Thanks to all for all the great shots contributed so far!
It has occurred to me that one of the reasons purple isn't reproduced well, is that much of the red and blue channels are clipped by the sRGB color space. The tip I passed on about always dialing in -1/3 or -2/3 exposure helps that quite a bit (and reducing saturation a notch would also help). For those of us using the Pro1, there is an added way to get great purples. To check my theory, I used an old RAW file (handy to have, ain't they?) of a similar purple flower from my first post (just an example, not a great shot, but from the same flower bed). I did NOT use the - exp or -sat trick when I shot this back in May, but there is still a way around it. When processing the raw file, change to the Adobe RGB color space to maximise the gamut of color used. Because I didn't adjust for purple exposure when shooting, I still had to reduce the exposure somewhat, and the saturation a notch... but voila! The original purple is back
I then changed the color space back to sRGB in PSE to show for the web. Here is the file as orginally processed in sRGB:
Here is the same file using aRGB then changed to sRGB for the web:
Both files were processed with the exact same parameters, changing only the color space (lowered exp, contrast and a little sat). No other sharpening or post processing was done. The second version is much truer to the actual colors seen. Of course, that only works for RAW files (not super macros) so the original trick will have to suffice for jpg use.
Purple reproduction is an interesting discussion, and I noticed a similar Adobe RGB one in the Nikon forums. Some interesting thoughts
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=20114668
Again, beautiful shots everyone. Thanks for sharing!
Best regards,
Mark
Thanks again Doug!
