Any tips for better reds?
Hello,
I enjoy macro shots of flowers. But I can't seem to make a decent (life-like) red in a photograph to save my life...
For instance, I recently took a shot (Nikon D800) of a large garden full of red and yellow tulips. The garden was truly awe inspiring. The colors were absolutely electric...
But... When I get home and look at these images, the reds look fake.
I get the same results with red geraniums as well.
In fact, at a local nursery, I noticed this with the naked eye - red is just a problem...
But I see other photos with realistic reds in them.
Can anyone please help me with these troublesome and challenging reds? What is the secret?
I've tried levels / curves adjustment(s) to the red channel only, but that never seems to work quite right.
There must be another trick I'm missing.
Thanks, in advance!!!
I enjoy macro shots of flowers. But I can't seem to make a decent (life-like) red in a photograph to save my life...
For instance, I recently took a shot (Nikon D800) of a large garden full of red and yellow tulips. The garden was truly awe inspiring. The colors were absolutely electric...
But... When I get home and look at these images, the reds look fake.
I get the same results with red geraniums as well.
In fact, at a local nursery, I noticed this with the naked eye - red is just a problem...
But I see other photos with realistic reds in them.
Can anyone please help me with these troublesome and challenging reds? What is the secret?
I've tried levels / curves adjustment(s) to the red channel only, but that never seems to work quite right.
There must be another trick I'm missing.
Thanks, in advance!!!
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Hi CaptureMann,
The first question is : which input profile do you use (Color Tool tab -> Base characteristics -> ICC Profile and Curve) ?
If you have always fake reds with this camera body, it could be that the profile provided by Phase One is not as good as expected. If you want to desaturate a bit the reds in ALL of your pictures, you can go to the Color Editor, select with the eyedrop the color area you want to desaturate, desaturate as you wish, and then ... (3 little dots) -> "save as ICC profile".
Of course, the best solution would be to get or create a personal profile for your camera body with a linear response curve, but this is an other story.....0 -
[quote="CaptureMann" wrote:
Hello,
I enjoy macro shots of flowers. But I can't seem to make a decent (life-like) red in a photograph to save my life...
For instance, I recently took a shot (Nikon D800) of a large garden full of red and yellow tulips. The garden was truly awe inspiring. The colors were absolutely electric...
But... When I get home and look at these images, the reds look fake.
I get the same results with red geraniums as well.
In fact, at a local nursery, I noticed this with the naked eye - red is just a problem...
But I see other photos with realistic reds in them.
Can anyone please help me with these troublesome and challenging reds? What is the secret?
I've tried levels / curves adjustment(s) to the red channel only, but that never seems to work quite right.
There must be another trick I'm missing.
Thanks, in advance!!!
Firstly - just checking - are you talking RAW files or jpgs?
Secondly - are the "other photos" you see with realistic reds in them from the same camera on the same settings? The same camera on different settings or a different camera?
Thirdly - is your screen colour profiled?
Fourthly - what do the images look like at 100% (in all cases).
Grant0 -
Thanks both of you for your replies.
Apologies - my post was not terribly thorough. ☹️
Yes, I shoot RAW.
I do indeed use color profiles - and my monitor is calibrated.
I use ProPhoto RGB as my working color space - then convert to profile for printer being used.
The issues with red seem to be with multiple cameras/bodies.
I also notice unrealistic reds on LCD TVs (FWIW).
But I see some good reds in other peoples photos.
I figured there must be a secret to making good reds that I didn't know about. 😊0 -
12 or 14bit raw?
I'm going to assume the other pictures you've seen are in sRGB. Try editing on sRGB and AdobeRGB.0 -
Is it partly a question of white balance? How do you set it? Have you tried, for instance, photographing a grey card in the garden in as close a position as possible to the flowers you are photographing? I suspect that real life lighting is often not quite the same as the presets on our cameras (or the same presets as reproduced in Capture One). Whether daylight is really the K value the camera manufacturer has set is dependent on things like the time of day, the time of year, the latitude, etc. (Because these all affect how high the sun is in the sky.) And in gardens, there is often a lot of green foliage that can reflect a significant amount of green light onto the subject. (I find that auto white balance on the camera rarely gets it anything like right when you take a photograph under a leafy tree.)
Ian0 -
Reds and Yellows often seem to have their own "vibrancy" issues although in my experience, mainly with Canon files, working at 100% and reviewing the histograms is useful - especially if trying to extract tricky yellow based results and "yellow" gets everywhere to influence things.
When really challenged (or when I think I am) I set the Base Characeteristics to the Linear Curve (i.e. take out any massaging of the colour representation beyond basic interpretation of the RAW data) as a start. Then build from there.
I also look at the Levels on a colour channel by colour channel basis and bring them into balance as necessary.
All of this in conjunction with finding a decent white balance starting point near the the start of the process and monitoring how that may change as things progress.
If the camera does not have any real white, grey or black to work with - often the case with flower shots that may also lack a sky blue/cloud reference point too - it can be very fooled.
Which brings me to another point I have recently come to realise, probably as the result of ageing eyes spending too much time looking as screens in a suitably darkened room!
Colour sensitivity of the eyeball.
The old trick we are shown as children about staring at a coloured shape for some seconds and them looking away and the mind "sees" the shape in it's inverse colour for a few seconds.
In some situations I find this can be quite influential when I am working with strongly defined images with very smooth blocks of colour. Especially when trying establish a decent white balance with some of the more challenging subjects.
I have taken to metaphorically "walking away" to rest the eyes (and the brain I suspect) before revisiting the images later. It seems to work for me but whether it is something to influence everyone's editing decisions I have no idea.
HTH.
Grant0 -
Thanks all for your continuing help.
One more question - Is anyone else observing this? Or am I the only one?
What do YOU do when/if you encounter this?
Cheers!0 -
[quote="CaptureMann" wrote:
Thanks all for your continuing help.
One more question - Is anyone else observing this? Or am I the only one?
What do YOU do when/if you encounter this?
Cheers!
Tricky one to answer without seeing what you are seeing.
Can you stick a couple of examples up on a sharing site somewhere and post links to them?
Which camera(s)?
Which ICC profiles for those cameras (or camera families) have you tried?
Grant0 -
Tricky one to answer without seeing what you are seeing
Agree. If you throw an example RAW file up others may be able to find a solution that helps you.0 -
I use ProPhoto RGB as my working color space - then convert to profile for printer being used.
The issues with red seem to be with multiple cameras/bodies.
I also notice unrealistic reds on LCD TVs (FWIW).
Not exactly sure how your setup is but what I can assume from the above is that your working color space is off. And by working color space, I really mean your "Proof Profile" that you can set under the menu "View > Proof Profile". To get the most consistent results, you should set this to "sRGB" as it's the lowest common denominator across devices. Pretty much any device with a color display is capable of displaying sRGB colors.
The RAW file itself does not contain a profile, it's just raw data. Once you create an image file out of it (like TIFF, PSD, JPG), you want to assign it a color profile, which determines the range of colors the file will contain. This is important if you want to further edit the file (i.e. in Photoshop), the more range the better. That's where ProPhoto would come in. However, you don't want to directly look at an image with a ProPhoto profile, it looks dull and flat. Only software uses the extended color range to work with it and perform better calculations than with a more limited profile. Meanwhile, the human eye should be looking at a preview (proof) of what the end result is going to look like on a display, which is 99% of the time sRGB. For that reason, your final output file should then contain the sRGB profile.
Your own printer or even professional print shops usually handle sRGB files pretty well, since this standard is ubiquitous. Manufactures and printers have trimmed their machines to produce the best possible results from these files. Sometimes it makes sense to create a custom printer profile and use this as your "working color space" as well in order to get a more accurate feel of what the printer is going to output. But again, sRGB will generally work pretty well.
To recap;
- Since RAW doesn't have a profile, have C1 preview (proof) one that is going to be as close to the final output, which is sRGB
- If you're round-tripping to Photoshop, export as TIFF/PSD with ProPhoto embedded. Yet, set the proof in Photoshop to sRGB as well. Under the hood, Photoshop uses the embedded ProPhoto range for processing
- Once ready for final output, export as an image file with sRGB profile embedded which will work for print, web and display on various devices
Hope that's what you're looking for, otherwise please provide more info.0
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