Tertulia.ro

First, an explanation on my previous article and the two updates I’ve made. While it may or may not impact you in your daily photography, understanding the basics of color representation across mediums and having an idea about the in-camera processes that can interfere with color reproduction, can really help you in situations where color accuracy is critical.

I will offer one real life example just to give you some clues about the complexity and importance of correct color rendering. A while ago, in one of the advertising agencies I worked for, we had an apparently simple task: produce a new product catalogue for one of our clients. While building the whole catalogue was by itself a very challenging task because it had texts in 4 different languages: English, German, Japanese and Arabic, another problem proven to be the real deal: rendering texture and colors accurately for the marble tiles that constituted 90% of the product samples. Even after making sure the second time that the entire production chain was color calibrated (computers, printers, raster image processor in the prepress lab plus the offset printing machine) and after taking and processing a new set of photos, the customer was not completely satisfied by the color samples in the catalogue: very small color variances added up throughout the whole chain and the final result was somehow off.

For more info on the combined subject of color representation and photography you can start by reading the very good introductory lessons by Sean McHugh at Cambridge in Color. For more in-depth info about the problematics of color rendering, you can check the website of International Color Consortium (www.color.org). Some samples: Tutorial on Color Management; Color Management: Current Practice and The Adoption of a New Standard and the section regarding photography.

In the previous episode I’ve started pondering around the color rendering – especially in regard to the White Balance. But let’s see which are the instruments offered by each of the application and how they may help in our quest for the perfect color. First of all, we have two categories of color correction adjustments: global and advanced or fine tuning. While the global correction are best suited for everyday photography, fine tuning answer to the big question of pinpoint color accuracy.

In this part I will start with the applications having the minimal set of tools: no real color accuracy here. Click on each application name to preview the interface.

RAW Drop – the most basic support for rendering RAW files: Auto WB, Use Camera WB. No histogram, no preview. Combined with the fact that the application auto adjusts the exposure such as 1% of the resulting image pixels to be white, we have the perfect situation for a totally unpredictable result.

Picassa 3 – Has the all in one set of auto tools and effects plus manual adjustment of Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows and Color Temperature (WB) including neutral color picker.

IrfanView – in itself not a RAW Developer, but I have used it in the previous parts to provide a base reading since it extracts the jpg preview saved within the RAW file. It offers a very basic set of tools not specific to RAW processing but to image processing in general: Histogram, Brightness, Contrast, Gamma, Saturation, RGB Color balance plus the all automatic Auto adjust color and Convert to Grayscale. As a bonus, through the plug-in interface, it has support for Adobe Photoshop 8bf plug-ins. The bad news is that the adjustment previews are so small that they are of no real help.

Breeze Browser Pro – 8 WB Presets: Camera, Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Shade, Flash, Fluorescent, Incandescent plus manual adjustments of Levels, Saturation and Gamma. Only luminosity/gray histogram. Almost full screen preview

Olympus Master 2 – the basic set of tools for global color correction. The interface is very modal: one edit at a time, click OK, then another edit. This mode is not suitable for batch processing. But the application has a second mode “Edit RAW” where the edits can be applied to a selection of photos. But for more advanced functions and for remote control of your camera you must buy Olympus Studio 2. The same situation is valid at Canon and Nikon. They include with the camera some basic applications, but to really develop your RAW files you have to pay.

Scarab Darkroom – All the basic color correction tools (including editing with numerical values and copy/paste of development settings. Everything available at hand as sliders and as numerical input boxes, no fiddling with tabs or application modes which are mostly a waste of clicks. While the interface is a bit unpolished, it sets the standard of minimal functionality, and it should be implemented by all the camera manufacturers in their basic editing software.

From this first set, only Scarab Darkroom and the basic offerings from camera manufacturers can be really classified as RAW developers. The above applications are best suited as viewers or for basic home use and are included here as reference only. Anyone really thinking about controlling the results in their photography should avoid them at all costs.

Related posts:

1. RAW Developers Review – Color Rendering (updated)
2. RAW Developers Review – Noise Reduction (3rd update)
3. RAW Developers Review – The setup and the prerequisites
4. RAW Developers Review – Recover "lost" pixels