Strange color in Aperture but not in Lightroom

[kentan]

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Hello. I have just ( one week) at last bought an used M8 and am trying to get the hang of the camera...(having fun..)

I am using Aperture 3.1, but have also tried Lightroom 3.2 for the M8 files. Today I saw something that I hope somebody can help me with (or explain..)

 

I was shooting jpg and raw when I saw that Aperture misinterpeted the files. The dng files have an ugly colourcast. I have only seen this on two pictures but when I import the files into Lightroom they appear ok.

I have also seen that the Lightoom pictures are some pixels bigger than the Aperture pictures? Is that normal?

 

Hope that somebody can explain what happened to my files...

 

I am having fun with the M8. But find it hard to get tack sharp pictures... (not used to rff yet I suppose...)

 

I got hold of an hopefully mint silver M8,

an CV 28/1.9, CV 50/1.5, CV 15/4.5 and an CV 75/2.5

 

Planing to retire my Nikon D200...

 

The files are

jpg exported from Aperture

DNG exported to jpg from Aperture

DNG exported to jpg from Lightroom

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[adan]

Assuming correct white balance (which seems fairly consistent across your shots, so not the main issue):

 

- It probably boils down to Aperture simply using a different profile for your M8 DNG images (as determined by Apple software engineers) than Lightroom does (as determined by Adobe software engineers).

 

Aperture (at its native settings) is simply reproducing reds and yellows with a hue shift towards oranges and greens in interpreting the data of the RAW/DNG files. (and also turning the bluish lamp in the background more magenta - since blue is the color complement of yellow, its hue shift goes more magenta as the yellows go more green)

 

JPEGs made in-camera already have the color determined (profiled) by the in-camera jpeging process - therefore there is nothing for Aperture to interpret. It just takes the colors made in the camera as a given.

 

It is really no different than Fuji Provia looking different from Kodak E100. Different companies having different ideas about what constitutes "correct" color reproduction.

 

The fix - if Aperture allows calibration control, build YOUR OWN profile for your camera(s) by way of photographing a Macbeth ColorChecker color card and using the calibration controls to match the target color values (a process described many times here and elsewhere on the Web.)

 

Here is your "Aperture" version with hues shifted in Photoshop's Hue/Saturation dialogue - i.e. after the fact. It comes closer to the Lightroom and in-camera colors. A better profile will do this for all your images automatically as you view them in Aperture.

 

There are other possible factors - which color space you are using for in-camera jpegs, and which you are using for Aperture or Lightroom processing (LR defaults to ProPhoto color space, I don't know what Aperture uses, in-camera jpegs are sRGB or Adobe 1998.)

 

Put simply, with DNG files you are entering a darkroom, where you have lots of control, but you can't depend as much on automation or default settings. You kinda have to learn how to use the tools and control the process.

 

____

 

Looking at my image repost, I could probably have shifted the hues even further towards pink reds and greeny blue, say -15 or -17. Maybe an artifact of converting from my Adobe 1998 working space to sRGB for web posting.

[adan]

Oh, as to the pixel dimensions - again, that is just a difference in how different software interprets or de-mosaics the pure red, green, and blue checkerboard of the raw file into a full-color picture.

 

Digital pictures do not use every single one of the pixels around the edges, because they are combining data from neighboring pixels, and pixels right on the edge are missing some neighbors (or more accurately, their outer neighbors are black.

 

So the final image is cropped slightly from the total array of pixels to avoid edge artifacts - a safety border. How much it is cropped again is up to the taste and (somewhat) arbitrary decisions of the software engineers, whether Adobe's or Apple's for LR and Aperture - or Leica's and Jenoptik's is setting the size of the in-camera jpegs.

 

See:

 

Color Filter Array: Camera System: Glossary: Learn: Digital Photography Review

Effective Pixels: Camera System: Glossary: Learn: Digital Photography Review

 

The dpreview M9 preview lists the sensor as 18.5 total Mpixels, and 18 effective Mpixels. But even there there is wiggle room. They list a full-sized image as 5212 x 3472 pixels (actually 18.096 Mpixels), but a 5200 x 3468 image would also be "18 Mpixels."

 

My M9 jpegs have 4 more columns of pixels (5216) than my DNGs (5212). Just a difference in how the data is used.

[ho_co]

... I have also seen that the Lightoom pictures are some pixels bigger than the Aperture pictures? ...

 

 

Just curious--what are the pixel dimensions the two converters deliver?

 

 

FYI, DNG Recover Edges will uncover all pixels in a DNG.

 

On the M8 and M9 it's virtually useless because the camera uses all but the very edge pixels. But if you first run the RAW file of some other brands through DNG Converter and then run DNG Recover Edges on the result, you'll pick up a small but sometimes helpful number of edge pixels.

 

For example, from a D200 file:

 

[ATTACH]233436[/ATTACH]

 

 

(For completeness' sake: Since the utility dates from 2005, it works only with the earlier version of DNG, before the standard was rewritten to allow including lens corrections as in Panasonic and Leica compacts in un-demosaicked files. You can use it on those later RWL files if you convert them with Adobe Raw Converter 5.2.)

[kentan]

Thank you for the informative answers... and that my camera is ok...

 

I did get an awful thought that there is something wrong with it.. Just got an M8 last week and thought that I would have to send it in for service..

 

And ... I think I should have a look on my D200 files.. if its any use doing the DNG Recover Edges thing..

 

I sort of like Aperture (having tried both Lightroom and Aperture), and have sort of made up my mind to use Aperture... That probably means that I have to try to make an profile for my camera.... or is it posible to use one from the net?

 

Thank you both

 

Kenneth