dealing with magenta splotches

[jbl]

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I've read a few threads here on dealing with the magenta splotches that you get on people's skin and lips (lips in particular) on the M9. I haven't read anything definitive on how to deal with it. It seems to happen particularly indoor under mixed lighting, but I've seen it indoor under daylight lighting as well. The nearest thing I can approximate it to is that women look like they're wearing lipstick.

 

How do people deal with this? I've fully calibrated my M9 with a color checker shot and an ACR camera profile, but that doesn't seem to help.

 

Thanks,

 

-jbl

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[Dougg]

I think it's infrared contamination. While the M9 blocks more infrared than a "naked" M8, it still lets more through than an M8 with UV/IR Cut filter. So I use a Cut filter on the M9 especially in high-IR situations. You might try it and see...

[jbl]

I hadn't thought it could be IR contamination, but it could be. It's definitely worse under indoor lighting at night. Any reason I tend to notice it on people's lips and not on black clothing?

 

-jbl

[jaapv]

Yes- not all blacks are affected and basically Caucasian skin tones are rather critical.

Using a B&W 486 filter may help.

[tobey bilek]

Had 486 filter on all lenses for the M8. Since getting the M9 and now having both, I just leave them on. I have had no problems.

 

If I did back lighted subjects or with light sources in or near the frame, take them off.

 

The new M will have better ir filtration than even the M9.

[jbl]

Tobey, do you take them off for back-lit subjects due to concerns about flare or is there some other reason?

 

-jbl

[hoppyman]

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There are some interesting comments here. I had seen this very occasionally but could not come up with a cause. A few 'magenta' eyebrows and lips and most notably a set where the model ended up with odd purple fingers.

A very knowledgeable engineer at Adobe looked at samples from me to see if it could be fixed by a profile change. While it can be rendered as a neutral grey that is not a cure.

The IR theory seems logical. I shall give that filter a try.

[Jamie Roberts]

I've read a few threads here on dealing with the magenta splotches that you get on people's skin and lips (lips in particular) on the M9. I haven't read anything definitive on how to deal with it. It seems to happen particularly indoor under mixed lighting, but I've seen it indoor under daylight lighting as well. The nearest thing I can approximate it to is that women look like they're wearing lipstick.

 

How do people deal with this? I've fully calibrated my M9 with a color checker shot and an ACR camera profile, but that doesn't seem to help.

 

Thanks,

 

-jbl

 

If you don't want to filter (which I don't think is really the problem anyway), the other, easier answer is not to use ACR / LR, which until V4, was quite horrible in the reds / magentas with any digital M (M8 or M9), the DMR or the S2.

 

There is absolutely no "magenta splotches" in an M9 raw file (or any of the other Leica cameras, with the exception of the M8 unfiltered) interpreted by C1.

[hoppyman]

I never got used to the interface with Capture One after getting it with my M8 some years ago. I have not tried the last several versions.

 

I think that it is a mistake to arrive at a general conclusion based on only descriptions in this thread. I understand the comments regarding rendering of reds with some versions of LR. In my user experience the current version and processing engine works very well for M9 files and of course there is a great deal more to Lightroom than the Raw processing. Personal preferences and familiarity naturally influence which Raw converters individuals prefer.

 

I can say that an example I mentioned and an accompanying reference frame of the identical setup with White Balance and Color checker targets included was sent to Adobe, Leica Camera and Sandy McGuffog of this forum. Leica Camera's engineers never replied on that occasion.

 

Adobe provided me with an improved custom profile and commented that the affected areas in my shot were actually pretty neutral. The effect was still there with the custom profile applied albeit not seen any longer as magenta tinted.

When the profile has been carefully addressed by one of the guys who wrote the Raw Converter you know that you are getting the best information.

 

Sandy put considerable effort into trying to profile this out for me too and noted that the effect existed with Capture One and whichever other Raw converters he tried with it as well.

 

For personal perspective I have noticed this odd issue in around six frames of some thousands that I have shot with my M9. I don't claim to know the root cause by any means . It seems worthwhile to experiment with the IR filter.

It is confirmed that IR is not entirely removed in the M9. Nor is that unique to that camera.

[jbl]

For the IR filter, Leica's docs say that they can safely be used at 35mm and longer. Is that your experience?

 

-jbl

[Dan States]

Forgive me if you have already tried this, but there may be another cause/solution to your problem.

 

If you are using Lightroom I suggest you try adjusting the color rendition in the HSL slider box. You may find that while it appears that magenta is your issue, it's actually the rendering of red. (typically the red channel has the most impact on caucasian skin tones).

 

In the "Hue" function try sliding the red channel to the right, giving red a slightly less "magenta" hue. I don't think IR is you issue as much as Leica's chosen color profiles.

 

Best wishes

Dan

[Paul J]

I find Lightroom 4 colour nose to be exceptionally effective. You can put it up full, as far as it goes and there is next to no image degradation. It quells the good majority of the M9 colour noise issues. My workflow uses a bunch of raw converters for different reasons. Lightroom 4 is something I often run a pass of for this reason.

[k-hawinkler]

I find Lightroom 4 colour nose to be exceptionally effective. You can put it up full, as far as it goes and there is next to no image degradation. It quells the good majority of the M9 colour noise issues. My workflow uses a bunch of raw converters for different reasons. Lightroom 4 is something I often run a pass of for this reason.

 

 

Hi Paul,

 

Which other raw converters do you use or recommend?

Thanks.

[Paul J]

Hi Paul,

 

Which other raw converters do you use or recommend?

Thanks.

 

A bit of a mix for different things. For my personal work I use Lightroom. Straightforward, easy to use and quick. C1 you can do the same things but it's more fussy and complicated. Lightroom is ideal for anything you want to keep a catalogue for. My commercial work though each job gets its own folder and catalogue or group of catalogues. Sometimes if I just can't get it right I will start from scratch on each image with a different converter (i know which to use as the need calls for it). Needless to say at times I will make 4 or 5 different versions of an image before I give it to a client.

 

Sometimes I do alot in RAW conversion, other times I just get the cleanest base file and then work in photoshop. Just depends on the job, the look, the time I have etc. There's a lot of things you just can't do in any Converter yet so Photoshop is essential.

 

I have a good base profile in Lightroom that I use for all my general personal shots. Also a group catalogue for browsing. I find it relatively a little flat in tone and colour though. You can tweak it but it tends to break up the image somewhat and it sometimes just never looks so good as Aperture base. It's the sort of thing that you don't notice until you put both side by side and see that one looks better than the other. Otherwise, more than acceptable. Lightroom is great for sharpening, some tonal control and curves. Overall I find it the best all round converter, particularly when you want to keep a catalogue, which I do for all my personal work. HSL is fantastic and a standout feature. Much easier than the C1 equivilant and the Aperture equivilant isn't so great in terms of image quality. I've also developed a bunch of profiles in Lightroom that I love so I go to those when I want them. Lightroom can do things that others can't. Moire brush in Lightroom is unparalleled. Clarity slider is really very useful too in small measures.

 

Capture One is outstanding. The results you can get from that are amazing in terms of smooth tonality when messing with colour. I find the sharpening too aggressive though. While creating really sharp images it tends to break the image up somewhat leaving a more synthetic look with the M9. It's great if you want to really dig into colour control although I prefer the curves in Lightroom and some of the tonal control. Skin tone control in particular in C1 is un paralleled, IMO.

 

Aperture is really solid for base exposure. It gets great contrast and colour straight away with not much messing about. You have to do less to it which ends up with better IQ in the end. Flip side is it's other features are less effective or less developed. Noise reduction is really quite average. It's light on features and you can't seem to push things as much if you want to. You also don't have as much range or scope for adjustment as C1 or Lightroom. I've found Aperture excellent if you don't push it too much. I don't thikn it deals with big shifts as well as lightroom or even better C1.

 

I have no set workflow path but call on different things as I need them. At the moment though, commercially I'm starting with Aperture as the base. I discovered it was cleaner whilst working with it tethered. It's relatively clunky and annoying to use though. There's a few minor quibbles qwhich for me make it highly annoying to use. Like not being able to adjust curves while the cursor is out of the curves box. It means you have to watch the curve and not the image while adjusting. Annoying.

 

I'm experimenting with C1v7 now and finding it really very good.

 

Needless to say I've not found one converter do everything for all images in all lighting conditions. I try to do as much as I can in RAW but often it's not possible. One of the greatest features of all the converters though is Lightroom with it's noise reduction. For the M9, or at least my copy, it has wobbly colour noise, at times, (talked about in this OP) in some images and Lightroom sorts it out very fast. Also moire brush is really very excellent and super simple to use.

 

Also a final note is that I use Lightroom for editing. It is really user friendly, more than any I have used for culling thousands of shots down to a few.

[Paul J]

Here is an example I found with magenta splotches and Lightroom Colour noise adjusted. It's most obvious when I get areas of uniform tonality and colour, especially in the shadows like this shot which is the top corner in a shot with colorama.

 

I can eliminate it entirely in photoshop with some extra work if it's really noticeable but Lightroom does an excellent job of removing most of the effects.

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[k-hawinkler]

A bit of a mix for different things. For my personal work I use Lightroom. Straightforward, easy to use and quick. C1 you can do the same things but it's more fussy and complicated. Lightroom is ideal for anything you want to keep a catalogue for. My commercial work though each job gets its own folder and catalogue or group of catalogues. Sometimes if I just can't get it right I will start from scratch on each image with a different converter (i know which to use as the need calls for it). Needless to say at times I will make 4 or 5 different versions of an image before I give it to a client.

 

Sometimes I do alot in RAW conversion, other times I just get the cleanest base file and then work in photoshop. Just depends on the job, the look, the time I have etc. There's a lot of things you just can't do in any Converter yet so Photoshop is essential.

 

I have a good base profile in Lightroom that I use for all my general personal shots. Also a group catalogue for browsing. I find it relatively a little flat in tone and colour though. You can tweak it but it tends to break up the image somewhat and it sometimes just never looks so good as Aperture base. It's the sort of thing that you don't notice until you put both side by side and see that one looks better than the other. Otherwise, more than acceptable. Lightroom is great for sharpening, some tonal control and curves. Overall I find it the best all round converter, particularly when you want to keep a catalogue, which I do for all my personal work. HSL is fantastic and a standout feature. Much easier than the C1 equivilant and the Aperture equivilant isn't so great in terms of image quality. I've also developed a bunch of profiles in Lightroom that I love so I go to those when I want them. Lightroom can do things that others can't. Moire brush in Lightroom is unparalleled. Clarity slider is really very useful too in small measures.

 

Capture One is outstanding. The results you can get from that are amazing in terms of smooth tonality when messing with colour. I find the sharpening too aggressive though. While creating really sharp images it tends to break the image up somewhat leaving a more synthetic look with the M9. It's great if you want to really dig into colour control although I prefer the curves in Lightroom and some of the tonal control. Skin tone control in particular in C1 is un paralleled, IMO.

 

Aperture is really solid for base exposure. It gets great contrast and colour straight away with not much messing about. You have to do less to it which ends up with better IQ in the end. Flip side is it's other features are less effective or less developed. Noise reduction is really quite average. It's light on features and you can't seem to push things as much if you want to. You also don't have as much range or scope for adjustment as C1 or Lightroom. I've found Aperture excellent if you don't push it too much. I don't thikn it deals with big shifts as well as lightroom or even better C1.

 

I have no set workflow path but call on different things as I need them. At the moment though, commercially I'm starting with Aperture as the base. I discovered it was cleaner whilst working with it tethered. It's relatively clunky and annoying to use though. There's a few minor quibbles qwhich for me make it highly annoying to use. Like not being able to adjust curves while the cursor is out of the curves box. It means you have to watch the curve and not the image while adjusting. Annoying.

 

I'm experimenting with C1v7 now and finding it really very good.

 

Needless to say I've not found one converter do everything for all images in all lighting conditions. I try to do as much as I can in RAW but often it's not possible. One of the greatest features of all the converters though is Lightroom with it's noise reduction. For the M9, or at least my copy, it has wobbly colour noise, at times, (talked about in this OP) in some images and Lightroom sorts it out very fast. Also moire brush is really very excellent and super simple to use.

 

Also a final note is that I use Lightroom for editing. It is really user friendly, more than any I have used for culling thousands of shots down to a few.

 

 

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks.

 

That's a smart way you handle your commercial work.

It makes it much harder to inadvertently show confidential images to the wrong client.

 

I have used a lot ACR in PS CS6, never had the patience to enter all the right words into LR4.

Also C1v7 seems to give better colors and tones than I could get with CS6.

So, nowadays I start in C1v7 then transfer to CS6 to finish an image.

 

I have Aperture, but never really used it, so I should give it a try.

 

With regards to moire I found CS6 and LR4 inferior to Nikon's Capture NX 2 when dealing with D800E files.

[jbl]

This is really a very helpful thread, thanks so much. I'm beginning to wonder if there are multiple issues that I'm grouping together. The only evidence I have of this is looking at different scenes and looking at what it takes to fix them.

 

I'm attaching two 100% crops from a few photos that have show problems recently. The first, L1000324 is of my niece under horrible indoor lighting, a bunch of rough, overhead halogen lights. She looks like she's wearing lipstick even though she isn't. This doesn't look like a color noise issue to me, I'd buy IR contamination on this one given the nature of the lighting.

 

The second, L1000702, is of my daughter under morning daylight. To me, this looks more like a color noise issue.

 

I've tried the following ways of fixing these shots, all with some luck in some cases and none in others.

 

1. Under camera calibration in LR4, dial in +20 for red primary hue and -10 for red primary saturation. Someone on another thread here suggested that once. Sometimes that desaturates the image more than I'd like so I try +10/-5.
   
2. Brush in color noise reduction in LR4 (this works with the one of my daughter which is at ISO 1250).
   
3. Brush in desaturation in the affected areas.
   
4. Convert to black and white :-).
   

 

I've tried C1v7, but I must be missing something. I used it years and years ago for a Canon DSLR, but I'm unable to get even reasonable color balance out of it with these photos. I know C1 is known for its color rendition, so it must be me, but I've been unable to get anything better out of it.

 

-jbl

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[Jamie Roberts]

Hi, if you post RAW files to yousendit or dropbox, then we can help you. Otherwise, diagnosing JPEGs over the web is a little silly.

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[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

Capture One is outstanding. The results you can get from that are amazing in terms of smooth tonality when messing with colour. I find the sharpening too aggressive though. While creating really sharp images it tends to break the image up somewhat leaving a more synthetic look with the M9. It's great if you want to really dig into colour control although I prefer the curves in Lightroom and some of the tonal control. Skin tone control in particular in C1 is un paralleled, IMO.

{snipped}

 

I'm experimenting with C1v7 now and finding it really very good.

 

{snipped}

 

Funny, I've used all the mentioned converters and I've never found C1's sharpening to be too aggressive in previous versions, and it has by far the most natural looking output from any of the RAW converters mentioned IMO.

 

C1 V7--which I also like--unfortunately has the NR pushed up way too high for my taste by default. V7 has a much more "LR" feel in terms of NR out of the box (I have to turn it down by half for both my Canons and Leicas to get more of a "normal" feel in terms of detail, especially on skin).

 

In any case, there's per channel curves in C1 as well, and all the "bad" things about V7 can be turned off

[jaapv]

Here is an example I found with magenta splotches and Lightroom Colour noise adjusted. It's most obvious when I get areas of uniform tonality and colour, especially in the shadows like this shot which is the top corner in a shot with colorama.

 

I can eliminate it entirely in photoshop with some extra work if it's really noticeable but Lightroom does an excellent job of removing most of the effects.

What is that black top left corner?