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Author Topic: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions  (Read 35632 times)

Lorenzo Pierucci

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #20 on: February 05, 2014, 10:58:37 am »

Ok guys, as always u had prove to be the best source on the net, thanks for all the sharing.

Ok so there is a error on my camera setting to. I do menage to use the the "picture control" on camera but not that much, because i know that in C1 and CRAW they will not care about it. So i don't really care, but looks that i should. Is the Standard the best setting to go for skin ? The portrait one looks so low contrast and low saturation that turn pale skin to gray…. :-\

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Some Guy

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #21 on: February 05, 2014, 11:38:26 am »

Lorenzo, I found this recent thread in ModelMayhem on the D800 & Capture One: http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=915857.  Seems the guy in the thread, Fred Greissing, got a response from Capture One (halfway down the thread) on the orange/brown color cast using their software with the D800 (i.e. "...but the brown-tinted tone of CO is deliberate choice based on user input.").  With my own little test using it yesterday, I wouldn't use it for RAW conversion out of the D800 unless I liked saturated orange/brown skin.  Those mayhem guys may be more finicky with skin color so maybe they are on to something too with Capture One and the D800.

I find the "Portrait" to be much like what you found, soft.  Maybe if you have someone with blown out forehead highlights or oily skin, but the Active-D lighting goes a long way in fixing some of that.  Just leave it in "Standard" or "Normal" and try a color chart and get as close as you can with the settings in the camera.  To fully utilize all those settings you are back to using Nikon's software.  Imho, even Adobe ACR is sort of like a Swiss Army Knife: It tries to do a lot, but not necessarily the best for the job at times for a given camera.

Personally, I hated Capture NX2 when I bought it 2-3 years ago.  It crashed a lot and was very slow.  Seems it is getting better with each version though and it recently went 16 bit.  Takes a lot of RAM though when running.  Maybe not as much as DxO Optics Pro 9 which really can beat a computer down with its PRIME noise reduction.  Still, Capture NX2 does seem to be the best NEF conversion out there for Nikon as it reads the camera files far better than anything else, but I expect it should be too.  Uses the Nikon RGB 4 colorspace too which seems to have some red control applied.  It also has those "Control Points" where you can fix certain contrast/color/brightness issues on an assigned portion of an image which is nice.  I like their retouch tool too that seems to leave some texture in the spot rather than going to Adobe plastic look.

SG
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digitaldog

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #22 on: February 05, 2014, 11:58:04 am »

Ok so there is a error on my camera setting to.
Yes and no. Yes IF you use the Nikon software that can understand and presumably produce a useful rendering from camera settings (picture styles you set on that camrea). Otherwise, raw is raw. It's why you can't separate the processing from the capture. If you take the same NEF and hand it to Lightroom, or C1, those camera settings, which are just metadata and have zero effect on the raw data itself is ignored.

Decide what raw converter you'll use, then you can deal with how it processes the raw data and the result of the final rendering. If you use Nikon's software, the settings referenced are important. If you don't use that converter, they are of no use and have no bearing on the data or the processing.

Keep in mind, the raw data is far closer to a grayscale document than anything else, the over donered color you see, if not an attribute of the display calibration is an attribute of the processing in large part. And again, in the NEF you provided, in Lightroom, the skin tones seem OK and look OK, your exposure is 'down' and you're not anywhere near color or tone clipping at least as reported though the ACR engine. Pop that raw into another converter, you will probably see something quite different.
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LKaven

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #23 on: February 05, 2014, 12:35:28 pm »

I do menage to use the the "picture control" on camera but not that much, because i know that in C1 and CRAW they will not care about it. So i don't really care, but looks that i should. Is the Standard the best setting to go for skin ? The portrait one looks so low contrast and low saturation that turn pale skin to gray…. :-\

I responded twice on this question: The "standard" profile is designed to exaggerate color in a "pleasing" sort of way.  It is not suitable for portraits.  If you want real skin color, this is not the profile to use.  Plus it blows your highlights.

The "portrait" profile is design to mitigate just this thing in skin tones.  But it does not go far enough. 

If you want real skin tones, you need to start with the "neutral" profile and roll your own tone curve with suitable care.  Yes, the "neutral" setting looks flat; it's just the starting point. 

digitaldog

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #24 on: February 05, 2014, 12:53:16 pm »

I responded twice on this question: The "standard" profile is designed to exaggerate color in a "pleasing" sort of way.  It is not suitable for portraits.  If you want real skin color, this is not the profile to use.  Plus it blows your highlights.
Not in Lightroom, not with the image the OP supplied. Nothing even close to highlight's blowing out. Now in another converter, possible. But the OP mentioned Lightroom and the profiles there really have no role over highlight's blowing out or not.
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Vladimirovich

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #25 on: February 05, 2014, 01:08:41 pm »

But the OP mentioned Lightroom and the profiles there really have no role over highlight's blowing out or not.
dcp profiles can control hidden expocorrections, WB, color transforms... so dcp profile can contribute to any number of ill effects... now if you are talking about profiles supplied by Adobe and without extreme manipulations in LR UI with a regular image that's another story
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LKaven

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #26 on: February 05, 2014, 01:52:53 pm »

Not in Lightroom, not with the image the OP supplied. Nothing even close to highlight's blowing out. Now in another converter, possible. But the OP mentioned Lightroom and the profiles there really have no role over highlight's blowing out or not.

Thought he was using C1.

The "standard" profile -- in every converter -- should be called the "pimped-out color" profile.  That way, nobody would ever be tempted to write "I used the pimped-out color profile, and the colors don't look accurate.  Why?"

The "neutral"/"linear" profile is great.  Start with the cleanest numbers, then customize your tone curve and local contrast enhancements altogether.  Too many people waste their time trying to 'unscrunch' their tones in photoshop after telling the computer to scrunch them up in capture.

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #27 on: February 05, 2014, 01:55:26 pm »

now if you are talking about profiles supplied by Adobe and without extreme manipulations in LR UI with a regular image that's another story
That's exactly what I'm talking about and observed with the supplied NEF.
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digitaldog

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #28 on: February 05, 2014, 01:59:12 pm »

Thought he was using C1.
He's using at least three converters. So the first step is deciding which to use as I don't see how we can separate the processing from the capture.
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Some Guy

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #29 on: February 05, 2014, 02:08:13 pm »

.... in the NEF you provided, in Lightroom, the skin tones seem OK and look OK, your exposure is 'down' and you're not anywhere near color or tone clipping at least as reported though the ACR engine. Pop that raw into another converter, you will probably see something quite different.

No doubt you will see something different from various converters.  Messing around and I just did.

In Nikon's ViewNX 2, the reds are definitely overexposed with the girls and especially their red (neon) basket, as are her red fingernails and the strawberry with no texture.  The basket is even shown being blown out in Windows Photo Viewer alone with the NEF.  Pull it up in CaptureNX 2 on the Red channel alone and it is blown at each end - but much worse on the highlight end with a very steep over-exposure spike there too.  I'll see if I can post a histogram image of it shown being blown out in CaptureNX 2.

Oddly, in ACR 8.3 it is not blown in their default histogram and seems compressed in range too.  Seems Nikon and Adobe are at a disagreement there, and why I'm not fond of Adobe for RAW conversion much less analysis with the D800.  Adobe sort of blew it there, but they are the generic Swiss Army Knife so I cut them a little slack - just not to use it for critical conversion with the D800 especially when reds are around.

Most of what the OP needs to do is focus and not jump all around the place in settings and converters.  Try and nail the reds down with some converter (Active D lighting perhaps) and all should fall in line - maybe.

SG
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digitaldog

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #30 on: February 05, 2014, 02:14:04 pm »

Quote
In Nikon's ViewNX 2, the reds are definitely overexposed with the girls and especially their red (neon) basket, as are her red fingernails and the strawberry with no texture.
Oddly, in ACR 8.3 it is not blown in their default histogram and seems compressed in range too.  Seems Nikon and Adobe are at a disagreement there
Looks like saturation clipping but I don't know that product. We need to examine a "luminosity"(it's actually brightness) histogram if one exists. It's easy to show saturation clipping on an image in say ACR when set to encode in sRGB which completely disappears if we select ProPhoto RGB instead. So in terms of what the histogram tells us, and they are prone to lie, it's possible there's no clipping anywhere within the raw data and it is the rendering controls at play here.

In ACR, if you convert to grayscale, you'll get close to the "luminosity" histogram in Photoshop. Close but not spot on due to the role of the data and processing in that converter. ACR and LR only provide RGB histograms which tell one part of the story and not the other.
Quote
Most of what the OP needs to do is focus and not jump all around the place in settings and converters.  Try and nail the reds down with some converter (Active D lighting perhaps) and all should fall in line - maybe.
Agreed although depending on the converter, many of the camera settings will play no role.
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Lorenzo Pierucci

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #31 on: February 06, 2014, 04:31:16 am »


The "standard" profile -- in every converter -- should be called the "pimped-out color" profile. 

HAHAHAHA so true.

Ok, i just play around a bit. Looks like the "picture control" have a part on the mess. Im now shoot in "neutral" ( which i guess is linear response ) and i get something quite similar to what i get when i import file in C1, also thanks the suggestion of use the linear curve, the similitude is even greater. Lets say that image does not looks great straight away, but at least I'm now seeing what i will get on the converter.

I use C1 for skin work, CRaw for architectural. I now start to menage this Rawtherapee which looks pretty cool. LR seems really to simple to me.

You guys had share a lot of knowledge really appreciated.

I just wish that my straight from camera LCD will look a bit better ( especially when shooting not tethered with client ). I always have to say " here looks suck but on screen will be great". I start to believe that Canon have a definitely better LCD display….  :-\
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hjulenissen

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #32 on: February 06, 2014, 04:38:54 am »

...
The "standard" profile -- in every converter -- should be called the "pimped-out color" profile.  That way, nobody would ever be tempted to write "I used the pimped-out color profile, and the colors don't look accurate.  Why?"

The "neutral"/"linear" profile is great.  Start with the cleanest numbers, then customize your tone curve and local contrast enhancements altogether.  Too many people waste their time trying to 'unscrunch' their tones in photoshop after telling the computer to scrunch them up in capture.
For my Canon 7D and Adobe Lightroom, none of the included profiles worked out for me (reds seems to have wrong hue and saturation).

It is strange that they won't do one default profile that is somewhat neutral under most lighting conditions, and rather have a slider called "pimp out my color". If need be, set this slider to 100% as default (this would be a lot more transparent).

-h
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Lorenzo Pierucci

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #33 on: February 06, 2014, 09:13:13 am »

Ok i tried out the liner of C1, looks that every shoot need to be over exposed of 1.5 stop, coz they all looks underexposed after apply the linear response. While on camera they looks well exposed.

But indeed: Linear response gave me better control ( looks like )
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sandymc

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #34 on: February 06, 2014, 10:21:33 am »

Out of curiosity, I took a look at both images in AccuRaw, which by design doesn't have any of the hue twists, "pimped up profiles", etc, and is generally very linear in its color response. AccuRaw agrees with Nikon's View NX  :) - in the second image, the red channel is blown. Although the rendered image looks ok. The first image looks fine - both on histogram and as rendered.

Sandy
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #35 on: February 06, 2014, 11:54:41 am »

Out of curiosity, I took a look at both images in AccuRaw, which by design doesn't have any of the hue twists, "pimped up profiles", etc, and is generally very linear in its color response. AccuRaw agrees with Nikon's View NX  :) - in the second image, the red channel is blown. Although the rendered image looks ok. The first image looks fine - both on histogram and as rendered.

Hi,

The Red channel in the second image is not really blown, not even after white-balancing, but it is very saturated (Red near 65% Green near 0%). A minor (-8) tweak in RawTherapee's CIE2002 Chroma (JC) brings everything into reasonable ranges, and allows to boost exposure by +0.91EV without introducing any clipping.

I'm more puzzled by the Green channels, the green bag also showed zero values, suggesting saturation/gamut clipping. I do not know how good the default profile for the D800 is, but skin tone looks just fine.

Cheers,
Bart
« Last Edit: February 06, 2014, 12:02:03 pm by BartvanderWolf »
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digitaldog

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #36 on: February 06, 2014, 12:35:50 pm »

Ok i tried out the liner of C1, looks that every shoot need to be over exposed of 1.5 stop, coz they all looks underexposed after apply the linear response. While on camera they looks well exposed.
Just ignore what you see on the camera LCD! In terms of exposure (for raw), clipping etc, it's a big fat lie. Great for checking focus, composition but pretty worthless for anything that releates to the raw data.
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Lorenzo Pierucci

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #37 on: February 06, 2014, 12:38:26 pm »

Just ignore what you see on the camera LCD! In terms of exposure (for raw), clipping etc, it's a big fat lie. Great for checking focus, composition but pretty worthless for anything that releates to the raw data.

So true! Film era docet.
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LKaven

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #38 on: February 06, 2014, 01:15:05 pm »

Ok i tried out the linear of C1, looks that every shoot need to be over exposed of 1.5 stop, coz they all looks underexposed after apply the linear response. While on camera they looks well exposed.

But indeed: Linear response gave me better control ( looks like )

C1 with the linear profile is giving you the closest to the actual numbers from the sensor.  So now you know where you really are!

The camera will apply all of the picture controls and JPG settings to the preview.  The in-camera histogram reflects in-camera settings.  In fact, the preview itself is a "basic" in-camera JPG. 

A good approximation of true exposure on the camera is to set picture control to "neutral" and WB to 5600K.  The rear LCD on the D800 isn't calibrated either (as it is on the D3/s/D4).  I find it best at around -1 brightness, but your experience might be different.

Lorenzo Pierucci

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Re: D800 clipping red channel ? Any possible solutions
« Reply #39 on: February 06, 2014, 02:01:25 pm »

I find it best at around -1 brightness, but your experience might be different.

Thanks! that was something i was wondering about actually. Putting this setting straight away !
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