Saturation Problem in Camera Raw - Advice Please

[ddt0725]

My pp for quite a while now has been to view my photos in Zoom Browser, open the photo I want to work on in Camera RAW to make some minor adjustments and then pulled the photo into Photoshop rather than using DPP.

Could someone explain to me why all of my RAW photos taken with my new Sigma lens look like this in each program before any post-processing has been done?! The have always matched before but now before I do anything the photos are overly-saturated as soon as I open them in Camera Raw as you can see on the left but look perfectly fine in Zoom Browser.

[ahab1372]

Does it happen only with this one lens? Or did it coincidentally start at the same time you started to use the lens?

I can think of two possible causes:
1. Camera Raw tries some kind of auto-enhancement
2. Camera Raw tries some color matching to you monitor profile, and maybe uses the wrong profile. The Zoom browser ignores any color matching to monitor profiles (or uses the correct one) and this does not show the oversaturation. Now, I am not an expert on setting profiles in Windows or Adobe applications, but if two different applications render the same file differently, color profiles are prime suspects.

Hope that helps,
Arnt

[w349]

The default ACR camera profile is "Adobe Standard", which is quite liberal on the saturation.

Open the Camera Calibration tab in ACR and alter the camera profile to your taste.

[ddt0725]

The default ACR camera profile is "Adobe Standard", which is quite liberal on the saturation.

Open the Camera Calibration tab in ACR and alter the camera profile to your taste.

I did that and all of them are way off from the real colors.

[ddt0725]

As far as I know right now it is just this lens. I will try to do some comparision shots with another lens later today. Maybe I just haven't taken shots of such a saturated color lately. Maybe it is just with the updated version of ACR which I downloaded a couple weeks ago.

Here is a comparison of all 3 programs (ZB being the true color of the hat) ...


Saturation Comparison by Denise Trocio ( www.dtrociophotography.com), on Flickr

Because of the over saturation in ACR & DPP, ZB is the only photo that shows the detail of the fabric in the upper part of the red hat and appears to give a sharper shot. Click on photo to see it larger in flickr and you will get a better view.

[Jayson]

Denise, try opening the camera raw calibration and place the tab to "camera standard". That is suppose to match the color profile of your camera. I know some sigma lenses are (or so they say) have a warm hue, but I think you would have experienced this with the ones you owned. This is definitely a camera Raw thing. Try that trick and if not, you can always make your own calibration in that tab and save it as default. It might have reset the tab based on the lens attached??? I have never had that problem, but you never know. If you downloaded the new ARC 6.7 recently, it messed up my defaults also.

[ddt0725]

It looks like camera faithful is the most accurate. A bit drab but it's a better starting point. Camera Standard looks less saturated than Adobe Standard but more so than ZB and the actual color. I do not know how to make my own preset so I will need to research that. But no, I never had a problem with any of my other Sigmas.

I did notice that I have ACR 6.6 so I will download 6.7 and see if that helps or makes it worse.

[Jayson]

It looks like camera faithful is the most accurate. A bit drab but it's a better starting point. Camera Standard looks less saturated than Adobe Standard but more so than ZB and the actual color. I do not know how to make my own preset so I will need to research that. But no, I never had a problem with any of my other Sigmas.

I did notice that I have ACR 6.6 so I will download 6.7 and see if that helps or makes it worse.

6.7 reset my preferences and it was a pain to get them back. I use camera faithful almost always since it is suppose to be how the colors are actually rendered and doesn't have other saturation and contrast added by the profile. I use the others very sparingly. I recently purchased the upgrade to lightroom 4 and use that exclusively now. I always preferred ACR, but the updated develop module in Lightroom 4 is great and seems to work best for me. You might try the trial if you don't already have. It is about 1/2 the price of lightroom 3.

Hopefully the problem gets fixed with your new download and things go back to normal. Good Luck!

[ahab1372]

Denise, do pictures look different when you open an older unedited raw file? Then it might've worth checking monitor settings and the monitor profile in the windows color management. Some applications take over what is in there, some don't. That would explain the difference between Zoom and DPP
Arnt

[jrw]

One other place to look in colour management is the settings that the individual programs use. In the options for each software package you need to specify the same calibration profile or specify to use the OS default setting depending on how you set it up under windows colour management. It is also worth mentioning that when updates are applied to some software packages, the preferences that were set for colour management are not always carried forward for you.

The other possibility is that the RAW converters are not treating the file the same way. Once you have checked the colour management and the rest of the default settings and eliminated any differences there, there aren't a whole lot of other options left to you other than to create custom profiles to allow bringing them closer together. If you are working with a release candidate, you may find that the next change to that also fixes the specific problems that you are experiencing if it is only an issue with Adobe. There is no doubt that there would be lots of feedback on something like this.

Edit: As Adobe uses lens specific corrections, it may be that someone else's guess of how that lens should perform is not what you want it to be. Assuming it is only the one lens and not all. You may want to replace the lens profile with your own.