My Editing/Gaming Desktop... Could use some help with color

1. I know NOTHING about Panasonic cameras.
   
2. Can the camera shoot in RAW? If so, are you shooting in RAW?
   
3. If the answer to 2a and 2b is "yes", what white balance are you using? It might be wrong. Can you do a custom white balance (if at all)?
   

Temma wrote in post #18368065

1. I know NOTHING about Panasonic cameras.
   
2. Can the camera shoot in RAW? If so, are you shooting in RAW?
   
3. If the answer to 2a and 2b is "yes", what white balance are you using? It might be wrong. Can you do a custom white balance (if at all)?
   

Yes I'm shooting in RAW and editing the RAW in lightroom. The GX8 is a mirrorless ILC with fairly good RAW output. Id probably have the same issue with the 7DII if i tried it.. But i might actually give the 7DII a try as well just to see..I picked the GX8 for the 15mm f/1.7 lens more than anything...

Basically tried to adjust the white balance and cant get the lighting right, The rest of the image in terms of color and etc is perfect, its just the lighting itself that i cant seem to get to look the same it does in reality

i might need to use HDR

Tried the 7DII as well, Same problem

Tweak the white balance and it changes the lighting from Red to orange or pink

Its a deep, Dark, Blood red, the best way i can get close to it is under exposing the image significantly but then all you see are the lights

So maybe not a white balance issue but an issue with exposure and dynamic range...

My spine gave out again so i cant try anymore atm..

Have you tried pulling the red and orange luminance sliders down, as well as playing with their hue? Unfortunately with camera sensors being linear devices it often seems that you lose some of the saturation when looking at strongly coloured light sources.

Alan

Again, I know nothing about Panasonic cameras.

With a Canon you could actually do a custom white balance off of a gray card.

Can you do this, and if so, have you tried it?

Curves > plus blue > plus magenta


Technically, minus green gets you more red, but most who know what they are doing would go with the above fix as it gives more control and RGB is all relative anyway.

Don't know how Lightroom's curves are to use, but levels can be used too, just might not be as intuitive if you are not familiar with it.

Sorry for late response

Its not a white balance issue, the rest of the image is color correct. Its literally the lights coming out off

Tried adjusting blue/magenta, its doing nothing to the coloration of the light to get it "correct"

Of course the comp is sitting right next to me so its easy to check lol

If anything im thinking its more exposure, the red is overexposed massively and shifting off hue perhaps...

FYI I took a few more with my 7D as well and i cannot get the color right..

This is the closest I can get

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/UF8i​y7

Just out of curiosity, have you viewed the images on somebody else's PC?

I think you should try pulling down the Red and Orange Luminance sliders in the HSL tolls in LR. It's an unfortunate fact of life that we tend to see red light sources as darker and more saturated than the camera does. You may well need to play with the hue and saturation sliders for those channels as well to get the effect that you are looking for. Remember that when photographing the light source itself that you are dealing with a very large brightness range. If the Red/Orange HSL channels don't get you all of the way, it might be necessary to play with the Highlights and possibly Whites values for the light sources themselves using a local brush adjustment. You might even need a little negative exposure too for some of the LEDs.

To be honest the images you have posted look just how I would expect them to look, that is just about the colour you would expect from red LEDs when given a relatively long exposure. I mean if they were white bulbs that you were photographing you would not be surprised if they were close to clipping, so why should a red light source be any different. Remember that they are not monochromatic, and that none of the filters in the Bayer FCA on the sensor will totally block all light from the red LEDs even in the blue and green channels, since we are dealing with analogue filters that are more or less high pass for the blue, low pass for the red, and a relatively wide band pass for the green. If you view those red LED's in a program like RAW Digger where you can see the output from each channel, you will see that they are quite bright in the blue channel, let alone the green.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #18383381
I think you should try pulling down the Red and Orange Luminance sliders in the HSL tolls in LR. It's an unfortunate fact of life that we tend to see red light sources as darker and more saturated than the camera does. You may well need to play with the hue and saturation sliders for those channels as well to get the effect that you are looking for. Remember that when photographing the light source itself that you are dealing with a very large brightness range. If the Red/Orange HSL channels don't get you all of the way, it might be necessary to play with the Highlights and possibly Whites values for the light sources themselves using a local brush adjustment. You might even need a little negative exposure too for some of the LEDs.

To be honest the images you have posted look just how I would expect them to look, that is just about the colour you would expect from red LEDs when given a relatively long exposure. I mean if they were white bulbs that you were photographing you would not be surprised if they were close to clipping, so why should a red light source be any different. Remember that they are not monochromatic, and that none of the filters in the Bayer FCA on the sensor will totally block all light from the red LEDs even in the blue and green channels, since we are dealing with analogue filters that are more or less high pass for the blue, low pass for the red, and a relatively wide band pass for the green. If you view those red LED's in a program like RAW Digger where you can see the output from each channel, you will see that they are quite bright in the blue channel, let alone the green.

Alan

Probably is just because its sitting RIGHT next to me that its getting to me. Others love how it looks im just like meh its not really how it looks in reality..

and yeah i did that, first thing i tried was adjusting the HSL sliders in lightroom and they did not do a ton of good.

The reds ARE blown now that i really look at the histogram, that is likely why HSL is doing nothing and why my adjusting things is going nowhere, So the best option for a "realistic" view would likely be to photograph the LEDs so they expose correctly (Underexposing everything else massively) and then take a "normally" lit photo and HDR them, Im asking too much from any camera, its as simple as that.

Other option would be level out the lighting level in the image otherwise by utilizing some kind of fill light so im not asking the camera to capture REALLY BRIGHT LEDS and the really dark everything else...