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Color Editor does not update Histogram, Exposure warnings and Color Readouts (when "no proof profile" is enabled)

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13 comments

  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    Thanks SFA.

    Which version/build do you use?

    Yes, if proofing is on, the Color Editor changes are reflected in the histogram and the others.

    I used to edit my images having the AdobeRGB profile enabled all the time for my "baseline" edit and depending on the usage web/print I had checked and fine-tuned it softproofing it with eventually other profiles, utilizing variants when adjustments deemed necessary. The baseline edit serves me as a long-term edit. 

    AdobeRGB is larger than sRGB but still one of the smaller ones, so I changed my method for the baseline edit some time ago and set the option "No proof profile" in order not to be restricted by the relative small AdobeRGB color space. 

    And I do use the Color Editor tool.

    Now, what to do. 

    1. I will try to find the reason in the documenation / forum why No proof profile even exists.
    2. I will report a bug.
    3. As a workaround, I will try to find a large color space / profile which I can use for my baseline edits.

    Regarind 3), I tried ROMM (which is said to be the official ProPhoto?) but it washes out my dark tones with a warm color cast, ugly, when compared to No proof profile, AdobeRGB or sRGB. I don't have ProPhoto but maybe I can get download it somewhere to double check if it is the same.

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    So, the bug still exists in 16.3? 

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    Thank you.

    I usually check the histogram and the exposure warnings at the end of my editing, not so much during usage of the Color Editor. But of course histogram and the exposure warnings must include the Color Editor settings.

    I have a proof profile enabled if I edit for web or print, but not for the baseline edit.

    Maybe I repeated myself, sorry.

    A screen profile is always deployed, whatever you do in C1.

    I submitted a bug with screen recording and stuff, thanks to you I reported it for 15.2 AND for 16.3.

     

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  • Brian Jordan

    BeO, with respect, I think you may be over-complicating things.  At least from my perspective.  More than 40 years ago I started in a dark room.  Each project started with a roll of developed film.  "Truth", right?  No, not really.  Only a beginning.  Even without any editing techniques I could radically change what someone downstream would see in the final print by choosing different chemicals, paper, temperature, and time.  

    Where we are now is all the same only with 1s and 0s.  Your RAW file is a stating point.  Just bits and bytes.  Throughout your posts I feel you working towards some "truth".  There isn't one.  Only those bits and bytes.  

    We can't do anything physically with them so we pull them into a piece of software.  EVERY software you use has to do some interpretation with those bits and bytes.  EVERY software has to have a starting recipe or recipes.  Color space has something to do with it, sure.  But I feel confident in saying that 99+ percent of the monitors out there - your only way of evaluating those bits and byes as interpreted by the software - can't express a difference between AdobeRGB and ProPhoto with 100% accuracy.  Maybe in the reds but not in the blues.  Fringe oranges are bad but the greens are WOW!   Even if it could, only some remarkably small number of humans have the physical ability to see the nuances.

    Worse, once we get our image "perfect" on our display, it all changes.  We walk into another room surrounded by different color walls and different intensity light.  Now our image looks different.  Or the monitor that we turned on and completed our edits on gets a little warmer..........and the colors displayed change.

    Then we post them online and all our work gets downsampled and streamlined and squeezed into a tiny box.  And those shadows that you worked so very diligently on are just black blobs.

    So we print.  Today it's on our trusty Canson Infinity Rag Photographique and WOW.  Tomorrow we're out and have to use Epson Hot Press Bright and our heart drops.

    That Canson Infinity Rag Photographique print is hanging on a wall and we're thrilled (not when we look at the image on screen because, honestly, it's a bit horrible.......but the print is SWEET).  Along comes some moron and changes the light bulb and WHAT.....IN.....THE.....WORLD........................MY PRINT!!!!!!!!!!!

    Color is a perception only.  Colors don't even exist outside our brain and, worse, change brain-to-brain.  The closest "truth" we have are those bits and bytes and everything downstream is just an interpretation delivered through a medium, be it display or paper.  Every step erodes and changes that truth. No matter how hard we try, there is zero way to 100% pass our interpretation to another person.

    So the best we can do is force an interpretation of that truth in one tiny momentary instant in one single place.  The rest is left to chance.

    "But my product photography has to have EXACT colors!!!" you say.  Sure.  But then we have to work within a larger context and color manage every step from camera to software to print.  Yet still we fall short.  That Vogue magazine looks like crap on the sidewalk at night under sodium vapor lights.  Or that Nike ad with just the right shade of red on those Air Jordan's looks just wrong on a Vizio TV.

    How do I know what I say is true?  Photography is art built on engineering and science.  If we could point a camera at a thing and exactly reproduce that truth every time reliably, there would be no art.

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    Hi Brian Jordan

    Interesting thoughts, but a little off topic imo. 

    BeO, with respect, I think you may be over-complicating things. 

    I detected a bug, what is so complicated about this. If digital is involved in my art then I do not want to clip information (e.g. with the Color Editor) just because C1 has a bug.

     

    The below is the assumed future, if you like to read something actually complicated:

    https://www.color.org/documents/New_World_of_Color_Study_Highlights.pdf

    Regards

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    We walk into another room surrounded by different color walls and different intensity light.  Now our image looks different.  

    Yep, I like to determine how it looks like under the light conditions present at this wall, therefore I need a color managed workflow.

    If we could point a camera at a thing and exactly reproduce that truth every time reliably, there would be no art.

    Fully agree, at least there would a lower degree of freedom for you to express your art, maybe only perspective and composition. Unless you deviate from perfection deliberately..

    But I think it is good to know and be in control of your paint and your brush and are experienced with your technique(s), then when you come into the state where your art rises and flows thru you, you can focus it onto the canvas.

     

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  • Brian Jordan

    But I think it is good to know and be in control of your paint and your brush and are experienced with your technique(s), then when you come into the state where your art rises and flows thru you, you can focus it onto the canvas.

    I'd argue that a skilled painter can paint with almost any brush on almost any surface.  

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  • Brian Jordan

    I made a post actually before this one above which I'll try to recreate here.  Somehow between submit and page update it went away.

    ------------

    Paraphrased:

    My post isn't specifically about this bug report.  I was the first (even before you) to upvote it.  Instead, I was speaking to a larger and deeper thread I feel runs through your posts across the boards.  Please forgive/excuse/ignore if I'm wrong.  It isn't an attack.  It's a conversation with someone I believe thinks and feels deeply about images they produce.

    This paper you linked is neat and fantastic yet still not relevant to what we do as photographers - at least not relevant to the part of our art where we present to others.  We can color manage ad infinitum and it all falls apart when we pass our work along to someone else.  If we create for ourselves only and only to be viewed under exacting conditions then, sure, we can gain some level of exactness.  But beyond that?  No way.  

    The paper you posted is completely oblivious to the consumer part of the equation.  1) They want to sell some enterprise an expensive solution.  2) They don't take into account the variability of the receiving medium.  Your consumers across the spectrum aren't going to spend the money to buy precisely color calibrated displays.  Prints aren't going to be displayed behind non-reflective, museum quality glass under color accurate 5600 K bulbs on medium gray walls.

    My conversation point is, it really doesn't matter if we are in the ballpark or on the 49.775 yardline on the far hash mark as long as we can create an output that can be pleasing to the viewer.  Viewers don't want reality.  They want to feel good about an image.  If it were otherwise, we wouldn't ask for tools to clone and delete and soften and remove.  Crows feet and zits would be a thing.  TikTok wouldn't have filters.

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  • Brian Jordan

    BeO 

    Yep, I like to determine how it looks like under the light conditions present at this wall, therefore I need a color managed workflow.

    But you can't.  You can never color manage exactly to an output.  Close?  Sure.  But it's impossible to recreate on your display the color and tone perceived by a viewer looking at something on a wall.  At its most basic, displays produce light whereas images reflect light.  For those reasons alone, one will never faithfully reproduce the other.  At least not with any technology I'm aware of. If we get it, I'll buy it.  I can save enough in wasted paper and ink to pay for it.

    Beyond that, viewing conditions around that print change constantly.  Unless it's in a sealed windowless room, ambient light will change.  Or the wall gets faded or painted or the lighting is upgraded.  Close is the best we can do.  To even start you'd need to spectrograph the location and create a custom ICC.

    I don't know.  Somewhere back down the line someone told me I was trying to measure with a micrometer then marking with chalk and cutting with an ax. Since then I don't pay so much attention to those color readouts.

    Different styles and just a conversation.  With DMs I feel like you and I could have an interesting conversation and maybe learn something from one another.

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  • Brian Jordan

    Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF)

    By the way, I barfed a bit (pun intended) when I read this.  The average user has trouble with layers and style brushes.  They neglected to comment on how they though the average user should be trained on all this gee-whiz.

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    Brian Jordan

    I'd argue that a skilled painter can paint with almost any brush on almost any surface. 

    Skilled painter, you nailed it. And part of modern (read digital) photography skills is mastering the process from your raw file to the end-product, file or print or projection.

    I was speaking to a larger and deeper thread I feel runs through your posts across the boards.

    I am far from being a expert in the digital workflow, and what you probably often see from me in this forum is more of an attempt to better comprehend, discuss, 'test' and fine-tune my knowledge and skills than anything else. (Besides trying to help others, and sometimes expressing my dissatisfaction about company policy:-) This forum is the place for the software related part of the process of my hobby. Besides the 'scientifically', theoretically and technically inclined me, which you probably referred to, there is an artistically inclined me from which you wouldn't see much here. So your perception might be biased for this reason.

    With DMs I feel like you and I could have an interesting conversation and maybe learn something from one another.

    Definitely. I am very sure that I could for example learn a ton from you regarding analog photography, technically and artistically, which I started in the 80s and after pausing for decades resumed last year. I seldom went into a darkroom except a few times back then. Today, I get my negatives developed by a service and then trying to master a digital workflow after the scan, or digitizing with my camera. Analog is far from a being 'perfect imaging' solution, as you know, the driver here is the artistical me. 
    Interesting conversions and a beer with you and maybe Michelangelo, a vey nice imagination.

    Regading color management and all its influencing human and non-human factors and shortcomings, I know all that (or most of it). "Coming close" to my idea of my images is what I want to achieve, not a perfect reproduction of the photographed scene (at least most of the time). It doesn't hurt though to know how to get to a perfect as possbile reproduction.

    Color readouts are not part of my workflow (sometimes interesting) but highlight warnings and checking the histogram, in this bug report it was of course a natural choice to use color readouts as I noticed that the highlight warning didn't work correctly.

    See, Ansel Adams for example, during his life he created numerous prints from the same negatives but interpreted them quite differently over time, e.g I think he got more contrasty. I keep my raws, and when I need tiffs to keep I want them to have as raw-like as possible in order to not through away information. That's my baseline edit. I then create a derivate (variant) for the output medium. I can re-interpret the baseline tiff later if I like (if I don't want to revisit my raw edit), and adapt to different current or future output media. I want to know the technical best solution to achive that. Embedding a profile (into tiff) and editing my image in C1 using the widest gamut and best suited rendering intent (for the image in question) and preserve the most information is something I want to know how to do.

    If a gallery or museum would want to exhibit some of my work (which they surely don't :-), I would try to understand the ambient and lighting conditions and eventually adapt my edit / print to induce in the observer what I then want to induce. I didn't think so far to bring a spectrograph to the location and create a custom ICC, and probably wouldn't do it :-) but I would need to have some knowledge and skills to create prints or have them created to achieve my intent.

    There is no final point, just conversation.

    Regards
    BeO

     

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    Hi SFA

    A colour neutral and more or less constant home "exhibition room", interesting idea. I should try to convince my wife... :-)

    Subjective color perception, color adaption and shortcomings you mentioned is one of the reasons why the video folks use tools to support them so they don't have to rely solely on their eyes and brain. eg. to detect unwanted color casts or to control skin tones. 

    'darktable' is the only image raw converter I know of who has more visual aids than just the histogram, which I think are helpful if you know how to read them (one need to know how to read a histogram as well, right), and they have already been requested from C1 by several users here.

    Visualisation tool in darktable of the (full) image, a marina, from the top of this thread, after a quick base edit in darktable:

    Regards
    BeO

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    For video or images, amongst others, the scopes can help you to objectively avoid, or add, color casts, and help to keep the color mood between a series of images, when your tired eyes and brain (or badly calibrated monitor) would fool you. You certainly know these days when the next day you look at it you think 'heck, what have I been doing yesterday night to these images....'

    Yes, the journey is as important as reaching the destination.

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