Hi,
I encountered some problems developing a picture using RT 4.2.835 and I thought someone might be able to help. It was taken with an Olympus E-M10 camera and a Panasonic 20mm/f1.7 lens.
I’ll start with how the Olympus converter treated it. This is how the file looks like almost at “default” settings, just after applying a custom WB:
What I don’t like about it is mainly the blown out highlights in the back. The converter does not give tools for playing flexibly with the highlights and shadows so I tried to get better results from RT.
This is what I’m getting from RT after playing quite some time with various settings:
I’m using a custom color profile that I created using the X-Rite CC passport for this camera-lens combination from a incandescent light bulb.
My main problem is that the colors look somewhat “plastic” with too harsh transitions from one hue to another. It looks like the color range and fidelity are very limited. For example, on the girl hand on the left hand side. Notice the yellowish tint. Another issue is on the faces themselves, where there are harsh transitions from pink to yellow. Granted, this also has to do with the hard lighting, but notice how the Olympus software smoothed such transitions. In general I didn’t manage to get pleasing skin tones from RT. Somehow the Olympus software is easier to get workable results in this respect and I’m trying to learn how to improve my skill with RT. Note that the Olympus software uses its own color profile, not the one I created using the color checker.
Besides that, I didn’t manage to brighten the faces without blowing out much highlights in the background. The RAW file is far from being perfect, but some of the blown highlights are caused by the development settings I apply and I’m trying to avoid that. This is how the file looks in RT when the Exposure settings are zeroed. It’s clear that some of the highlights are clipped, but not as in the developed file above.
I gave it a try with RT using mainly the tone curve. So basically check where the lights are, and fix those so they don’t change. Then check where the faces are in the tone curve and pull that up.
I didn’t use the tone mapping tool, which could also help here.
I’m assuming you do have your Input Profile set to the dcp you provided?
It’s possible that you may be asking too much of the shadows in your image. Pushing 1.2ev and then doing some further pulling around is possibly what has led to the ‘plastic’ feeling of the colors. To combat this you could probably drop the saturation (or vibrance if you wanted) and then re-introduce some hopefully more pleasing skin tones back into the image.
Some higher level thoughts, though.
It seems to be an environmental snapshot - so much of the context of the image is that it was shot in the evening, when the light is a bit darker. Pulling the EV up until it almost looks like a shot in the afternoon may not work well (not technically, but that the feeling of the time/place might be lost or diluted). In short, don’t worry about trying to make the image something it is not. Also that blue LED is a real pain.
Note that you may feel the Olympus software gave you more workable results, but you’ve pushed your image in RT much further than the Olympus software did.
I had a go with it quickly I only pushed to about +0.6EV to lighten things up a little bit for you. Not as bright in the face as yours, but I was trying to keep the faces just a little brighter without nuking them (or the tones). I did add in some color curves (a portra-esque curve that is in another thread).
If you play with this, as you lighten the faces by adjusting EV or lightness, try turning up the highlight compression to keep those tones in check a little bit.
This maybe the lazy way out, but you can always export two photos from rawtherapee, one for the background and one for the people, then blend them together in gimp.
I think your problem is the camera profile you are using. Use the adobe portrait either the EM 10 or the MKII doesn’t seem to matter which. Using that seems to alter the red setting in the white balance box. I reset that to one.
Don’t increase the exposure, use shadow recovery. Maybe shift the exposure black level slider a touch left. Go into one of the curves set custom and add a dot to the centre and drag it up a little. That will increase the mid tone contrast and lift the dark areas a bit. The highlight behind are blown. I added a vignette to help with that. Set it max so that you can see it and then make it oval then slowly back it off until your not really aware that it’s there.
Then in the lab adjustments have a play with lightness, contrast and chromaticity.
If you don’t like the skin tones go to white balance and shift the slider to the left. I don’t think a spot white balance will work out well on this shot as it looks like mixed coloured lighting to me.
The site wont allow me to add attachments otherwise I would post the pp3.
I also had a play with noise removal, just to tone it down a bit but reduced it probably wont show.
Personally I don’t think this should be a bright shot. The lab lightness slider will probably bring it up more but may show noise in places.
John
This one is just a different curve and some playing with saturation and colour temperature plus more vignette via a ramp to keep the background down. No pp3 as I did it with fotoxx using it’s contrast and brightness curves sliders. Looks like the blue dress is acting up to me but I haven’t seen it. Some fabrics have odd effects.
Thanks so much, @Ajohn. I really like your last development (after working on the file with fotoxx) and I need to investigate it more. I still wonder if it’s possible to get a similar result without shading all corners. I agree that maybe I was aiming for a development that is slightly too bright, but that’s how I remember that evening. Anyway, something a little darker could work as well. I’m not sure what went wrong with my color profile. In the past I had problems with Adobe’s profiles so I tried to avoid them. Thanks also to @patdavid for the suggestions.
I won’t develop the photo for you but I will point a few things out.
The photo is clearly not lit by incandescent light. It looks mostly fluorescent with LED or plasma highlights. The RT version is too green, as is to be expected from fluorescent light. It’s also too yellow. Regardless of DCP, wrong white balance seems to be the main problem. Fix the white balance and, if possible, make a DCP for that light.
Use curves.
I don’t see any CA issues in that screenshot sample.
Her teeth and shirt were not white under that light. You could make them white using the WB picker, and sometimes the result is good, but sometimes bad. But what I would try is to pick a white balance spot on her white shirt for the sole sake of fixing the green WB level, and then manually increase the temperature so that the shirt looks warmer again, non-white. That way you get warm-looking colors, as is expected, but without the horrendous yellow-green cast as in the first RT screenshot. If you try that, pick a spot which is clearly unaffected by the purple light, such as from the white shirt on her back.
Of note, I used retinex for some gentle tonemapping, and HH (hue by hue) LAB curve to adjust the skin tones (sacrificing the yellow shop lights), and tone curves, plus RTs auto white balance.
As this is mixed lighting I tried several of it’s built in white balances. Several of them worked reasonably well but no better than auto. This time I used the cie colour appearance model and did most of the adjustments in that using the curve to set contrast in the ladies and also to damp down the bright parts in the background. The image is rather soft so in order to apply sharpening I used the noise removal section and then 3 rad sharpening. I might use 5 on an image like this full sized but 3’s RT’s max.
If you make a copy of the pp3 and have a play with the points on the curve you will see what they do. In this case the subject is all in the bottom half. You can also alter a couple of other things in the cie panel. If you don’t keep a renamed copy RT will overwrite it when you exit it and the curve adjustments are pretty sensitive.
I still think a vignette that can’t obviously be seen would help. Also point out that the Olympus 25mm F1.8 is a better lens than the one you used but like all lenses this fast still a bit weak wide open.
Just thought I also used camera standard from raw rather than an Abobe camera profile. I does generally work well but it can be worth trying one of the pofiles.
Mixed lightning and overexposed background is not easy to master. I’m not familiar with RT yet, so I’ve tried to combine two tools that I know a bit better just to see if some satisfying results can be made.
Here is my work flow with darktable and GIMP:
darktable:
-dimmed highlights a bit, enhanced exposure (using parametric masks in exposure module) and reduced ISO noise.
GIMP:
I duplicated layer and made some white balance on that layer (with teeth from girl in the right as white point)
with hue-saturation tool reduced saturation of blue and pink colour on same layer and played a bit with transparency to settle big differences between that and original layer
merged both layer and duplicated resulting layer again
on duplicated layer used “detect skin” tool from GMIC plug-in (colour module) to isolate skin parts of the picture
on skin selection layer enhanced a bit lightning of the skin
merged layer again and played a bit with curves tool
added vignette to dim highlights a bit more (added black layer above original layer and applied masks with blend tool)
Excuse me for my bad English I hope that you can understand the steps I described above.
Perhaps a bit OT, but instead of savaging the HL than bring nuthin to the image, to the cute girls and the little guy, another possible approach would be cropping and embracing the blown-ups, the CAs, the neon mistress and all in between
Hope you don’t mind the messing around, they were too inviting =)
PD
a square crop at the ladies’ arms (and forgetting the joint’s heresy) would emphasise their expression even more
If the OP wants something lighter all he need do is adjust the lightness, contrast and chroma sliders in the cie panel. The skin toning can be changed with chroma also probably vibrance keeping it simple.
I did add a vignette this time but suspect that the GIMP would give more control on that. The far end of the curve could be dragged down more. The curve could also be used to play more with contrast again but once it’s more or less right it’s usually easier to use sliders to finish things off.
The lighting problem can be seen easily. There is a rather blue light some way to the front of the ladies and by the look of it off to one side - see the blue in the white dress, skin and hair in places. Sometimes artificial materials can do this sort of thing in photo’s but not usually hair and skin. Mixed fabrics can be a real pain on the same person but this shot doesn’t have that problem either.
As far as I can see it the essential problem with this image is that the two ladies are lit by mixed light (both purpleish and greenish from different angles). That does look ugly on a photograph IMO. The olympus color rendition does handle this quite nicely indeed. Here is what I would do (in darktable and not RT):
In short: I accept the purple light and try to balance away the green light to some extent. I fixed up some of the remaining green skin with the colorzones module. To deal with the exposure I used a simple luminance mask. The result is IMO acceptable but not great.
If you have the opportunity just try to avoid accidental mixed light on people, then you won’t have to fight it in post.
The site wont allow me to add attachments otherwise I would post the pp3.
It did let me do that.
I still think a vignette that can’t obviously be seen would help. Also point out that the Olympus 25mm F1.8 is a better lens than the one you used but like all lenses this fast still a bit weak wide open.
