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Color Shift when Exporting

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11 comments

  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter

    Could we see a screenshot of your export recipe?

    Ian

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  • Tom Reibeisen

    Hi Ian,

    of course!

    This one is producing inaccurate colors:

     

    This one is producing accurate colors:

    Interestingly, I'm also seeing the shift in color and saturation in other images, however, they weren't that apparent, but the effect is still noticeable. I've also tried exporting the hi res JPEG with Adobe colors, yielding the same washed out result. JPEG QuickProof with Adobe colors was more accurate again though.

    The recipes also differ in resolution, but changing these numbers didn't change the outcome.

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  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter

    The JPEG QuickProof output is generated solely from the Capture One preview, without reference to the original raw file. In fact in a catalog, you can produce JPEG QuickProof output even if the actual raw file is on a drive that is not connected to the computer at the time. So it is not surprising that the output and the preview match.

    When it comes to the other recipe, I wonder whether the colour you see in the viewer if you zoom in to 100% matches the zoom-to-fit colour. So if you zoom in (on the raw) does the colour shift? When you are at 100% zoom, Capture One is forced to render a view based on the actual raw file (plus your adjustments) rather than displaying something based on its preview.

    Ian

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  • Tom Reibeisen

    Thank you for your response. That hint is promising. Between the zoom levels 50% and 67% there's indeed a noticeable jump where the color suddenly starts to lose some amount of saturation and structures appear to be overly sharpened compared to the fit to screen preview (another effect I've noticed in the output files).

    What can I do to make sure I see an accurate representation of the image when it's zoomed out? Preview generation is currently set to "Optimized for Quality".

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  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter

    I'm no expert, but to me it seems that there is always going to be some compromise when viewing a preview. Apart from anything else, only viewing at 100% gives one pixel on screen corresponding to one pixel in the image file. If you are viewing at zoom-to-fit, each pixel on screen corresponds to several pixels in the actual image file, so effectively pixels are squished together (technical term!). That is bound to have an effect on things like sharpness. In fact it is often said that the only way to check whether you have the level of sharpening you want is to view the image at 100%. The same goes for some other things such as noise reduction. Maybe you should try zooming in to 100%, adjusting the saturation until you think it looks like you want it, and then generating your output and checking it against that. You can create a second variant of the image in Capture One so that you can easily compare the effect of the two approaches.

    Ian

    1
  • Walter Rowe
    Moderator
    Top Commenter

    What app on Windows are you using to view the exported files? Some Windows viewing apps are not color managed.

    0
  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter

    Walter Rowe - I wondered about that too, but then as far as I can see the screenshot in the original post shows all three images as displayed by Capture One, and the colour does look a bit different in the middle one of the three.

    Ian

     

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  • Tom Reibeisen

    I'm no expert, but to me it seems that there is always going to be some compromise when viewing a preview. Apart from anything else, only viewing at 100% gives one pixel on screen corresponding to one pixel in the image file. If you are viewing at zoom-to-fit, each pixel on screen corresponds to several pixels in the actual image file, so effectively pixels are squished together (technical term!). That is bound to have an effect on things like sharpness. In fact it is often said that the only way to check whether you have the level of sharpening you want is to view the image at 100%. The same goes for some other things such as noise reduction. Maybe you should try zooming in to 100%, adjusting the saturation until you think it looks like you want it, and then generating your output and checking it against that. You can create a second variant of the image in Capture One so that you can easily compare the effect of the two approaches.

    Thank you for the input, that makes 100% sense. I have now adjusted the above image to zoom 67% so that it comes close to the preview of the original edit. After re-exporting, the hi-res export is a lot closer to the result I want to see - so it really seems to be down to the way C1 generates the compressed previews. 

    However, I am now wondering how the QuickProof can/should be used if it continues to deviate so much from the actual export. After all, a QuickProof is precisely intended for proofing, and I have also used it to have certain images approved by the customer, only to find that the actual export differs afterwards. Even if I get the images edited the way I want them with increased zoom, the QuickProof and export still differ, which defeats the purpose for me. Will probably pivot to proof through the regular export and use a recipe with lower quality. 

    I also find it difficult to make a competent decision at such high zoom levels, as colors and contours are very dependent on the context of the image. In other words, each time I would have to zoom in, edit, zoom out, see if it fits, if not, zoom in again, rinse, repeat. Even though a lot of things had bothered me before in LR, I couldn't reproduce this divergence there. In my opinion, it would be nice if the compression were at least close enough to the original colors.

    But that's probably something we cannot fix as a community as of now. You've helped me understand the issue better and I also learnt something about how QuickProof works. That's all that matters. :-)

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  • Tom Reibeisen

    What app on Windows are you using to view the exported files? Some Windows viewing apps are not color managed.

    I usually use IrfanView. As Ian has stated, I also imported the image back into C1 to enable a fair comparison between both JPEGs.

     

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  • Mister Tolley

    The "colour shift" at different sizes is something that caught me out when I started with C1. With pictures of bare tree branches a lot of purple fringes were present, which didn't go away after chromatic correction, fringe removal etc. I even went as far as making a colour mask of the areas and attempting to desaturate them. At full size however, the effect just wasn't there.

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  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    It is said that sharpness and NR should be evaluated at 100% in C1 preview, as Ian points out, but I think one should evaluate the image after export with the final export settings, according to the final delivery requirements, and ideally in the software the client will use.

    If the final format is e.g. tiff in full resolution, then 100% zoom in preview is probably good though.

    Regarding colors, I think one can only evaluate colors and the color harmony of the image if the whole image can be seen on the screen. Which means zooming out. What zoom factor this is depends on the monitor resolution, which means that a 5k monitor is probably better. That is because C1 is not good at color rendering in zoomed out (pixel-reduced) images, if compared to exported images. It just ain't good.

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