Help with accurate color for art reproduction
I'm wondering if there is a better way to get accurate color out of my P30 for art reproduction than what I've been doing. For my own photography, vs.art reproduction, I have no issue getting pleasing, natural color out of either C1 or Lightroom. For reproducing paintings for clients, however, I find that the level of accuracy required to please demanding clients, who point to a particular fleck of paint in a piece of art and compare it to the same fleck in my fine art print I provide, is a much more difficult proposition. I find that the weak link in the process is not with the printing side, as there are rarely significant differences in what I see in a softproof on my calibrated monitor and what I get with my calibrated and profiled printer, but primarily with the input from the raw file I get.
I have tried using the C1 color editor, but find that the process of dialing in each color correctly to match a ColorChecker, or a particular capture of a painting is tedious and hit or miss. I often wind up having to solve specific color match problems with multiple, very time consuming and subjective hue/saturation adjustments using selections and masks in Photoshop. I'd rather get much closer, if possible, within Capture One, before resorting to minimal fine tuning in Photoshop. One problem with the C1 color editor, for me, is the coarseness of trying to match the 16 color patches of the ColorChecker or 100 colors in a painting with only six specific adjustment channels to work with. Another time consuming part is trying to match target RGB values using HSL sliders.
I decided to give Adobe's DNG Profile Editor a try, and found that their automated solution to generating a profile from the ColorChecker was by far the most accurate approach. They give you an excellent starting point automatically, and then provide 18 corresponding adjustments to match the 18 color patches individually for fine tuning. Then, within Lightroom, it is easy to perform finer corrections, specific to each artwork capture, as their interface is extremely well laid out and intuitive.
Unfortunately, though, I find the smoothness of rendering within Lightroom to be vastly inferior to C1. When I look at my ColorChecker image with solid color fields, I can see slight artifacts even at 100% in LR. At 400% it looks absolutely terrible (including processed TIFFs, not just the previews), whereas 400% in C1 still looks almost perfect and uniform in color.
This brings me (finally) to my question: Is there a better way, short of spending many thousands of $ (that I don't have, right now) for a standalone profiler to generate new, custom camera profiles within Capture One? I don't know of any automated process like Adobe provides to calibrate with a ColorChecker inside C1, and I don't think that Phase software can use the Adobe DCPR profile, can it? Is there another way of using the color editor? I can adjust the smoothness parameter to fine tune a specific color, but I'm still stuck with only six color adjustments that leave big gaps in specific parts of the spectrum that need correcting.
Suggestions? I finally get there and have happy clients, but I would certainly like to make the process less labor intensive, if possible.
Thanks,
Ron
I have tried using the C1 color editor, but find that the process of dialing in each color correctly to match a ColorChecker, or a particular capture of a painting is tedious and hit or miss. I often wind up having to solve specific color match problems with multiple, very time consuming and subjective hue/saturation adjustments using selections and masks in Photoshop. I'd rather get much closer, if possible, within Capture One, before resorting to minimal fine tuning in Photoshop. One problem with the C1 color editor, for me, is the coarseness of trying to match the 16 color patches of the ColorChecker or 100 colors in a painting with only six specific adjustment channels to work with. Another time consuming part is trying to match target RGB values using HSL sliders.
I decided to give Adobe's DNG Profile Editor a try, and found that their automated solution to generating a profile from the ColorChecker was by far the most accurate approach. They give you an excellent starting point automatically, and then provide 18 corresponding adjustments to match the 18 color patches individually for fine tuning. Then, within Lightroom, it is easy to perform finer corrections, specific to each artwork capture, as their interface is extremely well laid out and intuitive.
Unfortunately, though, I find the smoothness of rendering within Lightroom to be vastly inferior to C1. When I look at my ColorChecker image with solid color fields, I can see slight artifacts even at 100% in LR. At 400% it looks absolutely terrible (including processed TIFFs, not just the previews), whereas 400% in C1 still looks almost perfect and uniform in color.
This brings me (finally) to my question: Is there a better way, short of spending many thousands of $ (that I don't have, right now) for a standalone profiler to generate new, custom camera profiles within Capture One? I don't know of any automated process like Adobe provides to calibrate with a ColorChecker inside C1, and I don't think that Phase software can use the Adobe DCPR profile, can it? Is there another way of using the color editor? I can adjust the smoothness parameter to fine tune a specific color, but I'm still stuck with only six color adjustments that leave big gaps in specific parts of the spectrum that need correcting.
Suggestions? I finally get there and have happy clients, but I would certainly like to make the process less labor intensive, if possible.
Thanks,
Ron
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Hi Ron,
you could get 14 day trial version of "basiCColor input" and then use your colorchart or better a Gretag Colorchecker SG to profile your digital back.
A little testing and tweaking should provide satisfying results.
You can then implement the icc profile in your CO 4 workflow.
Good luck,
Adrian Denn0 -
Hi Ron,
No there is no automated way to do it Capture One, but you can go o the advanced tab in color editor and there you can use a dropper to select only the colors you want to edit. You can have asa many separate adjustments as you need. Once you select the color you can fine tune the selection on the color wheel, view selected color range will show you exactly what you are editing. when you are done you can save it out as a ICC profile for easy application later.0 -
NN890542-
Thanks, I've downloaded basICColor input and will give it a try.
Jon-
Automated adjustment would be a helpful start, but I realize that it isn't a complete solution. As for what you mention, though, about having as many separate adjustments as I need, this is something that I seem to have missed, and was hoping was a feature that I have not tapped into. How do I go about adding additional adjustments? There must be a button or menu option that I have overlooked.
I've found that my color is a little too inconsistent to be fully fine tuned with only six points, and that I have too many specific adjustments to cover all the changes I need with just six points. When I narrow each adjustment down, I miss important corrections that need to be made in between the more specific ones. Since I don't vary my setup for art reproduction much from one shot to the next, I'm willing to invest the time to get it right, but need to figure out how to get a more complex adjustment with more points of correction. It is an imperfect analogy, but at the moment, I feel like what I'm trying is similar to adjusting values with levels instead of curves, when I have a non-linear correction that needs to be made.
Thanks,
Ron0 -
Hi Ron,
When you are in color editor click on the advanced tab. Then click on the eyedropper tool that is just below the color wheel. Every time you click on the image with the eyedropper you will add a new color adjustment. There is a tutorial for the color tool available at http://www.phaseone.com/4 in Go for Pro... he talks about using the advanced mode of the color tool pretty briefly, but It may help you get started.0 -
I figured it was somehow right under my nose. I will give it a try and follow up with how things work out for me.
Thanks again,
Ron0 -
For the record, I tried basICColor Input, and found it extremely easy to use for generating a capture profile, but not very helpful. Perhaps I did something wrong, but I found that starting with a RAW file or a TIFF "file neutral" processed file, and generating the capture profiles with CIE D50 or D65 illuminant settings, all produced nasty looking ICC profiles.
Returning to the C1 only workflow, I think I may have discovered a flaw in my processing protocol. I have been using the "film standard" curve setting so far, and when I changed to "linear response" for the curve setting and added a bit of contrast in the exposure setting, I get a far more accurate starting point to work with. I'm not sure what the difference is, as I would not intuitively think that a curve difference would cause colors to render differently, but my results seem to indicate that it does in my case. I know that I can get there now with the Color Editor, as there is far less correction needed from this point. Lightroom still wins decisively in the interface category, but for what my needs are, that is more window dressing for my sake. When it comes to output, C1 is hands down the winner, as the end result is really what it is all about.
Thanks again Jon and Adrian for the advice.0 -
When an art repro job comes in, the first rule I tell the client is that it will not, and cannot, be exact due to physics, as there is always loss. If they are expecting an exact copy, I refer them back to rule #1.
I also have this disclaimer on my T&C: Finished prints are a Pleasing Color approximation, as no device is capable of exactly reproducing colors of an original piece of Artwork.0
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