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Archive 2012 · Color management kicking my butt again :)

  
 
charlesk
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Hey everyone,

I went back today to editing photos for the first time in over a year and it appears I have more than a bit of rust, especially in the color department.

My usual process is to open RAW files in ACR, save using ProPhoto RGB. I have Adobe PS CS5 set with ProPhoto as the working space.

I noticed after I processed some shots that the skies had turned cyan. Then I noticed that ACR itself is showing blue skies as cyan when they look fine in BreezeBrowser and other display programs.

I know I must be missing something simple. Any ideas?

Thanks.



Sep 14, 2012 at 05:36 PM
mshi
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


calibrate your monitor first. use sRGB or aRGB instead.


Sep 14, 2012 at 05:51 PM
charlesk
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Just calibrated it. I've still got a major mismatch in color between apps, and I'm pretty sure PS is the problem because the skies just don't look right.

Thanks for the reply.

ETA: I tried putting PS to sRGB as working space and also ACR. Still doing the same thing. I'm confuserated.



Sep 14, 2012 at 05:56 PM
BruceF99
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Are the other apps you are using color managed?


Sep 14, 2012 at 06:03 PM
charlesk
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Pretty sure BreezeBrowser is.

Maybe I'm getting mixed up on the difference between "color space" and "color profile" again...?

Thanks.



Sep 14, 2012 at 06:06 PM
charlesk
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Maybe I'm just seeing differences in color conversion from RAW here? I don't know. The more I stare at it, the more crazy I get.

Below are two copies of the same image. One is a straight 'as is' conversion with ACR, converted to sRGB and uploaded. The other is the in-camera JPG. Are they as different as I think they are?

http://desktopscenes.com/misc/x1.jpg

http://desktopscenes.com/misc/x2.jpg



Sep 14, 2012 at 06:27 PM
charlesk
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Okay, may have found the culprit: "Apply auto tone adjustments" in the ACR settings. Seems to behave rather strangely and may be responsible for the odd colors I'm seeing, perhaps?


Sep 14, 2012 at 08:51 PM
jchin
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Curious ... how many color management software are you running? Are you running the one from Adobe as well as the one from the screen calibration device? If you are, you need to get rid of the Adobe one. We had this problem when we had both running.


Sep 14, 2012 at 11:51 PM
charlesk
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Good suggestion. To my knowledge I am not.. just the one from XRite.

I'm starting to think this may not be a problem at all, just an issue with me being out of practice with RAW conversion. (And if that's the case, I do apologize for wasting your collective time. )

I think I just have to accept that things like different from any RAW converter because how to interpret the data is subjective.

My biggest issue is with sky color. It's true, isn't it, that the sky isn't "perfectly blue" with near-equal numbers for red and green, but rather has green mixed in more than red? That seems to be the case in most of my photos (except at sunset of course).

I can't decide which of the two images I posted above looks more natural. Sometimes the first one looks "too cyan" to me, and sometimes the second "too purple". What do you think?



Sep 15, 2012 at 09:06 AM
jchin
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


IMO, the bottom image is more 'natural'


Sep 15, 2012 at 10:51 AM
BobCollette
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


I believe with ACR, all images open with whatever your default ACR setting are set to. My hunch is that you have different default parameters set in ACR and BreezeBrowser. I suspect that if you set them the same (or as similar as possible), the two raw converters will give more similar results.


Sep 15, 2012 at 11:59 AM
Wayne Willison
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


I agree with Bob. It seems that BreezeBrowser has done a bit of editing on its own, that it comes that way. I know that NikonView does it with Nef files, whereas ACR does nothing until you work with it.

Wayne



Sep 15, 2012 at 03:03 PM
charlesk
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Thanks for the replies.

I have ACR set to its defaults. The differences between the files aren't enormous -- I think it's just the usual differences in how RAW converters render.

BreezeBrowser uses the default Canon libraries from what I understand, so it makes sense that their conversion would look like the embedded JPG.

But I think I have to remember that the embedded JPG isn't a "reference" of any sort. It's just what the camera's internal RAW converter came up with.

My eyes play tricks on me. Before, the second one seemed more natural. Now it seems too purplish. Or maybe I'm just talking myself into that.



Sep 15, 2012 at 06:02 PM
BobCollette
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


charlesk wrote:
But I think I have to remember that the embedded JPG isn't a "reference" of any sort. It's just what the camera's internal RAW converter came up with.


Exactly! If you happen to like the way the camera (or BreezeBrowser) renders the image, you should be able to find settings in ACR that make it look similar. Once you find those settings, you can save them as your new defaults. The important thing to remember (as you pointed out) is that the embedded JPEG should be reasonable, but it's not an absolute reference, that is it's not necessarily the correct rendering.



Sep 15, 2012 at 07:06 PM
Peter Figen
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


This looks as much like a color correction problem than a color management problem, although there may be some of the latter as well. The images I see posted here are in need more of correction than anything else.


Sep 15, 2012 at 07:41 PM
charlesk
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Color management kicking my butt again :)


Peter Figen wrote:
This looks as much like a color correction problem than a color management problem, although there may be some of the latter as well. The images I see posted here are in need more of correction than anything else.


Please elaborate? Thanks.



Sep 15, 2012 at 09:37 PM





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