's not the problem.

Daylight is usually ok, but indoors with artificial lighting often looks terrible. Initially I had been using the Adobe Standard profile for my 1000D but recently moved to the Camera Standard one as I found the Adobe profile to be problematic with reproducing saturated reds/yellows, and sometimes blue would have weird colour shifts.

It's not an interesting image, just one I took quickly when tweaking my default settings (I took a lot of random images to make sure they worked with as many images as possible) but I think it shows off one of the issues I had with the Adobe Standard profile. (I'm pretty sure it does, but I'm on my laptop right now and the screen isn't that good, so I'm not certain)

Old zeroed settings using the Adobe profile on the left, my new defaults using the Canon standard profile on the right:


Notice how the blue highlights look totally out of place with the Adobe profile, showing as a weird hue/saturation shift, rather than being a lighter shade of blue as they are with the Canon one. (obviously my new defaults produce a much punchier image as well, but there's no colour tweaking applied and the RAW wasn't clipped) The blue with the Canon profile is also much closer to how it actually looked.

That was shot under daylight and just shows off one of the problems I was having with the Adobe Standard profile, but artificial lighting is much worse for colour.

I thought the Adobe profiles were shot at both 2856K and 6500K, but when shooting under halogen lights (2735K going by the white balance—I haven't measured with my i1Pro) colour reproduction needs a lot of tweaking. I suppose it might be due to the spectral response even if they're around 2856K.


Adobe Standard:


Canon Standard:


Canon Standard tweaked by hand with the HSL controls to look how it actually should. (note: this was just done quickly, and isn't quite right—I went a bit far with red, but it's much closer to how it should be than the other two)


Notice how bad red, orange and yellow in particular are using either the Adobe or Canon standard profiles. I still can't get yellow looking right by tweaking it manually. (still looks desaturated here compared to the rest)


Particularly under halogen lighting (which seems to be the worst affected) is creating a custom profile with a ColorChecker going to make a big difference compared to the standard Adobe ones, or will I end up with a similar result that also suffers from hue shifts and needs just as much tweaking?

The ColorChecker cards are pretty expensive here—£60 ($100) for the large and £50 ($80) for the small so I'm a bit concerned about spending that much cash to end up with a similar result. And, would you recommend the large or small one? Small seems like it would be convenient, but I wonder if the larger patches would profile better? (and if it were to get marked at all, there's less chance of ruining the card with large patches)


Any information/advice is appreciated. If anyone has an example they could show shot under bad lighting comparing the standard Adobe profile for their camera to a custom one, that would be great.
Logged

Per Ofverbeck

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 140
    • http://elgfoto.se
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2009, 05:05:16 am »

Quote from: Andrew Fee
...Is it worthwhile buying a ColorChecker (£60 here, ≈$100 not exactly cheap) and creating my own profiles, or are they going to suffer from the same problems that the Adobe Standard one does? For people that have done profiling, how close were the results? Was it worthwhile?
....

Well, I won´t pretend I have anything really useful to add, but I´ve had similar questions and problems lately.  I use a regularly calibrated 30" Apple Cinema Display, and an Epson 3800, so I´m beginning to get colour right, and to be more critical of what my cameras are giving me.

First, it´s my Leica Digilux 2 and D-Lux 4.  Stunning jpeg´s direct from the camera in 80% of the cases.  Only, I´m after those remaining 20% as well, so I shoot in raw.  And then, the standard rendering in Lightroom is different from how in-camera jpeg´s are displayed.  Which one´s "right"?

Then, my Panasonic G1 with kit lens.  Great camera, good lens, only that "Leica glow" isn´t there (here jpeg´s aren´t very good; raw is the only option).  What can I do to make a mixed set of images work together, so no one (including myself...) asks which camera took what image?

What I did was to get the small (almost credit card size) ColorChecker; I´m a thrifty old fogey...  All the cameras have good closeup capabilities; just see that you avoid shading part of the target, and it works just as well as the big one.

Then I got original tiff files for the PhotoPro RGB colour space that LR uses, to be able to see and compare them on my monitor, and to print them out.  Now, I could start comparing the cameras, both jpeg and raw, and to compare them with the original files.

Suddenly, I could see directly that the raw´s from all camera were much closer to the original than those jpeg´s; also I could see exactly which patches were most "off target" - and it tallied exactly with the subjective impression I´ve had from seeing my images of other things.  I had guessed; now I KNEW!  And it took me less than an hour to get all these answers...

So, was it worthwhile buying that ColorChecker?  You BET!!!

What will I do now? The obvious path would be to make profiles for my three cameras, and hope that it would bring those off patches in line.  Only, first I´d have to do it for several different light types and colour temperatures to really get anywhere.  Then, honestly I subjectively prefer the jpeg colours from the Leicas, even when I know they´re less "correct, just like I preferred Fuji to Kodak when using slide film long ago.

So, I´m not sure I´ll do any custom profiles of my own, after all.  But now I have the tools to really analyse what´s going on in different situations, and to find out what kind of deviations from reality are to my subjective liking.  When I get there, I reckon I´ll be able to tweak the profiles with the Profile Editor in a systematic way to get closer to what I REALLY want (which isn´t necessarily the same thing as getting closer to reality...).

Again, was it worthwhile?  It would have been at three times the price....
« Last Edit: June 27, 2009, 05:08:38 am by Per Ofverbeck »
Logged
Per Ofverbeck
My

Andrew Fee

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 87
    • http://
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2009, 08:56:00 am »

Thanks for the response. I've just been thinking about it, and I don't know why I've been so reluctant to pick one up. I've spent a fair bit on other calibration equipment (ColorEyes for my computers, CalMAN for my projector, the i1Pro etc.) so what's another £50?

There doesn't seem to be any difference between the cards other than size, so I went with the small one. Actually, that might be easier to use as it's not as large a target to try and light evenly.

I don't think profiling cameras are necessarily going to give pleasing colour reproduction for all images, but it should give me a neutral starting point under various lighting conditions so I can then apply my own Lightroom presets and end up with the same look each time. (currently, it can end up looking completely different depending on the lighting)


I haven't really used the DNG Profile editor at all, but I'm sure you can probably use it to copy the look of one camera to another. If you have the details on how to make that camera neutral, surely you just need to invert those corrections and apply them to a neutral image from another camera.

It would be great if Adobe added the option to use a custom target, so using a target JPEG photographed in one camera, and RAW file from another, creating a profile so that RAW images from that camera look like the JPEGs.


When it arrives, I'll post again to show how successful creating a custom profile was compared to using the standard adobe one. Still interested to hear other people's results though if they want to post them here.
Logged

Andrew Fee

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 87
    • http://
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2009, 05:36:42 am »

Well, my card turned up in the mail about 45 minutes ago. I'm not on my normal machine due to hard drive problems, so I don't really have anything to show off other than the ColorChecker card itself right now.

I've created three profiles so far-one for halogen lighting, one for daylight (though it's maybe not the best weather for that one today-I'll probably reshoot it) and one that mixes both to see how well that works.

Well, there seems to be very little difference between the mixed and halogen profiles, so that's good.

In short, I wish I had bought this sooner. Considering the other calibration equipment I have, I really should have got one a long time ago.


Under halogen light (2750K +6) Everything is zeroed except for a bit of exposure compensation and black level adjustment.

Adobe Standard:


Canon Standard:


Custom Profile:



Now, I can't be certain if that's going to fix my issues as I'm using an old CRT right now, but it certainly looks like it.

So while the new Adobe profiles are an improvement over the old ACR ones, you really need to create a custom one for your camera. I'd go as far as saying it's an essential step, rather than being optional.
Logged

mmurph

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 506
    • http://
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #4 on: June 30, 2009, 02:45:18 pm »

Quote from: Andrew Fee
I'd go as far as saying it's an essential step, rather than being optional.

I tend to agree.  At least if you shoot any kind of product.

Canon tends to stuggle in particular with the reds.  A couple of yaers ago I couldn't get a red plaid "dress" (garmet, jump suit, I don't know what it was ;>) anywhere near accurate without a custom profile with a 1DsII.  Very "orange-ish". Dead on with the custom profile.

Color seems to drive me crazy more than anything else. I spent two lost years struggling with an un-calibrated (non-hardware-calibrated) monitor around 2000 or 2001.  Now taht is an absolute **must** of course.

I am feeling the same way about camera profiling now.  It is nice always to be able to get back to a "known" state when makig judgements (right nwo between Capture One and Lightroom.)

I have the digital Color Checker with my i1 kit, plus the regular one I used before with Chromaholics.  Guess I'll test the i1 process against the Adobe DNG and see how they both look.


Best,
Michael

Logged

James R

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 364
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2009, 04:17:15 pm »

You have an "old CRT" monitor.   How old and was it cheap?  Some older monitors can be difficult to calibrate, as can cheap monitors.
Logged

Andrew Fee

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 87
    • http://
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2009, 06:07:59 pm »

Quote from: James R
You have an "old CRT" monitor.   How old and was it cheap?  Some older monitors can be difficult to calibrate, as can cheap monitors.
It's a Viewsonic G90fB which was all I was able to pick up a few years ago when I wanted another CRT. (I've never liked LCD) Apparently it did calibrate quite well, according to coloreyes, but with its gamut being close to sRGB, I'm just not used to the way it reproduces colour as it's not my usual display so I'm finding it a little hard to judge how things look at the moment.
Logged

JanCelechovsky

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2010, 06:19:07 pm »

2 Andrew:
I have been searching internet for a solution of my problem and have come across your post here which is very similar. I have Canon 1000 D (Rebel XS) too. As memory cards are fairly cheap today I take all my photos into both JPG and CR2. When downloading my photos from the camera I decide for each of them whether it is worth further adjusting in my PC. If not, the JPG will do. If so, it is the CR2 that I play with.
And now what the problem is:
I tested the ACR 5.6 (with PS CS4) and like the way the workflow is controled, the adjustment sliders etc. very much. But unlike DPP (which is delivered free with camera) I have not been able to achieve the same (or at least similar) results as for the skin tones. I have tried various profiles (Adobe, Camera), various settings of the sliders but the faces are still rather pale and "a little less red" than in the JPG of the same photo. That is very unpleasant - apart from the fact I like the JPG appearance more, it is very unpleasant that some photos (the ones I adjusted) from a series have significantly different colors.
I realize that adjusting RAW is a big advantage over adjusting JPG - more information is preserved and more mistakes can be compensated for, but this is annoying me a lot. It is obvius that the problem has nothing to do with monitor calibration etc. - I would expect the JPG and the default CR2 output to look about the same on the same device but they do not :-(

Could you possibly describe me your favourite settings of ACR for Canon 1000 D in detail ? Any other information/advice is also appreciated. (Sorry for my English - I am not a native speaker.)

Thanks,
Jan
Logged

b2martin

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 136
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #8 on: February 17, 2010, 10:08:56 am »

Andrew, if you have the X-Rite Color Checker (24 patch), you can use it with the Passport software downloaded from the X-Rite site to generate profiles.  You don't have to purchase the Passport to get the software, X-Rite makes is available so owners of their ColorChecker can use it.  

I have Nikon equipment and find the Camera proiles Adobe released are very close to Nikon's profiles if I process the NEF (RAW File) using Photoshop CS4 ACR 5.6 with all in canera parameters set to nominal and ACR at nominal.  I processed 40+ images using Capture NX2 with each profile and in camera settings at nominal and the same NEF files with ACR and compared them - almost identical.  

I generated camera profiles using the Passport software and get much better agreement to actual colors than the Camera or Adobe probiles.  I now use the custom probiles as my default profile in ACR.
Logged

Scott Martin

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1315
    • Onsight
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #9 on: February 17, 2010, 10:56:01 am »

Profiles made using the new ColorChecker Passport are making more and more sense for lots of my clients. It's affordable and the software is pretty easy to use. If you're even considering this and doing the comparisons you've posted above I think you should go for it. Making camera profiles used to be A LOT more complicated and a lot more expensive. The price of the solution is fantastic.
Logged
Scott Martin
www.on-sight.com

markhout

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 176
    • http://www.markhout.com
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #10 on: February 17, 2010, 12:01:03 pm »

I would be the first to call user error, but I can't seem to get my Color Checker Passport profiles in order. The reds are screaming and contrast is over the top. Much prefer my Adobe profiles in LR - and this is for both my Nikon D300 and Canon S90. On a MacPro with profiled Dell monitors. Will try the X-Rite software - thanks for that reference.
Logged

Arlen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1707
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #11 on: February 18, 2010, 12:17:33 am »

I find that for my Canon 5D, the stock Adobe profiles give pleasing color. But when accurate color is called for, the ColorChecker with X-Rite Passport software yields clearly superior results.
Logged

John Cothron

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 349
    • Cothron Photography
Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #12 on: February 18, 2010, 11:17:26 am »

For those of you interested, I've been doing similar comparisons regarding camera profiles.  I'm not sure I've even posted here before although I've been lurking for quite a while.  My goal is to come up with a dual illuminant solution that can be used with all images regardless of color temp.  I've got pretty good results so far, but still intend to build a color profile with a much higher color temperature than my current one (7650K).

I guess it is okay to post links to another forum here?

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=827615
Logged
John
Flickr

hjulenissen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2051
Re: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2012, 06:37:01 am »

Sorry about bumping this old thread, but it was a prominent hit on google.

I have an issue with Canon 7D saturated reds on my Dell u2711 wide-gamut, calibrated using x-rite i1d2 pro. They seem to take a non-realistic purple hue shift, while my old sRGB lcd displays them more realistic (although with an orange tint).

I just assumed that the Adobe profile for my camera was reasonable (never played with camera color profiles). It makes a big difference! So I have made a "7D mainly lit by flash" profile using ColorChecker Passport.

My question is:
If I make/download 1-3 profiles of my camera under various lighting. Can the remaining variation in illuminance be taken care of by white-balance? Should not (ideally) the camera profile be only camera-specific, while WB should be illumination-specific?

Did anyone spend a lot of time/resources profile their 7D and then be nice enough to make their profiles available for anyone to download? :-)

-h
Logged

madmanchan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2115
    • Web
Re: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #14 on: January 18, 2012, 06:06:42 pm »

Camera profiles are illuminant-specific.  That is, illumination variation cannot be wholly accounted for by white balance scaling (i.e., diagonal matrix). 
Logged
Eric Chan

hjulenissen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2051
Re: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #15 on: January 19, 2012, 01:01:45 am »

Camera profiles are illuminant-specific.  That is, illumination variation cannot be wholly accounted for by white balance scaling (i.e., diagonal matrix).  
Sure, but here we are, using camera profiles in different lighting than they were generated in, and using White-balance. Would it be better to have access to the true spectral sensitivity of each camera color channel, and a measurement/estimate of the true psd of the illumination? That would mean something like 256x256 matrixes instead of 3x3 matrixes, but then at least the guesswork would be down to only illumination (stuff like natural lighting should be smooth and easily estimated/corrected by parametric functions like WB).

What illuminance were used to obtain the "Adobe Standard", "Camera Faithful", "Camera Standard" etc profiles? Are they the result of correcting the response of some standardized test-chart under some given illumination, or are they effectively "synthesized" so as to give a general "look"?

I am puzzled by the perceived hue error of Adobe Standard in reds for my camera that did not bother me that much until I got a calibrated wide-gamut display.

-h
« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 01:06:05 am by hjulenissen »
Logged

Tim Lookingbill

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2436
Re: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #16 on: January 19, 2012, 03:05:27 pm »

Quote
I am puzzled by the perceived hue error of Adobe Standard in reds for my camera that did not bother me that much until I got a calibrated wide-gamut display.

So all things being the same with the only change being the sRGB orangish reds turning purple-ish on the calibrated/profiled wide gamut display, how is this an issue with Adobe Standard?

Why not recalibrate or use a different calibration package on your new Dell wide gamut display to rule that out since that's what has changed?
Logged

Ellis Vener

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2151
    • http://www.ellisvener.com
Re: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #17 on: January 19, 2012, 03:27:56 pm »

Sure, but here we are, using camera profiles in different lighting than they were generated in, and using White-balance.

That's point of creating your own camera calibration profiles: your camera, your lens, your illuminations sources.
Logged

madmanchan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2115
    • Web
Re: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #18 on: January 19, 2012, 04:45:59 pm »

Yes it would be better to have the spectral characteristics of the light, and of the materials being photographed, and of the sensor.  Generally, though, the photographer doesn't have access to such information in the field.  It is possible to build & optimize profiles for these conditions, and it can be valuable for certain specific workflows (e.g., fine art repro involving certain oils, pigments, etc.).

White balance only guarantees that the object you wish to appear neutral will be neutral (i.e., R = G = B).  There are no guarantees about the non-neutral colors, due to metamerism.
Logged
Eric Chan

hjulenissen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2051
Re: Adobe's camera profiles—how accurate?
« Reply #19 on: January 19, 2012, 05:11:18 pm »

So all things being the same with the only change being the sRGB orangish reds turning purple-ish on the calibrated/profiled wide gamut display, how is this an issue with Adobe Standard?
One possibility is that the Adobe Standard does something weird that my sRGB monitor is incapable of showing, when combined with my particular illumination and scene?

Camera neutral looks better to me in this regard, so does my ColorChecker generated profile.
Quote
Why not recalibrate or use a different calibration package on your new Dell wide gamut display to rule that out since that's what has changed?
I have used the Spyder 3 with Argyll CMS and now purchased the i1d2 pro with i1 profiler. What do you suggest I do next?

-h
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up