So what you're telling us is that if your file down the threads of a screw it becomes a nail...
Hi,
I don't know what the story tells. If you feel that the colour reproduction as shown is very similar it would indicate that colour profiles are more important than sensor type or CFA design.
If you feel that colour reproduction is significantly different between IQ360 and Credo 50 it would indicate CMOS/CCD/CFA differences cannot be handled colour profiling. At least not by Adobe DNG Profile Editor used as a profiling tool.
A more labor intensive task would be to build a profile for each of the devices from scratch, for all three, all having the same 'look' applied. The Argyll / DCamProf route would enable to do that, but it takes time to do it right.
To me it seems that the IQ-360 produces some more saturated colour than the others, at least on the orange and the blue shaft on the brush. The Sony A7rII and the Credo seem to be very close.
The value of these comparisons is to see what happens if we use "same math" on the raw images.
Hi Erik, good work on these profiles. I am thinking that LR is definitely not the appropriate tool if you want 'same math' on the raw images, because we know that it virtually never, ever does the same thing even with all sliders zeroed out. I would suggest RawTherapee, which does take dcp profiles and can be easily setup for 'same math'.
As to color saturation, imho it normally means nothing (although I don't know whether the comment applies to a dcamProf context). For instance I was astounded to find out that when a dcp profile is used the linear matrix to XYZ has no negative terms, and often quite a few zeros in it - presumably not to incur in clipping. This results in totally desaturated images. They make it up later with non-linear profiles in HSV space, yikes! I hope your raw converter runs floating point internally ;)
Jack
I have used DcamProf to generate DCP profiles based on DT's test shots for the IQ360, Credo 50 and Sony A7rII.
Hi Jack,
Thanks for your input!
The suggestion to use "RawTherapee" is very good suggestion. I will make some work with RT and share. The reason I used LR here is that it is the raw converter that I am most familiar with.
AFAIK, very few raw converters use modern concepts, like floating point. I don't know for how many hundred years FP has been around, but not using FP says a lot about the ancient state of image processing…
Best regards
Erik
Hi Erik,
As long as one sticks to a single converter, an approximately unified look between cameras can be achieved
Cheers,
Bart
Yeah, sure, until you find a metameric failure. Which, if you look for it, you will.
it's like aliasing - unescapable.
Edmund
Yeah, sure, until you find a metameric failure. Which, if you look for it, you will.
Good show, Eric, you are right, not too different at first glance.
Notice the forward matrices have no negative terms? That means that they 'desaturate' the raw color information when transferring it linearly into XYZ space. The non-linear profile takes over from there, massaging the colors until they look as they should (it's an offer they can't refuse). I am not sure I understand the logic behind it 100% (perhaps Edmund or Torger can explain it), but it seems to me that it goes something like this: 'let me squeeze all the colors I can into XYZ, even if colorimetrically incorrectly; I will then try to make them look right by bending, pushing and pulling them to where I know they should be (move over and stay there, damn it)'.
Yes, that's correct. The reason negative terms are avoided is to avoid clipping of extreme range colors. Matrix-only profile always have negative terms, but then also robustness problems in extreme range, for example that deep saturated blues are clipped to black. Due to this I'm personally not very fond of matrix-only profiles.
Actually it's not only about avoiding non-negative factors, in DNG pipeline you must fit all into ProPhotoRGB if you want to avoid clipping. This desaturation and then stretching afterwards with the LUT is not as brittle as it may sound though, as the stretching is pretty linear. It's a purely DNG pipeline technical issue, and in my opinion it takes away some of the elegance of DNG profiles (I'm quite sure Adobe didn't realize this clipping problem until long after the profile format was decided, and indeed the early Adobe profiles have clipping issues), but in terms of actual result it's not a problem. It just makes it messier for us making camera profiling software.
Thanks for the clarification, Torger. Would you still be against non-desaturated forward matrices to XYZ (with optionally a tweaking Profile if desired) in a fully floating point environment?
Jack
Good show, Eric, you are right, not too different at first glance.
Notice the forward matrices have no negative terms? That means that they 'desaturate' the raw color information when transferring it linearly into XYZ space. The non-linear profile takes over from there, massaging the colors until they look as they should (it's an offer they can't refuse). I am not sure I understand the logic behind it 100% (perhaps Edmund or Torger can explain it), but it seems to me that it goes something like this: 'let me squeeze all the colors I can into XYZ, even if colorimetrically incorrectly; I will then try to make them look right by bending, pushing and pulling them to where I know they should be (move over and stay there, damn it)'.
It seems to me that after such an energetic tour de force, trying to determine the difference between 'CMOS vs CCD' CFA color recipes by looking at the final result is a bit like trying to figure out the type of potato used in Pringles (http://naturalsociety.com/how-pringles-are-made-potato-chip/) by tasting them :)
Jack
Maybe there is something I am not understanding here. I thought XYZ is basically standard observer cone-response observer space or at least a 5 degree version of same. So whatever the input device, you will need to "squeeze linearised device rgb into XYZ" before, I guess, adopting a whitepoint etc.
If your rgb input device is weird, in an ideal world yes you'd probably need negative coefs but you can probably recover the information without negative coefficients and apply some color transform later ...whitepoint adoption means that massaging the data heavily in a color space is mandatory anyway. I'm old and was always dumb, so what would I know ...maybe I should dig out a book :)
I don't know that much about "Pringle chips", but I am essentially sure that MFD chips are made of Idaho Potatoes.
You are the man where color is concerned, Edmund, I am just learning as I go along. Given what we know about color matching etc., aren't there some negative numbers in there? Every Forward Matrix I ever saw before (process) 2012 had them and did a decent job of converting white balanced raw CC24 data straight to XYZ sort of colorimetrically.
Enter THE PROFILE. Suddenly, the 'profiled' Forward Matrix produces totally desaturated XYZ data, i.e. pretend that the raw data has been mapped to a teeny weeny gamut, way smaller than sRGB, via perceptual intent. It is then the job of THE PROFILE to take teeny weeny XYZ data and blow it back up to your output gamut accurately again. Did I mention that on the way there is a trip from XYZ to ProPhoto, then to HSV, then to ProPhoto, then to XYZ, then to ProPhoto, then to HSV, then to ProPhoto, then to XYZ, then to final color space? A smart converter may be able to cut a couple of those conversions, but not m uch more than that. I trust Torger when he says that the stretching and conversions are not detrimental. But I can't see how this would work accurately unless one is running floating point math.
Jack
Between Kodak and Dalsa CCDs there was a big difference between color filters. Between various modern CMOSes today, not so much, unless you look at extremely saturated colors and narrow band colors. The Dalsa CCDs have color filters that are "modern" and neutral, while Kodak seems to have tried to mimic a subjective film response.
The whole discussion here appears to revolve around the idea of calibrating a camera so that it reproduces a colour chart perfectly. I don't want to do that. I am not in the business of reproducing paintings. I want my landscape pictures to have a particular rendition that reminds me of film, without going into the excesses of instagram filters.
Have you tried the Dalsa CCDs from Hasselblad or just the ones from Phase One?
I am asking, because I know from experience that the H4D-60 gives exactly the same colours as the H3D-39. I have had someone who had the two cameras take a few pictures under various lights and send me the results. I know that Phase One gives slightly different colours. It could just be the profile, or it could be that the manufacturers are also able to have a particular set of colour filters mounted on the sensors.
I also agree that Kodak CCDs appear to mimic a film response. It is a big plus for me and the reason I use an H4D-50: I am looking for that particular rendition.
The whole discussion here appears to revolve around the idea of calibrating a camera so that it reproduces a colour chart perfectly. I don't want to do that. I am not in the business of reproducing paintings. I want my landscape pictures to have a particular rendition that reminds me of film, without going into the excesses of instagram filters. I also don't want the overly saturated look, sort of David Kinkade on acid, that is popular on 500pix. I want good separation between various leaf green tones and I want them to look different under sunlight and under the clouds.
I get all of this with my present camera. On the minus side, I get more colour shifts under poor artificial lights than with my 24x36, but I can live with that.
I want my next camera to give me the same colours. Maybe I just need a profile, I don't know. All I know is that I am not going to take a colour chart with me every day and include it in all of my pictures as a reference.
I'm quite confident that they don't have custom CFAs, but I don't have inside information
Between Kodak and Dalsa CCDs there was a big difference between color filters. Between various modern CMOSes today, not so much, unless you look at extremely saturated colors and narrow band colors. The Dalsa CCDs have color filters that are "modern" and neutral, while Kodak seems to have tried to mimic a subjective film response.
...Hasselblad's look is pretty neutral, much more neutral than Phase One. I have a H4D-50 myself and have looked at its Hassy colors quite closely and compared to what my own camera profiler puts out. Hassy makes some subtle subjective adjustments plus quite extensive gamut compression, but overall a very natural look.
Torger, I respect your opinion, because I know the software you have written. But I have seen discussions on colour response on this forum for ages and in the end it always boils down to the characterisation of the CFA and nobody appears to have data on that.
How could we measure the transmission spectrum of the CFA? Wouldn't it be possible to have this data by taking a photograph of a diffraction grating behind a slit? I have seen pages where astronomers did something similar. I have also seen pages where people buy a spectrometer with a DVD as grating and cardboard box with a slit. (https://publiclab.org/wiki/foldable-spec)
It is a problem that will never be answered in this forum because the technical guys will keep insisting that as long as one cam match test chart shots to look the same with profiles, two cameras will shoot everything alike. It does not work that way in real life. Not for real world images.
I have done every trick under the sun, profiling, presets, different RAW demosaicers... nothing will get my Nikon D800 files to look even close to my Credo files.
I did not try to equalize test charts. Maybe that might be possible.
This is a typical tool for fast spectral response determination.
http://www.image-engineering.de/products/equipment/measurement-devices/588-camspecs-express
Otherwise one can use a monochromator; universities with optics labs etc have this.
Edmund
Hi,
That tool is around 10000€. A monochromator is not that expensive around 1000€ and up, but monochromator from lab equipment are often sold cheap on E-bay. With a monochromator you still need a light source and it needs to be calibrated. The calibration device is usually a spectroradiometer and those are expensive.
Best regards
Erik
It is a problem that will never be answered in this forum because the technical guys will keep insisting that as long as one cam match test chart shots to look the same with profiles, two cameras will shoot everything alike. It does not work that way in real life. Not for real world images.
I have done every trick under the sun, profiling, presets, different RAW demosaicers... nothing will get my Nikon D800 files to look even close to my Credo files.
I did not try to equalize test charts. Maybe that might be possible.
Torger, I respect your opinion, because I know the software you have written. But I have seen discussions on colour response on this forum for ages and in the end it always boils down to the characterisation of the CFA and nobody appears to have data on that.
How could we measure the transmission spectrum of the CFA? Wouldn't it be possible to have this data by taking a photograph of a diffraction grating behind a slit? I have seen pages where astronomers did something similar. I have also seen pages where people buy a spectrometer with a DVD as grating and cardboard box with a slit. (https://publiclab.org/wiki/foldable-spec)
I want good separation between various leaf green tones and I want them to look different under sunlight and under the clouds.
I get all of this with my present camera. On the minus side, I get more colour shifts under poor artificial lights than with my 24x36, but I can live with that.
I want my next camera to give me the same colours. Maybe I just need a profile, I don't know. All I know is that I am not going to take a colour chart with me every day and include it in all of my pictures as a reference.
Interesting that the topic of greens comes up. Apart from the skintones, this is where I see the Nikon being absolutely brutal. There is very little separation in the greens, no matter how one processes the files or how they try to equalize them. This is probably due to the CFAs, I don't know and frankly, I don't care.
These images were shot a minute apart from each other.
In the huge DCamProf thread over at the color management section there's this guy that built his own setup from ebay stuff for a very low cost.
Goody, I think I finally understand what is meant by green separation: the green separation on the white shed in the Leaf capture, right Synn? Definitely the CFA, the Leaf's awesome at bringing out them greens ;)
Jack
Goody, I think I finally understand what is meant by green separation: the green separation on the white shed in the Leaf capture, right Synn? Definitely the CFA, the Leaf's awesome at bringing out them greens ;)
Jack
With wit like that, I can't believe you are not writing for SNL.
Goody, I think I finally understand what is meant by green separation: the green separation on the white shed in the Leaf capture, right Synn? Definitely the CFA, the Leaf's awesome at bringing out them greens ;)
Yes,they say, the grass is greener in Sony country, but I cannot afford a Sony :)
This is a Canon 1Ds3, which has horribly low ISO, precisely because it has a cleaner CFA than most modern cams.
Edmund
See, this is what happens when you defend your beliefs. :)
In due course you too will get older and learn to run with the crowd.
Edmund
Interesting that the topic of greens comes up. Apart from the skintones, this is where I see the Nikon being absolutely brutal. There is very little separation in the greens, no matter how one processes the files or how they try to equalize them. This is probably due to the CFAs, I don't know and frankly, I don't care.
These images were shot a minute apart from each other.
Nikon:
(https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5638/21061974398_ca7b3bf922_b.jpg)
Leaf:
(https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5730/20628748483_3cd18bb28c_b.jpg)
The Leaf image is a stitch, but that's irrelevant.
I normally don't get into these discussions but if these images were shot one minute apart then I would have expected the clouds to be very similar...... they aren't. Just an observation.....
Victor
I normally don't get into these discussions but if these images were shot one minute apart then I would have expected the clouds to be very similar...... they aren't. Just an observation.....
Victor
Posted previously in a different sub-forum, the initial post on this (http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1234124/2&year=2013#11744473) page may be of interest.
Far from being poor at discriminating green, apparently Nikon excels at it.
Posted previously in a different sub-forum, the initial post on this (http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1234124/2&year=2013#11744473) page may be of interest.
Far from being poor at discriminating green, apparently Nikon excels at it.
...some words are apparently more accurate than actual pictures that one can see.
I did run across several challenges in making good looking color, and some was indeed about color separation, not sensor-related though but for example related to RGB modulation where reds are compressed and makes them harder to differ for the eye that it should be. I found it to be a lot more interesting to tweak the profile maker's color model and found it to have much more profound impacts on color rendering than I imagine the fine-tunings of CFA has.
Very interesting post, it would be interesting to know who's saying that and what information/knowledge he has.
Ah yes, THE Suede, a giant in the industry, considered one of the best color scientists in town, participated in some forums to bring what he termed 'sane and reasoned feedback' to discussions by us amateurs.
synn,
Good attitude: humility is the first step to redemption.
redemption is for those who have erred...
I am sorry - but where is that "green separation" in that small jpg ?
Ah yes, THE Suede, a giant in the industry, considered one of the best color scientists in town, participated in some forums to bring what he termed 'sane and reasoned feedback' to discussions by us amateurs. He was quite helpful and very forthcoming with his encyclopedic knowledge until a fateful exchange with another giant over a year ago - about the particle-wave nature of light of all things. I haven't seen him around since, quite a loss to the photographic community at large if I may say. I hope he'll come back from his self imposed exile one day.
If TheSuede said it, I believe it.
Jack
PS Clearly keeping in mind that he wrote that almost three years ago when the latest generation of Nikons was not even on the drawing board, and Nikon may have tweaked CFA recipes since then.
...keeping in mind that he wrote that almost three years ago when the latest generation of Nikons was not even on the drawing board...
Jack,
I'm not so sure: theSuede mentioned one day later in this (http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1234124/2&year=2013#11745379) post "...the absolute DR of the latest Sony sensors..." and "...D800...".
The next question is if the possible differences in colour rendition depend on image processing and weather those differences can be corrected by correct profiles or not.
How did the world ever shoot pictures without knowing the spectral sensitivity of our CFAs! ::)
Hi,
The camera software or the raw converter knows the spectral sensivity or just uses measured values from reflected targets.
So as usual, you don't need to know because someone else has done the job for you.
Best regards
Erik
I would suggest that this thread is about CCD vs CMOS in MF digital. The question here is if the new CMOS based backs have different rendition of colour compared to their CCD brethren. The link you refer to discusses 4/3 compared to MFD, mostly.
Hi Erik,
I think Torger answered this question with a definite yes, with the usual cautionary qualifications. I think I can see why: DNG profiles are designed to allow us to take any input and turn it into any output via double roundtrips to HVS with stopovers for additional PP (go wild with those sliders, Ken), although compared to a nice, pure linear matrix it seems at first glance to be a little bit like cheating. This is where I wish we had a bit more clarity from the cognoscenti:
When the goal is trying to objectively characterize HARDWARE quantitatively, as opposed to subjectively achieving pleasing output qualitatively - answering questions that depend on CFA Spectral Sensitivity Functions like sensor gamut, color discrimination, separation, orthogonality - shouldn't we be able to calculate that information straight from the forward 'compromise' matrix? Hasn't anyone come up with some practical such metrics yet, besides useless SMI? When someone says 'that camera has poor yellow discrimination', shouldn't we be able to point to a ratio or other combination of terms in the compromise matrix and say yay or nay? Please show the math in your answer.
Jack
If TheSuede said it, I believe it.
Erik,
I provided the link not to derail this thread, nor to refer to a comparison of 4/3 and MFD, but to provide clarity to a comment made by Jack.
That much should have been obvious.
Hi Erik,
I think Torger answered this question with a definite yes, with the usual cautionary qualifications. I think I can see why: DNG profiles are designed to allow us to take any input and turn it into any output via double roundtrips to HVS with stopovers for additional PP (go wild with those sliders, Ken), although compared to a nice, pure linear matrix it seems at first glance to be a little bit like cheating. This is where I wish we had a bit more clarity from the cognoscenti:
When the goal is trying to objectively characterize HARDWARE quantitatively, as opposed to subjectively achieving pleasing output qualitatively - answering questions that depend on CFA Spectral Sensitivity Functions like sensor gamut, color discrimination, separation, orthogonality - shouldn't we be able to calculate that information straight from the forward 'compromise' matrix? Hasn't anyone come up with some practical such metrics yet, besides useless SMI? When someone says 'that camera has poor yellow discrimination', shouldn't we be able to point to a ratio or other combination of terms in the compromise matrix and say yay or nay? Please show the math in your answer.
Jack
If you check the attached images, the ones on the left used Adobe Standard Profile while the ones on the right use a dual illuminant profile produced by DCamProf. The image with the lady on the park sofa doesn't gain that much from the DCamProf profile but the flower image gains a lot.
A comment about Adobe Lightroom's profiles -- they are not designed for a unified look. I've noted that several newer profiles are quite heavily under-saturated (Pentax 645z, A7r-II to name two), and I hope it's such a profile that's used in the LR vs DCamProf example above, otherwise my stuff is making over-saturation :-)
I think the reason Adobe has made under-saturated profiles is to make them more robust and they assume photographers will push the saturation sliders anyway. The challenge with making profiles with correct saturation is that for the outer gamut edges you end up in strange places. I never really solved that problem completely, so for artificial colored lights the Adobe desaturated profile often makes better results.
In profile design there's often a conflict between color accuracy and gradient smoothness. If you want smooth gradients from the outer "impossible" colors triggered by artificial narrow band lights into the normal gamut you must compromise accuracy also for normal colors, otherwise you will at some point get a too fast transition in the LUT and a bad gradient. The easiest way to get around this is to desaturate the whole profile. CFA design also have an impact here, Sony's sensitive blue channel gave me much problems with the Pentax 645z and the A7r-II. I never really looked at Phase One's implementations back then, but I probably will at some point. Even if the IQx50 has the exact same CFA as the Pentax, which I suspect, they could modulate it with the sensor cover glass.
Mea culpa!
Erik,
Keith once wrote: you've always struck me as being the perfect gentleman (http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=95456.msg780781#msg780781). I could not have said it better myself.
Peace.
Thanks you both!
Best regards
Erik
Rob,
Mea culpa! The reason I have posted this was that it seems that many photographers have a strong preference for CCD over CMOS. CMOS have been available for MFD for a while, and there are concerns about CMOS vs CCD colours.
This thread was intended to put CMOS vs CCD in a little perspective. I reread the original posting and I know realise that intent was not that clear. I feel that it is very good to discuss noise, DR, PRNU and other relevant factors. But I sort of assume that we are talking relative large sensors here.
The other point is that I can feel that the rendition of two objects are similar, but they may be different for another viewer. Also, just a one test scene may not tell the full story.
If you check the attached images, the ones on the left used Adobe Standard Profile while the ones on the right use a dual illuminant profile produced by DCamProf. The image with the lady on the park sofa doesn't gain that much from the DCamProf profile but the flower image gains a lot.
My personal opinion/guess is that profiles matter much more than CFA-designs and CCD/CMOS doesn't matter at all. The stuff I have seen that far doesn't contradict that belief.
Best regards
Erik
Hi Erik! Thanks for trouble, just wonder if you have white balanced those pictures? if yes, what has been your ref. white balance point in those pictures? or you have separate picture with color passport?
Regards
By the way, I did a quick comparison of IQ3100 vs A7r-II color response yesterday from Doug's raw files. I'd rather compare the IQx50 with the 645z as they're supposed to have the same sensor but I have no color checker raw shot of that at hand. What I could see though is that the "over-sensitive blue problem" with the A7r-II and Pentax 645z is not there with the IQ3100. This could be to a different CFA, or simply that the sensor glass cuts off some blue and not only IR. In any case a nicer hardware response to work with for color profile designers.
When it comes to matching cameras with profile I usually say that you can bring them very close, and indeed you can. However there will still be residual differences, and when you apply LUT relaxation to improve gradients the differences increase. For saturated colors there can easily be a 3-4 DE difference.
Another aspect is that many profile makers don't care to correct lightness with the LUT, and indeed per default DCamProf doesn't either. One reason for this is that colorcheckers are rarely evenly lit so lightness inputs are not to be trusted. Another reason is that lightness errors are the least disturbing, despite being easier to spot than hue/saturation in a quick A/B swap, and risking to break gradient performance just to correct lightness is often a bad idea. This means that lightness of saturated colors can differ quite much between cameras even when profiled for the same setup.
Hi -
Could you explain what you mean by "matching" cameras?
When you talk about DE, as you say you don't match lightness, is this effectively Delta AB?
Edmund
Hi,
Delta E normally includes lightness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference
Best regards
Erik
Are you using delta E(76) or delta E(94)?
Edmund
Hi Edmund,
I am not using Delta E these days, as I don't try to make numerical comparisons. When doing comparisons I mostly used CIEDE 2000.
The L value makes comparisons a bit messy, as tonal reproduction curve is intended to be slightly unlinear. I mostly used "Patch Tool" for comparisons.
Could you explain what you mean by "matching" cameras?
When you talk about DE, as you say you don't match lightness, is this effectively Delta AB?
I'm using CIE DE2000, and when analyzing I often split it up to look at hue, lightness and chroma separately. It's not an exact measure though, especially in the more extreme ranges. When I was referring to a 3-4 DE difference it's just to indicate the scale of differences so which standard that is used doesn't matter that much.
The numbers included lightness, but I don't think "not correcting lightness + LUT relax" compared to "correcting lightness + LUT relax" does that much of a difference since the relax brings it closer to a matrix solution anyway, it depends on how strong relaxation is. All this can be controlled with DCamProf, and the default relax is quite strong.
The goals of a general-purpose profile and a reproduction profile is quite different. I aim for general-purpose profiles and then it doesn't make much sense to try to get colors super-correct for a particular target and lighting condition and introduce strong LUT stretches to do so. Instead the LUT is kept quite relaxed to guarantee good gradients in any condition, and then "the magic" takes place in applying the "film curve" and subtle subjective adjustments in the "look" (this is also applied via a LUT).
I'd love to put some more effort into the design bits and make a GUI etc, and I have still much to learn about this, but it's a huge project and you really can't sell the stuff in any numbers, so it's not strange that there's not much profile design software around...
I'd love to put some more effort into the design bits and make a GUI etc
better to spend possible effort on core functionality and documentation...
Hi,
I shot some real world examples. These images have same processing, in Lightroom, using the profiles generated by Anders Torger's DCamProf.
Hi,
I shot some real world examples. These images have same processing, in Lightroom, using the profiles generated by Anders Torger's DCamProf.
Hi Erik,
What's left and what's right, IOW what are we comparing with?
Left is more (on sRGB displays too much?) saturated, and right is more controlled and a bit less yellow.
Of course that is a basis for further processing, so the differences could be made smaller by not using the same settings, but for a comparison one attempts to change as few variables as possible, in this case only the profile.
Cheers,
Bart
When one looks at the full-scene images, the one on the left is alive, the one on the right is a zombie.
Edmund
Hi Edmund,
P45+ is the one alive and A7rII is the zombie.
Best regards
Erik
When one looks at the full-scene images, the one on the left is alive, the one on the right is a zombie.
Hi Edmund,
That's what happens, if different profiles for different lenses+cameras/sensors are used with the same post-processing. The real question (and not the main goal of the thread) is of course which image can be made to look better, after using the data we get out of the Raw conversion/demosaicing stage.
I prefer the more saturated look (but not the oversaturation of some tones, nor the overall yellow tone), but that is easy to also achieve with the image on the right because it seems to have a well managed tonality to begin with. The question becomes whether the image on the left still has data to allow some post-processing of saturated detail or is it all bunched up in similar values beyond the ability to create subtle tone differences.
Also, don't forget that one of the benefits of Medium Format is a potentially higher MTF, because image detail is projected larger on the sensor, and needs less magnification for output to a similar size.
Cheers,
Bart
When one looks at the full-scene images, the one on the left is alive, the one on the right is a zombie.
Not using Lightroom is the single quickest way to make one's pictures better - if one can locate them :)
Bart,
I'm sure you're right. As for me - I simply don't use Lightroom
Not using Lightroom is the single quickest way to make one's pictures better - if one can locate them :)
Edmund
Hi,
As it happens, most photographers who's work I am familiar with use Lightroom. I would guess that vision, knowledge, subjects and workmanship are far more important than choice of tools. I would suggest that most photographers use Canon cameras and Lightroom so Canon and Lightroom are probably properly represented in any choice of great pictures.
A small point I would make is that experience matters. You find a way of processing your images. Learn what seems to be the best way to make the best of the tools you have at hand.
Best regards
Erik
Erik,
This happens to be one of the rare places where a majority of people might agree if I say "LR has nice workflow, but if you want good quality conversions, C1 is much better, especially for Phase files, and especially when it comes to color". I know people like to disagree with me, but I fear for once I might have both Synn and Doug at my side :)
I hate LR conversions, although I love PS as a Tiff editor. There was a time when I ran every Canon image through LR automatically with a script, but when I wanted to do a large print I would use DPP.
Edmund
Agreed. The problem is that the difference appears to be almost entirely in saturation, which appears to have become an arbitrary parameter in current profiles since DNG 1.4. Hey, the minute you buy into the idea that all a profile needs to do linearly is plop you into perceptual intent projection lines, the sky is the limit and Ken Rockwell is perceptually colorimetric.
Jack
That makes sense to keep the neutrals 'neutral'; I find the fact that it is possible to keep greys neutral all the way from the shadows to the highlights, whilst giving an overall warm look to images, interesting. I often find myself using the Color Balance wheels in C1 to compensate for the yellow cast; this helps to create a more neutral looking file overall in many cases but naturally means that the greys are no longer perfectly neutral 'by the numbers', and there are times when this causes more issues than it solves.
Anyway, I guess the colours out of C1 are what they are and it is unlikely that Phase is going to change its approach to colour rendering any time soon...
I'm one of those that think Capture One's color is overrated, and I'm sure that's one reason some have chosen Hasselblad over Phase One despite the more primitive backs and software.
Phase One has this thing about putting a yellow cast over everything, and I just don't think that's the right thing to do. Hasselblad does put a little bit warmth in there, and in my own subjective profiles I do put a little warmth into yellows and greens, but to a much lesser extent and less global than Phase One's profiles.
I can't deny that the profiles are really well made in terms of technical design, but I personally don't agree with their choice on how to render colors.
It's hard to discuss colors without having images to show though. What's is a "huge" difference to one person can be "small" or even not detectable to another. I'd love to see image examples of the color issues Tim mentions, and try to figure out if it's a profile issue or a CFA issue.
Hi,
I agree that correcting to achieve a different 'look' with the Colorbalance tools will change the neutral tones as well, so that's not the best method.
But Capture One is very capable of specifically modifying the (IMHO too yellow grass-greens) to less yellow, and even allows that to become the new default ICC profile to open new files with. The 'Advanced Color Editor' is our friend, so we are not stuck with how things are, we can change the (default) behavior.
Even if an image is mostly okay, but one wishes to change some tones, locally, that operation is hugely simplified by creating a Color Editor generated selection mask and use that on an adjustment layer. One can then locally modify the greens (or any other selection) by using a different Color Balance or with other tools, and e.g. even add some Structure to only those masked-in colors (e.g. to help foliage and grass definition).
Cheers,
Bart
| P45+ | Sony A7rII |
| (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Colours/GreenSeparation/20160511-CF047200.jpg) | (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Colours/GreenSeparation/20160511-_DSC5244.jpg) |
| C1-default | Adobe STD |
| (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Artefacts/20150407-CF046278_C1.jpg) | (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Artefacts/20150407-CF046278_AS.jpg) |
| Adobe DNG Profile Edior | DcamProf |
| (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Artefacts/20150407-CF046278_DPE.jpg) | (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Artefacts/20150407-CF046278_DCamProf.jpg) |
In my field shots using P45+ and Sony A7rII it may be differences that simple profiles cannot handle. It is possible to tweak profiles a lot, of course.
Erik, how can you tweet profile? Is it possible? When I profiling my cameras with Xrite profiler and compare the picture with passport, I like to fine tune the profile a little bit sometimes but don't know how. Thanks