QPcard vs. ColorChecker Passport vs. Adobe Camera Profiles

Nice set of test shots. I have not used QPcard, but my results with ColorChecker Passport are somewhat similar to Robin's. I have a few comparison images in the following web gallery, made with D700 and processed with ACR/CS5.

http://julianv.zenfolio.com/p564329719

For the parade shot, the custom Passport profile yields a noticeable saturation boost, compared to Adobe Standard, especially in reds and purples. For the forest scene, there is not much effect on foliage greens, but a noticeable difference in the blue sky, which goes toward cyan with Adobe Standard, toward magenta with Passport. The Passport profile used for those images was shot at mid-day under clear skies, with the target in open shade (roughly 6500K). This is a single illuminant profile. I've also tried profiles made with the target illuminated by direct sunlight, with and without UniWB. The differences from the open shade profiles are slight.

Based on my own limited experience, I have mixed feelings about the usefulness of custom camera profiles. Adobe's profiles are dual-illuminant and very carefully made. Adobe Standard usually gets me reasonably close to what I like. The daylight Passport profile sometimes produces more pop in the colors, but I see quite a few shots where the saturation looks excessive and less natural than what I get with Adobe Standard or Camera Neutral. I think custom profiles are most useful when shooting in unusual lighting conditions (e.g., sodium vapor) or with mixed lighting sources.

There is a lot of interesting information about this stuff in a thread on the LuLa forum, including some comments from Eric Chan, one of the Adobe engineers who works on ACR, DNG, and the profiling code.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=43733.0

Julian Vrieslander wrote:

Nice set of test shots. I have not used QPcard, but my results with ColorChecker Passport are somewhat similar to Robin's. I have a few comparison images in the following web gallery, made with D700 and processed with ACR/CS5.

Thanks. I've not tried either card much with the D700 and Lightroom 4 Process 2012. With the old Process 2010, there was a significant difference between Adobe Standard and ColorChecker Passport profiles. With 2012 Process, I'm finding Adobe Standard to be much closer to the ColorChecker Passport results.

http://julianv.zenfolio.com/p564329719

For the parade shot, the custom Passport profile yields a noticeable saturation boost, compared to Adobe Standard, especially in reds and purples. For the forest scene, there is not much effect on foliage greens, but a noticeable difference in the blue sky, which goes toward cyan with Adobe Standard, toward magenta with Passport.

With Process 2010 I noticed a significant improvement in greens for the D700 with the ColorChecker Passport. With process 2012 and the D800E the greens are pretty consistent between the different profiles. I think my Pink series shows some difference where the QPcard and ColorChecker Passport greens are a little richer looking than the two Adobe profiles I used.

Based on my own limited experience, I have mixed feelings about the usefulness of custom camera profiles. Adobe's profiles are dual-illuminant and very carefully made. Adobe Standard usually gets me reasonably close to what I like.

Adobe seems to have made significant improvements in Process 2012.

The daylight Passport profile sometimes produces more pop in the colors, but I see quite a few shots where the saturation looks excessive and less natural than what I get with Adobe Standard or Camera Neutral.

You might try building a profile from the same NEF with the Adobe DNG Profile Editor (free download). It gives slightly different results than the X-Rite software.

I think custom profiles are most useful when shooting in unusual lighting conditions (e.g., sodium vapor) or with mixed lighting sources.

It think they are also good when you want to match colors and are shooting with different lenses. Create a profile for each lens.

There is a lot of interesting information about this stuff in a thread on the LuLa forum...

Thanks. I'll have to look at them.
--
Robin Casady
http://www.robincasady.com/Photo/index.html

InTheMist wrote:

I'm still a bit confused. What setting do you use for UniWB?

UniWB is a kind of hack that will give a more accurate histogram and a truer indication of real exposure.

In its simple form, you can use a daylight exposure setting and the "neutral" tone curve. The use of an 's' tone curve can exaggerate highlights and lead to underexposing by a stop or so.

You can hack a little further to install custom tone curves in the camera, and custom WB profiles.

Now if only I could get QPcard profiles to work.

InTheMist wrote:

I'm still a bit confused. What setting do you use for UniWB?

You have to create a PRE for UniWB. It is usually done by creating or downloading a NEF that was created to generate UniWB and loading the PRE from it.

Its purpose is to cause the in-camera RGB Histograms to more closely show what is happening with the RAW data. Using it with Neutral Picture Control in the Shooting menu to cause the LCD display to give you a more accurate histogram. This is only used as a guide when shooting. In post you change it to an appropriate WB.

http://www.guillermoluijk.com/tutorial/uniwb/index_en.htm

FM2user created such a NEF for the D800E and made it available for download. It is what I'm using.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=41787319
--
Robin Casady
http://www.robincasady.com/Photo/index.html

That is very strange. Without seeing the original shot of the card, it is hard to guess what happened. If you like, I could email you a profile I created and you could see if you get similar results. That way you could tell if it was the profile, or something set in Lightroom 4. My email address is in my profile.

Luke Kaven wrote:

I did as you indicated as well.

The camera profile looks like this:

The QPcard profile looks like this:

WB in both cases is 5550/+6, same as the WB for the QPcard. The only change was the profile selection. It gives me these results whether I use medium or wide gamut when creating the profile.

Robin Casady wrote:

With the old Process 2010, there was a significant difference between Adobe Standard and ColorChecker Passport profiles. With 2012 Process, I'm finding Adobe Standard to be much closer to the ColorChecker Passport results.

Agreed.

Hello;

Just received the book 203 card and downloaded the windows V1.11 calibration software.

I am doing some adobe standard vs QP comparisons with Fuji S5 files and while I find the color a bit more accurate

Hello,

Just received the book 203 card and downloaded the windows V1.11 calibration software.

I am curently doing some adobe standard vs QP comparisons with Fuji S5 raw files and while I find the colors a bit more accurate, the gradations are a bit less smooth than with Adobe standard profile. Qp result is less forgiving in difficult/extreme lighting and gives sometimes posterization/banding issues.

The QP doc talks about a Profile smoothing option: "Smoothing should normally not be necessary. If you get posterization (banding) in very difficult lighting conditions "High" smoothing can help." but I don't see this option in the right panel and it is not selectable in the menu whereas there is indeed a "no smoothing" and "smoother" option.
Is it a limitation to the windows version???

Thanks.

ditch14b wrote:

Hello,

Just received the book 203 card and downloaded the windows V1.11 calibration software.

I'm using version 1.11 on a Mac.

I am curently doing some adobe standard vs QP comparisons with Fuji S5 raw files and while I find the colors a bit more accurate, the gradations are a bit less smooth than with Adobe standard profile. Qp result is less forgiving in difficult/extreme lighting and gives sometimes posterization/banding issues.

Are you shooting 14 bit or 12 bit? Best to shoot at 14 bit.

I haven't noticed any posterization.

The QP doc talks about a Profile smoothing option: "Smoothing should normally not be necessary. If you get posterization (banding) in very difficult lighting conditions "High" smoothing can help." but I don't see this option in the right panel and it is not selectable in the menu whereas there is indeed a "no smoothing" and "smoother" option.
Is it a limitation to the windows version???

It is in the Settings menu.

It should be a windows version bug...no selection possible!
Thanks for your reply

http://www.dch2photo.net/Qp-menu.jpg

Here is an example in an out of focus area, Adobe std on the left, Qp on the right.

That doesn't look like posterization to me. Looks like a difference in contrast.
--
Robin Casady
http://www.robincasady.com/Photo/index.html

IF yoy look closer you se that adobe standard are tvisting red and orange color in lower levels compare to qp-card, orange goes towards red

If you look closer to blue colors you can se that adobe has a magenta cast in adobe standard and neutral profiles together with Canon 5dmk2 for example.

I have used QP-card and done profiles for Pentax 645, 5dmk2, and d800, all of them coming up with similar colors

What kind of result depends on which camera you use and witch profiles you compare

Robin Casady wrote:

I've been playing with creating Camera Color Profiles for Lightroom 4 and ACR with a QPcard 203 and QPcalibration software to compare it with profiles created with a ColorChecker Passport and X-Rite Software.

This is not a rigorous nor complete test. It is just some comparisons of various flower colors in bright sunlight. I figured that would be an interesting challenge. The first post will deal with some red and crimson geraniums. None of them quite nailed the red colors. The greens look right, but the reds need more blue. The flowers on the left are your standard red geraniums with a good intense fire engine red. The ones on the right are a deeper crimson red (a touch more blue than fire engine red).

The next message will deal with the tricky purple of a morning glory.

All shots with a D800E. This one was done with a Nikon 24-70mm lens.

QPcard:

ColorChecker Passport:

Adobe Camera Neutral

Adobe Camera Standard

Adobe Camera Landscape

Adobe Standard

Robin Casady wrote:

That is very strange. Without seeing the original shot of the card, it is hard to guess what happened. If you like, I could email you a profile I created and you could see if you get similar results. That way you could tell if it was the profile, or something set in Lightroom 4. My email address is in my profile.

Thanks Robin. I might take you up on that if I don't hear back from the QPcard people sometime soon.

Regarding colors like red and so intense as in the first pictures you should use a larger color space as ProPhoto. Then you proofing in the colors in to the smaller color space such as Adobe RGB.

Qp-cards profiles gives you less intense colors compare to adobe standard and will not turn the hue by lower levels as adobe is doing , example: orange goes towards red in adobes profile

Robin Casady wrote:

I've been playing with creating Camera Color Profiles for Lightroom 4 and ACR with a QPcard 203 and QPcalibration software to compare it with profiles created with a ColorChecker Passport and X-Rite Software.

This is not a rigorous nor complete test. It is just some comparisons of various flower colors in bright sunlight. I figured that would be an interesting challenge. The first post will deal with some red and crimson geraniums. None of them quite nailed the red colors. The greens look right, but the reds need more blue. The flowers on the left are your standard red geraniums with a good intense fire engine red. The ones on the right are a deeper crimson red (a touch more blue than fire engine red).

The next message will deal with the tricky purple of a morning glory.

All shots with a D800E. This one was done with a Nikon 24-70mm lens.

QPcard:

ColorChecker Passport:

Adobe Camera Neutral

Adobe Camera Standard

Adobe Camera Landscape

Adobe Standard

After you are choosing the QP-card you shall do a WB .
http://www.qpcard.com/qpcalibration-instructions

if you have any questions you can ask me or I can move any tricky questions further to the team who I have been knowing many years back.

Luke Kaven wrote:

Robin -- I'm having trouble figuring out some of the basics with my QP-card 203. I can get the calibrator to recognize my card image and produce a profile. I can access the profile in LR4.

But what should I set the WB to and how does that figure into it? The results I get applying the profile in LR4 are nonsensical. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Thank you! Did you see my screenshots and description further down thread (or upthread, depending upon where you're standing)?

I definitely need help. I wrote the company twice last week and they haven't written back. Did you see my screen shots?

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=41893995

Mikael Risedal wrote:
After you are choosing the QP-card you shall do a WB .
http://www.qpcard.com/qpcalibration-instructions

if you have any questions you can ask me or I can move any tricky questions further to the team who I have been knowing many years back.

Luke Kaven wrote:

Robin -- I'm having trouble figuring out some of the basics with my QP-card 203. I can get the calibrator to recognize my card image and produce a profile. I can access the profile in LR4.

But what should I set the WB to and how does that figure into it? The results I get applying the profile in LR4 are nonsensical. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Do you have a D800E or a D800? I could send you some D800E profiles, but not D800. I would need a NEF of the QPcard to make a D800 profile.

If you have the D800E, you could send me the profile that is killing color on your shots.

Luke Kaven wrote:

I definitely need help. I wrote the company twice last week and they haven't written back. Did you see my screen shots?

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=41893995

Mikael Risedal wrote:
After you are choosing the QP-card you shall do a WB .
http://www.qpcard.com/qpcalibration-instructions

if you have any questions you can ask me or I can move any tricky questions further to the team who I have been knowing many years back.

Luke Kaven wrote:

Robin -- I'm having trouble figuring out some of the basics with my QP-card 203. I can get the calibrator to recognize my card image and produce a profile. I can access the profile in LR4.

But what should I set the WB to and how does that figure into it? The results I get applying the profile in LR4 are nonsensical. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.