RAW Post Processing - Color Levels

Not sure if this is the correct forum so my apologies up front. I just purchased the Canon R6 & was taking some initial photos, shooting in RAW. I grabbed a picture of a yellow finch in a field atop some tall weeds. The field is very green. Using Capture One, when I went to process the photo, I noticed that the photo had too much green so I removed some of the green and the yellow finch now looks yellow, not yellow tinted green. I just traded in my 7D MK II for the R6 but noticed something similar shooting on a softball field with the MK II where the dirt was very red, I would have to back off the reds in post. Seeing this behavior is consistent between the two cameras, I am not concerned it is a hardware issue but more of an issue with the guy pushing the button. I am not a professional but very enthusiastic with sports photography for many years and would love to lesson the load of post processing if there is something I can correct. I appreciate any guidance.

Tom

Tell us a bit more about your system. What monitor are you using for your computer and how are you calibrating it?

Also, are you shooting jpeg or RAW?

I-Mac Retina 4k 21.5” late 2015 - Intel iris pro graphics 6200 using spider X Pro to calibrate, shooting raw

A couple of things may influence the reds in that specific case - the C1 color profile for the camera, and the white balance of the image.

Is the reds-too-strong thing a problem across all sorts of images? Are you shooting AUTO white balance? Does you image have a neutral reference off of which you can white balance in C1?

The reds might be getting over-accentuated in that scene because of heavy green in the image from grass skewing the AUTO white balance tint toward magenta.

Tough to comment further without the actual image to observe.

Kirk

Kirk,

Here is the CR3

https://www.amazon.com …fy5E1B6KRZkHgCq​TXJMNB02ac

Here are some renderings from the CR3. For context, I established a reference using Raw Photo Processor and spot WB'ed on the tuft of white seed silk emerging from the pod in front of the perched bird.

For comparison, I used three renderings - Spot WB, As Shot WB, and Auto WB in both ACR and Capture One.

As you can appreciate, there is variation across the board, but most of the renderings do skew towards green, even though the scene probably did not look that uniformly cast in green. The RPP rendering retains reds fairly well and offers a neutral rendering with not a ton of contrast pushed into the image, that is why I chose it as the reference.

The As Shot JPEG is electric green

Kirk

Last composite.

Kirk

I would guess that spot WB probably gives the best result, and it is a matter of subjective taste as to which rendering you prefer across the spot WB bunch. The color profiles for ACR and C1 definitely add contrast and saturation to the image compared to the RPP rendering, as I expected.

Kirk

Here is the average of most of each frame for each of the three composites. Averaging a frame is a helpful way to examine color cast, or dominant color.

Kirk

Last average composite.

Kirk

Here is the RPP render with some contrast, a filmic color profile for contrast and color, and some saturation added. Same WB as in the reference rendering, just things to make the image punchier. Notice that the reds have nice contrast and presence with the greens, and the greens are not overpowering. The overall rendering is warmish, not cool and green-cyan like some of the other WB options.

I would say that the closest WB that matches RPP Spot is ACR Spot on the same tuft of seed pod silk.

Kirk

Wow Kirk, first, thank you. The RPP version with the filmic color profile looks great IMHO. It is interesting to see that the other renditions lead toward green, just varying shades. I am going to get back to that field and compare the image to reality for grins-n-giggles. I played with the WB in C1 and did improve the shot, playing with the R6 I wasn’t paying too much attention to the WB.

It is also interesting to see that Adobe’s converter with Auto WB is much less saturated than C1’s. I am just focusing on the yellow breast of the bird and the ACR version brings out that yellow better than the C1 auto does as it still seems to have some green tint.

Suffice it to say, I guess it is not the camera but do you find at all that when shooting an image where there is a dominant color, I.e., this field of green that the camera tends to “tint” for lack of a better word, the entire image with that dominant color? Picture styles don’t apply to raw files so I can’t think of any adjustments to make to the camera itself.

JPEGs burn in the white balance setting and can be prone to errors in exposure. They also have all sorts of automagic secret sauce added to them that increases contrast and adds saturation. These factors can conspire to cause problems with scenes that have strong color biases or areas of very concentrated, saturated color like the bird’s yellow plumage. You know what that yellow looked like, but the camera does not, so it just applies its recipe regardless. I have found yellow, particularly goldish yellow, to be a difficult color to capture reliably and consistently. You almost have to expose the entire image for the yellow to maintain detail in the yellow without over exposure, at the expense of the rest of the image.

Because you shoot raw (plus JPEG) you have the luxury of playing with picture styles and getting in-camera looks without worrying too much about completely destroying the raw data (as long as exposure is good). I will sometimes actually shoot with a black and white JPEG style to focus more on tonal information - the black and white rendered gray is what shows up in the EVF, while the full color file is maintained in the raw file.

Bottom line - there could be several things that affect the rendering of the raw file, including the white balance, the color profile used during raw conversion, the contrast and saturation of the conversion, etc. Some raw converters are punchier and more saturated out of the box and may need to be turned down a little from the default rendering for certain images that have strong color or tonal elements.

Good luck and have fun getting to know your new camera.

Kirk

In C1, for scenes that have intense color, give the ”linear” variation of your camera’s profile a shot. Sometimes this removes a lot of the extra juice that the C1 standard film profile contains.

Also, the lighting in the image implies an overcast or cloudy light - applying “daylight” WB to the image gives a more green, cool appearance, whereas a shade or cloudy preset WB would give a warmer rendering. I find that cameras often go too far (warm) when you use a shade or cloudy WB, so sometimes setting WB by Color Temp (in °K) is often a good compromise in the field.

Kirk