Can I get LrC to better render Z8 colors?

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SCoombs

SCoombs

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Is it possible to get more LrC to render/read/whatever colors more accurately to the Z8's in camera color than it does? I have been spending an inordinate amount of time lately trying to get white balance and color correct in my editing as it's felt pretty off from what I remember photographing and in sorting this out I have discovered the world on color profiles and all of that - one aspect of processing I was not too familiar with. I have tried using LrC's camera color profiles, but they're still pretty far off to me. Here is one random photo showing the difference between the embedded preview (right) and what LrC says is matching the camera (right). If I further edit the photo myself from here I can get it a bit closer - largely by changing the hue of greens to be more yellow and playing with exposure - but it's still different enough that I prefer the color of the original even if the phoo is worse for not having been processed.

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SCoombs said:
Is it possible to get more LrC to render/read/whatever colors more accurately to the Z8's in camera color than it does?
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You can definitely set up LR to read camera profiles and then if you're not happy with the camera's default WB algorithms you can customize profiles either by making slight color corrections in-camera or by going the color checker route and setting up custom profiles.

But for nature photography where overall feel and your vision may be more important than absolute color accuracy (as opposed to say product photography where color accuracy can be very important) I'd start by exploring the camera's different white balance modes along with making sure LR is setup to read camera profiles on import. It may be as simple as changing from say Auto WB to maybe Auto-Daylight WB or vice versa to get the look you're after.
 
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jerrylwatson said:
I would shoot RAW and the hit Auto in LR. The RAW contains mush more color information than jpg.
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I always do raw. However, I am finding that no amount of changing WB in Lr or editing while working on the raw can get the colors right, while the camera's embedded jpg always looks right and much, much better than anything I can get Lr to output.
 
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DRwyoming said:
You can definitely set up LR to read camera profiles and then if you're not happy with the camera's default WB algorithms you can customize profiles either by making slight color corrections in-camera or by going the color checker route and setting up custom profiles.

But for nature photography where overall feel and your vision may be more important than absolute color accuracy (as opposed to say product photography where color accuracy can be very important) I'd start by exploring the camera's different white balance modes along with making sure LR is setup to read camera profiles on import. It may be as simple as changing from say Auto WB to maybe Auto-Daylight WB or vice versa to get the look you're after.
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The examples I posted are of the camera's output vs. Lr's reading of the camera profile - but as you can see they're pretty different.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of adjusting the color myself to achieve what I'm going for and I do that and would be doing that anyways even if Lr was matching the camera's colors well. However, I'm lately finding myself spending hours on a single photo trying to get the color right and nothing I do can make it look right. It will either have a nasty green cast to it or a noticeable magenta cast - all of which differ dramatically from what the camera's own preview shows. In other words, there's clearly nothing wrong with the camera or its recording of color, but Lr is interpreting the camera's raw files in a way that I don't seem to always be able to get to look right.
 
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jerrylwatson said:
Have other cameras worked alright?
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I don't think I was paying as much attention at the time I was using other cameras, so it's hard to say. I think what's happened is that when shooting on DSLRs, I was only ever seeing things through an optical viewfinder and so any difference in the look of the photo I saw in processing I just attributed to white balance/color/etc. as a general thing and never really checked the camera's output vs. Adobe's. Now with a Z8 I remember what I see on the EVF, which is what the camera's own output would be, and so when I've been editing in Lr it's looked very different and that prompted me to try to figure out why which led to me looking at the camera's own jpg output for really the first time - and now I see it's better/more accurate than anything I can get the raw file to look like in post.
 
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SCoombs said:
The examples I posted are of the camera's output vs. Lr's reading of the camera profile - but as you can see they're pretty different.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of adjusting the color myself to achieve what I'm going for and I do that and would be doing that anyways even if Lr was matching the camera's colors well. However, I'm lately finding myself spending hours on a single photo trying to get the color right and nothing I do can make it look right. It will either have a nasty green cast to it or a noticeable magenta cast - all of which differ dramatically from what the camera's own preview shows. In other words, there's clearly nothing wrong with the camera or its recording of color, but Lr is interpreting the camera's raw files in a way that I don't seem to always be able to get to look right.
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That's the reason I create a custom camera color profile. Once you set it as the default in LR, LR will then use that profile instead of the canned options in LR.
 
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jerrylwatson said:
At the top do you see "Adobe Color" and 'WB" as shot?

View attachment 68861
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That was the default and so it's how everything has been on import. I've tried changing it to the appropriate camera matching color profile (which is Camera Vivid for the example I shared; usually I have had the camera on neutral or standard but I was experimenting with vivid). I have of late been starting my editing by changing "as shot" to "auto." Why? Well, I had been reading a lot of users saying that for their Z8/9 their best results are to set the WB to daylight - which is similar from the old tried and true standard of people setting their Nikon WB to cloudy - so I thought I'd give it a try. In the EVF, it looks great. On the back LCD of the camera, it looks great. When I'd import to LR, with "Adobe color" and WB "As Shot" everything had a horrible sickly yellow/green tone, like you were looking at the photo through a glass of yellow Easter egg dye. Setting it to "Auto" would get something that looked a heck of a lot better.

I think the point is that suffice it to say I'm aware of this control and setting it to the appropriate camera profile doesn't get things to look like the camera actually does.
 
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Butlerkid said:
That's the reason I create a custom camera color profile. Once you set it as the default in LR, LR will then use that profile instead of the canned options in LR.
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I've been looking at doing this but haven't been able to get a photo to match the embedded JPG closely enough to turn it into a profile. Do either of the threads you linked discuss a way for doing this, or do you have another suggestion for how to get a custom profile figured out?
 
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Have you calibrated your monitor? It is the same process.....in this case you calibrate how the camera reflects the colors in the scene.

The purpose of a custom camera color profile is to reflect the actual colors in the scene......not what the camera created in the raw or jpg. To do that you shoot a Color Checker Passport (CCP) card that contains squares of colors representing specific RGB colors. The s/w then compares how the camera reflects these colors and writes a snippet of code to adjust the color(s) if necessary in the raw file to the specific colors in the CCP. The profile is saved and can be access by most raw processing s/w.

Here is a video on it............
 
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SCoombs said:
The examples I posted are of the camera's output vs. Lr's reading of the camera profile - but as you can see they're pretty different.
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I wonder the same thing as the post above, does LR show WB As Shot and do you have LR import preferences set to use Camera Profile?
 
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Butlerkid said:
Have you calibrated your monitor? It is the same process.....in this case you calibrate how the camera reflects the colors in the scene.

The purpose of a custom camera color profile is to reflect the actual colors in the scene......not what the camera created in the raw or jpg. To do that you shoot a Color Checker Passport (CCP) card that contains squares of colors representing specific RGB colors. The s/w then compares how the camera reflects these colors and writes a snippet of code to adjust the color(s) if necessary in the raw file to the specific colors in the CCP. The profile is saved and can be access by most raw processing s/w.

Here is a video on it............
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I used to do this. The problem I found was the color profile changes with each location and each lens. Its great for studio work.
 
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DRwyoming said:
I wonder the same thing as the post above, does LR show WB As Shot and do you have LR import preferences set to use Camera Profile?
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Please see my reply to the other post. The example I posted was the embedded preview (literally a JPG the camera puts in the raw file, just in case anyone doesn't know how it works) vs. an unedited, direct-from-import version from Lr. The version from Lr was indeed using the camera profile and the WB as shot.
 
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Butlerkid said:
Have you calibrated your monitor? It is the same process.....in this case you calibrate how the camera reflects the colors in the scene.

The purpose of a custom camera color profile is to reflect the actual colors in the scene......not what the camera created in the raw or jpg. To do that you shoot a Color Checker Passport (CCP) card that contains squares of colors representing specific RGB colors. The s/w then compares how the camera reflects these colors and writes a snippet of code to adjust the color(s) if necessary in the raw file to the specific colors in the CCP. The profile is saved and can be access by most raw processing s/w.

Here is a video on it............
Click to expand...
I had spent some time trying to calibrate the monitor at one point, but right now I'm less concerned with whether these things look absolutely true to life on a perfectly calibrated monitor and more concerned with the fact that Lr's camera profiles are notably different from what the camera is actually producing as viewed on the same monitor.
 
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SCoombs said:
I had spent some time trying to calibrate the monitor at one point, but right now I'm less concerned with whether these things look absolutely true to life on a perfectly calibrated monitor and more concerned with the fact that Lr's camera profiles are notably different from what the camera is actually producing as viewed on the same monitor.
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Calibrating a monitor might take 10 minutes. Same with calibrating the camera. And you only have to create the camera profile once for shooting in daylight.......

Good luck.....
 
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jerrylwatson said:
I used to do this. The problem I found was the color profile changes with each location and each lens. Its great for studio work.
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Lenses should have almost no effect. And each location should have almost no effect unless you are visiting a somewhere a long ways around the globe. That's because the color profile is based on the source of light - in this case - the sun. If you shoot in different types of light (tungsten, fluorescent, LED, etc) then you could create a profile for each source of light.
 
Something is not adding up. A jpeg generated in camera is generated from the raw using the camera settings. The Lightroom rendering using camera settings ought to be similar, and to my eye they are in fact similar for the example you gave.

It sounds like you are describing a white balance issue and you are purposely setting the white balance to some setting that doesn't match your light. But in that case the in camera jpeg would also be processed with the same as shot white balance. Outdoors, "auto" usually does fine on most cameras maybe with some small tweaking. Or maybe shoot a neutral card so you can use the eyedropper to see how different the auto is to the eyedropper.
 
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Palouse said:
I'm confused too. And it's partly because photos in post #1 are labeled as (right). One is clearly more vibrant.
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Sorry about the typo. The one on the left is the embedded jpeg - in other words, what the camera would output if shooting jpeg. The one on the right is Lightroom's version if what the camera jpeg is supposed to look like. In other words, it's the unedited raw file as interpreted by Lightroom using the camera settings color space.
 
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