colors... ACR and Capture One Pro 7 very different....

[orchidblooms]

I am beginning to think i should start to 'run' like Forrest Gump!

I have been working hard to get accurate colors...

To celebrate Earth Day - I took photos of a bridge lit in green

In CP1 - colors were almost drab pastel -

In ACR much more true to life...

Then with the flower blooms i have been struggling with

CP1 much better rendition of the nef file by default...

the ACR file looks horrible...

I realize these are 2 different apps...  should we expect such disparity in colors on default settings?

Are there maybe some 'settings' i am missing?

i am loading these in profoto mode so you can see clearly what i see...

1st is screen cap

2 and 3 exports - all in default modes  image 2 ia the ACR file 3, cp1

the flower images would not 'screen cap' and paste into PS.. they looked really bad... pasted in...

Image 2 seems to be more of a blob of color by default... (ACR)

what is going on?

[stamper]

Try and zero the settings as much as possible in each program. It won't be possible to get them completely flat. As to "accurate" forget about that term. It would be better for you to decide which program you like best and stick to it and enhance the image/images to taste. This approach will save you a lot of grief. This is my methodology and no doubt others will disagree? 

[orchidblooms]

Try and zero the settings as much as possible in each program. It won't be possible to get them completely flat. As to "accurate" forget about that term. It would be better for you to decide which program you like best and stick to it and enhance the image/images to taste. This approach will save you a lot of grief. This is my methodology and no doubt others will disagree? 

for this everything  was set to default - zero

[Mark D Segal]

To help you save time and agony may I suggest that this is a fruitless line of inquiry? Recognize that raw files are raw files. They start life in a state that no matter what raw converter you use they will need to be adjusted to suit what your mind's eye tells you the photo should look like. Unless you are a product photographer, chasing after "accurate colour" is a non-starter. Which of the trillions of scene colours would you have measured to vet for "accuracy" when you made the photo? At best shooting a gray card? Both of these applications are highly sophisticated constructs that give you most of the control you need to produce what you want. You can spend ions of time making comparisons of the kind you are trying to make and none of that will buy you a good photograph. Settle on one of them, determined largely by which you are more comfortable working with, has more of the features you would use most and most easily, and best integrates with the post-raw conversion workflow you would normally deploy.

[orchidblooms]

Indeed what you say Mark, makes sense...

I have settled on one... Capture One Pro 7

However - When working yesterday with images of the bridge - they all looked pastel green when, infact the bridge was lit with LED's and was much 'brighter'...

I loaded ACR and you see the 'default' settings here...

Simply put - unable to get what i am looking for in cp1 - hence the post....

To me still not making much sense -

... Also i noticed each app has a different 'as shot' value for the white balance...  how can this be?  camera is set to 5200K  so i would then pre-suppose each image in respective app would reflect 5200 for WB?

Phil

[xpatUSA]

I had a troublesome sunflower shot last year that ACR 5.4 could not handle. Some yellows in the sunlit petal tips were well outside of the sRGB gamut and ACR's conversion of those yellow highlights from RAW to it's working area gamut was unsuccessful with bad color clipping. The sliders were of no help in fixing the color-clipped areas. The RAW data showed that the areas were not out of sensor gamut but were outside of the linear response although not saturated (sensor-wise).

On the other hand, DCraw 9.02 produced a reasonable image without much difficulty, as did Sigma Photo Pro 3.5. So converters do vary quite considerably.

Sometime I ago, I found that ACR 5.4 had the closest match to the Macbeth card, as far as the SRGB figures on the packet are concerned.

OT, but yesterday I was investigating white points and shot a white target. The same raw file produced quite different histograms in two different converters mainly the spreads (SD) were 9.33, 14.57 for the distributions. Quite noticeable.

[Mark D Segal]

... Also i noticed each app has a different 'as shot' value for the white balance...  how can this be?  camera is set to 5200K  so i would then pre-suppose each image in respective app would reflect 5200 for WB?

Phil

The in-camera WB setting is irrelevant for a raw file.

[xpatUSA]

Indeed what you say Mark, makes sense...

I have settled on one... Capture One Pro 7

However - When working yesterday with images of the bridge - they all looked pastel green when, infact the bridge was lit with LED's and was much 'brighter'...

I loaded ACR and you see the 'default' settings here...

Simply put - unable to get what i am looking for in cp1 - hence the post....

Phil, you may find it worth-while keeping several converters to suit a range of image types. Each has it's good and bad points:

For example, SPP can't crop. FastStone can crop but has no RGB indicator. ACR has an RGB indicator but is bad on saturated colors. IrfanView, in it's latest incarnation, won't open X3F files from the "open dialog". DCraw is flexible, but is a command-line application and can over-brighten images. Some converters don't embed ICC profiles and some don't even add EXIF data! Raw Therapee has some exotic sharpening. FastStone offers excellent choices of JPEG quality including 4:4:4 at low percentages, unlike PSE 6 which only changes to 4:4:4 above a certain level (9-12 is 4:4:4). The list goes on; others will no doubt have their favorites . . .

[orchidblooms]

Phil, you may find it worth-while keeping several converters to suit a range of image types. Each has it's good and bad points:

For example, SPP can't crop. FastStone can crop but has no RGB indicator. ACR has an RGB indicator but is bad on saturated colors. IrfanView, in it's latest incarnation, won't open X3F files from the "open dialog". DCraw is flexible, but is a command-line application and can over-brighten images. Some converters don't embed ICC profiles and some don't even add EXIF data! Raw Therapee has some exotic sharpening. FastStone offers excellent choices of JPEG quality including 4:4:4 at low percentages, unlike PSE 6 which only changes to 4:4:4 above a certain level (9-12 is 4:4:4). The list goes on; others will no doubt have their favorites . . .

Ted I am beginning to 'see' what your are suggesting...

I will keep moving along, perhaps not moving ahead all of the time at first glance...

- Many Thanks -

Phil

[xpatUSA]

Ted I am beginning to 'see' what your are suggesting...

I will keep moving along, perhaps not moving ahead all of the time at first glance...

Yes, for a long time I was seeking a Grail for my Sigma SD9/10 X3F files. The Grail being one app. that did it all in a satisfactory manner. I ended up with ACR 5.4 and PSE 6 as being OK, until the sunflower shot came along  

Currently, I'm going X3F > Sigma Photo Pro 3.5 > 16-bit ProPhoto TIFF > PSE > sRGB JPEG for web stuff.

I found ACR was quite OK for .nef files (D50) and quite a choice of camera profiles for the conversion. If you're feeling adventurous, you can download free DNG stuff from Adobe Labs and roll you own profiles, too.

good luck!