dealing with magenta splotches

[Paul J]

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Well spotted. That one is a bad case of "the curtains". Another one that randomly pops up on my sensor from time to time somehow.

 

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[douglasf13]

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

 

 

Jbl, I've had the same issues under artificial light. Pushing the WB a little warmer than I'd like seems to improve things. In fact, just moving the WB slider around shows these weird color blotches really come and go, so experiment with it.

[Paul J]

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

 

These are quite normal for mixed and uncontrolled lighting and not unique the the M9. If you do alot of this kind of thing you would probably find a manual white balance with a WhiBal/ExpoDisc or such aid will help greatly. Just try to position the photo near a dominant source where possible. Seeing the exaggerated reddish magenta shadow by the pillow you should be able to reduce mostly through a quick HSL tweak. Saturateion and luminance to balance.

 

Otherwise bounce or fill flash works wonders and is the best compromise.

[jaapv]

But even then. Last Saturday we did a little experiment shooting the M9 with a yellow filter on the lens. The auto white balance was way off. But even a manual balance from a grey card showed that the relative colors were unbalanced. The grays were good, the green OK, but the red turned magenta. Not fully correctible in photoshop either. So yellow light will produce magenta reds. See the yellow skin cast in your first shot.

[Paul J]

Yes you are right. The best way of correcting mixed lighting is with lighting itself. Though I'm yet to have a problem I've not been able to solve with PS for those times where it's been out of my control.

[Dan States]

Was this closer to what you are trying to achieve?

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[jaapv]

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In my experience using a manual whitebalance is the best starting point in postprocessing. C1 pro will give the best results I find.

[Dan States]

The sliders on color control in LR are really useful in correcting these issues.

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[Dan States]

And now with a bit of color noise reduction.

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[jbl]

Yes, that's much more along the lines of what I wanted. How were you correcting this?

 

-jbl

[Artichoke]

A bit of a mix for different things.

snip

 

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.

 

snip

particularly C1 7

since using my bundled Capture One with the M8, I have become accustomed to its workflow & much prefer it to other Raw converters, even using it with my Nikon camera

C1 7 is a complete re-working but so far seems a major upgrade from C1 6, with many improvements ...I have had some crashes early on, but had major Win 7 updates as well, which may be responsible

a close/relaunch quickly restored my work & on one occasion I got a What Were You Doing box from Phase One, so I know they are working on this

skin tones are particularly difficult with cameras that have great color sensitivity, particularly in difficult mixed lighting

I love Capture One's ability to correct for skin tones using selective layering, a function introduced with earlier versions, but much improved with the latest

it takes an investment to master, but the results seem worthwhile for me

[Dan States]

Yes, that's much more along the lines of what I wanted. How were you correcting this?

 

-jbl

 

I imported the jpeg into lr4 and first applied auto white balance. I then warned it just a bit. I used the red and magenta sliders. Both shifted right to taste. I finally applied a little color noise reduction to clear up.the spotches on the cheeks.

 

Best wishes

Dan

[jbl]

Yeah, I see what you're talking about. In my copy, I tried Red Hue + 20, Magenta Hue +20 and to my eyes things look a lot better, especially without shifting the colors in the rest of the shot.

 

Is your thought that this is just how the M9/LR combo render things?

 

-jbl

[Dan States]

M8 and M9 regardless of RAW software. Leica's M color rendering can overstate magenta/red in caucasian skin tones. When the brew-ha-ha over IR contamination in the M8 broke out a lot of what people saw was actually the color rendering of the camera, regardless of IR.

[jbl]

That makes sense, Dan, thanks!

 

-jbl

[Jamie Roberts]

M8 and M9 regardless of RAW software. Leica's M color rendering can overstate magenta/red in caucasian skin tones. When the brew-ha-ha over IR contamination in the M8 broke out a lot of what people saw was actually the color rendering of the camera, regardless of IR.

 

Sorry I don't agree with that. The M9 doesn't tend towards magenta; but LR / ACR has traditionally been over-magenta with the M9.

 

Again, in C1, it's just not the case. In fact, the M8 / M9 has superb Caucasian skin tones, properly processed.

 

As one of the people who created magenta controlling profiles for the unfiltered IR M8, let me also assure you that 1) the actual properly filtered colour of the m8 in C1 was not overly magenta and 2) people who thought the camera was over-magenta were invariably using Adobe's LR / ACR colour model It's only LR 4 that has begun to do a decent job with the digital Leicas. But other raw converters are (and have been) much better.

 

And it's not just the Leicas: LR traditionally does best with Canon. But I hated what LR did to my Nikon files as well, and I'm not alone in that