Canon T4i In-camera color not accurate?

So when I take photos in jpg on the T4i and then look at it in LR4, the colors aren't the same. They seem more dull. Not in a horribly unsaturated way but just not the same way I expected off the rear monitor. Is there a way I can fix it either on the camera or on my monitor?

One of the more likely reasons is that you monitor is not properly calibrated and that the color settings in Lightroom have not been optimised. I'm not a lightroom user myself and can't offer any more help so perhaps someone who does could chip in here ?

Yes, calibrate your monitor. It makes a big difference in two ways:

• accuracy of colors (obviously)
  
  Helps if you want to change the white balance or "warmth" of your pictures to the correct value.
  
• tone curves (accuracy of blacks, shadows, midtones and highlights)
  
  This is less obvious but equally important. You simply cannot do good shadow and highlight recovery without getting this OK on your monitor. If your monitor is off then your pictures may look more noisy than they are and darker or lighter than they would be after print or when viewing them on the latest iPads.

Don't even bother with RAW without a properly calibrated monitor.

10s said:

10s wrote:

Don't even bother with RAW without a properly calibrated monitor.

Click to expand...

I'm guessing you simply mean to emphasize the fact that Monitor Calibration is very important. However, IMHO Everyone should give RAW a try no matter if they use a calibrated monitor or not. Its benefits are that great.

R2

maicrophotographer said:

CLung wrote:

So when I take photos in jpg on the T4i and then look at it in LR4, the colors aren't the same. They seem more dull. Not in a horribly unsaturated way but just not the same way I expected off the rear monitor. Is there a way I can fix it either on the camera or on my monitor?

Click to expand...

in addition to what has been said, check also the color profiles. jpg in camera uses sRGB, while Adobe can use their own profile (there should be a switch in the camera). this can also make a big impact.

I do not use them because I always shoot RAW and post process. I recomend that you do the same. But if you elect not to then you may want to increase contrast, saturation and sharpness using the apropriate controls. I do not own a T3i, so refer to the manual for information on how to change these settings.

Calbirating your monitor is also a good idea, Make sure you are using the sRGB colorspace in LR. If you are using Prophoto RGB your pictures may well be very dull

There is no choice of color space in lightroom. It uses natively prophoto and exports in your choice. It will automatically display properly based on the color management it finds embedded in the image.

The op has not stated what he was comparing the colors to, the display on the camera?, the real scene etc.



James

I'm using sRGB in camera and I'm using Color LCD (which is the default for a MBP). The lack of vibrancy is also apparent on my Dell 2410 monitor which should already be calibrate. The reason I haven't shot RAW yet is because of the color inconsistency. I hope to eventually print my own photos but I'm not yet at that point. Once I do calibrate my monitor, will my photos look like the photos from my camera? And will it also look like that when I print them?




Edit. I'm comparing the photos on my camera with the photos on my laptop and my monitor.

maicrophotographer said:

CLung wrote:

I'm using sRGB in camera and I'm using Color LCD (which is the default for a MBP). The lack of vibrancy is also apparent on my Dell 2410 monitor which should already be calibrate. The reason I haven't shot RAW yet is because of the color inconsistency. I hope to eventually print my own photos but I'm not yet at that point. Once I do calibrate my monitor, will my photos look like the photos from my camera? And will it also look like that when I print them?

Edit. I'm comparing the photos on my camera with the photos on my laptop and my monitor.

Click to expand...

Camera LCDs are really just a guide rather than a 100% accurate monitor (I think) and I don't think there's any way of calibrating them either in consumer level Canons. It's more important that the colours are accurate on your calibrated monitor, so that when you have them printed by commercial printers they should come out identically the same (or at least close).


The colour in the camera LCD depends on which Picture Style you have set it to. Each picture style will have a different emphasis on certain colours to give a different tone or mood so not every picture style is colour accurate. See my article on Getting Great Color From Picture Styles for more info.

After calibrating your monitor, to get accurate colours in Jpeg, I recommend you shoot Raw first and play with the Picture Style settings with Digital Photo Professional (Canon bundled software). Neutral is good Picture Style to begin with and try reducing the contrast for more colour.

maicrophotographer said:

CLung wrote:

I'm using sRGB in camera and I'm using Color LCD (which is the default for a MBP). The lack of vibrancy is also apparent on my Dell 2410 monitor which should already be calibrate. The reason I haven't shot RAW yet is because of the color inconsistency. I hope to eventually print my own photos but I'm not yet at that point. Once I do calibrate my monitor, will my photos look like the photos from my camera? And will it also look like that when I print them?

Edit. I'm comparing the photos on my camera with the photos on my laptop and my monitor.

Click to expand...

What is Color LCD? And what is MBP?

The LCD on camera and laptop can never be trusted for color accuracy. They may look pretty but you can't make decisions based on what they display. A properly hardware calibrated monitor using a device like I1 pro 2 or Huey will give you much more consistent results. Your Dell, if not manually calibrated by using the mentioned devices is not calibrated ie they don't come calibrated from the manufacturer in such a way they can be trusted even though Dell claims otherwise. You can't be sure the calibration is done properly and even so the monitor will deviate from the calibration target after a couple of weeks after every calibration. That's why it's important to have a calibration device yourself and doing it manually. It's great it leaves the manufacturer roughly calibrated to a certain target though.


Lightroom will use the color profile that's been created by the calibration hardware and software. If you haven't set any profile in windows or Mac OS then Lightroom will use the most common output target (likely the sRGB profile). That will produce conversion errors when converting from it's internal Pro Photo RGB to sRGB.

So after calibration it still will not look the same on your camera or laptop, but at least you have a good reference with a calibrated Dell 2410 and know how to adjust things when targeting a printer or lab. Others with a properly calibrated monitor are more likely to see the image as intended (depending on if they use software that supports color profiles).

What "Picture Style" do you have the camera set at? Have you had any pictures printed and if yes how do they turn out?

R2D2 said:

IMHO Everyone should give RAW a try no matter if they use a calibrated monitor or not. Its benefits are that great.

Click to expand...

I fully agree, with some reservations:

I plunged into RAW to stretch the lifetime of my old 300D. Naïve as I was, I optimized my images (towards my uncalibrated monitor). Printed enlargements came back too dark and too red, regardless of the print studio. Then I started to do some experiments with RAW+JPEG to see compare my "improvements" with in-camera cooked JPEGs. Well... embarrassing! Well, you get the drift: calibration helped me to tackle the darkness and redness issues. I also found Lightroom renders colors, sharpness and contrast differently (not worse - different). I backed away to DPP. Came back to Lightroom for several reasons.

So my advise to people who want to start with RAW using Lightroom: begin using the RAW + JPG setting. On an uncalibrated monitor: learn to understand and trust the histograms and be careful with color calibration and the color picker. Begin to post-process only your best images and compare the results with the JPG's.

Hope it helps,

10s

Does your music sound the same through earbuds on your smartphone as it does through a component hi-fi? Which one is "right"?


There's nothing sacred about what the camera shows you, it's just what you get through the way it processes and displays the information in the image file, and how it does that is entirely a matter of choice.

Yes, calibrate your monitor, then shoot raw and work out how to get your images to look the way you want them to look - that's the only "right" that matters.

"Does your music sound the same through earbuds on your smartphone as it does through a component hi-fi? Which one is "right"?"




Well, in my case, I'd say almost, but then again I have a couple of high-end in ear monitors

10s said:

10s wrote:

I plunged into RAW to stretch the lifetime of my old 300D. Naïve as I was, I optimized my images (towards my uncalibrated monitor). Printed enlargements came back too dark and too red, regardless of the print studio. Then I started to do some experiments with RAW+JPEG to see compare my "improvements" with in-camera cooked JPEGs. Well... embarrassing! Well, you get the drift: calibration helped me to tackle the darkness and redness issues. I also found Lightroom renders colors, sharpness and contrast differently (not worse - different). I backed away to DPP. Came back to Lightroom for several reasons.

So my advise to people who want to start with RAW using Lightroom: begin using the RAW + JPG setting. On an uncalibrated monitor: learn to understand and trust the histograms and be careful with color calibration and the color picker. Begin to post-process only your best images and compare the results with the JPG's.

Click to expand...

I agree with your recommendations here 100%. The issues the OP is having are very likely due to a fault somewhere in color management (or even an underperforming monitor).

R2