Red Color Over Saturated

Hi All,

Can someone help me out the camera settings? Whenever I take red or anything RED, the red color is just really over saturated in the picture.

What could be the causes on the 400D? What should be done before creating this shot?

I'd be interested to see if there is a solution to this. The only way I've found to keep the red channel intact is to massively underexpose.

coffeeguy415 wrote in post #7664480
Hi All,

Can someone help me out the camera settings? Whenever I take red or anything RED, the red color is just really over saturated in the picture.

What could be the causes on the 400D? What should be done before creating this shot?

The cause is not in your 400D, it is in the conversion from RAW. This does not mean that DPP specifically is at fault, any RAW converter would do the same. As you can see in the RAW tab histogram the RAW is hardly clipped, (1/3 less exposure would have fixed this) although the red channel is very clipped on the RGB histogram. This is because during the conversion from RAW to RGB white balancing was done. White balance is obtained by pushing up the red and blue channels while the green is held more or less constant. The amount of push given to the red and the blue is determined by the color of the light that needs to be neutralized. I assume the flower was photographed outdoors. Direct sunlight is blue and in the shade the light is even bluer. To balance out the blue cast it is the red channel that gets the bigger push. A typical WB might be Rx2.0, Gx1.0, Bx1.4. That means that all the values from the red pixels in the original RAW data were doubled. It is easy to see how they could be pushed over the top.
The solution is to move the Brightness (other converters call this control 'Exposure") slider on the RAW tab to the left until the red channel is no longer clipped on the RGB tab. This however has made everything darker, so now you need to brighten the darker tones. On the RGB tab click three times on the histogram, at the three intersections of the dotted lines. The top right point will now act as an anchor to prevent the highlights from being pushed up while you can drag up other two points to lighten the shadows and midtones.

There are other ways to tackle this problem if you have an editor like Photoshop, etc. The method I have outlined assumes you are using only DPP.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Thanks tzalamn. I think I understand the explanation, but the solution in the camera is not given.

How can I correct this problem on the camera itself? but not on the software side?

If I set my camera with the corrected white balance, will the red saturation be correct? I have tried that but it did not correct this problem.

Question:
Is everyone also having this problem? Am I setting the WB incorrect? How can I correct red over saturation on the camera?

Make yourself a custom Picture Style and load it into the camera (assuming that's possible with the 400D -I'm assuming it is).

If you shoot RAW, though, make a custom preset for your RAW workflow and use that instead.

coffeeguy415 wrote in post #7668928
Thanks tzalamn. I think I understand the explanation, but the solution in the camera is not given.

How can I correct this problem on the camera itself? but not on the software side?

If I set my camera with the corrected white balance, will the red saturation be correct? I have tried that but it did not correct this problem.

Question:
Is everyone also having this problem? Am I setting the WB incorrect? How can I correct red over saturation on the camera?

Yes, everybody who shoots bright red or orange objects has this problem and no, you can't entirely correct it in the camera alone, only with a combination of camera and post-processing.

I think you didn't entirely understand what I wrote above. I didn't say that the WB was wrong. I did mean to explain that the red clipping was the inevitable result of the combination of the correct WB and the "correct" exposure. In order to prevent it in-camera you would have had to reduce exposure to the point where the WB was no longer causing the red channel review histogram to show clipping. However, this would cause other items in the photo to be underexposed and they would have to be brightened in post processing. On the whole, I think that between underexposing in the camera and reducing exposure in the RAW converter, the latter is prefererable.

Of course there are other possible camera + post-processing methods, such as an HDR type blending of multiple exposures, and various other processing solutions, if you have the software and knowledge, such as working in 16 bits and a very wide color space in order to obtain extra headroom for the reds, but I hesitate to recommend the advanced stuff to a beginner.

Alternatively, when shooting jpg, try this: Restore Those Clipped Channels

This is a problem I have to wrestle with all the time too. Most Canon cameras have a red channel that's just way too sensitive...(some exceptions, like the 1DsII and 1D Mark III).