This is more a question than anything, probably a lack of experience or understanding. I am sure some more experienced guys can help here.
I still use my good old EM-1 ii for portraits because I love the look the Oly Pro 1.2 45mm lens produces.
However, I have real challenges with skin tones as soon as I activate the matching Color Rending profile for the EM-1 ii. The colors typically shift into red and make the skin look unnatural. Even the JPG’s that come straight out of the camera look better.
I often find myself trying to emulate the look of the JPG’s with the RAW image by reducing ‘Rendering’ intensity to low levels and increasing ‘Protect Saturated Colors’ quite a bit. Additionally, I often add some HSL red Saturation reduction. Strangely, if I don’t activate the profile at all, I can create a more natural looking image much easier and quicker.
Am I missing a trick here? Is the camera profile not supposed to fix camera/sensor quirks to create a natural looking image without much initial tweaking?
Thanks guys for some feedback, I really appreciate it.
This will make lips dull. In LR5.7 my standard correction for portraits included Saturation=-10 and Luminance=+5 in the Orange channel, which is much safer also in HSL. If you have to use the Red channel, something may be really wrong with the rendering or the face (typically we tend to be more tolerant to red faces in reality than on photos).
I didn’t use PL6 nor any Olympus cameras, so I can’t say anything more without seeing an example. BTW, DxO could add to PL something like Yellow-Magenta Balance for Skin Tones in Nikon NX Studio - it shouldn’t be too difficult to implement, but who knows.
PS. Don’t use ClearView for typical portraits, but it seems you are aware of this.
My experience with Olympus gear and PL6, also. Forget the DxO default presets - they’re excessively contrasty and saturated. I suggest taking advantage of the control PhotoLab gives you, making your own presets so that you have a better starting point.
Over the past few years, there have been several discussions here about how difficult it is to get PhotoLab to match Olympus out-of-camera renderings. The camera profiles are supposed to match, and do to some extent - but the differences can be significant depending on what you’ve photographed. One problem has been that trying to adjust green in PhotoLab often doesn’t work - you have to adjust yellow instead to affect green sufficiently. The current HSL tool improves on this, but still won’t do exactly what Olympus in-camera processing does. I’ve asked DxO support about this behavior on a few occasions and have never received a response - not even a show of interest that I can recall. They won’t admit that PhotoLab doesn’t emulate in-camera color renderings as advertised.
@cloudiq Hello, Can you please provide sample images to analyse this problem? Upload Raw + Jpg here - http://upload.dxo.com and let me know when ready. Thank you
I made my own presets based on DCP profiles from Adobe.
I made several adjustments in the HSL to match the OOC jpegs that I had on the screen at the same time.
The result is a very close rendition of the OOC jpeg in regards to colour.
The preset with -20R in the name reduces the HLS Red by 20 and also a subtle change to the hue. I find this good for skin tones but, sometimes, I want the full Red.
They don’t work all the time as some lighting produces a different OOC jpeg.
I use them with all my Olympus bodies regardless of model.
These are full presets, so use them before any other changes.
Hi Pascal, thanks very much for that.
I played with your suggestion and did like the way the Neutral colors look like. Interestingly, with this preset, there is no camera profile active whatsoever.
I was a bit surprised at that, but I understand now that I don’t need to use it religiously.
This is a very useful comment. I am starting to be much more aware of colors and appreciate that I need to find my own ways of getting them right, so your approach is where I am heading, too.
I tried to import your presets (thanks for those) but for some unknown reason, it doesn’t work. When I try to import the presets, Photolab v6 doesn’t complain, but it does nothing.
I then tried to shoehorn them in manually by copying ithem into C:\Users\phil\AppData\Local\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 6\Presets\Own, but that did not make them accessible either.
What could be the reason for that? Is it possible that they have been created with v7 and are not compatible with v6?
Yes, Presets are not backwards compatible … That is, a version created (or tweaked) using one version of PL will not work with earlier versions of PL.
Provided they are partial presents - and NOT containing any correction details that an earlier version of PL is not aware of - then it’s possible to “convince” an earlier version of PL to accept a Preset that was created/tweaked by a later version …
Edit the Preset-Name.preset file with a text editor
Look for: Version = "99.9" … there may be multiple lines with this setting.
For PLv6, change this to Version = “17.0”
Save the change - and test with PLv6 … If it still doesn’t like it then it’s likely the Preset contains instructions that PLv6 does not understand
Thanks for that PL 5 present. Unfortunately, it didn’t work either in PL 6. I was able to load it, but then got a strange error message.
I then did some further research and came across this post on DPReview.
I followed the instructions and created a DCP profile for my EM 1 ii.
This worked amazingly well and gave me lovely skin tones without additional PL 6 color adjustments. All I need to do now is to do some final Light tweaks and local clean-ups and I have great portraits.
Thanks guys for your help, really appreciate it.
Cheers
Phil
Allan’s presets use DCP profiles from Adobe LR. Install latest DNG Converter (which is free) and edit the ‘ColorRenderingDCPProfile’ value in the preset file to point to the right file (on Windows11 DNG Converter installs profiles below ‘C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles’). You can also set DCP path in DPL rendering settings after selecting rendering type=DCP. Adobe’s profiles contain color matrices for native ↔ XYZ coordinate transformations, one for ‘A’ lighting (2850K tungsten) the other for ‘D65’ (daylight at 6500K), table for color conversions in HSV coordinates and a tone curve. Color transformations for other WB values are extrapolated. See DNG specification for more details.
Adobe DCP profiles have often problems with hue twists, especially in highlights, which can cause harsh color transitions. I would rather follow Cecile-C’s advice and let DxO check for any problem with DxO modules. For my Nikon cameras I generally find DxO profiles “better” than Adobe DCP. Some people untwist the hues in DCP profiles using dcpTool. There might be also problems caused by different gamuts used.
Please note that ‘homemade’ color profiles will work well only with the same lighting they were created with. From the PL7 help: To create a custom DCP input profile, you need to use a color chart. This will allow you to get accurate colors according to the light source, and apply the saved profile to batches of images taken with the same light source.
DCP profiles created by PhotoLab contain only color transformation 3x3 matrix.
Hi @Cecile-C
I assume that you have seen the images I uploaded via your link.
In case you didn’t, this is a little prod :-).
Thanks for looking into this.
Phil
Thanks for your comments. I am still new to color management but I am learning fast, so I see where you are coming from. This DCP profile I created will be applied to flash 5500k images from my portrait shoots. However, I am aware now that this won’t work if I shoot outdoors or in other non-flash conditions.
I will have a closer look at this hue untwisting with dcpTools to see what I can learn from that.
I did submit test images to DxO as request. So lets see what comes out from that.
Hello, Thank you for your images. We are going to review the rendering of DxO camera profile E-M1MarkII, because it is too saturated.
In the meantime, it is better to use Neutral color for portraits. Best regards
Absolutely great response @Cecile-C ! This is the kind of interaction with DxO support that we(and DxO) really need in this forum! Please inform @Barbara-S and your other buddies on the Support Team. Please provide this kind of assistance to every question, add personnel to your team(if necessary). This is on the right path!
Thank you so much for your positive feedback! I’m glad to hear that you found this response helpful. I’ll definitely inform the rest of the @DxO_Support-Team about your encouraging words. We strive to provide this level of assistance and your support means a lot. If you have any further questions or concerns, feel free to reach out anytime!
