Given the number of presets and profiles that PL6 contains (I have FP as well) I am surprised that none of them seem to mimic the colours of the camera-created JPEGs and I have been finding it very difficult to make the ARW files look as good as the JPGs. Does anyone have any advice on this? Using one of the Fuji Velvia profiles gets close, but it is not quite right.
You may say, why bother, and why not use the JPGs? That downloading JPG and ARW would mean that I would have twice as many files to sort through, and in any case I may want to do further processing. Mimicing the camera-created JPGs is to get a good starting point, not the end-point.
The reason I ask this is that PL6 has a profile created specifically for the camera and I would have expected that to be designed to make the file look like one processed with the camera settings.
PS I checked the calibration of my monitor, just in case that wasthe problem though I would expect it to have affected dirrerent files the same way.
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
2
Shouldn´t the goal be to get the most out of your RAW and not just mimic the JPEG you get right out of an A7R 3. I have had many Sony bodies and still own A6300, A7r, A7 III and A7 IV and I have never been satisfied with JPEG-files right out of any of them.
If it is your goal to get the RAW-files look like the JPEG-files you have better using Sonys own Imaging Edge, because that converter is using the camera setting used to produce the camera JPEG-files that are written into the very RAW-files. If you look at the EXIF in EXIF Tools you will see a bunch of variables in EXIF with a “Sony”-prefix. Photolab can´t read these variables just Image Edge can. Maybe time to switch converter if this is an important concern yours.
Maybe this article can explain more in detail how Imaging Edge is working.
Thanks for the suggestion, though the answer is that I like PL6, and I like having all my files, from different cameras, in a single app. It is not that my goal is to make them look like the camera-created JPGs but that I was finding it hard to get colours I was happy with, and so I decided to take a look at the JPGs and to my surprise they looked different from anything I had managed to create with PL6.
I’m mostly an Olympus photographer. PhotoLAB RAW color renderings and presets CANNOT duplicate the Olympus JPEG color renderings. Some colors come close, such as sky - but not foliage. It doesn’t surprise me if PL likewise can’t duplicate Sony A7R3 out-of-camera colors. You will have to find your own recipe of presets/renderings/HSL/contrast adjustments to come close. You can try an Adobe DCP profile from ACR - but no guarantee that this will give you a closer match than PL’s own generic renderings:
The problem is that each manufacturer provides 5 to 8 different profiles for in camera JPGs. And each of them may vary from one camera to another from the same manufacturer. So, the PL profile named “generic rendering - DXO camera profile xxx” is just the “standard” profile for each camera… which is a basis if you like that rendering.
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
7
@rsp
There is nothing that stops you to select one single DXO Camera Profile in PL 6 and use it for all your cameras. There is no practical problem for me to use a Canon R5-profile or5D MK IV to all my Sony-images if I so prefer.
The only thing a camera profile does really is to give you a color bias and a certain starting point for further development.
I don´t agree at all that there should be any problem to get more out of a Sony ARW in PL 6 than what the camera offers in the JPEG-files right out of my cameras. I always think I can do it better and with very little efforts really and that the JPEG-files really rarely lives up to my personal demands.
Considering the restrictions for lens modules, camera bodies, supported combinations and other DxO compatibility requirements to meet before you can even open an image this must be a bug
The next DxO dev that this way wanders will add it to the backlog to fix - which means you can carry on enjoying this rare flexibility for many Pholabs yet
Thanks for all this advice. I think I had misunderstood what the camera profiles were intended to do. I shall do some more experimenting to find settings that seem to work and then save them as a preset.
If I remember correctly, it is DxO’s ambition to match the default jpg rendition that is setup in the factory state of the camera. I think I read somewhere, that they are calibrating each camera with a studio scene with two different white balances. Their neutral preset is supposed to achieve the same colors regardless of the camera, and their camera preset is supposed to match the default jpg output. In theory, you could make any camera raw look like the default jpg of any other camera in the database.
In practice however some colors are quite off, I noticed the same problem with Nikon cameras. I’d also really like a more closer rendition to the jpg as a starting point. I guess that the studio scene does not entail enough color shades to properly recreate the correct profile. The camera manufacturers have invested a lot of research to refine their profiles. Also lightroom and capture one are not achieving this, they can be better on some cameras and worse on others.
As already suggested, if no profile works well, you can also import external DCP profiles, e.g. the ones used in Lightroom, but also profiles that you have created yourself.
There are also open source scripts that try to create profiles from a database of jpg-raw pairs. I will add some link if I remember one…
I think that you can try to deactivate the color rendering module and see if that to your liking. You can also use default profile that should give you good rendering, if you are not happy with that, I think Adobe offers attempt to match the colors of your in camera JPEG’s and profiles. What you can do is load ICC and DCP profiles, so you can actually load about external profiles. and If you hae Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom or DNG converter installed on your hard drive, there is a place where they keep all the camera profiles. You can tell DXO PhotoLab to load one of these profiles and colors should look the same as in Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom and probably the same as your JPEG’s out of Camera. Last time I checked Adobe offers all the same profile as Sony does. So if you shoot with Standard or landscape or portrait of neutral profiles with your Sony, the rendering will be differnt. Adobe offers profiles to match those same in camera profiles and now DXO offers you ability to load about those profiles from Adobe. Actually if you know how you can make a custom DPC or ICC profile and load that in DXO as well.
I understand the reason you say you want to match the JEPG look, but personally and as some have suggested it seems strange, considering you have all this power of RAW processing. But to each their own I guess. Anyway I hope this helps.
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
12
I can´t remember when I left everything “standard” without any personal tweeks in my cameras when it comes to the JPEG-renditions in the cameras. I can understand if that is the DXO stance, what else could it be but you will still end up wanting something else really. So I don´t think the Camera profile itself and the DXO Standard preset necessarily will make you happy.
… and if that should be sufficient to lock every new camera out, that hasn´t got a ready made DXO-profile present puzzles me really. I have never understood what they are saving me from - and I know I´m not entirely solo in having these thoughts.
no, DxO PL6 does not implement application of DCP profiles exactly as Adobe does (and as DNG standard says to apply them) … so colors will not look the same, they might look similar enough
How so? As far as I can see they look virtually identical. If there are differences that you see, I imagine they come from other tonal settings. And if you are right and there is some difference in rendering its very minimal, not very noticeable.
Edit: I notice a slight difference, but I left the DeepPrimeXD on by default, so probably that is the reason. Even with that, the difference is relatively minor, almost unnoticeable and I would argue negligible, unless you are comparing them side by side. Without the reference, they are virtually the same in the eyes of people.
Here is screenshot from Adobe and DXO for comparison.
Don’t get too opposed with numbers, because there are way too many factors, it just makes things worse. And besides there is a sweet spot between people who see everything in numbers and people who see colors. Yes we can’t trust our eyes when it comes to color, hence we need color management, but we also don’t want to trust engineers and math geeks when it comes to judging appearance of something. They only see numbers, where they should see colors. Hence there is a happy medium in between.
Developers and engineers should deliver what artists want, not the other way around. But we need both.
Geoff Boyle the DP makes some good points. DP is for Director of Photography. (Cinematographer)
Colour Representation || Geoff Boyle || Spotlight
Does Resolution Matter? || Geoff Boyle || Spotlight
