I’m sure there’s a good reason for this, but wanted to check I haven’t found a bug.
In the screenshot, you’ll see I’ve sampled a white shirt. When I zoom in to 1600%, it’s obvious that the individual pixels are more of a grey/magenta colour. But the color picker sample is showing a distinct olive green colour, which doesn’t correspond at all to what I’m seeing. I notice the same regardless of whether I use the area color picker or spot color picker.
As per the manual, the color picker works in the histogram colour space and reflects the end of the pixelpipe process. So this means color picker values should correspond to what I’m seeing.
Is this because the color picker samples a larger area than what I want and is taking the reading from the surrounding grass? If so, what is the smallest area the picker can do in either point or area mode?
Or is it something else to do with active modules?
The sample area stays in the same place when zoomed out.
This is zoomed to 200%, but it’s the same when at 100%
I suspect the sample area is larger than what I’ve drawn, which means that the picker has a minimum size regardless of what area you draw. But I’m not sure of this.
AFAIK, colour picker samples from preview image (image on navigator), and affected by preview resolution setting, just like the histogram.
As the global color picker runs at the end of the preview pixelpipe, it receives data in display color space then converts it to histogram color space.
For performance reasons, the histogram display is calculated from the image preview (the image displayed in the navigation module) rather than the higher quality image displayed in the center view.
reduce resolution of preview image
Reduce the resolution of the navigation preview image (choose from “original”, “1/2”, “1/3” or “1/4” size). This may improve the speed of the rendering but take care as it can also hinder accurate color-picking and masking (default “original”).
That’s my conclusion after reading that 3 parts of manual from colour picker, histogram, and preferences section.
Original for the “preview” image, not from image original resolution, so if 1/2 is selected, it is half from the preview (that is already at lower resolution), and also this section from histogram manual
The preview is calculated at a lower resolution and may use shortcuts to bypass more time-consuming image processing steps. Hence the display may not accurately represent fine detail in the image, and may deviate in other ways from the final developed image.
Again, this is my conclusion, so maybe developer could correct me if i’m wrong.
Edit: I’m wondering if it’s only on the pictures where I’ve used negadoctor. I have reproduced the problem on another developed negative, but not yet on a regular RAW.
