Same photo done in three different programs. Comments appreciated

[Thornton]

I processed the same shot in 3 different raw converters using the same colour temperature and then tweaked them a bit with Nik (lightened the same areas in each rather than changes to colour). There is a slight but noticeable difference in the way lens correction has been applied but the colour seems more variable.
1)


2)


3)


(I removed the EXIF on purpose but know which shot was converted in which raw program)

[Abitconfused]

I vote for number one. It seems more natural than the others particularly in the sky.

[DanK]

the colour seems more variable.
1)


2)


3)


(I removed the EXIF on purpose but know which shot was converted in which raw program)

You should expect this. The software has to make an initial rendering of the raw file to make it viewable, and different programs apply different rendering. In Lightroom, if this is one software package that you use, this rendering is called a "profile". There is not a single Lightroom profile, although there is a default. You will find a bunch of them in a drop-down in the basic panel of the develop module. These include a number of Adobe's own, as well as their attempt to emulate the profiles used by your camera for JPEG conversion (in my case, the Canon "picture styles," which I never use).

One of the nice things about shooting raw is that everything can be changed. However, it isn't always easy to figure out how to reverse something you don't like about an initial rendering. For example, it is hard (for me, at least) to correct for an unnatural color balance, so I would avoid an initial rendering that has unnatural-seeming colors.

[dje]

Julian this seems to me to be a result of the discrepencies in Col Temp reported by different raw converters that was discussed in your recent thread. You mention that you adjusted all converters to the same temp for the above image - this means that you've changed the white balance on at least two of them from As Shot, assuming they all reported different Col Temps initially. Remember the As Shot WB is determined by channel multipliers contained in the EXIF of the raw file, not Col Temp directly.

If I recall correctly, SilkyPik gave a much higher value of Col Temp so I would suggest you used it on no 2 above. It's been cooled down considerably by reducing Col Temp.

Dave

[xpatUSA]

A pity that a color checker card was not included in the image, Julian.

Then the three shots would be compared quite simply:

Apply your LAB color picker to the six primary and secondary patches. Note the three values L*, a*, b*.

Calculate the delta-E with respect to the LAB colors listed on the leaflet that came with the card.

Toss out the converters with the biggest delta-E.

Piece of cake ...

[Manfred M]

Julian - what the raw convertors do is nothing more than a starting point. There is no "magic" with regards to the colour temperature or any of the other settings. It's up to the photographer to edit the image to the level that he or she wants to get the desired result.

[Manfred M]

A pity that a color checker card was not included in the image, Julian.

I've never seen a landscape photographer use a color checker or gray card in his or her work. The card needs to be the light falling on the scene and that is rarely the same as where the camera is located.

[Donald]

I've never seen a landscape photographer use a color checker or gray card in his or her work. The card needs to be the light falling on the scene and that is rarely the same as where the camera is located.

The subject might not be beside the camera, but the light falling onto the subject is surely, in the majority of cases, the same as that falling onto the location of the camera. As you say, it is not the light reflected off the subject but that falling onto the subject, so therefore it is likely to be the same light. That was how I was taught when I started out.

[Thornton]

Thanks for your replies. Number 1 was processed in Affinity Photo, number 2 in Dx0 (standard preset) and number 3 with Silkypix. In my previous post it was DxO which gave the different temperature value to both Affinity and Silkypix (when the latter was set to Default “Taste”, as it was here). So DxO should be closer here to what I was getting from it before, because the temperature of 6900 that I set for all these conversions is fairly close to that which I previously set in DxO.

I must say I’m still rather confused about white balance setting in raw, because I understood that nothing was “baked into” a raw. Silkypix gives lots of WB choices when processing raws, including “camera” and two “Silkypix auto” choices, the usual tungsten, flash etc, and a colour temperature slider. I would have expected this to mean that on “camera” setting, the temperature would be what was set on the camera, on ”Silkypix auto” it would be what the program thinks it should be, and that when using the temperature slider it would give a more accurate result, but it seems I’m not understanding correctly? So, if I had inadvertently set the WB to “fluorescent” and then in a raw converter I wanted to change the temperature to 6900, would that interpretation of 6900 give a different result to 6900 applied to a raw file which had been shot with the camera set on auto white balance?

I take Manfred’s point about, essentially, using the raw converter controls to get the results one is trying to achieve. It also seems to me that sometimes one raw converter gives a conversion which I prefer, sometimes another does. In this case, I think the Affinity result is most “realistic” but prefer the Silkypix result. On the other hand, I recently got a pleasing result from DxO with a shot taken the other year that had previously eluded me with the other converters. BTW, I also tried PSE Camera Raw for this test but the result looked awful. Presumably anyone more skilled than me could produce any of the above conversions in any of the programs by tweaking the controls.

I did notice that DxO produces a slightly different crop than the others after lens correction.

Julian

[pschlute]

I must say I’m still rather confused about white balance setting in raw, because I understood that nothing was “baked into” a raw. Silkypix gives lots of WB choices when processing raws, including “camera” and two “Silkypix auto” choices, the usual tungsten, flash etc, and a colour temperature slider. I would have expected this to mean that on “camera” setting, the temperature would be what was set on the camera, on ”Silkypix auto” it would be what the program thinks it should be, and that when using the temperature slider it would give a more accurate result, but it seems I’m not understanding correctly?

The WB is not "baked in", but the camera WB setting is recorded in the raw file and indeed will probably be used to display a preview of that raw file on the camera lcd and in photo viewers. Your assumption of what camera and auto settings do are correct. "More accurate using the slider".....that is debatable. Accurate, achieved by sampling a grey card or using a WB tool in the converter may not give you what you want to achieve especially if shooting at the beginning or end of the day.

So, if I had inadvertently set the WB to “fluorescent” and then in a raw converter I wanted to change the temperature to 6900, would that interpretation of 6900 give a different result to 6900 applied to a raw file which had been shot with the camera set on auto white balance?

No. If you select 6900 in the raw converter, that is what you will get.

It also seems to me that sometimes one raw converter gives a conversion which I prefer, sometimes another does

Different converters will give different results. There is not one industry standard for converters, and indeed how they present an image in default view can make a huge difference in how you regard the converter. A raw file by its nature is a pretty dull thing lacking in contrast and colour. If your raw converter has a default which does not apply any significant changes initially you will be looking at a dull image !

[Manfred M]

The subject might not be beside the camera, but the light falling onto the subject is surely, in the majority of cases, the same as that falling onto the location of the camera. As you say, it is not the light reflected off the subject but that falling onto the subject, so therefore it is likely to be the same light. That was how I was taught when I started out.

Not necessarily Donald.

Take a shot of a landscape while positioning your camera under a tree and the white balance reading will be biased towards magenta because of the green tinge falling on the gray card. Stand beside building that is red brick and shoot out onto a scene that is beyond that building, the gray card will have a red bias and will end up providing an image that goes to the cyan side. Take a shot at golden hour and use that to white balance and you will get a result that is quite far from what you are looking for as the gray card will have an orange cast falling on it.

Yes there are scenarios where you will get a good reading, but there are many scenarios where you won't as well. In product and portraiture the card will be at the subject and you will get a "correct" reading. In my personal work in portraiture I will bias the gray card reading about 5% towards the yellow and / or red because I generally prefer a slightly warmer tone in those images. When I print portraits I will use a paper without any optical bleaching agents because these tend to produce a slightly blue tone when exposed to UV (fluorescent lights and daylight).

[DanK]

I think there are two things mixed up in this. One is white balance. The second is the larger rendering intent, which includes white balance.

There is no white balance setting baked into the image data in a raw file. The camera will record a white balance number in EXIF. This could be one that it estimates itself, if you use auto white balance. It can be a fixed value, for example, if you pick "tungsten" or a specific Kelvin value. Lightroom, and AFAIK other raw converters, read that value from EXIF and apply it as part of their initial rendering intent. It is trivial to change this.

However, rendering the data into a viewable image requires more than a white balance setting. This is where profiles come in. When you select a picture style (or whatever it is called with your brand of camera) on your camera, you are selecting a rendering intent that includes color balance, saturation, contrast, and sharpening parameters that are used to process the raw image into a JPEG--the JPEG you store, if you shoot JPEG, and the thumbnail on the back LCD.

Some conversion software will read that rendering intent from EXIF and apply it as a starting point. DPP does this for Canon cameras. Lightroom does not. Instead, it has to apply its own rendering algorithms. In Lightroom terminology, these are profiles. Adobe provides a bunch of their own, and they also provide their attempts to emulate the rendering algorithms in the manufacturer's picture styles. None of these are "correct," although some may come closer to a neutral representation of the scene than others. They are simply starting points.

You can see this easily if you have Lightroom. Just load an image, go to the develop module, and cycle through the available profiles.

If you use Lightroom, there is one additional complication. Even though the rendering algorithms involve adjustments to the same parameters as the user's edits, they do not change the user's edits. For example, let's say that you increase saturation in the blues. This increase is calculated relative to the rendering intent in the profile. If you later change profiles, the edit will still be the same in terms of the sliders, but it will be an increase applied to the results of the new profile.

[Manfred M]

Julian - a bit of "back to basics".

Raw data is exact that, data. It's not an image file or even an image. Before we can view an image the data has to be turned into an image and that is what a raw convertor does. The data file contains all kinds of information that the camera records, including any settings that you have made, whether they are the defaults that shipped with the camera or the ones you have set (this is what drives the look of the JPEGS that you see on the back of the camera screen after you have taken the shot).

With the exception of two camera lines (all of the Sigma cameras and the Leica M Monochrom), all of our cameras use a Bayer array that have red, green and blue filters that record colour data (again there is a bit of an exception here with the FujiFIlm X-Trans sensor that uses a Bayer array that is different from the standard R G G B used by other camera manufacturers). There are no rules on how to assemble this data. Some software will likely just group these pairs into a single colour value whereas others (I seem to remember that ACR works this way) looks at data from other adjacent values and uses these to bias the colour value. This process is referred to as de-mosaicing.

In order to create an image, the raw convertor has to assign both a colour temperature and a colour space. Taking the one that the camera has recorded is obviously a reasonable place to start. The Adobe products use a variant of the ProPhoto colour space; I have no idea of what the others use. The profiles others have mentioned will adjust things like contrast, sharpness (import sharpening corrects for both the AA filter, saturation, the de-mosaicing process, etc.

None of these are "locked in" until you export an image file from the raw convertor and all these values can be changed. If you don't like the look, tweak the image until you get what you like. I wouldn't be too concerned about the actual colour temperatures shown by the different raw convertors you are using as you have no idea as to the background calculations. Use what looks right to you and if you are in a setting where you can shoot a white balance card (gray card), that becomes a far stronger starting point to a correct with balance. I pull white balance that way as much as possible when I do portraits or product shots. I don't do this for landscape work.

A word of caution though, unless you are working with a calibrated and profiled computer screen that is either sRGB or Adobe RGB compliant and are working in a suitably lit workspace, what you see might not be accurate.

[xpatUSA]

Originally Posted by xpatUSA A pity that a color checker card was not included in the image, Julian.

Originally Posted by Manfred M

I've never seen a landscape photographer use a color checker or gray card in his or her work.

Apparently, my post was not understood. The subject under discussion at some length is different color rendition of the same image. Had a color-checker card been included in the image, this quite long discussion about color temperature or WB 101 would have been unnecessary.

The card needs to be [in] the light falling on the scene and that [light] is rarely the same as where the camera is located.

I disagree. He who places a card (or an incident light-meter) in different lighting than the subject is wasting his time.

[Manfred M]

Apparently, my post was not understood. The subject under discussion at some length is different color rendition of the same image. Had a color-checker card been included in the image, this quite long discussion about color temperature or WB 101 would have been unnecessary.

ApparentlyI did not understand your original premise. Yes, I agree. Had a color checker been included in the original shot, regardless of whether it could be used to pull a "correct" WB would certainly show up colour biases of the various editors or profiles used.

I disagree. He who places a card (or an incident light-meter) in different lighting than the subject is wasting his time.

I agree 100%. I think we were both trying to say the same thing.

[ccphoto]

This has less to do with all the discussion above concerning using color charts, WB or Gray cards and more to do with the tendency to ignore the mid-tone grays. I used to use just about every editing program on the market but discarded all but Photoshop with two plug in packages: Silver Efex Pro2 and Tony Kuyper's Luminosity Masks. It is with
the expanded mid-tone luminosity mask that I was able to accentuate the details and deepen the color without over-saturating either effect. Not having his original RAW file, I instead chose to use the first edited version of his 3 for an editing point.