20D Camera Calibration values for ACR & Lightroom?

[John down under]

ACR and Lightroom (and no doubt other RAW converters) provide facility to adjust Camera Calibration, ie shadow tint and RGB hue and saturation (for each of R, G and B).

I've never worried about calibration for my 20D in ACR (and now Lightroom), but does anyone have some good ballpark values to use? I realise that there may be some variation from body to body and lens to lens, but there must be some kind of basic ballpark calibration values that will provide a reasonable approximation for colour accuracy when compared with not calibrating at all. For example, I understand that uncorrected reds out of the camera may be too orange (and exaggerated?), and there are probably some other tweaks that would help to provide accurate colours.

Don't get me wrong. I'm usually able to get reasonable colours that work well enough for most situations by tweaking during RAW conversion/PP, but I figure it can't hurt to strive for a better starting point that more closely matches the real world, and that may even lead to a better result.

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[Barry Pearson]

John down under wrote:
[snip]

I realise that there may be some variation from body to body and
lens to lens, but there must be some kind of basic ballpark
calibration values that will provide a reasonable approximation for
colour accuracy when compared with not calibrating at all. For
example, I understand that uncorrected reds out of the camera may
be too orange (and exaggerated?), and there are probably some other
tweaks that would help to provide accurate colours.

[snip]

I haven't got FULL 20D calibration values. But if you are having trouble with reds that are too orange, and/or greens that are too yellow, that is quite a common complaint about the default colours of ACR.

For lots of examples of a typical way of correcting for this, including a couple of 20D numbers I found "somewhere", see:
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17064

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17064&view=findpost&p=120160

 

[John down under]

I haven't got FULL 20D calibration values. But if you are having
trouble with reds that are too orange, and/or greens that are too
yellow, that is quite a common complaint about the default colours
of ACR.

For lots of examples of a typical way of correcting for this,
including a couple of 20D numbers I found "somewhere", see:
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17064

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17064&view=findpost&p=120160

Thanks Barry. I'm having a look at the links, but haven't come across any suggestions for green cal numbers to adjust for the yellow you mentioned for the 20D, nor any suggestions for shadow tint. Do you know of any other sources I could consult? I was hping to avoid having to get a Gretag Macbeth colour chart and figuring out what the relevant script is all about. I don't even know what a script is.

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[Barry Pearson]

John down under wrote:
[snip]

Thanks Barry. I'm having a look at the links, but haven't come
across any suggestions for green cal numbers to adjust for the
yellow you mentioned for the 20D, nor any suggestions for shadow
tint. Do you know of any other sources I could consult? I was hping
to avoid having to get a Gretag Macbeth colour chart and figuring
out what the relevant script is all about. I don't even know what a
script is.

I've just tried this search. There are lots of diversions, but you may find something useful.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/search.asp?query=20d+acr+calibration&page=1&forum=all

Here is a possibility:
http://www.oaktree-imaging.com/downloads/

Apart from that, I have no further suggestions.

 

[Barry Pearson]

20D:

ShadowTint> -2
RedHue> -9
RedSaturation> +9
GreenHue> -56
GreenSaturation> +15
BlueHue> +4
BlueSaturation> -10

 

[tonidavid5]

Hi,

You might want to have a look at this link:
http://inside-lightroom.co.uk/cal.php

There are some 30D (ACR calibration) develop presets for Lightroom.

You may use them as a baseline or first step for your develop workflow in LR.

Cheers,

David

 

[John down under]

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[John down under]

20D:

ShadowTint> -2
RedHue> -9
RedSaturation> +9
GreenHue> -56
GreenSaturation> +15
BlueHue> +4
BlueSaturation> -10

Barry, when you say you don't know where you found them, do you mean you saved them a while ago and didn't save the source?
The reds make sense if red is too orange.

The greens don't make sense if the green is too yellow, as GreenHue of -56 pushes the green tones way into the yellow region.
Blue is a more subtle change.

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[John down under]

Hi,

You might want to have a look at this link:
http://inside-lightroom.co.uk/cal.php

There are some 30D (ACR calibration) develop presets for Lightroom.

You may use them as a baseline or first step for your develop
workflow in LR.

Cheers,

David

David, I don't understand what they mean.

Whether or not 30D values should be similar to 20D values (and who knows?), one profile on that page is Canon 30D ACR Lightroom Calibration, which I assume means the same values for both (both ACR and Lightroom use the same engine, right?). The result looks like it's a fairly extreme change, with the skin of the sample being very yellow compared to the original, suggesting the 30D response is nowhere near yellow enough to start with. In addition, there's also a separate profile for Canon 30D ACR Calibration, with a sample image that looks very different and is much more neutral than the ACR Lightroom one I just mentioned. Why would there be a separate profile just for ACR that's very different from the 'Canon 30D ACR Lightroom Calibration' profile?

I'm more confused than I was before I started looking! LOL

Based on all of this, my safest bet might be to ignore it all or to bite the bullet and get a Gretag Macbeth colour chart to shoot after all.

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[Barry Pearson]

John down under wrote:
[snip]

Barry, when you say you don't know where you found them, do you
mean you saved them a while ago and didn't save the source?

[snip]

Yes. (I don't have a 20D to test). I found the following in my filestore, and I don't know where it came from:
20d_calibration.zip

 

[John down under]

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[florinbaiduc]

--
Does not play well with others.
It seems 'others' have a problem with loosing.

 

[rdspear]

I don't quite understand the concept of "calibrating" to "Average" or "ballpark" values. Isn't the whole idea of calibrating to match your equipment exactly?

I would assume that Adobe built their camera-specific profiles from more than one data point, so I wouldn't think that getting a data point or two from others would be any more accurate.

Calibration software is free and G-McB color chart is something like $60.

 

[Manjade]

I found lots and lots of variable values for calibration of the 20d with ACR
I tried out various ones, and the one I like most is this

shadow 0
red h +10
red s -10
green h +10
green s +10
blue h 0
blue sat +10

the others all make differences, of course, but after a while I gave up playing around

AJ
http://www.pbase.com/manjade

 

[John down under]

I don't quite understand the concept of "calibrating" to "Average"
or "ballpark" values. Isn't the whole idea of calibrating to match
your equipment exactly?

Ideally, yes, but if a certain camera model typically has a certain bias in its response, then it must be possible to compensate to a degree for that bias without having to go to the expense and effort of doing a proper cal.

I would assume that Adobe built their camera-specific profiles from
more than one data point, so I wouldn't think that getting a data
point or two from others would be any more accurate.

Calibration software is free and G-McB color chart is something
like $60.

Fair enough. Maybe it makes sense after all. Having never done it before, I had no idea how easy or hard it would be.

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[John down under]

I found lots and lots of variable values for calibration of the 20d
with ACR
I tried out various ones, and the one I like most is this

shadow 0
red h +10
red s -10
green h +10
green s +10
blue h 0
blue sat +10

the others all make differences, of course, but after a while I
gave up playing around

Thanks for the information. I might give those values a try as a starting point to see how they look.

--
Cheers from John from Adelaide, South Australia
John Harvey Photography http://johnharvey.com.au
Canon 20D & Fuji F10

 

[Skunk]

I previously accidently posted this response in another forum.

Anyway here is my experience - I am very happy with how these values have affected reds.

FWIW
I could never get the Thomas Fors script to work for my 20d
I tried over and over.
I would get something different every time.
Most of the time the colors were way, way off or incredibly flat

But, the Rags script worked perfectly the first time.
I use CS1 and it wasn't hard to do at all.
The best correction was in the reds which were too orange in default ACR.
The reds seem to be right on the money now.

For any one interested in trying it out - here is what I got using the Rags ACR Calibrator script (don't forget these settings are camera specific to just my camera not all 20Ds, but it might work well on your camera, who knows) This calibration was made from a Gretag McBeth image taken on a partially sunny day in the shade using the Rags Script:

Shadows
tint 0
Red Primary
hue -12
saturation +16
Green Primary
hue +2
saturation 0
Blue Primary
hue +1
saturation -21

You can find the Rags script here:
http://www.rags-int-inc.com/PhotoTechStuff/ColorCalibration/

I am interested to learn how these settings work for your 20D.
Don't forget you still have to make all the normal level changes.

Does anyone know that if the calibration above is correctly done if it will work propely across a wide range of manual color balance settings?

Interested in hearing your experience.

skunk