HELP! Color shift in Lightroom

I have been using JPEG out of my GH1. Today I checked the RAW files of the JPEG's that I have used and to my dismay, there is a very drastic color shift on the RAW files as compared to the JPEG.

Below is an example. The flower shifted from purple to blue. The correct color was closer to purple. (Please scroll to the right to see the flower).
RAW



JPEG



What should I do? I do expect color changes from JPEG to RAW mostly due to WB. But this one was very drastic and the color change only seems to occur on the blue/purple part. I don't think WB can't have that effect.
--
=============================
My flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/testdasi/

Just to add, I use Lightroom 2.5.

--
=============================
My flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/testdasi/

If you're using lightroom you can easily change hue of the blues in the scene to return the flower to the correct one...

Under the develop module just scroll down to HSL / Color / Grayscale..... then select blue and use the sliders to adjust to your taste...

Perhaps you've accidentially set a preset in lightroom-- perhaps a default white balance?

--
Steve Jacobs

I didn't accidentally set any preset - in fact, I have no WB preset! Everything was as-is. I tried and there was no way to duplicate the color shift without affecting other colors.

What I would like to know is why it happens and what I can do about it. I can certainly change the HSL to make it look more realistic but here it seems to be like a camera calibration problem so if I can get a camera profile for GH1 somewhere (did try google with no luck) then it would be the best fix I think.

Stevejac said:

Perhaps you've accidentially set a preset in lightroom-- perhaps a default white balance?

--
Steve Jacobs

Click to expand...

--
=============================
My flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/testdasi/

It does look like a different white balance to me. Did you try other white balance values to see what you'd get. Did you have the camera set to some kind of mode for the jpeg? I don't take jpegs so I wouldn't know if the jpegs and raw files were different. But so far I've been very satisfied with the color of my raw files on Lightroom with both my G1 and my GH1. Hope you figure it out. Good luck
--
Ann Chaikin
Painting & Photography:
http://www.annchaikin.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/annchaikin/
Family Websites:
http://www.chaikinsofbellingham.com
http://www.achaikin.com

Aex said:

What I would like to know is why it happens and what I can do about it.

Click to expand...

What you're seeing is the difference between Panasonic's interpretation of the raw data (your JPEG is just a Panasonic in-camera conversion of the raw data) and Adobe's interpretation of it. If you tried a third raw converter, you'd almost certainly see a third interpretation. It's not a mistake or malfunction; it's just the difference between different color engines. The camera maker's interpretation is often taken to be the 'true' one, but, in fact, they are often not very colorimetrically accurate -- this is because most people prefer vivid colors to accurate ones.

The raw data has no 'real' or 'true' color. It can be interpreted in any number of different ways -- it's a process called color matrixing and it happens in every color digital picture. I don't have a GH-1, but I imagine you can even choose from several different interpretations of the color within the camera itself -- do you have modes like "vivid", "portrait", "landscape" etc.? If so, they will each produce a different set of colors from the same raw data.

All that said, you may be able to find a profile, or a preset, for Lightroom that will give you a look that more closely duplicates the particular in-camera Panasonic profile you are using. Hopefully, someone else can chime in on this thread with a suggestion.

It's well worth checking the white balance: is it set to "as shot" or is it set to auto or one of the other settings? You might try a manual white balance too using the dropper.

But that said it is almost certain that the Adobe Standard calibration will have slightly different colours than the panasonic JPEG engine's colours. It usually does (for Canikon they offer a simulation of the JPEG engine as an alternative).

Most people prefer the Adobe Standard to the panasonic colour rendering. It is a little more accurate -- but that's overall, so it may well be that it isn't getting this particular shade of mauve quite right, and panasonic's colour looks closer. But that's not to say that other colours aren't more accurate in Adobe -- it's all swings and roundabouts!

You can use the Adobe profile editor to make a profile that closer matches the JPEG engine if you really want.....but most panny users seem to trying to match the Olympus jpeg engine! (me I'm happy with Adobe's rendering of the gf1 in LR 2.6 -- oh, try the 2.6 beta by the way, it may have updated the progile)

I was told the WB setting in RAW file is encrypted, I don't understand why manufacturer doing so. LR just makes the best guess what the WB is. I loaded my pictures with RAW and JPEG to LR. First it used the JPEG setting before it made the best guess. I saw the raw loaded as the JPEG's WB, then the color(WB) changed after it analyzed the pic. I find the WB in LR is more realistic. The as shot one which shows in photofun studio is not quite natural and it is more blue.

No, it doesn't use the JPEG setting at first: what you see at first is the JPEG itself! Even if you haven't recorded RAW+JPEG there is a small JPEG embedded in the raw file which LR uses as an initial preview before it creates it's own rendering.

And I don't think that the camera white balance is encrypted; note that when you switch from "as shot" to "auto" you get very different balances; this is the difference between the recorded WB and the best guess that adobe makes.

But the important thing is that most of the differences people are reporting are not matters of white balance, they are differences in rendering -- ie (as another poster put it) differences of interpretation of the RAW data between Adobe and the camera JPEG engine.

Is that no matter what the WB setting is in the camera, in Lightroom it will end up being a bit more Magenta. If you want to make the RAW output look more like the JPEG output, then dial in more Cyan (minus in in the Tint bar).

--
Sam Bennett - http://www.swiftbennett.com

Adobe did not try to replicate the white balance and other settings to match what Panasonic did when they rendered the raw data into their in-camera JPEG. They provide an Adobe Standard calibration profile for the Lumix G cameras.

If you want to have some alternative color calibration or default settings used, take a sample photo that is representative of what you want in RAW+JPEG. Open the JPEG in a viewer outside of Lightroom and open the .RW2 file in Lightroom. Using the JPEG as a guide, adjust the camera calibration and other settings to match the JPEG, then use LR's "Develop-> Set Default..." command to set up those settings as the default for processing your raw files from the Lumix G camera.

If you really want to get fancy, and the available range of adjustment isn't enough to suit your needs/desires, you can make test exposures of exactly the settings you want in RAW+JPEG, convert the RW2 files to DNG, then use the DNG Profile Editor to generate camera calibrations. These can be installed in LR and set to be the defaults too.

Lightroom has tremendous flexibility in this regard. The only thing is that you have to set it up to do the processing as you want it.
--
Godfrey
http://godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com

@Godfrey: Would you please elaborate on the calibration steps in more detail? Can the DNG Profile Editor compares the RAW and the JPEG and output all the necessary adjustments to make the RAW look like the JPEG? I'm totally noob about all these calibration things.

Godfrey said:

Adobe did not try to replicate the white balance and other settings to match what Panasonic did when they rendered the raw data into their in-camera JPEG. They provide an Adobe Standard calibration profile for the Lumix G cameras.

If you want to have some alternative color calibration or default settings used, take a sample photo that is representative of what you want in RAW+JPEG. Open the JPEG in a viewer outside of Lightroom and open the .RW2 file in Lightroom. Using the JPEG as a guide, adjust the camera calibration and other settings to match the JPEG, then use LR's "Develop-> Set Default..." command to set up those settings as the default for processing your raw files from the Lumix G camera.

If you really want to get fancy, and the available range of adjustment isn't enough to suit your needs/desires, you can make test exposures of exactly the settings you want in RAW+JPEG, convert the RW2 files to DNG, then use the DNG Profile Editor to generate camera calibrations. These can be installed in LR and set to be the defaults too.

Lightroom has tremendous flexibility in this regard. The only thing is that you have to set it up to do the processing as you want it.
--
Godfrey
http://godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com

Click to expand...

--
=============================
My flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/testdasi/

Aex said:

@Godfrey: Would you please elaborate on the calibration steps in more detail? Can the DNG Profile Editor compares the RAW and the JPEG and output all the necessary adjustments to make the RAW look like the JPEG? I'm totally noob about all these calibration things.

Click to expand...

It's complex subject and not easily explained quickly in a forum post. I'd recommend you look into the DNG Profile Editor (it's on one of the Adobe Labs sites), it comes with plenty of documentation.

By itself, DNG Profile Editor does not automatically do calibrations. You have to find a way to do that using your eye, a calibrated display, and whatever other tools you can muster to do the job. I've done it by using a reference JPEG open in Photoshop on one side of the screen, the DNG raw file in DNG Profile Editor on the other, and the Mac OS X "Digital Color Meter" application to check screen pixel values between them.

Making a good camera calibration profile is a slow and tedious task. It's not hard, but you have to understand what you're doing and put the time in to make sure it all works correctly.

--
Godfrey
http://godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com

Adobe's Panasonic profiles are all a little "cowardly" towards purple and orange hues, maybe to protect the user from gettng a very much worse "worst case scenario" in strange lighting conditions.

If you want to try it, I've put a less "considerate" profile here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/zfvqmtndww3/Panasonic DMC-GH1 D50.dcp

Download, and put the .dcp-file (a CameraRaw/Lightroom profile) in the folder named ".....CameraRaw\Profiles" that you will find somewhere on your main hard-drive, where depends on what OS you're running.

On Mac OS X:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

On Windows 2000 / XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\* yourname* \Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

On Windows Vista:
C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

After you moved the file, you'll have to restart LR to make it notice the new profile.

It will restore your purples, and also correct some other things. I do NOT guarantee that it will work very well under incandescent/fluorescent light!

If you try it, feedback is appreciated.

Greetings / Joakim

Since I forgot that the parsing on the forum breaks links if the have "space" letters in them, the link in my message above doesn't work.

Try this in stead:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zfvqmtndww3

Otherwise - as in the other (above) post.

/Joakim

Wow, it seems to work great! May I know what other corrections did you apply?

The_Suede said:

Adobe's Panasonic profiles are all a little "cowardly" towards purple and orange hues, maybe to protect the user from gettng a very much worse "worst case scenario" in strange lighting conditions.

If you want to try it, I've put a less "considerate" profile here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/zfvqmtndww3/Panasonic DMC-GH1 D50.dcp

Download, and put the .dcp-file (a CameraRaw/Lightroom profile) in the folder named ".....CameraRaw\Profiles" that you will find somewhere on your main hard-drive, where depends on what OS you're running.

On Mac OS X:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

On Windows 2000 / XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\* yourname* \Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

On Windows Vista:
C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

After you moved the file, you'll have to restart LR to make it notice the new profile.

It will restore your purples, and also correct some other things. I do NOT guarantee that it will work very well under incandescent/fluorescent light!

If you try it, feedback is appreciated.

Greetings / Joakim

Click to expand...

--
=============================
My flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/testdasi/

Hi

I've balanced out the brightess of orange-yellow, and made the yellows quite a bit more red, and the oranges stronger. Those are actually the "usual suspects" in Bayer RGB cameras, The "in between" colours of the primaries.

This changes almost everything in the pictures, as you usually WB after skintones if you don't have any very clearly neutral greys or whites to consider. As the skintones are now (at least more) correct, you can use the correct WB temperature - which is a bit less red and a bit more blue than what you would use with the "Adobe Standard" or any of the camera-mode copies. Normally, when the yellows are too greenish yellow you tend to make all of the picture to red to make the skin look natural. Unfortunately this makes everything EXCEPT the skintones to red... :-/

As I said, I wouldn't bet to much on the profile working well under indoor lighting (except halogen), you almost always need a custom profile for incandescent and fluorescents, but it should "work" for most natural light sources from deep shade under blue sky to direct sunlight / overcast.

I totally don't understand what you did but it works for me pretty well so thank you very much. I tried with incadescence and the skin tone turns out quite nicely so I guess it isn't too much of a problem.

The_Suede said:

Hi

I've balanced out the brightess of orange-yellow, and made the yellows quite a bit more red, and the oranges stronger. Those are actually the "usual suspects" in Bayer RGB cameras, The "in between" colours of the primaries.

This changes almost everything in the pictures, as you usually WB after skintones if you don't have any very clearly neutral greys or whites to consider. As the skintones are now (at least more) correct, you can use the correct WB temperature - which is a bit less red and a bit more blue than what you would use with the "Adobe Standard" or any of the camera-mode copies. Normally, when the yellows are too greenish yellow you tend to make all of the picture to red to make the skin look natural. Unfortunately this makes everything EXCEPT the skintones to red... :-/

As I said, I wouldn't bet to much on the profile working well under indoor lighting (except halogen), you almost always need a custom profile for incandescent and fluorescents, but it should "work" for most natural light sources from deep shade under blue sky to direct sunlight / overcast.

Click to expand...

--
=============================
My flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/testdasi/

Good!

The change is in the actual colour transform in the raw-conversion. You can make the same for yourself with a profiling tool, much like the ones used for calibrating monitors.

Q:
Did you find it over-saturated?