Colorchecker ICC camera profiles

[makaphoto]

I haven't tested it yet but it seems like the color checker software can now create camera profiles for CO

https://xritephoto.com/CameraICC

The new ColorChecker for CO looks like it could save me a lot of time in reproducing art photos in the future. When I tried it though (following the PDF instruction) the icc profile that ColorChecker created and saved could not be found by CO. I tried dropping the profile into other various folders associated with color profiles, restarting CO every time i did this. No luck. It seems that CO is very picky about which profiles get listed in the "Other" section of the icc profile section.

I'm on CO 11.1, ColorChecker 1.2 and Mac High Sierra

[DP]

The new ColorChecker for CO looks like it could save me a lot of time in reproducing art photos in the future. When I tried it though (following the PDF instruction) the icc profile that ColorChecker created and saved could not be found by CO. I tried dropping the profile into other various folders associated with color profiles, restarting CO every time i did this. No luck. It seems that CO is very picky about which profiles get listed in the "Other" section of the icc profile section.

I'm on CO 11.1, ColorChecker 1.2 and Mac High Sierra

you are creating a "camera profile" for a specific camera model, are you not ... why in the world you are aiming for it to appear in the "other" section ? instead of making a proper file name for it to show up for your camera model ?

[makaphoto]

Because it says so in the manual. See attachment.

[ippolitois]

Because it says so in the manual. See attachment.

I downloaded the manual, and thank you for the link. I'm puzzled by these statements on page 2:

Capture One Workflow to Apply Profile
1. Re-Start Capture One software to recognize the new
profile.

2. Open the image where the profile will be applied.
NOTE: If images in the collection need to be white
balanced, white balance using the image with the
ColorChecker in it. Then manually use that white
balance setting in the rest of the images.

3. Apply the profile to desired image. The profile will
appear under the Other profiles list option.

Number 2 has me confused! Does it say to white balance using the color pick in CO and then apply the profile? Am I reading this correctly? Then what would be the point of creating a new profile.

One more thing, can I adjust the exposure in the color checker file before I create the TIFF? For example, let's say I over or under exposure the color checker and make the corrections in CO before exporting the image. Will that affect the overall look and accuracy of the ICC?

I'm not entirely sure how to use it after it's done. In the Color panel I select the new ICC in the Base Characteristics ICC Profile drop down box, but do I leave the Curve section to Auto or Linear?

Please help, dazed and confused.

Paul

[Dave Rosser]

Hi Paul, I was confused at first until I understood that the tool has a particular purpose.  It is aimed at photographers photographing say an original painting who want as accurate a colour match as possible.  They would set up the lighting etc and then take an initial shot of the colour checker followed by a series of shots of the painting(s) being copied.  Then when processing use the colour checker picture as though it was a grey card to set colour balance for the whole series and then the profile to get the best colour match possible.
The tool is not realy intended for generating general purpose profiles.

Dave

[makaphoto]

I downloaded the manual, and thank you for the link. I'm puzzled by these statements on page 2:

Capture One Workflow to Apply Profile
1. Re-Start Capture One software to recognize the new
profile.

2. Open the image where the profile will be applied.
NOTE: If images in the collection need to be white
balanced, white balance using the image with the
ColorChecker in it. Then manually use that white
balance setting in the rest of the images.

3. Apply the profile to desired image. The profile will
appear under the Other profiles list option.

Number 2 has me confused! Does it say to white balance using the color pick in CO and then apply the profile? Am I reading this correctly? Then what would be the point of creating a new profile.

One more thing, can I adjust the exposure in the color checker file before I create the TIFF? For example, let's say I over or under exposure the color checker and make the corrections in CO before exporting the image. Will that affect the overall look and accuracy of the ICC?

I'm not entirely sure how to use it after it's done. In the Color panel I select the new ICC in the Base Characteristics ICC Profile drop down box, but do I leave the Curve section to Auto or Linear?

Please help, dazed and confused.

Paul

ippolitois
so the newly created profile does appear in the "other" section in your version of CO? Because here it is still nowhere to be found.

[ippolitois]

ippolitois
so the newly created profile does appear in the "other" section in your version of CO? Because here it is still nowhere to be found.

Yes, it appears in the Others folder as specified in the PDF. I'm on Win 10, build 1809 with all the updates.

Hope this helps.

Paul

[Dromano]

You have to name the profile in a specific way to get it to appear in the area you want. It doesn't have to be in the Other folder. See existing profiles for guidance.

[nemophoto]

I have created three or four camera profiles with the ColorChecker Passport for Capture 1. While I think the profiles for my cameras used in Lightroom are excellent and make a HUGE difference, the profiles, from C1, in a word, suck. I keep thinking it's me and I keep remaking the profiles thinking I did something wrong, but each time the color is flat, unsaturated and just plain bad. I had high hopes, but at this point, I'll use the canned generic profiles bundled with C1.

[makaphoto]

You have to name the profile in a specific way to get it to appear in the area you want. It doesn't have to be in the Other folder. See existing profiles for guidance.

I tried a few things like putting the profiles in different color sync related folders (user and system levels). Also I tried renaming them, as you suggest. But how? For instance a profile the is named CNNIRC09 gets listed in the "Others" folder, whereas a profile named CNN819RA (which rests in the same color sync folder) is not.

As ippolitois mentions that he got it working on a WIN 10 platform, I tend to believe it is an OS related problem (I'm on Mac, High Sierra)

[DP]

But how?

for simplicity - see how P1 names camera profiles for cameras and where they put them ...

[imagetone]

The dark blue patch is a quite distinctive look of a reproduction profile. That blue patch on the color checker really is very dark so if you are making reproduction work (eg photographing a painting on canvas and then printing it on canvas) it should be that. However if you do general-purpose photography the deep blues will be so dark that tone reproduction suffers significantly, it's all just all to dark to make subtle gradations visible. Therefore almost no bundled profiles from a good quality raw converter renders blues like that, but instead lightens them significantly often paired with a little desaturation. It's just not a good idea to slap a curve on top of a linear reproduction profile and call it a general-purpose profile, and the overly dark deep blues is just one reason.

But well I'm getting on my hobby-horse now as I constantly talk about the importance of differing between linear reproduction and general-purpose when it comes to profiles. If you do want a neutral rendering with contrast, which product photographers want for example, the answer is still not a linear reproduction profile with a curve on top like X-Rite does here, that will over-saturate among other problems. The profile maker must take the final contrast into account to make a percetually neutral rendering.

Thanks, that is useful to know. So in your opinion for the kind of product (and food) studio photography you are talking about is the most convenient way to a good result for a specific lighting condition still to tune the canned C1 profiles (in my case Fuji GFX 50s and legacy P+  backs) using the Color Editor (and calibrated/profiled monitor)?

Tony

[David Good]

The thing with ICC profiles in raw converters is that while the format itself is standard, raw converter color pipelines and where the ICC profile are applied within them is not. So to make an ICC profile that really works in concert with the ICC-using raw converter you must know how it actually uses the ICC profile. For example a profile maker that is solely designed for making ICC profiles for scanner software will not make ICC profiles that work well with Capture One.

In most raw converters using ICC profiles the ICC profile works on linear input and applies itself the tone curve if you want one. In Capture One the input into the ICC profile is not linear, and the curve is not supposed to be applied by the profile, but separately by Capture One. To further complicate things the ICC profile is still expected to apply a minor amount of contrast, most significantly in the shadow range. Oh, and gamut compression too. A profile maker truly made for Capture One needs to take all these aspects into account. If it only is supposed to make reproduction profiles, like traditional profile makers do, some of these aspects can be skipped, but if you want to make a high-end general-purpose profile all aspects need to be taken into account, just as for Capture One's bundled profiles, which as you know are truly excellent -- if your taste is in line with the rather subjective look they provide.

Thank-you Anders for the very concise explanation(s) of what it takes to properly produce profiles for C1, very informative.

[David Good]

For those really interested in camera profiling, Lumariver's user manual http://www.lumariver.com/lrpd-manual/ is a wealth of information and a must read. Regarding C1 profiles I found it easier to make my own notes after reading through the manual's sections on how that raw converter handles it's profiles and the Tone Curve settings. Next for me is to get explore (and get my head around) the advanced Optimization workflow. 

[Christoph B.]

Here's a bit of an "Update" on the ICC profiles created with the ColorChecker and the X-Rite software:

They are in fact all broken and unusable for professionals.

What do I mean by that? Well - they are all missing the L*a*b (0,0,0) coordinate and therefore you can't properly convert the images to any other profile like AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB or even sRGB without a noticeably shift in the black points.
This shift can be very minor (0 0 0 turns into 3 0 5 rgb) or massive (0 0 0 turns into 13 11 15 rgb). Since this shift happens during profile conversion while exporting a RAW image, it can't be countered by any setting or adjustment in Capture One and of course it also happens in Photoshop. When you try to correct this during or after the conversion in Photoshop it'll impact the contrast and colors of the whole image - which of course renders the whole point of profiling completely moot.


Yes, the X-rite profile has nice colors but due to the crappy contrast and no true black levels it can't be used for repro work (or any serious critical work for that matter).

I notified x-rite about this 3 months ago and it took them weeks to even recognise and confirm that this happens. I got handed through the various support tiers and they even informed product management about this issue in July(!).

So far: no changes, no updates. No press release to inform photographers who use it and may create problems they probably don't know about. Not even a note on their product page.

It seems like they hope it goes away if they just ignore it.

[Shiftworker]

Can someone explain how a small number of colour patches that cover a very small part of the 3d colour space reliably create an accurate profile for general photography use. It would seem it's akin to  trying to do a 3d survey of a large house using a 12" ruler. Even with the 140 patch SG it's still a small part of the gamut. Is this what PhaseOne use to create their camera profiles?

[digitaldog]

Can someone explain how a small number of colour patches that cover a very small part of the 3d colour space reliably create an accurate profile for general photography use. It would seem it's akin to  trying to do a 3d survey of a large house using a 12" ruler. Even with the 140 patch SG it's still a small part of the gamut. Is this what PhaseOne use to create their camera profiles?

All ICC profiles are based on extrapolation. Even if you could measure something close to 16.7 million device values, the resulting profiles would be larger than many images they "Define" by colorimetrics.

[Shiftworker]

All ICC profiles are based on extrapolation. Even if you could measure something close to 16.7 million device values, the resulting profiles would be larger than many images they "Define" by colorimetrics.

That's what I assumed and why I never found it worked for anything other than flat copy work. I assume camera makers and RAW processing developers use something more sophisticated that can create control points spread throughout the color space so they are just filling in the gaps and limiting the errors?

[digitaldog]

That's what I assumed and why I never found it worked for anything other than flat copy work. I assume camera makers and RAW processing developers use something more sophisticated that can create control points spread throughout the color space so they are just filling in the gaps and limiting the errors?

I wouldn't make such an assumption and there are different kinds of camera profiles besides ICC profiles which are usually based on a rendered output rather than say .dcp profiles based more on the raw data. So much of this isn't about accuracy and more about producing a starting point for pleasing colors.

[Dinarius]

Anyone care to share their experiences of creating X-Rite profiles on C1 20?

Unless my eyes are deceiving me, something is better.

Contrast is better and I'm getting 0,0,0, on one file and 3,0,0, on another, without having to radically adjust the Curves shadow to the right.

I made two profiles on two shots of the same X-Rite Passport CC.

When I applied the profile that was giving me 0,0,0, to the other card (whose profile was giving me 3,0,0,) I also got 0,0,0, on that card.

After creating a profile, I am zeroing out changes to the CC image file and just choosing Linear and then boosting Exposure until the green in the green patch is about 148/150. What I'm seeing is much better.

Would be interested to hear if others see an improvement using files that weren't great previously.

I'm using version 2.0.1 of the X-Rite software - PC/Windows 10.

Thanks.

D.