I’m struggling to understand the initial colour pipelines in RT. It seems as though there are profiles for both the camera and lens that are used to get to a baseline ‘corrected’ state. It seems my camera (LX100) is found in both areas. But colour looks very unnatural with just those options enabled. Isn’t the idea that a colour profile would get to a standard look - i.e something where a colour checker would get its marks in the right spots? It seems like with all the presets and simulations etc out there we should be able to reliably get different cameras to match colours right - am I thinking about this the right way?
Do you have the tone curve section enabled…this is going to impact the image a lot if you do so you need to explore that…you could load the neutral processing profile and see where you start from there… When you use the tone curve there are color preservation or curve models and each will render color quite differently so check that out first.
Finally, RT will use DCP profiles so you can get those by installing the free Adobe DNG convertor…
It has this set of profiles…
And you can try with or without the tone curve and or look table to see if one suits your taste…
I don’t use RT, so don’t really know what it does by default.
That’s one way to use profiles. But it’s also possible to have “creative” profiles that are intended to give a specific look, which may not be accurate at all. DCP, in particular, has a lot of features for that purpose.
You can read a bit more about that here:
https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Color_Management#DCP
If you don’t mind spending a bit of money, those Cobalt profiles look like an interesting choice.
This advert-ish video explains them pretty well:
Ah this is very interesting - will install CameraRaw and see what happens - thanks!
Very interesting indeed! This is the same as what CameraRaw does right? Just claiming to offer an improvement in the colour?
If you have access to camera raw…you don’t need it though…just the free DNG conversion software…it will install all the profiles…
I don’t use Adobe stuff but given the names I would think that their profiles are trying to fairly closely match the ones used for your in camera jpg as the profile names are similar…
I suggested it as its one way to get a look… But the some of the default settings in the tone curve of RT will greatly impact the color too so if you are using that you need to explore setting it off ie linear and then enable the automatch and then also compare the color models for the curves…it could be that if you set it to linear and bump the exposure and then look at the RT profile it might not be the sources of what you are seeing… so in a very long winded way I was/am just suggesting that you explore the various DNG options from adobe and the options within that with the RT curve set to linear …and then also explore the RT options but checking out the color models used with the tone curve when you do that… also the link shared by @Donatzsky looks interesting too…
You can continue with that thinking just fine, but if you want something different than that default you’re essentially adding a modification upon a modification.
Due to a number of investigations I’ve ended up with using the “neutral” rendition as the starting point. I then add tone curve and sometimes color modifications to make what rendition I want. A bit more intuitive, to my predilections…