Hi, I just discovered a big advantage for me when I select in Tone Curves > Mode > Weighted Standard.
Standard is way too saturated, Neutral is better but sometimes still too intense. Especially for the Panasonic Lumix S5M2, which usually makes faces too magenta cast, this setting is the best. My question: What does Weighted Standard mean and what exactly does this setting do? I would like to understand this better.
It’s nice that you can switch so easily between Neutral and Weigthed Standard, depending on the subject.
I have often commented on this feature and pointed to the really dramatically different results you can get between modes… esp when people were complaining or asking question about color in RT and ART…
Hi @priort,
that’s good information, even if I don’t fully understand the content straight away. It’s amazing how much less correction work I have now when I use Neutral or Weightet Standard. With Standard, I had to work very hard to reduce the excess colour, especially red, in the faces.
What surprises me is that I used to love using “Perceptual” with RatTherapee - this mode is no good at all with ART. Could it be that ART works very differently to RT in this area?
Because my enthusiasm is now so great, I would like to show a picture here where Weighted Standard saves me so much reworking - on the left Standard, my previous setting, on the right Weighted Standard, the first choice for this motif:
I have to correct myself, my absolute favorite has now become “Neutral”, which makes the much livelier and fresher face colors. I still have to tame (reduce) the somewhat too dominant red of the camera with other tools, neutral is clearly the best mode for me.
See also here: Tone Curves Mode
You probably don’t see it so clearly in this example, but if you try it with your own pictures, you’ll probably experience the same thing I did: “Neutral” is the best “Mode” for portraits.
edit: The saturation was too high for my taste. I have just seen that I had Vibrance at +20. I have since corrected that to 0.
Hello, in the color tab you can also select “Camera profile” instead of “Auto camera profile selection”. I have a Lumix S5 and I’m having the same problems as you, now I’ve created a profile for myself.
Hello @Thierry007
does the S5 sometimes have this red cast? I’m surprised. I thought only the S5M2 had this problem.
I’m very curious what workflow you have to reduce this. If you want, we can open a new topic to share info.
I could be wrong but I feel like I have in the past seen comments about other lumix/panasonic cameras and the issue of red’s or red cast… so it could be a more brand like color tendancy than a camera specific one…but again maybe I am just convinced that I read some posts about this…
Yes, you could be right, you often find this red cast with Lumix. Initially I was very annoyed about it, but in the meantime I’ve found some great tools to compensate for it. And I think it was you who gave me the idea to stop using Mode: Standard. That helped a lot.
@Thierry007
I once had an S5 for a short time and the colors seemed to be less problematic. But if it’s the same for you, then I’m curious to know what your workflow is to reduce the red.
In fact, if I use “Camera standard” instead of the original “PANASONIC DC-S5M2.dcp”, the red cast is reduced. However, Alberto himself made this profile at my request and I tested it extensively and found it better than “Camera standard” or the profiles from Adobe. However, based on your suggestion, I want to take a closer look at which one is better for me.
edit: Yes, the Camera standard profile makes the skin a little more natural, and less red.
Hello Todd, no, I don’t have anything like that. I have to be very careful not to make my photography too scientific, as that would certainly diminish my pleasure and creativity. I don’t want to reproduce the colors 100% true to life.
I want to take portraits in color and if the face color doesn’t match, the portraits are unpleasant or simply wrong.
I don’t think it too scientific to have the correct colors or to be able to correct for lighting…it might be better to start with a sound base and then you be the artist… I think if the reds are too magenta as it seems they can be then using color checker might tweak green and or reds to neutralize that… Your data sits on the camera and is going to be processed by the software… The input profile and subsequent operations including wb will then impact how you see that light as colors when you process…
I think it would be better to know that your profile is sound and accurate and so that any color cast or other issue that is out of place is perhaps coming from tone curves color models etc… or at least you could rule out your input profile …
Also having one would perhaps allow you to make some artistic profiles tweaking targeted colors…
Hello Todd,
what exactly do you mean by your “own profile”? We had already tried something with software that you recommended. Or do you mean using the color picker to find the right values for L a: (14-21) and b: (15-23)?
There are several software packages that will take the color checker image and make you a dcp or icc profile. There is also the dcp profile editor that can do one off visual spot edits as well as a calibrated profile to the color checker…
I literally just selected the cheek on portrait and reduced the redness when I flicked you that tweaked profile…so it was just my interpretation of the reduction…you could in your own hands likely do far better or even edit a few if the key colors individually after it was calibrated… in anycase a proper base profile would I think be useful…do you see the same issues if you open your images in the default panasonic software… that would also be a bit of a hint that you might need to make your own profile, ie if it looks good in their software then it might be that the profiles used elsewhere are not set to correct as the native one might be…
In any case you need something that will give you the ground truth before chasing what may or may not be the source of it or maybe you just keep doing as you have been and find the best tools to correct things to your taste…
I’d have to go back and read what he told you he did…maybe he used a test image for your camera or maybe he has that camera…no idea…it might be a daylight profile and you are shooting some portraits which might have quite different light… its hard to say…I’ll go back and see if I can see what he told you about the profile and how he made it…
For me the ground truth will be a shot from your camera in the light you want to consider as the scene lighting so that white balance and colors are correct and then you can get creative or come up with looks from there…the bottom line is if you are happy with what you have that’s all that really matters…if you find you are continually fighting a little or a lot with this issue maybe a systematic approach would help??
It really is very precise, but the faces still get redder than you would like.
If you could please find out for me what this camera standard is made of, I would be very grateful.
I don’t like what I see at all: But the “Camera standard” seems to be better than the special “PANASONIC DC-S5M2.dcp” profile, that I have been using for more than a year now, at least for portraits that tend to have a red cast.
