I made some time to test one of my images just now in PL4, PL5, and PL6. First, with the No Corrections preset, but using the Legacy working color space and Soft Proofing for sRGB in PL6, I see no noticeable differences. With Color Rendering on and set to “DxO camera profile (E-M10)” (“Camera default rendering” in PL4), there is a bit of a loss of saturation in all three, and again they are all equal.
Repeating this test with the image of the model in the top post, there are again no differences. When I change the color rendering in all three PLs to DxO Portrait, the situation changes. Now PL6 has muted colors. The same thing happens with my own test image. So that’s a major cause of the problem, and hopefully the only cause.
This isn’t the only color rendering option that’s broken in PL6, but I don’t believe there are many.
Can I confirm, using my famous lobster kite image, that PL6 drastically changes the rendering for the generic portrait rendering, even in Classic mode.
@Hugo@Wolfgang@Egregius@Joanna Joanna nice kites and the answer is yes ish or rather yes if you leave the image in Legacy mode!
I repeated my test by taking Hugo’s DOP and applying the DOP to some of my images but then went back to Hugo’s model images because the comparisons are easier. If the Color space is changed to Wide Gamut then the images where PL6 has used the PL5 DOP become closer to the original, arguably slightly better!!
@BHAYT If you swich to Wide Gamut the problem is mostly solved (but there is no portrait rendering in V6). However that is not really the issue. The rendering should be exactly the same in V5 en V6 (legacy mode). If it does not work for portrait rendering, there might be issues in other renderings too.
Although this is might be a minor issue for most users, it is a huge issue for me, since I used the portrait rendering in 99% of my images (model and studio shots)
@Hugo the test with Wide Gamut was just part of a test to see if I could use your DOP on my images, a trick I have used that works on DxPL(Win) and it occurred to me that we had not tested the impact of Wide Gamut. When using my own images on PL5 I was not able to get the ‘DxO portrait’ rendering it simply was not there!? When I used your DOP I was in ‘DxO portrait’ but my own camera rendering was also available!?
So I agree with you that this is a bug but one which might be linked to the introduction of Wide Gamut (!!"??) (or not) and using Wide Gamut might provide a temporary work around. But I would definitely raise the issue as a fault with @DxO_Support-Team
My biggest “scare” was on the beta, when opening an image, previously edited in PL5, with no rendering selected, in PL6. All of a sudden, the colours were way different.
Fortunately, DxO have now provided the switch back to Classic and, from comparing all the other renderings, (part from Portrait, they all seem to be the same in PL5 and PL6.
Unless I am missing something you guys have found in your test?
@Joanna that appears to be the case but I am also puzzled by what I think I saw in some of my tests.
Unfortunately I am using two machines, one on PL5 and the other PL6 but sharing directories, each designated to a version of the product and that has been fine but my snapshots are not as well filed as they should be and that has me feeling that 3 screens, 2 machines but only one aging brain is losing contact with reality if you can describe this testing as reality!!
The issue that is puzzling me is
The problem definitely exists and appears to be associated with ‘1 - Portrait - Standard’ and the ‘Rendering’ of ‘DxO Portrait’ that results from using that DxO supplied, “locked” preset in the move from PL5 to PL6 with a PL5 DOP.
But
I believe I have seen anomalies with other DxO presets?
If I apply the preset to some of my own images in PL5, in order to carry them to PL6 I do not get the ‘DxO Portrait’ ‘Rendering’ I get my camera rendering and things go as they should! Hence, the hacking with the DOP, which worked but the differences were not as obvious as with the picture provided by @Hugo so I reverted to those images rather than using my own!
Applying ‘1 - Portrait - Standard’ to my own image
@Hugo Please raise this fault via the DxO support channels because raising it here gets you opinion, advice and “advice” and confirmation but I am simply not sure anyone in DxO is monitoring the forum anymore, let alone actually preparing to react!?
During Beta testing, the issue that making any change to existing customer presets was to be avoided as much as possible seemed to be accepted by DxO and the ‘Wide Gamut’ feature was made optional but something seems to have slipped through.
Whenever new features are provided, particularly when they involve image editing, it must be possible for the user to continue with the “legacy” features wherever possible until they decide to adopt the “new”, or not, as they choose.
Not that all developers of image editing software even keep the interface the same going from one release to the next!!
This is not a perfectly black image, which means that differences exist… I still needed the >10 stop (roughly 1000x) enhancement to make the differences visible. A difference of 1/1000 cannot be distinguished by an average human eye/brain, that combo is good for about 1/100 only.
Lessons learned
Images that have been migrated from DPL5 to DPL 6 and exported without further adjustments can be identical, except images containing fairly saturated colours that fall between Adobe and DxO Wide gamuts. Hugo’s image has no such colours.
I tried different target profiles in soft proofing and found that AdobeRGB and SP (off) produce identical results, no matter if I set perceptive or relative rendering intent (which might be meant to act on paper simulation only)
Export was done with ICC = “As shot” in all cases
Tested on macOS Monterey 12.6.1 in iMac 2019.
I could also test on a M1 MacBook Air running Ventura, but I don’t feel like it right now.
Having Soft Proofing activated or deactivated makes no difference to the exported result - - the SP setting impacts only what you see on-screen/within-PL … because;
within PL, it determines whether or not the Protect Saturated Colors Algorithm is applied (See more about the PSCA here)
whereas, when Exporting-to-Disk, the PSCA is always applied.
Similarly, the “Intent” setting;
I agree with your suggestion that it relates only to the “Simulate paper & ink” setting
– That is, presumably - - we’ll know for sure “soon” !
– The current UI layout for this setting is confusing (I’m guessing that will change … hopefully !)
Does absolutely nothing in the current version of PLv6 … instead, the concept of “intent” is handled by the Protect Saturated Colors Algorithm (See reference above).
So, the result may have been exported with an AdobeRGB profile (if that was the camera setting).
Colour renderings are intended to change colours and tonality of images. Depending on selected rendering and WCS, images change more or less. This is to be expected.
The issue I have with DPL6 is, that renderings use names as in DPL5, even though they render differently, and I hope that DxO wil come up with respective fixes and communications.
At the time being, we are confronted with new half-baked features in a paid release. Bugs happen, proposing half baked features is a deliberate choice and bad manners imo.
@platypus Please explain the following that from exactly the same starting point (eventually) the same image produces different results when the same DxO supplied preset is applied.
This is not, repeat not, the same issue that @Hugo encountered (although it may be!?) because in his case he was taking a PL5 DOP over into PL6 when he encountered an issue!!
Take a “boring” photo and write to two directories PL5 and PL6
Open PL5 directory image with PL5 and apply ‘1 - Portrait - Standard’ and snapshot and export
Open PL6 directory image with PL6 and do the same as in 2.
Compare the images with whatever tools at your disposal, mostly with eyes!!
Repeat tests because I had become confused after initial PL6 change but before export and opened PL5 directory and discovered the images were not starting from the same point!
The differences are “interesting”, tests with other homegrown presets do not typically cause an issue but this, and possibly other DxO presets are causing images to change dramatically between the two releases, given that they arguably shouldn’t have changed at all.
I don’t necessarily consider that the other changes in DxPL should have caused this but @DxO_Support-Team if you are still alive a response would be nice!!??
PS:- The reason for my multiple attempts was principally because PL5 contained lens fixes and PL6 didn’t!
I now realise that ‘1 - Portrait - Standard’ must be a ‘Partial preset’ and the PL5 starting preset and the PL6 starting preset were not the same, hence they were both set to 5 - No correction for the last round of tests!!
@platypus There are differences between images using home grown presets they are just a bit harder to see - IGNORE wrong preset used on PL6 test, Homegrown 56 - … instead of 55 - …!
Instead of running the test, I had a look at a few of the roughly 200 presets that come with DPL5 and DPL6 respectively. I found presets of the same name that have more or less differences, which might (or might not) explain, why looks will be different in DPL5 and DPL6.
While DPL6 is still incomplete, I’ll refrain from running yet more tests that will show (or not show) differences between the looks. DxO has a hell of a lot of things to iron out and I think we’ve made it clear that some of the unripe bananas are in the colour handling basket.