# Unfixable reds...



## Dick (Jul 12, 2015)

I have really struggled with reds (and magenta) lately and I'm starting to think that a 5D3 cannot be used to take pictures of red things.

Here is one example - this is what the raw looks like when opened up in Aperture:






Played with the sliders and was not able to fix the photo (the color is off and all kinds of weird details have emerged):






Sorry for the different framings. Used print screen.

In many cases I have failed to fix the reds and BW has been the only option left. Sometimes it is possible to get something decent out, but the same settings do not fix the next photo. Having kids running around with red clothes on is something that really makes me angry now, because I know already before I pick up the piece of trash Canon, that the photos will suck. 

What's the cure?
Has anyone found a solution to this? If it starts with N, then I guess I will have to look into that stuff next. 
Is there something specific that could be done in PP? I have tried pretty much everything I have been able to think of even with the help of Google.


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## StudentOfLight (Jul 12, 2015)

Do you have a colorchecker passport?
What light light source were you shooting under, i.e. is it a full spectrum light? 
What does the red channel's histogram look like on your computer when you open the file?
Does your screen have the gamut to display the range of saturation that was captured?
Is your monitor calibrated?


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## Dick (Jul 12, 2015)

StudentOfLight said:


> Do you have a colorchecker passport?
> What light light source were you shooting under, i.e. is it a full spectrum light?
> What does the red channel's histogram look like on your computer when you open the file?
> Does your screen have the gamut to display the range of saturation that was captured?
> Is your monitor calibrated?



Screen is calibrated and fine. Natural light. Will have to dig out a histogram tomorrow. 

This is just one example. The worst case would be one where two (or more) persons have red clothes that are supposed to look slightly different.


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## rs (Jul 12, 2015)

StudentOfLight said:


> Do you have a colorchecker passport?
> What light light source were you shooting under, i.e. is it a full spectrum light?
> What does the red channel's histogram look like on your computer when you open the file?
> Does your screen have the gamut to display the range of saturation that was captured?
> Is your monitor calibrated?


+1

It looks like the red channel has clipped. Also, if the same subject is shot darker, do you get better results using DPP?


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## Dick (Jul 12, 2015)

rs said:


> StudentOfLight said:
> 
> 
> > Do you have a colorchecker passport?
> ...



If the red channel gets clipped with somewhat correct exposure of a photo, I don't know what to do anymore. I have tons of photos with this kind of issues. The photos look fine except for the red bits. 

Haven't tried DPP. Maybe I should, but then again I don't really want additional work flow steps i.e. using multiple apps for each photo.


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## rado98 (Jul 13, 2015)

Not sure if it is the same in Aperture, but I had an issue with purples in Lightroom, they were just never right. I solved the problem by using the Faithful camera calibration profile instead of the default Adobe standard, man that made a massive difference.


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## tpatana (Jul 13, 2015)

Red is often tough for Canons. Someone told me it's "feature" on the Canon sensors.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jul 13, 2015)

I've found my 5D MK III to be excellent for reds, better than previous models with the exception of the original 5D.

There is little we can do to advise you from a screen shot of a monitor that might be part of the issue. 

Can you post a link to a raw file?

Reds can be over exposed, if you use the rgb histogram in your camera to set the exposure manually, you will be able to set exposure to avoid overexposure of any single color.

Its also possible that the camera is faulty, there are internal adjustments for the color amplifiers that only Canon can adjust. I have seen posts from those who were able to get the issues repaired.

Sometimes, users set their camera to Adobe RGB and end up with out of gamut colors because their monitor cannot display them, or their printer print them. Blues and purples are normally the issues for that situation.

I have never had a reds issue with either of my 5D MK III's, so something is going on that does not sound normal.


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## Dick (Jul 13, 2015)

Don't feel like posting the raw since there are people in the photo. I could maybe do some test shots later on when I find the time and then I could post the raw(s).

This is from the image originally posted:


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## rs (Jul 13, 2015)

Dick said:


> rs said:
> 
> 
> > StudentOfLight said:
> ...


The reason for suggesting DPP is being Canon software, it's more likely to be fine tuned for the CFA in the camera than any third party raw converter. Plus you gain all the camera profiles such as faithful. It's worth a shot (it is free after all), and if it doesn't improve the situation, don't include it in your workflow.


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## MrFotoFool (Jul 29, 2015)

I have been using 5d3 for a year and a half (and 5d2 before that) and never had any problems. Sounds really strange that it would not record them properly in camera or on screen.

Now if you have trouble printing reds, that is understandable. I work at a photo lab (over 20 years) and photo paper has always had trouble reproducing detail in reds. For example a red rose will be a solid blob with no petal separation whereas a yellow or white or blue flower the petals will be finely detailed.

Is it only with fabrics like your sample photo, or is it other objects like red cars? If it is fabrics that is a well known problem especially with synthetic materials.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jul 29, 2015)

Here is a bright red dress taken earlier this year at a high school play. ISO 1000 1/160 sec f/3.2 with my 5D MK III and 24-70mm L II.

There were lots of reds of every hue, but never a issue.


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## Dick (Jul 29, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Here is a bright red dress taken earlier this year at a high school play. ISO 1000 1/160 sec f/3.2 with my 5D MK III and 24-70mm L II.
> 
> There were lots of reds of every hue, but never a issue.



Those reds are blown at my end (traveling with a calibrated MacBook Air). Maybe it is the great Apple screen then that is not good enough. On iPhone 6 they also look blown.

Then I come to my next question: People look at photos on screens these days, so should the reds be desaturated so that they don't look blown on most displays?


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## distant.star (Jul 30, 2015)

.
If you plow through this, it will give you what you need...

"Tips and Strategies for Mastering Color in Photoshop with John Paul Caponigro"

https://youtu.be/as78a4oIhFc


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## Bungle (Nov 20, 2015)

I too have problems with reds with 5diii. Using lightroom on Spyder calibrated monitor. 
Question for you, do you get terrible vertical banding noise if you adjust the exposure?


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## privatebydesign (Nov 20, 2015)

Bungle said:


> I too have problems with reds with 5diii. Using lightroom on Spyder calibrated monitor.
> Question for you, do you get terrible vertical banding noise if you adjust the exposure?



You need to calibrate your camera with a custom profile.

The image below is seven versions of the same file all with the same white balance, just different camera profiles. These are the equivalent of Picture Styles for jpegs but are actual profiles applied to the same RAW file. 

Only one is 'correct', and you can only get that by using a custom camera profile. Making a custom camera profile takes a minute or two.

Look at it like this, what is the point of only calibrating one part of your workflow?


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## rfdesigner (Nov 20, 2015)

privatebydesign said:


> Look at it like this, what is the point of only calibrating one part of your workflow?



Because you can choose what colours you want in post processing, then your prints must match, other than some portraits how many images we see are a true and accurate representation of what is there?.. very few. Most will have a different colour balance & more saturated colours as a minimum.

I'm not saying correcting for the colour variation of your camera vs the average isn't a good move, just that adjusting for white balance in post pretty covers a large part (but not all) of what you gain from calibration.

Also remember the big gain in printer and screen calibration is getting the individual colours linear, if all screens wer linear then adjusting contrast, saturation and brightness would be enough. Camera sensors are inherantly linear.

PS I have tried calibrating my camera.. it can be worth doing.. just it doesn't give the huge benefit you get from calibrating screens and printers.


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## chauncey (Nov 20, 2015)

Unfixable reds...why do you need to fix them? It seems to me that your difficulty is improper exposure.
You have a shown histogram capabilities while in live view...use it...no more blown colors...ever.

I starting shooting in live view-manual mode using the displayed histogram to expose to the right. 
One must remember that the LV image is a jpeg representation of the image and you must neutralize your 
in-camera picture styles for that histogram to be more accurate representation of the RAW image.

Trying to achieve accurate colors without using that passbook is an exercise in futility.


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## AUGS (Nov 20, 2015)

Dick said:


> I have really struggled with reds (and magenta) lately and I'm starting to think that a 5D3 cannot be used to take pictures of red things.



One thing you may want to check is the colorspace you have set on the camera now.
Just wondering if you previously used sRGB and now the camera is set to AdobeRGB. They will display differently depending on your monitor settings. Typically the AdobeRGB will look washed out.


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## Khristo (Nov 20, 2015)

Can someone explain why it should be necessary to create a custom colour profile in Lightroom? 

As I understand it, when i import a raw from my 5D3 into Lightroom, the software recognises it as a 5D3 file and applies Adobe's standard profile for the 5D3 (unless I have set something else). If that is correct, I'd hope that Adobe's profile has a little more work behind it than I'm likely to get out of my own effort, and even then, a profile created with a Colorchecker is going to be influenced ("coloured") by x-rite as well to some extent(?).

I get that if I am trying to achieve maximum colour accuracy in a specific shot and am concerned about the colour balance of the incident light lighting the scene, then a custom profile for that scene/incident light should theoretically help. But generally speaking, is my 5D3 so different to other 5D3s that a general custom profile for my 5D3 is going to be 'better' that the standard Adobe 5D3 profile?

(I do have a Colorchecker, so I'm not trying to construct an argument not to invest in one!)


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## dak723 (Nov 20, 2015)

tpatana said:


> Red is often tough for Canons. Someone told me it's "feature" on the Canon sensors.



Nothing to do with Canon in my experience. Reds have been difficult to capture with the Olympus cameras I have had, too. Plus, red was difficult to capture with print film as well. Cameras have never replicated color exactly. Reds just seem to be a bit more problematic, in my experience.


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## privatebydesign (Nov 21, 2015)

Khristo said:


> Can someone explain why it should be necessary to create a custom colour profile in Lightroom?
> 
> As I understand it, when i import a raw from my 5D3 into Lightroom, the software recognises it as a 5D3 file and applies Adobe's standard profile for the 5D3 (unless I have set something else). If that is correct, I'd hope that Adobe's profile has a little more work behind it than I'm likely to get out of my own effort, and even then, a profile created with a Colorchecker is going to be influenced ("coloured") by x-rite as well to some extent(?).
> 
> ...



The illuminant. The idea of profiling is that you make a custom profile for difficult lighting and or colourful subjects. I have custom camera profiles for each body and each lens with my studio lights with the individual modifiers and also my 600-EX-RT's. The point is different light sources reflect off the subject differently and so the colours appear different under each light source.

The colour patches on the ColorChecker are an industry standard and very carefully printed, that is why they are so expensive, so there shouldn't be a variation of any magnitude to the information the profiling software gets. Also most of the colourchecker style charts have a 'use by' date, they will degrade over time with exposure to UV light.

Obviously Adobe can't profile for the specific light sources you take your images under and the generic profiles are not that good, I don't know why.


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## Khristo (Nov 21, 2015)

OK. That meets with my understanding that it's about the profile of the light rather than any variability within the specific camera or camera model. I thought I must have been missing something from the way people talk about "calibrating the camera" as if it's like calibrating a monitor. In fact it's calibrating the processing software for the specific lighting and camera/lens so the software renders the original scene colours "correctly" based on the Colorchecker chips - except of course where you want the specific lighting characteristics to show (e.g sunsets, golden hour).

Having said that though, I guess there is an argument that if you calibrate for "normal" light, and then take an image in different lighting, the effect of that different lighting might be considered correct depending on what you are trying to achieve in relation to the corrections the observer's eye/brain makes. That also makes x-rite's dual illuminant calibration a little more sensible as a one-size-fits-all solution.


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## privatebydesign (Nov 21, 2015)

Khristo said:


> OK. That meets with my understanding that it's about the profile of the light rather than any variability within the specific camera or camera model. I thought I must have been missing something from the way people talk about "calibrating the camera" as if it's like calibrating a monitor. In fact it's calibrating the processing software for the specific lighting and camera/lens so the software renders the original scene colours "correctly" based on the Colorchecker chips - except of course where you want the specific lighting characteristics to show (e.g sunsets, golden hour).
> 
> Having said that though, I guess there is an argument that if you calibrate for "normal" light, and then take an image in different lighting, the effect of that different lighting might be considered correct depending on what you are trying to achieve in relation to the corrections the observer's eye/brain makes. That also makes x-rite's dual illuminant calibration a little more sensible as a one-size-fits-all solution.



That is a very good way of wording it!

As for the second paragraph, the eye/brain is incredibly easy to fool and a very unreliable judge of 'correct' colours. My way of thinking most of the time, get it as close as correct initially via profiles etc, then change colours to taste to get the mood or feeling you either want or believed was there.

Output colour is always subjective, but these threads normally start with somebody saying they can't get good/accurate reds, they can, they just have to know how to do it and camera profiles go a long way towards doing that.


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## KeithBreazeal (Nov 21, 2015)

I haven't seen any red issues with the 5D III



Two Hot Babes and a Ferrari ©Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal, on Flickr

I use the Color Checker for tricky lighting, shade, etc.



Color Checker holder © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal, on Flickr


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## Aglet (Nov 21, 2015)

That coat looks almost fluorescent, which can be an issue too by being redder than normal, especially if you're at a higher ISO (might be the case here?) and you could lose more red tonality if you're shooting under FL lighting with a poor CRI so red gain is pumped and red DR is even worse than usual.
Other than that, I've only had some difficulty with keeping reds from clipping in some instances with peculiar flowers that needed to be exposed with -2EV or more compensation at times to keep red from clipping in direct sunlight.


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## Bungle (Nov 23, 2015)

So I was reading this: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6497352654/get-more-accurate-color-with-camera-calibration-
and this line:
" it doesn't matter which color space - Adobe RGB or sRGB - I select in camera, but I always process the files in AdobeRGB since it gives a wider color gamut. You should use the same color space for both the calibration shot and subsequent images which will use the same profile."
made me realize right away I was in sRGB. I have changed it and we will see where it goes from here. I will also look into the color checker in the future if this doesn't help things but I really think it will. I believe all my cameras except this one are set to adobeRGB and have not had this issue with them.


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## chauncey (Nov 23, 2015)

> Unfixable reds...why do you need to fix them? It seems to me that your difficulty is improper exposure.
> You have a shown histogram capabilities while in live view...use it...no more blown colors...ever.
> 
> I starting shooting in live view-manual mode using the displayed histogram to expose to the right.
> ...



Dah...


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## privatebydesign (Nov 23, 2015)

Bungle said:


> So I was reading this: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6497352654/get-more-accurate-color-with-camera-calibration-
> and this line:
> " it doesn't matter which color space - Adobe RGB or sRGB - I select in camera, but I always process the files in AdobeRGB since it gives a wider color gamut. You should use the same color space for both the calibration shot and subsequent images which will use the same profile."
> made me realize right away I was in sRGB. I have changed it and we will see where it goes from here. I will also look into the color checker in the future if this doesn't help things but I really think it will. I believe all my cameras except this one are set to adobeRGB and have not had this issue with them.



If you shoot in RAW and process in Lightroom or Photoshop, in camera selection of sRGB and Adobe RGB are entirely irrelevant, neither are used at any stage unless you choose for them to be, and why would you!


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 23, 2015)

Bungle said:


> So I was reading this: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6497352654/get-more-accurate-color-with-camera-calibration-
> and this line:
> " it doesn't matter which color space - Adobe RGB or sRGB - I select in camera, but I always process the files in AdobeRGB since it gives a wider color gamut. You should use the same color space for both the calibration shot and subsequent images which will use the same profile."
> made me realize right away I was in sRGB. I have changed it and we will see where it goes from here. I will also look into the color checker in the future if this doesn't help things but I really think it will. I believe all my cameras except this one are set to adobeRGB and have not had this issue with them.



The author of that article is confusing you a bit. He says he processes files in Adobe Lightroom using Adobe RGB, when, in fact, Adobe Lightroom uses the Profoto Gamut in the develop module which is wider than Adobe RGB Adobe RGB is used to display colors in some of the modules but not the develop module where the editing of raw images is done. It can be confusing.

From Adobe:

How Lightroom manages color 



Lightroom primarily uses the Adobe RGB color space to display colors. The Adobe RGB gamut includes most of the colors that digital cameras can capture as well as some printable colors (cyans and blues, in particular) that can’t be defined using the smaller, web-friendly sRGB color space.



Lightroom uses Adobe RGB:
•for previews in the Library, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web modules
•when printing in Draft mode
•in exported PDF slideshows and uploaded web galleries
•when you send a book to Blurb.com (If you export books as PDF or JPEG from the Book module, however, you can choose sRGB or a different color profile.)
•for photos uploaded to Facebook and other photo-sharing sites using the Publish Services panel

*In the Develop module, by default Lightroom displays previews using the ProPhoto RGB color space. ProPhoto RGB contains all of the colors that digital cameras can capture, making it an excellent choice for editing images. *In the Develop module, you can also use the Soft Proofing panel to preview how color looks under various color-managed printing conditions.


http://www.fotospeed.com/pdf/Articles/Adobe%20RGB%20(1998)%20vs%20ProPhoto%20RGB.pdf


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## privatebydesign (Nov 23, 2015)

More reading for those thrufully interested in colour, spaces, gamuts and the like.

http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/imprint_downloads/peachpit/peachpit/lightroom4/pdf_files/LightroomRGB_Space.pdf

https://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/color_managed_raw_workflow.pdf

For those who know, check the authors of the second link.


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## Maiaibing (Dec 4, 2015)

KeithBreazeal said:


> I use the Color Checker for tricky lighting, shade, etc.



A color checker ends all the pain and discussion if color accuracy is important. Just do it!

Due to the awful LR profile for the 5DSR I have built an ever expanding catalog of profiles for various scenes and light conditions including sun height.

Absolutely overkill for most people. But since I expect to be using this camera for the next 5 years or so - and I often take pictures under tricky outdoor light conditions - its worth the effort for me.

Most people will probably get along fine with 3-4 standard profiles and just add an additional one occasionally if they encounter a really tricky light condition (shooting in the forest etc.).

Just added an example of how a color checker can make your life easier. Top original Adobe Standard w/no corrections - below with my own profile w/no corrections. One click I have the deep shadows back, killed the overpowering white and got real red in the shinning sun:


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## sunnyVan (Dec 4, 2015)

It seems that people just want to snap a picture with a great camera and expect it to produce exactly what their vision was in mind. It doesn't happen like that. No matter how good the camera is, it can only guess what the photographer is shooting. It's not going to know how saturated you want your red to look. Post processing is as important as shooting skill. Jumping ship to nikon doesn't make you a better photographer if you don't know how to post process a picture to match what you had in mind. However, you're free to do so.


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