Nikon d4 profile to fix skin tones?

Christian Gruner

October 28, 2013 16:26

[quote="NN145994UL" wrote:
Any one have a better Nikon D4 profile that I can import or something (if that even works?). I have found with the switch to Nikon that the skin tones are really red, images are over saturated, and the shadows are crushed.

I talked to Nikon and they claim it's because Phase One wouldn't sign an NDA so they aren't sharing what their profiles are made of so Phase One is just guessing. Phase one denies this.

So maybe someone out there has had the same problem as me and has found a good universal (or close) solution?

Thanks

Can I ask who at Nikon (Name and Country) you have asked?

We do our profiles ourselves based on lots of reference pictures. The profiles are made for 5600 Kelvin based lighting (daylight), so if you use them in other temperatures, they might not be accurate.

If you like to make your own profile, you can save the results of the Color Editor in a color-profile for the D4. You can of course always use the original profile as well.

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Permanently deleted user

October 28, 2013 17:46

Here is the response I posted on the facebook page. Your response here... sorry I just don't get. Your going to blame it on color temperature? It's in every single image, the skin tones are off. When you white balance everything else, the skin tones are still off. It should also not have much of an impact on the images being over saturated and crushed in the shadows. There is more to it then you are letting on. Especially when I see that I did not have such problems with Canon, and it seems to be more nikon specific as I don't see the issues with my fuji either. So it points more to you have 'missed the mark' with nikon files. Something seemingly that would be more accurate if you were working more hand and hand with the camera manufacturers. It also seems that the Nikon profile is a pretty generic one? Is the profile even reads... Nikon D4: generic.

My facebook response:
"I was at Photoplus conference in the Nikon VIP lounge for nps members and asked the Nikon "experts" on hand and they were VERY confident in saying that was the problem. That capture one and Adobe both would not agree to an NDA to protect the info of how they process their camera images, thus capture one and LR only have profiles where they back engineered them and took an educated guess as to what it is. I followed up with them to say.... Well you know then when I talk to them they will say it's your fault (which seems to be the case here), and they said once again it's that they would not sign an NDA, so they couldn't share the official info with them.

The cameras I have are the d800 and d4. The d800 isn't as bad as the d4. The d4 is horrible on the skin tones making them very red. They also seem to be very over saturated, crushing in the shadows, and a touch warm.

Compared to with Canon when I use to use them and your software it was much more on point, although the shadows continued to get a bit crushed for some reason.

Making a skin tone profile helps a tiny bit but really when editing something like a wedding isn't much help because every lighting set up is going to produce different results.

It needs to be much better out of the gate.

Who to believe on who's fault it is I don't know. But the folks at Nikon seemed very confident in their answer"

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Keith Reeder

October 28, 2013 19:26

The best lies are the confidently-delivered ones.

Phase One - and Adobe - create their own profiles. In fact no commercial converter I'm aware of uses manufacturer-sourced profiles.

Your Nikon experts are BSing you.

Compared to with Canon when I use to use them and your software it was much more on point, although the shadows continued to get a bit crushed for some reason.

Actually, the Canon profiles in Capture One are pretty grim these days too.

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Christian Gruner

October 28, 2013 19:48

[quote="NN145994UL" wrote:
Here is the response I posted on the facebook page. Your response here... sorry I just don't get. Your going to blame it on color temperature? It's in every single image, the skin tones are off. When you white balance everything else, the skin tones are still off. It should also not have much of an impact on the images being over saturated and crushed in the shadows. There is more to it then you are letting on. Especially when I see that I did not have such problems with Canon, and it seems to be more nikon specific as I don't see the issues with my fuji either. So it points more to you have 'missed the mark' with nikon files. Something seemingly that would be more accurate if you were working more hand and hand with the camera manufacturers. It also seems that the Nikon profile is a pretty generic one? Is the profile even reads... Nikon D4: generic.

My facebook response:
"I was at Photoplus conference in the Nikon VIP lounge for nps members and asked the Nikon "experts" on hand and they were VERY confident in saying that was the problem. That capture one and Adobe both would not agree to an NDA to protect the info of how they process their camera images, thus capture one and LR only have profiles where they back engineered them and took an educated guess as to what it is. I followed up with them to say.... Well you know then when I talk to them they will say it's your fault (which seems to be the case here), and they said once again it's that they would not sign an NDA, so they couldn't share the official info with them.

The cameras I have are the d800 and d4. The d800 isn't as bad as the d4. The d4 is horrible on the skin tones making them very red. They also seem to be very over saturated, crushing in the shadows, and a touch warm.

Compared to with Canon when I use to use them and your software it was much more on point, although the shadows continued to get a bit crushed for some reason.

Making a skin tone profile helps a tiny bit but really when editing something like a wedding isn't much help because every lighting set up is going to produce different results.

It needs to be much better out of the gate.

Who to believe on who's fault it is I don't know. But the folks at Nikon seemed very confident in their answer"

Let me explain the difference between color profiles, film curves, and the method of decoding the raw-file itself:
- Decoding and de-bayering of the raw-file. This is the process that your Nikon Rep is talking about. This is also the first step, among many, where CO can provide a better output than other raw-converters.
- Film curves. Can be changed from Base Characteristics. If you are not happy with the default contrast, you can change it here (and make your new selection default). You mention the shadow as being too dark, so you could try the "Extra Shadow"-profile. If you want total control over the curve, choose "Linear Response" and then tweak the contrast to your liking using the Curves tool.
- ICC profiles. Can be changed from Base Characteristics. We create all ICC's from scratch. With some cameras (Primarily Phase One/Leaf backs) you can have a selection of different profiles customized for different light conditions. It is impossible to create a profile that will handle all lighting situations. Colors change with the source of lighting and with the whitebalance. With most DSLR's there will be a 1 profile customized for that particular camera at 5600 Kelvin in color temperature. This is the "Generic" profile, CO's default profile for that specific camera.

So why is the ICC profile like that for D4? It's a balance really. Some will like its colors, some won't. If you don't, you can easily tweak the colors using the Color Editor, and save the edit made in an ICC profile, that can then be selected (and defaulted) from the Base Characteristics tool.

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Permanently deleted user

October 29, 2013 10:08

Hello, quite agree that these are generic profiles, and these have their limits, but I agree that the Nikon profiles problem.
There's already several post that echo this concern, I do not know how these profiles are published but often as general and generic, they just hang the example of the profile that is identical to D800 D600. Worse than the D7100 is the 3100 two different devices in their resolution and possibility, 3100 encoding 12 bits, 14 bits 7100. And these are just two examples.
The only way to get a satisfactory report corresponding to the possibility of the case is to calibrate its equipment.

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Permanently deleted user

October 29, 2013 15:24

Yea out of the box the profile is just bad. I don't know how you are justifying that in your comments. How are the skin tones that massively red in comparison to the Canon files? It doesn't matter what color balance it is in, they are equally bad, so that points to the 'formula' just being off.

The adjustments you mentioned may or may not work. To be honest I haven't been able to find better info on how to do these modifications for them to be at least as a starting point universally better. You saying that can't be done is just not true. Of course your color balance over all is going to change depending on your scene, but how the software is making those adjustments and still killing skin tones is the problem. The only way to adjust it seems to hand paint out the skin, and you can't do that to 1,000 images on a wedding.

So if you are suggesting a custom ICC profile or things, or even setting it to always be a touch adjusted on the shadows at import.... I can't find good info on how to do this?

Can you point to any tutorials or online tutorial videos on this matter?

I have tried changing the camera profile to the D800 settings for a D4 file because it seems to be at least a little better, but it seems to only let you do it, image by image, and that won't work. And I haven't found a way to do it on batch at import.

Suggestions? but clearly by the other poster I am not the only one that feels this way.

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Permanently deleted user

October 29, 2013 15:26

I don't even know what that is in that link that person just posted with the profile inspector... what it is... how to get to it... how to use it... what it does etc.

Maybe some type of tutorial on how to make a ICC profile etc.

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ChrisM

October 29, 2013 17:16

[quote="NN145994UL" wrote:
I don't even know what that is in that link that person just posted with the profile inspector... what it is... how to get to it... how to use it... what it does etc.

Maybe some type of tutorial on how to make a ICC profile etc.

I think he is showing, that Phase one is re-using profiles, in this case the D800 generic profile for the D600, by simply renaming the profile.
I experienced the same with the re-use of the pentax K5 profile for the (AA filterless)K5IIs.

Chris

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mcphoto

October 29, 2013 21:22

I take this occasion to ask if is it possible to calibrate the cameras with ColorChecker Passport as I was used with LR. If not possible automatically is it at least possible with some well explained procedure?

Thanks

-Massimo

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Permanently deleted user

October 29, 2013 21:30

Yes I am wondering as well, since it seems PhaseOne won't be helping... what is the work around to bring my sanity back? Anyone find anything that works and maybe a step by step or a link to a tutorial? Thanks!

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Christian Gruner

October 29, 2013 21:54

[quote="NN145994UL" wrote:
Yes I am wondering as well, since it seems PhaseOne won't be helping... what is the work around to bring my sanity back? Anyone find anything that works and maybe a step by step or a link to a tutorial? Thanks!

Did you try my suggestions with the Color Editor?

Here's a few links that might help:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryG-DTekYB0
- http://blog.phaseone.com/tweak-the-defa ... ur-camera/

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mcphoto

October 30, 2013 22:13

[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:

Did you try my suggestions with the Color Editor?

Here's a few links that might help:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryG-DTekYB0
- http://blog.phaseone.com/tweak-the-defa ... ur-camera/

Thank you Christian,

these tutorials are nice and complete on how to use the Color Editor... but is it possible to clarify how to calibrate a camera using a Color Checker color by color based not on "look or feeling" but on real and objective color correspondence?

Thanks again,

-Massimo

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Rick Allen

October 30, 2013 23:34

Here is my 2 cents.

It seems to me that Nikon overexpose the blue channel or probably more accurately use lighter than normal filters on the Bayer (for various reason but the obvious one is so that they can shoot at higher iso). The result of this is that skin tones are a lot harder to get correct. Try it for your self shoot a color check in daylight with both nikon and canon in jpeg (in Jpeg because it removes the de-Bayer variable) and you'll see that the blue checks are vastly different.

While I love the new version 7 engine I do find it to be more contrasty than is needed. Thats why I use the extra shadow film curve for dslr (canon and nikon). This seems to flatten out the saturation a little as well, in a nice way as I see it. I also find that after neutralising the WB I almost always need to go into color editor to shift the skin towards mag and increase lightness, with canon and shift further to mag and decrease saturation with nikon. Another common adjustment I make with nikon is to add a grad mask to cover the legs of a model then make a selection of the leg tones in the layer adjustment color editor and increase the lightness and decrease Sat a tiny bit. The Nikons seem to get muddy in shadow skin areas in a not nice way.

Would be interesting if someone produced some high quality profiles for different light types or skin looks. I'd spend $100 bucks on that.

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Permanently deleted user

October 30, 2013 23:58

[quote="rapdigital" wrote:
Here is my 2 cents.

It seems to me that Nikon overexpose the blue channel or probably more accurately use lighter than normal filters on the Bayer (for various reason but the obvious one is so that they can shoot at higher iso). The result of this is that skin tones are a lot harder to get correct. Try it for your self shoot a color check in daylight with both nikon and canon in jpeg (in Jpeg because it removes the de-Bayer variable) and you'll see that the blue checks are vastly different.

While I love the new version 7 engine I do find it to be more contrasty than is needed. Thats why I use the extra shadow film curve for dslr (canon and nikon). This seems to flatten out the saturation a little as well, in a nice way as I see it. I also find that after neutralising the WB I almost always need to go into color editor to shift the skin towards mag and increase lightness, with canon and shift further to mag and decrease saturation with nikon. Another common adjustment I make with nikon is to add a grad mask to cover the legs of a model then make a selection of the leg tones in the layer adjustment color editor and increase the lightness and decrease Sat a tiny bit. The Nikons seem to get muddy in shadow skin areas in a not nice way.

Would be interesting if someone produced some high quality profiles for different light types or skin looks. I'd spend $100 bucks on that.

Well that is all well and good if you are working on only a few images like in a portrait shoot. But you can't go in and do that on every image for a wedding. It would take you a year and a half.

It needs to be something you can adjust for once and be done, so any time you drop in a D4 file for instance it just works.

I don't know if your badge on the right means you work for Phase one? But if you do... and you know this? Then why isn't it just corrected in the default profiles so we as users don't have to 'figure it out' on our own?

Any video or a better step by step on how to go about making all of those changes you listed? To be honest I got lost after the first one. I don't even know what you mean when you refer to 'extra shadow film curve" or where you are even finding 'film curves' at all.

Anyone know a solution where I can have this fixed on import? And yes I know I will still have to correct over all color balance, but that is not what we are really referring to here.

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Christian Gruner

October 31, 2013 08:26

[quote="mcphoto" wrote:
[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:

Did you try my suggestions with the Color Editor?

Here's a few links that might help:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryG-DTekYB0
- http://blog.phaseone.com/tweak-the-defa ... ur-camera/

Thank you Christian,

these tutorials are nice and complete on how to use the Color Editor... but is it possible to clarify how to calibrate a camera using a Color Checker color by color based not on "look or feeling" but on real and objective color correspondence?

Thanks again,

-Massimo

At current, that's not possible.

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Christian Gruner

October 31, 2013 08:30

[quote="NN145994UL" wrote:
[quote="rapdigital" wrote:
Here is my 2 cents.

It seems to me that Nikon overexpose the blue channel or probably more accurately use lighter than normal filters on the Bayer (for various reason but the obvious one is so that they can shoot at higher iso). The result of this is that skin tones are a lot harder to get correct. Try it for your self shoot a color check in daylight with both nikon and canon in jpeg (in Jpeg because it removes the de-Bayer variable) and you'll see that the blue checks are vastly different.

While I love the new version 7 engine I do find it to be more contrasty than is needed. Thats why I use the extra shadow film curve for dslr (canon and nikon). This seems to flatten out the saturation a little as well, in a nice way as I see it. I also find that after neutralising the WB I almost always need to go into color editor to shift the skin towards mag and increase lightness, with canon and shift further to mag and decrease saturation with nikon. Another common adjustment I make with nikon is to add a grad mask to cover the legs of a model then make a selection of the leg tones in the layer adjustment color editor and increase the lightness and decrease Sat a tiny bit. The Nikons seem to get muddy in shadow skin areas in a not nice way.

Would be interesting if someone produced some high quality profiles for different light types or skin looks. I'd spend $100 bucks on that.

Well that is all well and good if you are working on only a few images like in a portrait shoot. But you can't go in and do that on every image for a wedding. It would take you a year and a half.

It needs to be something you can adjust for once and be done, so any time you drop in a D4 file for instance it just works.

I don't know if your badge on the right means you work for Phase one? But if you do... and you know this? Then why isn't it just corrected in the default profiles so we as users don't have to 'figure it out' on our own?

Any video or a better step by step on how to go about making all of those changes you listed? To be honest I got lost after the first one. I don't even know what you mean when you refer to 'extra shadow film curve" or where you are even finding 'film curves' at all.

Anyone know a solution where I can have this fixed on import? And yes I know I will still have to correct over all color balance, but that is not what we are really referring to here.

His badge means that he is Phase One Certified Professional. You read more about it here: http://www.phaseone.com/en/workshops/pocp.aspx

With regards to the filmcurves, I explained it in a previous post in this thread. Take a look 😉

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ChrisM

October 31, 2013 12:27

[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:
[quote="NN145994UL" wrote:
[quote="rapdigital" wrote:
Here is my 2 cents.

It seems to me that Nikon overexpose the blue channel or probably more accurately use lighter than normal filters on the Bayer (for various reason but the obvious one is so that they can shoot at higher iso). The result of this is that skin tones are a lot harder to get correct. Try it for your self shoot a color check in daylight with both nikon and canon in jpeg (in Jpeg because it removes the de-Bayer variable) and you'll see that the blue checks are vastly different.

While I love the new version 7 engine I do find it to be more contrasty than is needed. Thats why I use the extra shadow film curve for dslr (canon and nikon). This seems to flatten out the saturation a little as well, in a nice way as I see it. I also find that after neutralising the WB I almost always need to go into color editor to shift the skin towards mag and increase lightness, with canon and shift further to mag and decrease saturation with nikon. Another common adjustment I make with nikon is to add a grad mask to cover the legs of a model then make a selection of the leg tones in the layer adjustment color editor and increase the lightness and decrease Sat a tiny bit. The Nikons seem to get muddy in shadow skin areas in a not nice way.

Would be interesting if someone produced some high quality profiles for different light types or skin looks. I'd spend $100 bucks on that.

Well that is all well and good if you are working on only a few images like in a portrait shoot. But you can't go in and do that on every image for a wedding. It would take you a year and a half.

It needs to be something you can adjust for once and be done, so any time you drop in a D4 file for instance it just works.

I don't know if your badge on the right means you work for Phase one? But if you do... and you know this? Then why isn't it just corrected in the default profiles so we as users don't have to 'figure it out' on our own?

Any video or a better step by step on how to go about making all of those changes you listed? To be honest I got lost after the first one. I don't even know what you mean when you refer to 'extra shadow film curve" or where you are even finding 'film curves' at all.

Anyone know a solution where I can have this fixed on import? And yes I know I will still have to correct over all color balance, but that is not what we are really referring to here.

His badge means that he is Phase One Certified Professional. You read more about it here: http://www.phaseone.com/en/workshops/pocp.aspx

With regards to the filmcurves, I explained it in a previous post in this thread. Take a look 😉

The problem is not always understanding. Perhaps Pase one could consider to make a third "filmcurve" next to "standard", and "extra shadow", and do it in the spirit of DxO's "neutral color/neutral tonality" option. I am not considering DxO as an alternative to CO1, but in this regard they offer more options. Most will like the more colorful and contrasty "standard" film curve, but I find it crushes the shadows a fair bit with my Pentax K5IIs. I always have to lift shadows on a mask in Photoshop to bring the neccesary life in the darker parts of the image, or work with film "extra shadow" and use the curve tool. But it would be a real time saver if CO1 would include a "neutral tonality/neutral color" curve.
Chris

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mcphoto

October 31, 2013 16:57

[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:
[quote="mcphoto" wrote:
[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:

is it possible to clarify how to calibrate a camera using a Color Checker color by color based not on "look or feeling" but on real and objective color correspondence?

At current, that's not possible.

Thank you Christian, now it's clear and I stop to look around for that. I hope it will be possible in the future, is there any plan regarding that?

-Massimo

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Christian Gruner

October 31, 2013 16:58

ChrisM, You can have both:

Use linear response (Filmcurve) and no color correction (ICC Profile -> Effects -> No Color Correction)

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Christian Gruner

October 31, 2013 16:59

[quote="mcphoto" wrote:

Thank you Christian, now it's clear and I stop to look around for that. I hope it will be possible in the future, is there any plan regarding that?

-Massimo

I cannot comment on features in future versions

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ChrisM

October 31, 2013 17:35

[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:
ChrisM, You can have both:

Use linear response (Filmcurve) and no color correction (ICC Profile -> Effects -> No Color Correction)

Thanks for the response, and yes the filmcurve "lineair response" is a great feature to have, but does not produce a practicle image in itself, it's only useable in conjunture with the tone curve tool. It's great for images with a high dynamic range, to have a better start in the highlights, and fill in the curve by yourself. Neutral tonality in DxO I think is a different approach, it uses a curve that strives to produce an image with as much as possible a neutral tonality, just as the name indicates. Really CO1 produces better output to my eyes, but misses that one option for developing neutral looking images out of the box, that are meant to maintain as much detail over the whole scale as possible, and are also a good starting point for further editing in e.g. Photoshop.
It'snot indispensable, but it would make life a lot easier for all the times that you just do not want the great color pop and contrast of the default curve
Chris

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Christian Gruner

October 31, 2013 18:36

[quote="ChrisM" wrote:
[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:
ChrisM, You can have both:

Use linear response (Filmcurve) and no color correction (ICC Profile -> Effects -> No Color Correction)

Thanks for the response, and yes the filmcurve "lineair response" is a great feature to have, but does not produce a practicle image in itself, it's only useable in conjunture with the tone curve tool. It's great for images with a high dynamic range, to have a better start in the highlights, and fill in the curve by yourself. Neutral tonality in DxO I think is a different approach, it uses a curve that strives to produce an image with as much as possible a neutral tonality, just as the name indicates. Really CO1 produces better output to my eyes, but misses that one option for developing neutral looking images out of the box, that are meant to maintain as much detail over the whole scale as possible, and are also a good starting point for further editing in e.g. Photoshop.
It'snot indispensable, but it would make life a lot easier for all the times that you just do not want the great color pop and contrast of the default curve
Chris

Again, you can just set the default of contrast, saturation, shadow/highlight and so on to whatever suits your general need. That way new pictures will have these applied when you import/capture/view them.

Again, there's isn't 1 solution that will suit all, but the possibilities for setting up CO to suit each user are there.

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ChrisM

October 31, 2013 19:15

[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:
[quote="ChrisM" wrote:
[quote="Christian Gr" wrote:
ChrisM, You can have both:

Use linear response (Filmcurve) and no color correction (ICC Profile -> Effects -> No Color Correction)

Thanks for the response, and yes the filmcurve "lineair response" is a great feature to have, but does not produce a practicle image in itself, it's only useable in conjunture with the tone curve tool. It's great for images with a high dynamic range, to have a better start in the highlights, and fill in the curve by yourself. Neutral tonality in DxO I think is a different approach, it uses a curve that strives to produce an image with as much as possible a neutral tonality, just as the name indicates. Really CO1 produces better output to my eyes, but misses that one option for developing neutral looking images out of the box, that are meant to maintain as much detail over the whole scale as possible, and are also a good starting point for further editing in e.g. Photoshop.
It'snot indispensable, but it would make life a lot easier for all the times that you just do not want the great color pop and contrast of the default curve
Chris

Again, you can just set the default of contrast, saturation, shadow/highlight and so on to whatever suits your general need. That way new pictures will have these applied when you import/capture/view them.

Again, there's isn't 1 solution that will suit all, but the possibilities for setting up CO to suit each user are there.

I understand the philosophy behind this, but there is merely the suggestion that default CO1 profiles stress saturation and contrast a bit too much in the new v7 engine, which I agree with. Sometimes this leads to attractive rendering of images, but not always. I use Zeiss lenses that have relatively strong color and high contrast, so I am aware that camera profiles are never really right unless you calibrate yourself with specific lenses under specific circumstances, which outstretches the means of many.
A raw converter can help in this regard by offering a lot of user friendliness in the way icc-profiles and curves are applied. I specifically like the way DxO offers a scale that you can set from 0% to 100%, and where you can determine how strongly the camera profile is applied. This would perhaps be the one major improvement in user friendliness that I would like to see in CO1 with the new engine v7. "No color correction" is of no practical use, but to be able to "slide in" the amount of color correction that is applied, would give me a wealth of control over the amount of "pop" without having to wrestle with saturation and contrast sliders, which simply does not yield the same results.

thanks
Chris

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Christian Gruner

October 31, 2013 20:40

[quote="ChrisM" wrote:

I understand the philosophy behind this, but there is merely the suggestion that default CO1 profiles stress saturation and contrast a bit too much in the new v7 engine, which I agree with. Sometimes this leads to attractive rendering of images, but not always. I use Zeiss lenses that have relatively strong color and high contrast, so I am aware that camera profiles are never really right unless you calibrate yourself with specific lenses under specific circumstances, which outstretches the means of many.
A raw converter can help in this regard by offering a lot of user friendliness in the way icc-profiles and curves are applied. I specifically like the way DxO offers a scale that you can set from 0% to 100%, and where you can determine how strongly the camera profile is applied. This would perhaps be the one major improvement in user friendliness that I would like to see in CO1 with the new engine v7. "No color correction" is of no practical use, but to be able to "slide in" the amount of color correction that is applied, would give me a wealth of control over the amount of "pop" without having to wrestle with saturation and contrast sliders, which simply does not yield the same results.

thanks
Chris

All raw-converters are different in their flow and their default rendering. But with the right tools and knowledge anything is possible.

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