Getting “It” Right For Better Photographs: The original image

What do I mean by getting it right in the original image?

Back in the days of film you had to pay attention to lighting and the type of film you were using. Typically you’d use daylight balanced film. If you took pictures indoors with this film under tungsten light you’d get yellow images because of a light balance mismatch.

With digital imaging, your camera usually takes care of color balance for you. The only time you really run into trouble is if you program your camera to use a particular color balance and shoot in the jpeg format. That’s only one of the reasons I always shoot in the raw digital format! But, the multitude of reasons for this preference is really another topic - maybe we’ll talk about that later.

With most digital cameras you can set the color balance to something like “Natural”, “Portrait” or another color setting. This is okay if you shoot jpeg; but, if you shoot raw you might have noticed that the camera settings never get into Photoshop (or any other bitmap graphics editing program). That’s because they only affect jpeg images (as does the histogram on your camera display).

“But,” you say, “I want to shoot raw. And, I like those jpeg color settings and want to keep them!

Okay, you can do that (Adobe to the rescue!). Adobe has a free application called “Adobe DNG Profile Editor” that not only applies approximations of the built-in camera profiles, but also allows you to actually profile your camera using a widely available Macbeth ColorChecker card.
If you’re using Photoshop CS3 or CS4 or Lightroom 2, this capability is included. You might have to install the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw to access it. CS3 uses Camera Raw 4.5, CS4 uses Camera Raw 5.x. The DNG Profile Editor is available at the adobe.com web site.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles - Go to Downloads_and_Installation

What if you don’t have Photoshop CS3 or CS4, Lightroom 2 or you’re using another program that doesn’t recognize the latest Camera Raw? Well, all you have to do is to convert your camera’s raw files to the Adobe DNG format. DNG is a universal digital negative format developed by Adobe that, among other things, allows backward compatibility of new digital camera raw files with older versions of editing software. If you need to do this and your editing program doesn’t have the capability to convert, simply download the free Adobe DNG Converter and use that.

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/
Click on DNG Converter 5.5 update.

In Photoshop CS3 & CS4, the camera color calibration function can be found in the Camera Calibration Tab in Camera Raw. It’s under Camera Profile.

In Lightroom 2, it’s under Camera Calibration in the Develop Module. If you’re using Lr2, you can set up a preset so that you can apply a camera profile when you import your images.

One other thing you might want to do... this will make life a bit easier for you whether you do the calibration thing or not. Include a digital gray card in one of your images! Then you can use the white balance function to neutralize the colors of your image, no matter which program you’re using to edit your images.

Next time we’ll talk about calibrating and profiling your monitor. You do want to be sure that the colors you’re seeing represent the colors you think you’re seeing... don’t you?

You can add your comments and questions. I’ll be happy to answer them. The idea is to just enjoy and learn.

This and similar blogs may be found at thewhole9.com.

Chuck Behrman, a Los Angeles based advertising and fine art photographer, has been holding workshops in digital photography, Photoshop and Lightroom in the Los Angeles and Central Coast areas since 2004. You can see his images and learn about all his services at http://www.chbphoto.com

Update For Using ColorMunki With Snow Leopard

The other day, I posted some information about color management and Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6.1).

Since then, I did some printing on an Epson 9800 using the ConeColor inkset. I tried using my old profiles, created with the ColorMunki in the Leopard OS (10.5). They were "not optimum" - in other words, they were pretty bad. The prints I had previously made in Leoard were perfect.

So, I followed XRite's suggestion and re-profiled the paper using the Version 2 ICC profile (it's a setting in the ColorMunki printer profiling preferences - I described the process in the last post). The default for the ColorMunki (and the I-1) is Version 4. According to XRite, the Snow Leopard OS cannot currently recognize the Version 4 profiles.

Bottom line -- everything is back to normal -- I'm getting beautiful prints using the Version 2 ICC profiles generated by the ColorMunki and using Snow Leopard.

When will Apple fix Snow Leopard? I don't know... but I'll let you know when I do.

Updates To ColorMunki, I1 & HueyPro for Snow Leopard

Well, I've finally got something meaningful to say for the blog... XRite/Pantone has updated the color management software for their monitor and printer profiling devices to be compatible with the new Mac Snow Leopard OS (10.6).

The new software can be found at the following site:

Snow Leopard Product Support Matrix

It's easy to install and from what I can tell works fine.

There is one thing you need to know - Mac 10.6 and 10.6.1 are still having problems with the new Type 4 ICC profiles. According to XRite, Apple is aware of the problem and will fix it with a software update to Snow Leopard.

In the mean time this is what you should do if you are using Snow Leopard:

ColorMunki - Start the process of "Profile My Display..... Go to Profile My Display & Projector > Preferences. Change BOTH "ICC Profile Version" settings to "Version 2" for Display & Printer.

That's it.

Now you can profile your display. Be aware that your existing ColorMunki printer profiles ar Type 4 and should be regenerated as Type 2. I haven't done that yet for my printer profiles so I can't say what the differences are, if any.

I'll let you know as soon as I can create and test the new profiles.

I1 - According to XRite, "This release of Eye-One Match is currently not able to create correct large ICC4 monitor profiles on the new Intel Macs. It is recommended to create only default monitor profiles on the Intel Macs until a new version of Eye-One Match will be released."


HueyPro - Just use the new software.

Getting “It” Right for Better Photographs

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to attempt to cut through the techno-fog that surrounds it and, to some extent, how you can do it quickly and economically.

I’ll show you about how to do it with your camera, do it with your monitor, and how to do it with your printer.

What is this elusive “it” that I am referring to? “It” is called color management. Without this kind of information, you’ll have an almost impossible time getting repeatable, correct colors from your images.

“But, wait!” you say… “I get really nice prints on my printer or from my on line lab.” Yup, you probably do get nice, vivid colors. Are the colors in your prints the same as those on your monitor? Are they the right colors? And… do you want to get the right colors… consistently?

If not, then like they say, “read no further.” This column is for those of you who truly care about the quality of your images and the fidelity of their reproduction, whether you print your images yourself or have someone else print them for you.

If you do decide to “read further” you will learn how to maintain a straightforward control over your entire process, from your camera through your computer to your printer.

In up-coming blog installments, we’ll look at topics like:

• The original image
• Calibrating & profiling the monitor
• Photoshop color space
• Profiling your printer
• Printing to your printer
• Sending an image to a photo lab
• Uploading to a website
• Lighting your images for display

I really hope you’ll come back and learn.

This blog entry is also being posted at a blog I'm contributing to at www.thewhole9.com.

You can add your comments and questions, too. I’ll be happy to answer them. The idea is to just enjoy and learn.