Editing M10 raw files. Help please.

[Adam Bonn]

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5 minutes ago, falling_in2_infinity said:

I have here two files from my M8 days

I think maybe shots from the M10 might be more helpful!

The C1 work flow described above by @hansvons is very good 

For a LR workflow I might try something vaguely like this

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Here we have the same file twice in LR.

The one on the left is the Leica embedded profile ("Leica M10") and the right is "adobe Standard' - both of these profiles are available in LR6 and beyond

I'd personally (and OWMV and seeing as this is the internet I'm sure they'll say so too !!!) decide which starting point best suits my vision

The M10 profile has more punch, which might suit you better based on your M8 photos and also has more yellow (which frankly I clucking hate, but each to their own) too which might work for you based on your comments about green earlier

Now (and I haven't spent a lot of time on this.....)

Working with the M10 profile I've made the following (quick and dirty) adjustments in the camera calibration tool, I'm not trying to give you a solution, but instead show how you might reach one

Now lets look at before and after

 

The original file is on the left.

So now with those adjustments we see that (more or less - quick and dirty adjustments remember?!!) in the right hand image

Red is red (look at the red plastic bag in the bag holder on the upper left)

Green is green (look at the clothes peg in the basket in bottom left)

Blue is still blue!

From here I would then edit the image with the usual sliders, tweak the WB etc etc

But the point is that the often overlooked calibration tool is a good place to get an image in the ball park before further work, and can be saved as a preset and easily tweaked depending on the content of the shot (for example these settings wouldn't be kind to skin tones)

Now for the adobe standard profile...

again the original file is on the left

This time I've made no colour adjustments at all!

I've simply added contrast using the sliders.

Between these two LR toolsets you should be able to find a look for the images...

NB:

I've made large adjustments here so that they show up clearly on people's web/phone/ipad/whatever. I'd personally try for something a little more nuanced...

Anyway hope this helps..

 

 

[hansvons]

@Adam Bonn Quite a post!

 

[pedaes]

Surely for a 'quick and dirty' you will be hard pressed to beat 'Auto' in LrC plus a bit of clarity / dehaze to taste.

I wondered why this worked so well until I learned Auto is based on thousands of images processed by Jeff Schewe. 

 

[Adam Bonn]

6 minutes ago, pedaes said:

Surely for a 'quick and dirty' you will be hard pressed to beat 'Auto' in LrC plus a bit of clarity / dehaze to taste.

I wondered why this worked so well until I learned Auto is based on thousands of images processed by Jeff Schewe. 

 

True but that won't change the calibration sliders or show what the tools do 

[pedaes]

9 minutes ago, Adam Bonn said:

True but that won't change the calibration sliders or show what the tools do 

Yes to the first (it changes the sliders by the amount applied) but no to the second. As you have comprehensively demonstrated, there is no short cut learning for what each tool does, but there are some excellent YouTube videos to help with all pp software. The new 'mask' tools in LrC are so simple to use (AI based) that yet more skill will be unnecessary!

[Adam Bonn]

I haven't played with new masking tools yet, the Jeff Schewe auto button is indeed surprisingly good.

I showed the OP the colour stuff as he asked about the M10 colours, which FWIW, I quite like once they're tuned to taste

[wda]

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4 hours ago, falling_in2_infinity said:

I'm sorry I didn't provide any example files.  I have here two files from my M8 days, which show my general approach to colour photography (certainly for my private photography work).  These may not be to everyone's liking, but they show the kind of accurate, but vivid colours I tend to go for.  Both these were auto WB, Exposure, Contrast, Vibrance and Saturation. 

I think both were 35mm Cron non-Asph, with B+W IR filter, but I've lost my notes and can't be 100% sure.

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You clearly like high saturation, a little unreal, but a personal choice. I think you will not be satisfied until you achieve your high saturation results. In any process, you should be able to achieve this result.

Choose a picture with representative colours. I use LR6, but in LR5 you should find a panel in the Develop module, which allows you to make changes to each of 8 colours. At the top, select 'Saturation' and click the 'picker' or sampler tool. Then, using a mouse wheel, adjust each colour in your photograph, and increase or decrease the adjustment to your satisfaction. If you achieve a satisfactory result, save your adjustments and name it. (I use a camera identifier, such as M10) If you refine the preset, at a later date, you can save a new preset). You might need to tweak the Luminance values, as well.

Trial and error will soon produce a result you like. Then it is a simple matter of applying that preset, AT THE TIME YOU IMPORT NEW FILES INTO LIGHTROOM. That saves a lot of processing time with new files. Remember, you will possibly want to fine tune each result to suit the result you envisage. Good Luck!

If you have no manual for Lightroom, I can highly recommend Adobe Lightroom—The Missing FAQs by Victoria Bampton. It contains so much valuable information, and the author will invite you to register the book, so that you can present further queries direct to her. There are separate versions for old and new copies of LR. (I have no connection, whatsoever, with the author or publisher)

[marchyman]

3 hours ago, pedaes said:

Surely for a 'quick and dirty' you will be hard pressed to beat 'Auto' in LrC plus a bit of clarity / dehaze to taste.

I used a color passport to create profiles for my Q and my M.  My profiles are selected upon import.  When editing I often start with the 'Auto' keyboard shortcut.  I find 'Auto' adds more 'Vibrance' than I like and I often have to play with shadows.  that said, in conjunction with my profiles it seems to be a decent starting point.

[Olaf_ZG]

On 10/26/2022 at 11:45 AM, Stuart Richardson said:

You might consider trying the Cobalt Imaging profiles. I found them to be better than the custom profiles I made with the Xrite color checker when I was in a similar position with the S3. I would give them a try. I know it is another thing to buy, but it may help. I found that they had better tonality and color discrimination, especially in areas where the gamut was being stretched...things like vibrant colors in the dark, sunsets and sunrises etc. The skies were less cyan/yellow and more blue/magenta (as they should be to my eyes at least). Greens too were a bit less yellow. Perhaps they can improve the greens for you. If it does not, then you might consider trying a different camera. I was also an M8 and M9 user who was never convinced by the M10 sensor, though I loved the body itself. I sold it before I was aware of Cobalt Imaging's profiles, however.

I do agree. Use them on both my m10 and sl.

[Adam Bonn]

David Farkas has an M10 preset that you might like, IMO he tends to favour pop via saturated colours

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2020/04/lightroom-presets-for-leica-cameras/

If you need to convert it to older style LR format, simply place the preset file in a folder with a DNG, rename one or the other so that they have the same name (super important) then import the DNG into LR. It will arrive with the preset changes already applied, then create a preset as one normally would with the settings

[Anbaric]

It's a shame Leica doesn't make available some sort of reference converter that by default gives output similar to the in-camera jpegs. Most of the major manufacturers do this, often with a customised limited version of Silkypix or Capture One with profiles tuned to what the maker thinks the output should look like. That way, people like the OP who often find themselves preferring the look of the jpegs can still shoot raw to keep their options open, but are also able to do quick 'in-camera style' conversions when necessary without having to hunt around for a third party equivalent.

[M Street Photographer]

Then we would experience the same debacle as with Capture One. C1 was included with the MF cameras and still does not meet the requirements of standard software. Denoising - bad, HDR pano function - bad, sensor shift, focus stacking ???
The support - underground and the crowning glory is the update to C1 23, no new features that motivate. In addition, there is the pricing and the termination of the manufacturer-specific variants, for Sony, Fuji, etc.

Nevertheless, I use C1 Pro, but this year, for the first time, I won't update now.

Leica has / had a cooperation and close cooperation with Adobe. LR used to be included with an M free of charge. If the results in the RAW converter are bad today, Leica still intervenes today and works out e.g. with Adobe, a better camera profile.

Writing, maintaining and updating software for all Leica cameras with all the different sensors is very time-consuming and expensive. And at the end the question what should the software cost? Leica level € 500.00 and even if it were provided free of charge, it is allocated to the hardware.

Edited November 1, 2022 by M Street Photographer

[marchyman]

5 hours ago, M Street Photographer said:

Nevertheless, I use C1 Pro, but this year, for the first time, I won't update now.

Like you, I will not be updating.  I'm up to date with C1, but  It is very, very rare for me to launch the program these days. I switched back to Lightroom Classic earlier this year.

Edited November 1, 2022 by marchyman

[M Street Photographer]

I bought LR + PS as a prepaid offer in the summer for one year to get to know Adobe. This package can do certain things significantly better than the C1 Pro. On the other hand, C1 suits me more from the workflow. I also like the color interpretation of the RAW better in C1, as well as the color processing and especially the sharpening.
The masking of C1, the magic brush, is also bad; it doesn't have the accuracy that the current Adobe software offers. I can get by with the less good denoising of C1, but I won't buy any other specific software either.

At the same time, I'm also testing DXO LAB 6 because of the integrated Pure RAW, deep prime and the lens/camera profiles. If there was a 50% offer from DXO on Black Friday, I might go for it and give up Adobe.

I wouldn't like to use several software side by side, because I've found that I don't fully master any of them.
Now I will deal intensively with Adobe and mainly work with C1, without update. There won't be any new hardware, especially since I've only treated myself to an M 10 R. Many old lenses are adapted. I only have 2 newer ones: Summarit 35 2.4 and VC 50 1.0 that are supported. Other cameras are also at least 2 years old, which are also supported.
That's why I don't need a C1 update to version 23 now. Should C1 appear with good new features in the course of the next few months, I'll check whether an update is justified for me.

[Adam Bonn]

8 hours ago, M Street Photographer said:

Leica still intervenes today and works out e.g. with Adobe, a better camera profile.

I'm not sure if adobe has ever made a 'adobe standard V2' dcp file... if they have it's the exception not the rule... very strange (and bad) things happen to historically edited pictures if you have filename.dcp and you overwrite it with a modified filename.dcp... Sure adobe iron out bugs and get things to work smoother with new cameras (eg lens corrections with the M11), but their first pass at providing a DCP is their last... and these days it defaults to adobe color which is a generic profile that piggybacks off of the adobe standard file.

(Sometimes Leica release a FW update to address colour issues, but this is internal to them and probably centres around the WB algorithm)

The Leica camera profiles I doubt have any input from adobe... they're without exception two colormatrices.. even the adobe DNG spec suggests one should try a little bit harder than that!

But at the end of the day... Leica is a DNG work stream and adobe is THE DNG pipeline... it's hand in glove IMHO

I'm never giving C1 a penny again... liked it in my Fuji days but IMHO it doesn't really support Leica properly, especially with lens profiles and automation

[M Street Photographer]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Adam Bonn:

I'm never giving C1 a penny again... liked it in my Fuji days but IMHO it doesn't really support Leica properly, especially with lens profiles and automation

I agree with you, I'm dissatisfied with the lens profiles too.
In the end I can't say where the path will lead me, what my final decision will be, which software I will work with.
Of course you have to make compromises, but only those that are specifically tolerable for everyone.
That's why I'm reading along with others here with great interest, maybe the experiences and assessments of others can help me.

[hansvons]

11 hours ago, Adam Bonn said:

I'm never giving C1 a penny again... liked it in my Fuji days but IMHO it doesn't really support Leica properly, especially with lens profiles and automation

If you were looking for colour accuracy, the C1 Leica profiles are nearly perfect. Lens profiles work nicely with the SL lenses; I cannot comment on M lenses. 

For me, C1's biggest plus is the ability to use custom ICC/ICM camera profiles. That way, I can use my self-created profiles, which allow for super-fast editing because my preferred gamma, saturation etc... are already baked-in, and I only have to adjust WB, exposure, lift shadows if necessary, etc. I even have B&W camera profiles that work instantly.

--

Denoising in C1 isn't bad. It's just not super clean. I love texture in my images and thus shoot relatively high ISO. In C1, you can denoise the colour share in the noise and leave all else as is (subtly controllable), which removes the colour in the noise but leaves the texture intact, coming close to grain in film.

I find C1 by far the best tool. But obviously, the mileage varies.

Edited November 2, 2022 by hansvons

[Adam Bonn]

5 hours ago, hansvons said:

If you were looking for colour accuracy, the C1 Leica profiles are nearly perfect. Lens profiles work nicely with the SL lenses; I cannot comment on M lenses. 

For me, C1's biggest plus is the ability to use custom ICC/ICM camera profiles. That way, I can use my self-created profiles, which allow for super-fast editing because my preferred gamma, saturation etc... are already baked-in, and I only have to adjust WB, exposure, lift shadows if necessary, etc. I even have B&W camera profiles that work instantly.

--

Denoising in C1 isn't bad. It's just not super clean. I love texture in my images and thus shoot relatively high ISO. In C1, you can denoise the colour share in the noise and leave all else as is (subtly controllable), which removes the colour in the noise but leaves the texture intact, coming close to grain in film.

I find C1 by far the best tool. But obviously, the mileage varies.

I think ultimately the best app is the one we enjoy using and it helps us get the best from it.

C1 neither automatically applies M lens profiles (no huge biggie) nor, in the case of the 35 summarit at least, fixes the native distortion when applied manually (epically crap when compared to C1's marketing RE the strength of their lens profiles)

I make my own camera profiles for LR (I use Lumariver so that I can design profiles) but I wouldn't describe my colours as accurate 😂

[otto.f]

On 10/26/2022 at 11:15 AM, falling_in2_infinity said:

At this time of year, there's lots of yellow in the green, but the M10 files just don't capture that subtlety.

 

I'd really appreciate some help/advice.  Perhaps some workflow ideas?

 

For clarification, I am using a Zeiss ZM Planar 50.  I have a colleague who has a 'cron, which I want to try in case it improves things.

I don’t want to stir things up here, and certainly not you, but the same experience with the M10 as you describe was reason for me to sell it and  I’m now very satisfied with the colors from the M10-R. This camera may be too expensive for you at the moment, but I must say that there was a certain amount of variance due to the type and age of the Leica lens you put on the M10. For instance, I discovered afterwards that the Summilux 35 FLE has, just like the M10 whereever in the process, also a preference for yellows, which, as you said, overrule a lot of subtlety. I found that there was no app which made it possible to attain good quality colors straightforward and within reasonable time. With the M10-R now, I just have to change the white balance a bit, if needed at all, and I’m done. Discussions on the forum here suggested that I’d be able to make it if I only knew better how colors work on a digital camera, but sorry, this is not what I expected from an M10 after ten years of perfect colors with my M9. 
That said, I’d advise you to use older Leica lenses which happen to have a blueish cast, for instance the Summicron 50 iv indeed, or the Summicron 35 iv or older. The Zeiss you mention is also yellow-horny in my experience. 
This could help too: 

 The term ‘Superb’ is overdone but it could certainly help, next to the ACR from Photoshop, which was in my view the most neutral compared to LR and C1 (which for me is still the best apart from this M10 thing)

Edited November 2, 2022 by otto.f

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