First DP3Merrill and DP2x shots

pat scales wrote:

I took a DP2M photo of an artwork, acrylic painting. The jpeg turned out close to true color, but the raw file when put in spp was washed out and the color balance was way off. It took alot to retrieve it. It was especially difficult to deal with the tan/brown tones on the skin, and then more work in photoshop. I have never experienced this with landscapes in spp. Can anyone offer an explaination?

There are two problems with the image you are showing:

1) You have the white balance set to sunlight, no way that will work out well.  Even if you were photographing outside you would still select shade unless in direct sunlight (which it was not).  I would start with augo, then try one of the standard presets if that does not work - If you are really serious about photographing artwork I would use a grey card to set a custom white balance.  You should also play with color modes, Neutral I think is best for the the DP cameras (and is not the default, Standard is).

2) From your other message, you are setting the working space to ProPhoto and AdobeRGB.  I have never been able to get either to work myself; many monitors only display the full sRGB space anyway.  Set the working color space to sRGB to judge colors - you can still save in a wider space when you are done in SPP.  Or, you can ignore the colors and just use the histogram while making adjustments, then do final adjustments in some other editor.  Personally I use SPP set to sRGB, but I do most of my editing in Aperture after making first rough adjustments in SPP.