Color Anomaly

[Thlayle]

I think you misunderstand. You DID do something. By leaving everything as is after reading the image in, you left all parameters at their LR defaults. That's a decision about editing, and not a good one. These defaults, unlike the parameters in your in-camera processing, are NOT designed to produce a finished image.

Maybe I should offer this much to (maybe) clarify: I am not one to expect finished images coming straight out from the SD card into an editor that does everything for me. On the contrary, I work with RAW images & and an editing program (Aperture primarily, LR is new for me) in order to have good tools to work with the image data I have captured in my shots.

That said, a first look at thousands downloaded images (I HAVE indeed surpassed my first 10,000 (so hopefully the worst is behind me!)) has never resulted in anything similar to this. I shoot mostly where I live (Michigan, USA) so I am VERY familiar with overcast shooting conditions that I often find give really washed out highlights, especially in the sky itself. This does not resemble that sort of situation very much.

I came into this discussion with the belief (that I still hold) that the editing program and my actions with the editor are NOT the problem. I firmly believe I could load this shot into any editor with any default or other settings and get essentially the same result: washed out colors but for some small area in the images.

Something else happened and I think it is true, just as Mike has said, that I just will never know--unless it gets to be a constant result with this camera or card, in which case I might have to seek a definitive answer or purchase new equipment.

Thanks everyone for your input and your patience. Sorry if I muddied the waters by leading off my question with the whole SOOC thing.

[Mike Buckley]

Randy,

Of all the possible explanations of this situation, I would put defective hardware or software as the absolute least likely cause.

[Dave Humphries]

My own take is that it will be nearly if not totally impossible to obtain a complete understanding of this situation that would stand up to the rigor of scientific scrutiny. So, I think we'll have to settle for a group of potential causes and acknowledge that we can't with any degree of certainty know the exact reason the image is different than Randy expected.

I agree Mike.

The only thing that I would have found useful Randy - would be to see an example of a good image from the other 197 - e.g. one of the same scene as most closely matches the angle, viewpoint and time of day of the de-saturated ones (if such exists).

However, to my eyes, this looks a natural, believable scene to me, just lacking anything colourful in much of the scene and Auto-WB may have 'cancelled out' any bias one way or the other caused by the light, because although sunset time, the sky looks hazy and this is in shade.

That said, the EXIF data shows this started as a Canon cr2 file, went via ACR 8.3 into Photoshop CC, was saved as Tif, then went to LR5.3 (on Mac) - however, all adjustments do seem to be the defaults (i.e. unaltered, as Randy said).

The PP WB is "As Shot", but the camera's WB information is not provided (I'd guess Auto), nor is any lens data - perhaps an older non-digital lens was used (not that that has any bearing on this).

Not sure that helps

[Stagecoach]

Three images out of about 200 came off from the same SD card this way, all shot with the same basic settings during roughly the same time period.

Any thoughts as to what might be going on here?[/IMG]

Randy, are the other images you have compared these ones to as overexposed as these are?

Grahame

[ajohnw]

You can upload one or both of the raw files here - no sign up or anything else. I'm sure you ment mB and not gB.

http://filebin.net/

I think you may just have a colour balance problem over the 2 shots or as sometimes happens the lighting changed between shots. The panorama software may well attempt to cure that sort of thing and lead to problems like this when one shot contains 1/2 of a building and the rest is in the other.. Some advise locking everything between shots for panoramas. Difficult when using camera white balance but maybe the cameras setting from one could be read across to the other.

John
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[chauncey]

Fixing the exposures can be done in LR with a delicate touch by using the color picker and noting the percentages in one area of one image, then balancing the numbers on the other image in the correlating area as best you can.
I've always found that chore to be easier done in Photoshop using curves/levels.

[Thlayle]

I agree Mike.

The only thing that I would have found useful Randy - would be to see an example of a good image from the other 197 - e.g. one of the same scene as most closely matches the angle, viewpoint and time of day of the de-saturated ones (if such exists).

Thanks, Dave. The closest I have is one of the two used to generate the composite. (I believe the PS work to generate the pano composite explains the TIF conversion & related activity). I believe the WB was at 'daylight.' I seldom use 'auto.' I have one other around the same time at a different place but with a similar angle in relation to the sun:

[DanK]

Randy,

Thanks for the additional explanation. Sorry that I misunderstood.

Is the top image just above the processed, uncomposited single shot? If you upload the raw file for that, someone might be able to figure out what is what. With all the steps involved in creating the composite, there are a lot of variables that could be involved.

Dan

[Thlayle]

Yes, it is the unprocessed shot. I'll see if I can find a site for upload & linking to.

If Mike IS right, that it is a result of conditions at the site where the shot was taken, I probably could not ever duplicate the conditions & results ever again if I were to try to!

[DanK]

Wow. I just took a few minutes to play with the jpeg you posted in photoshop. It is very highly desaturated. I did a heavy vibrance adjustment, a moderate saturation adjustment, a levels adjustment, and a change in color balance, shifting a little from cyan to red and more from blue to yellow. I'll post it below. It is not very good, but it looks a little better. (Were the stones across the street really blue?) This is a real puzzle--I wouldn't expect to need such a severe increase in vibrance and saturation.