Color profiles in different RAW processing tools

[marcelpres]

Hi All,

After some days of googling and trying myself without success I decided to share my issues with you even if I am sure parts of it have been already diascussed / answered previously here.

I am kind of new in photography and having difficulties with RAW processing softwares, specially color profiles.

What I want is a pretty simple workflow for developing my RAWs with a free tool on Mac (Linux compatibility is an advantage, I don't care Windows): finetuning lights, contrast, maybe some lens / perspective correction, B/W, but no retouching, no magic with colors.

Basically the best would be starting the development with some kind of sw preset applied on the RAW image matching the embedded JPEG. I know it is not the professional way, but I think I have not enough experience and not enough time to start building every image from scratch.

Based on my previous experience and reading articles I found four sw candidates. All of them are producing very different results ater importing the same RAW file specially in case of colors and I think this is because different color profiles and/or differently handling existing color profiles (even possible?). See below my conclusion. Points starting with (!!!) are the most important ones which discourage me from using the software.

• NX Studio
  • Obvious choice for my old Nikon camera
  • Matching the embedded JPEG automatically and most precisely.
  • A bit unconfortable, lack of ergonomics
  • (!!!) Slow and unstable. Takes forever to launch, very slow behaviour during development and has a very serious memory leak problem. It can often eat all of the system memory and then freeze.
  • There is a Color management tab in Options menu but I am not sure how to use input, and output profiles. Only choice called "RGB default profile" is set to "Nikon sRGB 4.0.0.3002". I think that is the output profile.
  • Exported JPEG looks just like in the editor. Having "Nikon sRGB 4.0.0.3002" color profile.
  • Not available for Linux
• Apple Photos
  • Easy and fast to use on Mac
  • Does not reproduce exactly the embedded JPEG but to my eyes this is the closest to reality, good colors, contrast, lights etc. Some magic here, maybe MacOS does this since it is the same look as seen in 3rd party image viewer when I open the same RAW file. But definatelly I do not know what is happening.
  • Not so powerful like the two below, but would be enough for me.
  • (!!!) Incompetent in file handling. Following the usual apple "style" it does not allow to see / store / copy the image files and sidecar files. I just import images into my library and then the whole image set is stored in one big file. Impssoble to move to another computer (maybe it is with iCloud subscription). I can export JPEG and even the RAW file untouched but that way I will lose all modifications on the RAW file, there is no sidecar files.
  • Does not have any color profile setting, I am almost sure it is using Apple's "Display P3" as input profile and something called "sRGB linear" as output profile.
  • Exported JPEG looks just like in the editor. Having "sRGB linear" color profile.
  • Not available for Linux.
• Darktable
  • Speed and ergonomy is OK, but not a native app for Mac.
  • Maybe the most similar to Lightroom (?).
  • Tons of possibilities, some of that are not so straightforward.
  • (!!!) After importing RAW image, it is exactly what I meant by "from scratch". Ugly grey image without contrast and color. With built-in color profiles I gave up after 30 minutes of tweaking. I could not get closer even to the JPEG look. Colors were far from reality. Then I tried the same but now using color profiles stolen from other softwares like Apple Photos or Adobe DNG converter. As a result, colors are much closer to reality or at least the JPEG look but still slightly different and the image is still dark and is lacking of contrast that should be fixed using curves I guess, which seems too complicated and time consuming compaired to starting with JPEG look.
  • Input and working color profile can be specified, default value is something called "standard color matrix" which gives better result than other built-ins but still not good enough.
  • Does not handle dcm profiles, only icc profiles.
  • Exported JPEG looks just like in the editor. Having "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" color profile.
  • Availble for Linux
• Rawtherapee
  • Speed and ergonomy is OK, but not a native app for Mac.
  • Even more tons of possibilities, most of those are understandable.
  • (!!!) At the beginning imported RAW image is just like in Darktable explained above, but here I have better possibilities for fixing it. Curves seem to work better to me, more understandable workflow and there are usable automations for tone curves but at the end color still does not match with embedded JPEG or what I remember as reality or what I can see when I open the RAW file with a simple image viewer even with sRGB profile which is used in NX studio or with Display P3 profile which is used in Apple Photos.
  • (!!!) Exported JPEG has less color and contrast compared to the editor look. Having "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" color profile or whatever I chose as output, but the result is the same. I think it could be fixed somehow but I also gave up after several hours of reading and trying.
  • Input, working and output color profile can be specified, there is a lot of built-in. icc and also dcp profiles can be used.
  • Availble for Linux

After some reading I think I have a good understanding of color profiles (or not but not sure still why these softwares show different result in color while using the same input color profile.

What should I do?

1. With NX Studio: live together with the unstable and slow software, have more attention to in-camera JPEG image processing settings since these are affecting the embedded JPEG which will be the starting point in RAW processing?
2. With Apple Photos: forget thinking about files, live together with dependence on MacOS and the risk of losing all the development ever done on RAW images, just export JPEGs and store unmodified RAWs?
3. With Darktable or RawTherapee: Keep trying to get a better undersanding of way of working of each software and color profiles, keep trying to understand why using same color profiles gives different color result, maybe create a custom preset holding all the fixes which can lead from the ugly uncolored dark image to close to the JPEG look and use this preset all the time?

In the frst two cases I could produces images that I am satisfied with more or less, limitations are technical I can say. Maybe in the future I will have problems because of limited features. Maybe Nikon's memory problem will make it unusable, maybe Apple just removes Photos from the next MacOS release..

In the third case there is no technical limitation, softwares are corssplatform and having tons of features, but when it comes to color I can not produce satisfying images.

Sorry for the long post, any comment / suggestion is appreciated even for color profiles or RAW processors above.
Marton

 

[lehill]

What should I do?

AFAIK, RAW files don't even have colors assigned to individual pixels until they are processed by some software like Darktable, NX Studio, Adobe Camera Raw, etc. So color assignment is 100% dependent on the software authors.

Naturally, only Nikon knows exactly how they use RAW data to assign colors to pixels and create an in-camera JPEG file. So Nikon software will always do the best job matching the in-camera JPEG file. The same goes for any other brand.

All the 3rd-party software authors do their best to match or reverse-engineer Nikon's results. Apparently, this is an extremely difficult thing to do. Even my Photoshop RAW processor - Adobe Camera Raw - is just "pretty close" to matching my Sony in-camera JPEG images.

What I did for many years is just accept this and process the RAW files to my preferences. My preferences never matched the JPEG images anyway. I have my own sense of the "right way" to make a JPEG image so it's no longer important if it matches what Sony thinks is the "right way".

In case I ever need high fidelity to some brand's in-camera JPEGs, I can use the camera brand's RAW processing software.

Within the past few years, I've been using a Color Checker to create consistent (if not JPEG-authentic) camera profiles for all my cameras, new or old, Brand X or Brand Y. This consistent starting point makes RAW processing a lot easier.

--
Lance H

 

[bmoag]

Lack of grounding in the basics is making this more difficult for you than it should be.

You can't get very far with raw processing without a basic understanding of color spaces and bit depths. Once you get that its transferable to any program, paid or free, You should then understand why those programs use whatever arbitrary labels they do for whatever processing options they offer.

Raw images don't need a color profile, whatever is offered in a raw processing program is essentially an arbitrary preset. You don't have to chain yourself to them.

Most people, unfortunately, process raw images with adjustments that are applied globally to the entire image, the paradigm for most of the programs you listed. That can/should/might not yield images better than an in-camera jpeg algorithm but conceptually is no different. I see exclusive use of that paradigm as a sad waste of the information contained in a modern hi-bit wide gamut raw file. With the right tools you can inflict whatever you want on any part of the image for maximum impact.

For learning about color spaces and basic issues around raw processing you might start with videos linked to digitaldog.net. I think the videos are now on Youtube.

If you want to get the most out of raw images that requires processing them in a program with a layering paradigm, the best of which inescapably is Photoshop, but there are several others, paid and free, with that capability.

 

[lehill]

What should I do?

1. With NX Studio: live together with the unstable and slow software, have more attention to in-camera JPEG image processing settings since these are affecting the embedded JPEG which will be the starting point in RAW processing?
2. With Apple Photos: forget thinking about files, live together with dependence on MacOS and the risk of losing all the development ever done on RAW images, just export JPEGs and store unmodified RAWs?
3. With Darktable or RawTherapee: Keep trying to get a better undersanding of way of working of each software and color profiles, keep trying to understand why using same color profiles gives different color result, maybe create a custom preset holding all the fixes which can lead from the ugly uncolored dark image to close to the JPEG look and use this preset all the time?

In the frst two cases I could produces images that I am satisfied with more or less, limitations are technical I can say. Maybe in the future I will have problems because of limited features. Maybe Nikon's memory problem will make it unusable, maybe Apple just removes Photos from the next MacOS release..

In the third case there is no technical limitation, softwares are corssplatform and having tons of features, but when it comes to color I can not produce satisfying images.

Sorry for the long post, any comment / suggestion is appreciated even for color profiles or RAW processors above.
Marton

After sleeping on this I have a few more comments.

The priority here seems to be free RAW editors that run on Linux. There are not that many and you've explored them thoroughly. As a beginner, I don't think this will work for you.

You didn't mention which Nikon camera you have. When looking around for 3rd-party RAW editors, it's important to check their supported cameras list (example). Cameras with full RAW support have all the camera profiles (tone curves, colors, presets, etc) already worked out.

If you need to stay with free software, I was thinking you could use NX Studio for the initial RAW conversion and maybe some Nikon-specific edits (eg, Picture Controls, Active D-Lighting, Noise Reduction). If more editing is required, then export a 16-bit TIFF file for use in Apple Photo or some other free editor. For multiple photos, this workflow is very clumsy and TIFF files are very, very, large.

Frankly, your best option is paid software. What you're paying for is software you can actually use without a lot of obstacles so you get to the main task of editing RAW files and making finished products. Photoshop Elements is an inexpensive and well-supported software. No subscription is required. Another possibility is Affinity Photo.

--
Lance H

 

[Kameratrollet]

• Darktable
  • Speed and ergonomy is OK, but not a native app for Mac.
  • Maybe the most similar to Lightroom (?).
  • Tons of possibilities, some of that are not so straightforward.
  • (!!!) After importing RAW image, it is exactly what I meant by "from scratch". Ugly grey image without contrast and color. With built-in color profiles I gave up after 30 minutes of tweaking. I could not get closer even to the JPEG look. Colors were far from reality. Then I tried the same but now using color profiles stolen from other softwares like Apple Photos or Adobe DNG converter. As a result, colors are much closer to reality or at least the JPEG look but still slightly different and the image is still dark and is lacking of contrast that should be fixed using curves I guess, which seems too complicated and time consuming compaired to starting with JPEG look.
  • Input and working color profile can be specified, default value is something called "standard color matrix" which gives better result than other built-ins but still not good enough.
  • Does not handle dcm profiles, only icc profiles.
  • Exported JPEG looks just like in the editor. Having "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" color profile.
  • Availble for Linux

https://pixls.us/articles/profiling-a-camera-with-darktable-chart/

Or

https://discuss.pixls.us/t/do-you-w...le-in-darktable-here-we-help-each-other/25366

About NX Studio, are raw files modified during import? https://exiftool.org/fix_corrupted_nef.html

Verify if the checksum is the same untouched from the card and imported after. Use https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256_checksum.html