JPEG saving question

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

2) I am researching for a very entry level DSLR camera that has a very quick focus/auto-focus for general photography. Not necessarily shutter speed, but an ability to very quickly focus on an image.

Can anyone assist with the above queries?

Thanks

Jeremy

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

This sounds like an issue specific to Photomatix to me. Try asking on the Retouching forum.

Jays001 said:

2) I am researching for a very entry level DSLR camera that has a very quick focus/auto-focus for general photography. Not necessarily shutter speed, but an ability to very quickly focus on an image.

Click to expand...

Generally entry level DSLRs have pretty fast single shot focusing anyway although it will depend somewhat on the lens. Are you talking about focusing in Liveview? Liveview will be slow in just about all entry level DSLRs.

Have you tried a DSLR and found it to be particularly slow? If you have, what DSLR and what lens? What were you trying to photograph?

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

With Photomatix Pro v5.1.3 & Sony RAW files, I did have a problem with a very strong magenta color cast just appearing one day in the finished JPEGs. Personally, I blame some Win10 or video card driver update.

To get around it, I had to first convert the RAW source files to TIFF or DNG and use those files in Photomatix.

HDRSoft released v6 a few weeks after the problem appeared. It's a nice upgrade with a somewhat easier workflow.

Turns out if you purchased a license for v5 you can upgrade to v6 for free (whoo hoo!). Upgrading fixed the problem for me:
https://www.hdrsoft.com/support/upgrade6.html

Jays001 said:

2) I am researching for a very entry level DSLR camera that has a very quick focus/auto-focus for general photography. Not necessarily shutter speed, but an ability to very quickly focus on an image.

Click to expand...

Chris already answered this question. I'm happy for that because I'm completely befuddled by what "very quick" means. Compared to a cellphone? Your friend's Sony A6000?

BTW, low light level has a big effect on focus speed. DSLRs still have a slight advantage over mirrorless camera here.

--
Lance H

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

It could be a colorspace management issue. What colorspace are you using for the images when working in Photomatix? What colorspace are you using for the generated JPEG images? What software are you using to view the JPEGs? What OS are you using?

Chris R-UK said:

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

This sounds like an issue specific to Photomatix to me. Try asking on the Retouching forum.

Click to expand...

Good idea,

Chris R-UK said:

Chris R-UK said:

2) I am researching for a very entry level DSLR camera that has a very quick focus/auto-focus for general photography. Not necessarily shutter speed, but an ability to very quickly focus on an image.

Click to expand...

Generally entry level DSLRs have pretty fast single shot focusing anyway although it will depend somewhat on the lens. Are you talking about focusing in Liveview? Liveview will be slow in just about all entry level DSLRs.

Have you tried a DSLR and found it to be particularly slow? If you have, what DSLR and what lens? What were you trying to photograph?

Click to expand...

HI Chris, thanks for the reply, we are documenting the internals of buildings (ie. taking shots of everything) I just find the current Nikon D3200 a bit slow to focus, in normal viewfinder mode,

Chris R-UK said:

--
Chris R

Click to expand...

lehill said:

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

With Photomatix Pro v5.1.3 & Sony RAW files, I did have a problem with a very strong magenta color cast just appearing one day in the finished JPEGs. Personally, I blame some Win10 or video card driver update.

To get around it, I had to first convert the RAW source files to TIFF or DNG and use those files in Photomatix.

HDRSoft released v6 a few weeks after the problem appeared. It's a nice upgrade with a somewhat easier workflow.

Turns out if you purchased a license for v5 you can upgrade to v6 for free (whoo hoo!). Upgrading fixed the problem for me:
https://www.hdrsoft.com/support/upgrade6.html

Click to expand...

thanks for the reply, i have upgraded and this is definitely a nice interface to use, ill have to see if the over saturation issue still occurs, or will try the work around

lehill said:

lehill said:

2) I am researching for a very entry level DSLR camera that has a very quick focus/auto-focus for general photography. Not necessarily shutter speed, but an ability to very quickly focus on an image.

Click to expand...

Chris already answered this question. I'm happy for that because I'm completely befuddled by what "very quick" means. Compared to a cellphone? Your friend's Sony A6000?

BTW, low light level has a big effect on focus speed. DSLRs still have a slight advantage over mirrorless camera here.

--
Lance H

Click to expand...

Michael Fryd said:

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

It could be a colorspace management issue. What colorspace are you using for the images when working in Photomatix? What colorspace are you using for the generated JPEG images? What software are you using to view the JPEGs? What OS are you using?

Click to expand...

thanks for the reply,

not too sure what you mean by colourspace, i use Win7 just with windows photo viewer

Jays001 said:

Michael Fryd said:

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

It could be a colorspace management issue. What colorspace are you using for the images when working in Photomatix? What colorspace are you using for the generated JPEG images? What software are you using to view the JPEGs? What OS are you using?

Click to expand...

not too sure what you mean by colourspace, i use Win7 just with windows photo viewer

Click to expand...

The world in front of us has an infinite variety of colours. The devices we use to record and display pictures aren't able to deal with that infinite variety. The term " Colour Space" is a description of how wide (or narrow) a range a particular device can display. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space

In photography there are two widely used Colour Spaces - AdobeRGB and sRGB. Adobe RGB is wider than sRGB. If your camera records AdobeRGB (which is a common default setting) and Photomatix follows that, but the JPG is saved into sRGB then the result will look flat.

Generally speaking it doesn't matter what Colour Space you use as long as you understand the limitations; in practice it is safer to set everything to the lowest common denominator, which is sRGB. Doing that may lose some fine gradations of colour on the way through but you know that what you see is always what you get.

This has nothing to do with JPG compression.

Jays001 said:

Jays001 said:

Chris R-UK wrote: (...)

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Jays001 said:

Jays001 said:

Have you tried a DSLR and found it to be particularly slow? If you have, what DSLR and what lens? What were you trying to photograph?

Click to expand...

HI Chris, thanks for the reply, we are documenting the internals of buildings (ie. taking shots of everything) I just find the current Nikon D3200 a bit slow to focus, in normal viewfinder mode,

Click to expand...

As I understand that you mainly photograph non-moving subjects, maybe a mirrorless camera might be better for your needs than a DSLR (less weight)?

For example the Sony a6000, or an entry level m4/3 camera (Panasonic/Olympus).

In simplistic terms, the "colorspace" defines the mapping from a particular numeric RGB value to a particular color.

The choice of colorspace determines both the range of colors that can be represented, and the precision with which you can specify a color.

Contrary to popular myth, a wider gamut colorspace does not give you more "colors", it just distributes the same number of colors across a wider range.

Your digital JPEG file is essentially a big "paint-by-numbers" image. Each pixel contains a number from 0 to 16,777,215. For instance, if the pixel had the value 128 that tells us to use color number 128. That's likely a shade of blue, but the exact shade will vary depending on which colorspace you chose.

As a general rule, if you aren't paying attention to colorspaces, you are probably using sRGB, or something close. The vast majority of web images are in sRGB.

Once you move out of sRGB, you need to make sure that everyone who uses or views the image has a properly color-managed workflow. If not, then colors can look wrong. The reason is that without proper color management there can be a noticeable difference between the shade of blue that the viewer sees for the number 128, and the shade you intended.

A disadvantage of wide gamut colorspaces is that the difference between adjacent colors will be greater. Thus you don't have as much precision in specifiying a color. It's like the difference between specifying a distance in integer inches or centimeters. With inches you can specify larger distances with the same range of integers. With centimeters you have a shorter range, but more precision.

For most images, the difference in precision won't make a noticeable difference. However, if you wll be making significant edits to the image, you will find that the wider gamut colorspace is mosre susceptible to banding and posterization issues. Thus when using wide gamut colorspaces, you should strongly consider working in 16 bits per channel, ratyher than 8 (this tends to double the size of your files).

You may find that colorspace discussions tend to get controversial, mostly due to differences in terminology. For instance, some people consider that two different frequencies of light are the same color if they look the same. Others would consider them Different colors as they are measureably different frequencies of light. The correct answer depends on the context, and you will find that some people mix and match definitions which can lead to strange conclusions.

Jays001 said:

Hello There,

I have a couple of questions I am wondering if anyone can assist in helping,

1) I use Photomatix Pro 5.1.2 for a bit of HDR processing of photos, they generally turn out OK, but it seems when I process the RAW images, and save as a JPEG at the end, the colour of the photos always seems to appear quite over saturated compared to the end result in Photomatix. IE. they look OK in photomatix, but look quite bad when saved... do you think this just a result of the JPEG compression ?

Click to expand...

No it's nothing to do with the JPEG compression. As others have mentioned it could be down to colour space, but I suspect it's one of the settings in Photomatix. Many HDR images are artificial looking with highly saturated colour. I guess many people like that look, though loads of us don't as well. I personally think its part of what has given HDR a bad name!

If you can't find a saturation control in Photomatix, then you can turn down the saturation in any photo editing software, after you've finished with Photomatix.