Coloring in JPG vs. RAW

[venchka]

Originally Posted by Duffy Pratt

...And I agree that this stuff is much simpler if there is an identifiable neutral in the frame for at least one shot using the same lighting.

Duffy

...the more they stay the same.

[srwatters]

If you want 'true to life' color, then you need to set your white balance to balance the color temperature from the strobe and modifier. Remember that I mentioned the softbox we were using had two gold and two silver panel inside it? That rendered the color temperature to about 5300 degrees (+- 200). You actually do have an excellent neutral in that frame. The paper behind the model is thunder gray. It has just a touch of green (96, 101, 96) in it rather than perfect neutral gray (114,114,114), but it's pretty close.

On my calibrated monitor, your jpeg looks to be far too red/orange, while the raw looks much closer to 'real life'. I don't recall which pre-set white balance we set your camera to, but if it was 'sunny' then you may have a bit too much red in the jpg do to the tint. In any case, with CS3, you can actually open the jpg in camera RAW and fix it before you get into full photoshop. Another huge advantage to the latest version.

Hope that helps!

[Duffy Pratt]

Scott:

It's cool that you have the reference numbers for the background, but you should remember thatr the numbers only become concrete if you also mention the defined color space. Is it 96, 101, 96 in sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, or some other definition?

Knowing that the background is neutral, this picture should probably be simple to get close to accurate with a set of RGB curves. Just pick the dress as a black point, keep the background as neutral as possible, and I'm willing to bet the bracelet is pure white or close and a little on the warm side. If you write curves that keep those parts neutral, everything else should fall into place.

Duffy

Actually, forget this. Yes, it's helpful, but the numbers you give are some other measurement entirely. The RGB numbers of the scene, as shot, are somewhere around 25,25,25 (in sRGB). So I'm not sure what your numbers mean (a measure of pigment maybe? or the color of reflected light when illuminated to some preset standard?). But they are still useful to know in terms of correcting this.

[Supermanny]

Hi Emily,

To answer your questions:

1) Your camera made some adjustments for you when converting and apparently it likes red-heads :)
2) To make her hair more like the jpeg image, try shifting the Orange Hue to the left (less yellow) and maybe the white-balance tint to the right (more magenta)...or something along those lines. By the way, I'm no expert on raw conversion.

Hope this helps.

[srwatters]

The numbers I quoted for the paper color are in sRGB for a properly exposed and metered background. In this scene there is considerable (on purpose) fall off to the background. My point was that the background paper is fairly neutral in color (more useful than anything else in the scene for WB adjustment). I normally will shoot my jpg images using a custom white balance generated with a Lastolite gray target. Using that as a base measurement, I'll set my final values as needed for the RAW conversion (I shoot jpg + RAW). That way I get 'reality' and my desired color.

BTW, in aRGB, thunder gray is 97,101,96. For ProPhoto it's 79,81,78.

[Duffy Pratt]

Scott:

Thanks for the clarification. It's pretty amazing how much the numbers differ for the different color spaces, especially ProPhoto. Your point about using the background as a near neutral is well taken, but it sure helps to know that its slightly green. If you took it to be a pure grey, then the entire shot is going to get pushed a bit to magenta, which is what I think is happening in the jpg. The dress is also probably a fairly neutral black as well, but blacks for some reason are much less reliable for setting white balance.

[digitalpixels]

Thanks everyone for all your great replies.

Scott, I think we set the setting to outdoor for Trisha, but I don't think I changed it for Melissa.

All this color management/white balance stuff sometimes gets really confusing, but thanks for everyone's great advice.

[blssdwlf]

Hi Emily,

I didn't see this mentioned, but one reason also could be that ACR tends to render Canon reds to be more orange-y, even after white balancing.

Here is an example which I had the same results with ACR 3.6 thru 4.x on CS3. The left is ACR, the right with Canon's Digital Photo Professional.



In reality, the red was somewhere in between, but closer to Canon's rendering of it.

I had spent some time calibrating ACR but stopped when it became too cumbersome in my workflow. I now use Canon's DPP for just the RAW conversion.

Canon's ZoomBrowser should render the RAW much more closer to the camera JPEG as I understand that it uses the same algorithms that the camera uses (DPP does not).

Good luck!
Peter

[digitalpixels]

Thanks Peter!

Very cool shot, btw! I might try using Canon's software. For now, calibrating my monitor did help considerably. They still don't the exact same coloring, but the RAW is closer to the JPG.