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Colour: a better starting point

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Rob de Loe

Rob de Loe

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I've only been shooting in colour since early 2022, so the last couple years have been a steep learning curve.

I develop and edit my GFX RAW files in Lightroom, which offers a huge range of tools for working with colour. Until recently, it's always been a bit of a struggle. I've never had a starting point that represented colour and tone in my GFX RAFs quite the way I wanted.

I can get where I want to go, but it takes me more effort than I like. I pay a physical toll for time spent editing -- so the less time I spend in front of the computer making edits, the better.

I don't shoot Hasselblad, but I keep hearing that the Hasselblad Natural Color System (shoot Hasselblad and process in Phocus) produces colour that people seem to really like right from the start. That's the kind of starting point I've been searching for with GFX files.

Long story short, I found a "better" (for me!) starting point than anything I've used before. I wrote a bit about it here with lots of examples: https://www.robdeloephotography.com/Pages/Colour-A-Better-Starting-Point The short article in draft form so I welcome feedback through this thread.

If you're also feeling a bit frustrated with your colour work in the Adobe ecosystem, it may be as simple as finding a profile that provides a better starting point for you.
 
I like the non-accurate, but imho subjectively very pleasing, colour renditions offered by some of Kodak's film stocks, like e.g. Ektar 100, Portra 400 and Portra 800.

Of course, those being colour negative films, a lot also depends on how you scan and invert them (I go all manual), but the "signature" looks are unmistakable.

For a slightly more accurate (but lower-DR) look, I also like Ektachrome E100.

When working with digital RAW files, as a starting point I often use a preset that mimicks one of those film stocks, and then tweak from there.

I'm rarely interested in "neutral", unless the purpose is reproduction of some artwork, in controlled lighting.
 
I bought Lightroom 3, hated workin in it and with it. So I have never gone back.

I will use Photo ninja, DXO (own photolab5), CaptureOne (own version April 2023, not after) and photo Affinity. I still haven't edited my files intensively so can't say which is best. But photo ninja may only support the Gfx100, as it hasn't been updated since 2021. Its the best at working with odd white balance.

Just checked and it does support the gfx100S as well.
 
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Interesting subject, Rob.

I only use LR for my pre-2019 images now and have moved primarily to Linux open source tools. My raw convertor of choice, darktable, is an interesting and complicated beast. Its colour was completely reworked over a few years by a colour scientist called Aurelian Pierre. His view was that darktable's colour engine (LAB based) was suitable for old style display referred files, but today's higher dynamic range gear could cause it all sorts of issues, so he rebuilt it into what he calls a scene referred workflow. I don't pretend to understand what is going on under the hood with this, it all sounds very technical and complicated to me, but the end result is that you have lots of choice as to how you set up darktable colour: you can use the old display referred model, the newer scene referred model, no model at all or some combination. You need to be a colour scientist to have any clue as to what is going on with darktable.

One of the options you have (there are so many) is to use 3DLUTs. I have installed a bunch of 3DLuts to provide raw support for Fuji film sims (non-official sims, of course). I usually only apply Provia or Acros LUTs, but I notice that effect they have is image dependent which makes the LUT opacity slider very useful for getting just the right amount of effect. Your experiments look good to me.

Mind you, recently I have found that I often prefer to use no workflow model at all. This produces a much flatter starting point and allows me to decide my own levels of saturation and contrast from scratch. What works is very image dependent.

--
2024: Awarded Royal Photographic Society LRPS Distinction
Photo of the day: https://whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/photo-of-the-day/
Website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
DPReview gallery: https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0286305481
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/ (very old!)
 
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Rob, I could be wrong but I think it was you who brought up Color Fidelity profiles a while back. I’ve been using them for my Fuji and Nikon files since then. I’ll have to give these a try.

Thanks,
 
Rodenmg said:
Rob, I could be wrong but I think it was you who brought up Color Fidelity profiles a while back. I’ve been using them for my Fuji and Nikon files since then. I’ll have to give these a try.

Thanks,
Click to expand...
You're not wrong. The Color Fidelity profiles are also good. I will continue to use them for some kinds of images because they're nicely neutral, and I like the graded approach.

I did get frustrated with the greens though. I've been processing a lot of images lately that have lots of different greens in them. Like a lot of profiles, the Color Fidelity profiles for GFX compress the range of green hues. Or perhaps it's more correct to say that they preserve the actual range of green hues! Either way, I found myself trying to broaden the range of green hues for a lot of images with the Green Primary hue slider in the Calibration panel, and with the Point Color tool in the Color Mixer panel.

This is 100% a question of personal taste -- a point I hope was clear in my article. I was looking for a starting point that sat better with how I felt about color, and which cut down on the amount of edits I have to do.

After processing a lot of files with the Photoetmac Paysages profile, I've noticed that I can do a lot less to get where I want the image to be, and they're a lot closer to where I want them to be right from the start. For me, that's a big win and worth the cost of the whole set.
 
Rob, have you ever started with the Linear profile? I've had mixed results with it myself, but I keep thinking that if I keep trying I should be able to come up with a small number of ACR presets based on Linear that will give me good starting points for a few types of scenes.

Thanks,|
Sterling
 
SterlingBjorndahl said:
Rob, have you ever started with the Linear profile? I've had mixed results with it myself, but I keep thinking that if I keep trying I should be able to come up with a small number of ACR presets based on Linear that will give me good starting points for a few types of scenes.

Thanks,|
Sterling
Click to expand...
I've tried working with linear over the years, but never had much success. The Color Fidelity profiles I purchased and used all of last year include a good linear one for GFX 100S.

One thing I've figured out about my colour preferences is that they are relatively simple. I took a small dive into the world of custom lookup tables (LUTs). These are huge in the world of video, but more and more people are adopting them in their still photography.

There clearly are a lot of people out there who want to swing the colour channels wildly and customize them for different scenes, projects, moods, etc. That's not me... I can be happy with one profile that gives me what I consider to be "natural" or "realistic" colours. This fits well with my whole approach to photography, which is the opposite of what was showcased in this thread: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4771524

Anyway, the point of that tangent is that I think I've found that one profile that not only makes me happy, but also saves me a lot of faffing around with individual colour correction tools for each image I'm working on. Simple is good. ;)
 
I didn't include a comparison of the Color Fidelity profile I used previously against this new Paysages profile that I like. Here's a set with Adobe Standard, Color Fidelity Medium (my go-to profile in 2023), the Paysages profile from Photoetmac that I wrote about in the article, and Color Fidelity Linear.

Adobe Standard

Adobe Standard

Color Fidelity Medium

Color Fidelity Medium

Photoetmac Paysages 0%

Photoetmac Paysages 0%

Color Fidelity Linear

Color Fidelity Linear

The best way to compare the four is to download them and put them up side-by-side in Photoshop (or equivalent) so you can move around the image and see how different sections are treated by the profile. Remember, any differences you see are entirely due to the profile; these images include no other edits.

The linear profile is a good baseline interpretation of what's in the RAF. If you put that up beside Color Fidelity Medium and Paysages 0%, you'll clearly see the creative decisions that the authors of those profiles have made regarding luminance, hue and saturation for colours in the file.

All four files provide very different starting points. The profile that lines up best with your tastes and preferences is the one that simplifies your editing the most.
 
Rob de Loe said:
I didn't include a comparison of the Color Fidelity profile I used previously against this new Paysages profile that I like. Here's a set with Adobe Standard, Color Fidelity Medium (my go-to profile in 2023), the Paysages profile from Photoetmac that I wrote about in the article, and Color Fidelity Linear.

Adobe Standard

Adobe Standard

Color Fidelity Medium

Color Fidelity Medium

Photoetmac Paysages 0%

Photoetmac Paysages 0%

Color Fidelity Linear

Color Fidelity Linear

The best way to compare the four is to download them and put them up side-by-side in Photoshop (or equivalent) so you can move around the image and see how different sections are treated by the profile. Remember, any differences you see are entirely due to the profile; these images include no other edits.

The linear profile is a good baseline interpretation of what's in the RAF. If you put that up beside Color Fidelity Medium and Paysages 0%, you'll clearly see the creative decisions that the authors of those profiles have made regarding luminance, hue and saturation for colours in the file.

All four files provide very different starting points. The profile that lines up best with your tastes and preferences is the one that simplifies your editing the most.
Click to expand...
Color Fedility medium is my default.

I want to try the Photoetmac profiles but so far can’t get past the language barrier. On the order page I don’t even see a listing for US currency,

--
... Mike, formerly known as Rod. :)
... https://www.flickr.com/photos/198581502@N02/
 
Rodenmg said:
Color Fedility medium is my default.

I want to try the Photoetmac profiles but so far can’t get past the language barrier. On the order page I don’t even see a listing for US currency,
Click to expand...
My school French was too rusty, so I cheated and used Google Translate on the pages.

As a Canadian, I'm so used to paying for things in other people's currencies that I didn't even blink at paying in Euros.
 
Rob de Loe said:
Rodenmg said:
Color Fedility medium is my default.

I want to try the Photoetmac profiles but so far can’t get past the language barrier. On the order page I don’t even see a listing for US currency,
Click to expand...
My school French was too rusty, so I cheated and used Google Translate on the pages.

As a Canadian, I'm so used to paying for things in other people's currencies that I didn't even blink at paying in Euros.
Click to expand...
IMHO, no country's currency has such an adorable nickname as Canada's.

Oh , and thanks for Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, Sylvia Fricker, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, most of the Band, Leonard Cohen, Paul Anka, James Keelaghan, Stan Rogers, and a bunch of others that I've forgotten to mention.
 
JimKasson said:
Rob de Loe said:
Rodenmg said:
Color Fedility medium is my default.

I want to try the Photoetmac profiles but so far can’t get past the language barrier. On the order page I don’t even see a listing for US currency,
Click to expand...
My school French was too rusty, so I cheated and used Google Translate on the pages.

As a Canadian, I'm so used to paying for things in other people's currencies that I didn't even blink at paying in Euros.
Click to expand...
IMHO, no country's currency has such an adorable nickname as Canada's.

Oh , and thanks for Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, Sylvia Fricker, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, most of the Band, Leonard Cohen, Paul Anka, James Keelaghan, Stan Rogers, and a bunch of others that I've forgotten to mention.
Click to expand...
Ha, you're most welcome. Sorry about Justin Bieber though.
 
JimKasson said:
Rob de Loe said:
Rodenmg said:
Color Fedility medium is my default.

I want to try the Photoetmac profiles but so far can’t get past the language barrier. On the order page I don’t even see a listing for US currency,
Click to expand...
My school French was too rusty, so I cheated and used Google Translate on the pages.

As a Canadian, I'm so used to paying for things in other people's currencies that I didn't even blink at paying in Euros.
Click to expand...
IMHO, no country's currency has such an adorable nickname as Canada's.

Oh , and thanks for Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, Sylvia Fricker, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, most of the Band, Leonard Cohen, Paul Anka, James Keelaghan, Stan Rogers, and a bunch of others that I've forgotten to mention.
Click to expand...
 
Rob de Loe said:
I didn't include a comparison of the Color Fidelity profile I used previously against this new Paysages profile that I like. Here's a set with Adobe Standard, Color Fidelity Medium (my go-to profile in 2023), the Paysages profile from Photoetmac that I wrote about in the article, and Color Fidelity Linear.

Adobe Standard

Adobe Standard

Color Fidelity Medium

Color Fidelity Medium

Photoetmac Paysages 0%

Photoetmac Paysages 0%

Color Fidelity Linear

Color Fidelity Linear

The best way to compare the four is to download them and put them up side-by-side in Photoshop (or equivalent) so you can move around the image and see how different sections are treated by the profile. Remember, any differences you see are entirely due to the profile; these images include no other edits.

The linear profile is a good baseline interpretation of what's in the RAF. If you put that up beside Color Fidelity Medium and Paysages 0%, you'll clearly see the creative decisions that the authors of those profiles have made regarding luminance, hue and saturation for colours in the file.

All four files provide very different starting points. The profile that lines up best with your tastes and preferences is the one that simplifies your editing the most.
Click to expand...
I always find such things fascinating. How people see things differently. Out of these I would prefer the linear profile by a pretty big margin as my starting point. Then the Adobe. Then Fidelity Medium, that I find too vibrant. And lastly the Paysages, that has too much red for me. I mostly use linear profiles myself.
 
Nevermind, please ignore.
 
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boastar said:
I always find such things fascinating. How people see things differently. Out of these I would prefer the linear profile by a pretty big margin as my starting point. Then the Adobe. Then Fidelity Medium, that I find too vibrant. And lastly the Paysages, that has too much red for me. I mostly use linear profiles myself.
Click to expand...
Do you like the look of the linear profiles, or do you just prefer to start with them? I see a lot of photography that is using a linear profile and not departing from the look (flat, dull, underexposed). It seems quite popular at the moment judging by how often I see it.
 
Rob de Loe said:
boastar said:
I always find such things fascinating. How people see things differently. Out of these I would prefer the linear profile by a pretty big margin as my starting point. Then the Adobe. Then Fidelity Medium, that I find too vibrant. And lastly the Paysages, that has too much red for me. I mostly use linear profiles myself.
Click to expand...
Do you like the look of the linear profiles, or do you just prefer to start with them? I see a lot of photography that is using a linear profile and not departing from the look (flat, dull, underexposed). It seems quite popular at the moment judging by how often I see it.
Click to expand...
I mostly like the flexibility it gives. And not being predetermined to a certain style through a bolder profile. Because the more saturated profiles often make rather strong adjustments in color reproduction. Most of the Fuji "film sims" are like that too.

When I start linear, I feel it is better to freely take development into any direction I need. Im not at all a "100% accuracy" type though. Sometimes I go pretty far from "what was there", especially in luminance. The "dull" look that you speak of is on the rise unfortunately. I think many are mistaking it to look analog, which it doesn't.
 
boastar said:
Rob de Loe said:
boastar said:
I always find such things fascinating. How people see things differently. Out of these I would prefer the linear profile by a pretty big margin as my starting point. Then the Adobe. Then Fidelity Medium, that I find too vibrant. And lastly the Paysages, that has too much red for me. I mostly use linear profiles myself.
Click to expand...
Do you like the look of the linear profiles, or do you just prefer to start with them? I see a lot of photography that is using a linear profile and not departing from the look (flat, dull, underexposed). It seems quite popular at the moment judging by how often I see it.
Click to expand...
I mostly like the flexibility it gives. And not being predetermined to a certain style through a bolder profile. Because the more saturated profiles often make rather strong adjustments in color reproduction. Most of the Fuji "film sims" are like that too.

When I start linear, I feel it is better to freely take development into any direction I need. Im not at all a "100% accuracy" type though. Sometimes I go pretty far from "what was there", especially in luminance. The "dull" look that you speak of is on the rise unfortunately. I think many are mistaking it to look analog, which it doesn't.
Click to expand...
Thanks for explaining your workflow. That's helpful.

Buried in the original context for this post -- the short article I mention in the opener -- is an important part of my rationale. The wear and tear of editing is really getting to be too much for my hands, arms and shoulders. One motivator was finding a starting point that cuts down on the amount spent editing.

I completely understand your concern about being locked into someone else's tastes. That's why I don't use film simulations or custom LUTs that create wild swings in colour. I'm a bit surprised that I like the profile I wrote about in this post as much as I do because the author's thumb is definitely on the scale. It just so happens that I like his choices.

But if you really can't abide anyone's choices getting in your way, then for sure a linear profile is the way to go. For me, there's no advantage. Thankfully, we have almost endless choice about how to get where we want to go.
 
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