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Equalizing colour rendition across cameras

mli20
In Adobe Lightroom Desktop CC this can achieved by using the Adobe Raw profiles, of which there are five available for my Nikon DSLRs.

Are COP12 profiles devised to achieve such uniform colour rendition from one camera to the next?

If not how do you go about this in COP12 if ever it is deemed necessary?

Cheers,
MLI
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Comments

12 comments

Date Votes
  • mli20
    Maybe the better question is:

    "Who cares?" 😉

    MLI
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  • cdc
    I haven't tried with CO12 yet but I have with CO11. Using a D800 and a 5DmkIII in studio the colors of the clothing & skin tones were not an exact match. However the same could be said when I viewed the images in Lightroom as well, even after profiling with a color checker.

    More recently I used a D850 & 5DmkIII outdoors in a natural light setting and they we're quite similar in Lightroom but I haven't tested in Capture One 12 with these files yet.

    What type of setting are you shooting in and what types of cameras are you using?
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  • mli20
    cdc wrote:
    I haven't tried with CO12 yet but I have with CO11. Using a D800 and a 5DmkIII in studio the colors of the clothing & skin tones were not an exact match. However the same could be said when I viewed the images in Lightroom as well, even after profiling with a color checker.

    One needs to use the LR "Camera Matching profiles" available in LR if equalization of colour rendition is desirable.

    cdc wrote:
    ...
    What type of setting are you shooting in and what types of cameras are you using?

    Architecture in broad daylight with Nikon DSLRs.

    Thanks for participating.

    MLI
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  • SFA
    An interesting question.

    Back some time ago there were some discussion along similar lines based on accurate colour matching and how to achieve it. This was for Fine Art repro work and was slightly related to making use of the C1 LCC profiles.

    An example post. (Not from me.)

    viewtopic.php?f=52&t=24836&p=115774&hilit=colour+balancing+icc#p115774

    The idea would be to generate a reference match for each shoot (or each camera perhaps for your requirements) and use that colour information to fix to a good colour match individually, thus bypassing the interpretative curves or even differences in sensor output when using the Linear Curve.

    For a less involved approach I thought I would check out the "Normalise" tool but my obvious challenge is that I don't have any ready examples that I can think of for more or less equivalent images of the same subject shot in the same conditions with different cameras. At least none that would not be likely affected by subtle changes in natural light conditions across the colour spectrum.

    Anyway, a quick play with some random vaguely similar images suggested that starting with a Linear curve and for individual colours, notably greens and yellow beige (sandstone) type tones even very different images from very different sensors (Canon 1D3 used to balance on a Fuji GF file) seemed to do a reasonable job of normalising the selected colour closely and the rest of the image's colours, viewed as a whole, seemed to be cohesive in appearance.

    On the other had all the red based matching I tried was clearly unsuccessful. That may be no surprise.

    One that basis I would think differences between sensors from the same family would be quite readily Normalised and differences between different sensors but from the same manufacturer could probably be successfully normalised in most use cases.

    Normalising across different sensors from different manufacturers and covering the whole colour range .... perhaps not so easy.

    You may already have tried this approach. If so, what did you discover?



    Grant
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  • cdc
    mli20 wrote:
    cdc wrote:
    I haven't tried with CO12 yet but I have with CO11. Using a D800 and a 5DmkIII in studio the colors of the clothing & skin tones were not an exact match. However the same could be said when I viewed the images in Lightroom as well, even after profiling with a color checker.

    One needs to use the LR "Camera Matching profiles" available in LR if equalization of colour rendition is desirable.

    cdc wrote:
    ...
    What type of setting are you shooting in and what types of cameras are you using?

    Architecture in broad daylight with Nikon DSLRs.

    Thanks for participating.

    MLI


    I think I misunderstood your question. Are you talking about matching the picture control settings of your camera (standard, neutral, vivid, portrait, etc)?

    I thought you were referring to matching 2 different camera's with each other.
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  • mli20
    cdc wrote:
    mli20 wrote:
    cdc wrote:
    I haven't tried with CO12 yet but I have with CO11. Using a D800 and a 5DmkIII in studio the colors of the clothing & skin tones were not an exact match. However the same could be said when I viewed the images in Lightroom as well, even after profiling with a color checker.

    One needs to use the LR "Camera Matching profiles" available in LR if equalization of colour rendition is desirable.

    cdc wrote:
    ...
    What type of setting are you shooting in and what types of cameras are you using?

    Architecture in broad daylight with Nikon DSLRs.

    Thanks for participating.

    MLI

    I think I misunderstood your question. Are you talking about matching the picture control settings of your camera (standard, neutral, vivid, portrait, etc)?

    No. I'm talking about the possibilities for colour equalization across cameras in two apps: Capture One 12 and Adobe Lightroom Classic CC. Neither of these read will read the Nikon Picture Control settings off the cameras' image files, thus said settings are irrelevant for the present discussion.

    cdc wrote:
    I thought you were referring to matching 2 different camera's with each other.

    I hope to obtain a close match colourwise, irrespective of which of my Nikon cameras I choose for a specific shoot. I should not be able to tell which camera was used solely from the colour rendition.

    In Lightroom I can use a profile from the profile group labeled "Camera Matching profiles" to get a best shot at this. Mind you, this is Lightroom terminology, strict definitions.

    Which all leads to the original question: Do such matched profiles exist for us to use in Capture One 12? Let's assume for a moment I'm using one Nikon D5600 plus a Nikon D7500 for a shoot. Are there a Capture One 12 camera profile available for each that will give me similar colour rendition between the two cameras? If not, how to proceed towards the objective.

    Original wording:
    mli20 wrote:
    Are COP12 profiles devised to achieve such uniform colour rendition from one camera to the next?

    If not how do you go about this in COP12 if ever it is deemed necessary?

    MLI
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  • cdc
    mli20 wrote:

    No. I'm talking about the possibilities for colour equalization across cameras in two apps: Capture One 12 and Adobe Lightroom Classic CC. Neither of these read will read the Nikon Picture Control settings off the cameras' image files, thus said settings are irrelevant for the present discussion.....

    I hope to obtain a close match colourwise, irrespective of which of my Nikon cameras I choose for a specific shoot. I should not be able to tell which camera was used solely from the colour rendition.

    In Lightroom I can use a profile from the profile group labeled "Camera Matching profiles" to get a best shot at this. Mind you, this is Lightroom terminology, strict definitions.


    Ok, so I think you've misunderstood what Adobe's camera matching profiles are then. They are not there to match between different cameras, even if that does end up working out. They are there to mimic the in camera picture control settings of your camera, hence my confusion. Read this:

    Because ACR does not recognize Nikon picture control settings, as you pointed out, camera matching profiles are Adobe's attempt to match your in camera settings. You might notice that the camera matching profiles available will change between different cameras and their names will match what you will find in the picture control settings menu of that camera. The D800 has 7 camera matching profiles, the D850 has 11, for example.

    mli20 wrote:
    Which all leads to the original question: Do such matched profiles exist for us to use in Capture One 12? Let's assume for a moment I'm using one Nikon D5600 plus a Nikon D7500 for a shoot. Are there a Capture One 12 camera profile available for each that will give me similar colour rendition between the two cameras? If not, how to proceed towards the objective.

    Original wording:
    mli20 wrote:
    Are COP12 profiles devised to achieve such uniform colour rendition from one camera to the next?

    If not how do you go about this in COP12 if ever it is deemed necessary?

    MLI


    So back to your original question. In Capture One 12 the D5600 & D7500 each have their own ICC profiles and there is a possibility that they match color-wise, you'll have to try it and find out. But if you find that they differ in color rendition you could use the color editor to adjust the colors as you see fit and create your own custom ICC profile and assign that to one or both of your cameras. Alternatively you can use a color checker and create profiles for both cameras based on shooting conditions, or simply assign other ICC profiles/curves already built into CO and see if one happens to be a good fit for your needs.
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  • mli20
    cdc wrote:

    So back to your original question. In Capture One 12 the D5600 & D7500 each have their own ICC profiles and there is a possibility that they match color-wise, you'll have to try it and find out. But if you find that they differ in color rendition you could use the color editor to adjust the colors as you see fit and create your own custom ICC profile and assign that to one or both of your cameras. Alternatively you can use a color checker and create profiles for both cameras based on shooting conditions, or simply assign other ICC profiles/curves already built into CO and see if one happens to be a good fit for your needs.

    Thank you very much for post. I agree with you entirely that experiment is king. In the end I must do my own research using COP12 in particular. One thing I will not undertake however is using the ColorChecker for creating my own icc profiles to use with COP12, too much software jumping through hoops for my taste. But that is a personal thing of course.

    What triggered me to thinking about this subject was the Lightroom Queen's article "What’s New in Lightroom Classic CC 7.3 (April 2018)?" .

    Indeed there now exist two profile groups relevant to the present discussion.

    - The Adobe profiles such as "Adobe Color", "Adobe Portrait" etc. the purpose of which she explains as follows:

    "...aimed to make photos from different cameras look as similar as possible."

    - The "Camera Matching" profiles:

    "They’re designed to mimic your camera JPEG, so they’ll more closely match the image you saw on the back of the camera, although they’re not available for all cameras."

    Up till now I have erroneously used the label "Camera Matching profiles" instead of the correct label "Adobe profiles". I sincerely apologize for the confusion it have caused.

    The question then is if COP12 camera profiles are designed in a similar fashion:

    - "...to make photos from different cameras look as similar as possible.", and/or
    - "...designed to mimic your camera JPEG.

    Time for me to open up COP12, to experiment.

    Thanks again for your contribution.

    MLI
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  • cdc
    mli20 wrote:
    cdc wrote:

    The question then is if COP12 camera profiles are designed in a similar fashion:

    - "...to make photos from different cameras look as similar as possible.", and/or
    - "...designed to mimic your camera JPEG.


    I would imagine CO does have targets in mind when profiling cameras, to present accurate color rendition. But every sensor/camera is going to translate colors uniquely. In my experience even when profiling with color checkers there are still differences between cameras.

    To my knowledge CO has made no attempt to mimic in camera JPEG settings, there are plenty of options for doing so oneself however.
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  • Keith Reeder
    cdc wrote:
    I would imagine CO does have targets in mind when profiling cameras, to present accurate color rendition.

    They don't. Phase One has always been clear that their profiles are intended only to provide "pleasing", rather than colorimetrically accurate, output.
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  • cdc
    Keith Reeder wrote:
    cdc wrote:
    I would imagine CO does have targets in mind when profiling cameras, to present accurate color rendition.

    They don't. Phase One has always been clear that their profiles are intended only to provide "pleasing", rather than colorimetrically accurate, output.


    Good to know.
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  • Keith Reeder
    Yeah, it's a perfectly reasonable approach, and back when "The Capture One Look" was its major selling point, it made a lot of sense.
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