Embedded Profile

[sarav]

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I'm giving the newer version of LR a try (I'm still using LR6) and I found that you can choose Embedded Photo Profile (M10-R in my case). This is not the same with M10 Monochrom, I can't find an embedded Profile; I only have Adobe Monochrome. Is this correct? Or there is an M10 Monochrom profile also?

[Adam Bonn]

1 hour ago, sarav said:

I'm giving the newer version of LR a try (I'm still using LR6) and I found that you can choose Embedded Photo Profile (M10-R in my case). This is not the same with M10 Monochrom, I can't find an embedded Profile; I only have Adobe Monochrome. Is this correct? Or there is an M10 Monochrom profile also?

Embedded profile is the one that Leica (and other brands that shoot DNG natively) embed into the RAW file.

With colour cameras adobe also provide their own profile specific to that particular camera (eg filename camera brand, camera model Adobe Standard) and also a generic colour table profile that works with all cameras (eg Adobe Color, Adobe Landscape* etc)

However, the adobe image pipeline isn't capable of supporting a true monochrome camera with a profile, so the only profile that you can have with a monochrome camera (within adobe) is the one that the manufacturer embeds into the DNG file

adobe monochrome is just what the new version of LR calls what LR6 used to call black and white

*IIRC you don't get these choices in LR6 and earlier, they came out with the CC versions of LR/ACR

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

If we look at an M10M file in LR (latest version) we see that the colour and BW options are greyed out = the displayed profile is the only one available and it's from Leica

 

If we open a colour file in LR we can see that colour and BW options are available and we have a choice of adobe profiles to chose from

 

Edited October 28, 2022 by Adam Bonn

[sarav]

Many thanks, Adam. Very complete answer! With colour DNG some profiles cut highlights or blacks, so my question is if I can leave the default ADOBE Monochrome and be comfortable that my source data are not lost (ie: highlights)

[Adam Bonn]

1 hour ago, sarav said:

Many thanks, Adam. Very complete answer!

My pleasure (I'm a bit of a DNG/dcp geek tbh... )

 

1 hour ago, sarav said:

With colour DNG some profiles cut highlights or blacks

Yeah maybe... I mean you can modify them with a linear tone curve which helps but you sure do start with a flat crappy looking image though. 

This might be tricky with a monochrome camera (due to how hard it would be profile it), these days Leica ring fence their DNG profiles to prevent extraction... back in the day (when they didn't) I seem to recall that the M9M profile was the same as the M9 one, but that was a long time ago so I could be wrong... the Leica embedded profiles are only two colour matrices (which basically handle WB) anyway, not a great deal of info in them

1 hour ago, sarav said:

if I can leave the default ADOBE Monochrome and be comfortable that my source data are not lost (ie: highlights)

Maybe I didn't explain this so well... there is no adobe profile for monochrome cameras (notice the lack of the word 'Adobe' before monochrome in the profile selection menu, thus differentiating it from adobe monochrome, which will basically de-sat the colour image)

If I try to open a monochrome image in adobe's profile editor I get this message

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

With the M10M what adobe does

Is add this tone curve to add contrast to the image. You can remove this TC or tweak it and save it as a preset if you need too

Working with a monochrome file in LR doesn't prevent you from using the red/blue 'blinkies' to indicate under/over exposure that are located in the histogram

 

 

 

 

[sarav]

6 hours ago, Adam Bonn said:

...

Thank you very much Adam. I've just tried and it's exactly like you wrote. I've also tried Capture One but I prefer LR. I'm working with it since version 3 (actually have V6 for many many years but I'd like to use the newest one).
Color profiling has no secrets to you!!

Thank you again

[Adam Bonn]

6 minutes ago, sarav said:

Color profiling has no secrets to you!!

If only that was true 😅

You’re very welcome

My preference is for LR, but any app that one enjoys using will do the job well

I’ve never owned a monochrome camera but I bet the workflow is somehow purer than a colour file!

[sarav]

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1 hour ago, Adam Bonn said:

I’ve never owned a monochrome camera but I bet the workflow is somehow purer than a colour file!

That's true! I go crazy every time looking for the right colours. I go out take the shots, get back home and colours are yellowish, greens are not green, image is flat and boring. I've been using film since 90s and I can't obtain a similar output with DNG. It's me, obviously, not the cameras! But it's tedious. With B&W film, you develop them, scan them, import with Phoshop, AutoContrast and Voila! Les jeux sont fait!!
With Monochrom: DNG, slight adjustment in LR, some twickening in Photoshop and in SilverFX. Easy and fast!
With colours i go crazy every time . 

[Adam Bonn]

1 hour ago, sarav said:

That's true! I go crazy every time looking for the right colours. I go out take the shots, get back home and colours are yellowish, greens are not green, image is flat and boring. I've been using film since 90s and I can't obtain a similar output with DNG. It's me, obviously, not the cameras! But it's tedious. With B&W film, you develop them, scan them, import with Phoshop, AutoContrast and Voila! Les jeux sont fait!!
With Monochrom: DNG, slight adjustment in LR, some twickening in Photoshop and in SilverFX. Easy and fast!
With colours i go crazy every time . 

I don't think film and digital really look a like.. I think that we instinctively appraise each in a different way... we expect digital to be accurate and film to be charming... something like that

I started to learn the dng/dcp pipeline because I was curious about what is from the camera and what is from the raw application, it's not straightforward !! The colours are all connected ('fix' one and mess up with another), the camera only sees RGB and even then (made up easy math example) 1 of R = 0.8 red + 0.1 blue, 0.1 green, the colours are influenced by the sensor CFA and also the signal manipulation of the base chip. Leica don't put enough content into their embedded colour profiles, IMHO adobe put a bit too much in... adobe like to shake up their workflow from time to time, splitting the heavy lifting of their profile between the forward matrices and the Hue Sat Delta tables, plus they love their profile lookup tables and now these new(ish) colour table profiles.

Yeah sometimes film seems like a very attractive option... or seeing as I haven't shot film in 20 years maybe I just saw a little too much M6 reissue coverage 😅

[sarav]

I also have been shooting digital since 20 years. My first digital camera was a Leica R8/DMR, obtaining a right photo from its DNG was not straightforward (software at the time were also not so good). Latest Leica cameras have much better DNG (better profile...) and post processing is easier but, to me, not as easy as with films.
Let M6 reissue alone, it's a great camera but it is all marketing. The camera is exactly an MP (I love it!) with little cosmetics...a great camera announced in 2002 or 2003 and now it continues its life with another face (M6) no more  
 

[zeitz]

48 minutes ago, Adam Bonn said:

the camera only sees RGB

Film and digital sensors only "see" RGB.  There is no reason there couldn't be more layers for color film and more than three colors in a Bayer filter.  More similar to high end ink jet printers with have up to 12 colors (if you count the shades of gray cartridges).  I don't know of any manufacturer who has taken this approach.

51 minutes ago, Adam Bonn said:

made up easy math example) 1 of R = 0.8 red + 0.1 blue, 0.1 green

The typical digital camera has a Bayer filter which is a one red, one blue and two green pixel arrangement.

What is not discussed is the need to use filters (red, yellow, orange, green, blue, etc) with monochrome cameras at the time the image is taken.  Without the color information in the raw file, filters can't be applied in PP.  I took a workshop with Alan Ross.  Alan started his career working for Ansel Adams and to this day still prints Adams' negatives.  At the workshop each participant could use a Phase One camera with an Achromatic back.  (Monochrome in Leica parlance.)  Unfortunately Phase One did not bring filters.  Alan produced amazing black and white files from color raw files.  In one instance he used a blue filter on a mountain scene to enhance a fog layer at the base of the mount.  However, he was unable to do much with the Phase One monochromes files precisely because he couldn't use Channel Mixer (or other similar channel tools) to reproduce the effects of filters.  The only tool left was Curves which was inadequate.

[Adam Bonn]

8 hours ago, zeitz said:

The typical digital camera has a Bayer filter which is a one red, one blue and two green pixel arrangement.

I’m not talking about the physical CFA. With adobe at least there is no pure red, pure green and pure blue, but instead R contains also B and G and B contains R and G and G contains R and B.

This has implications for digital profiling because adding one means subtracting from another 

But RE your opening point, with the possible exception of X-Trans, the market hasn’t really embraced non-standard CFA patterns and you’re right - that’s a shame.

[Adam Bonn]

9 hours ago, sarav said:

The camera is exactly an MP (I love it!) with little cosmetics...a great camera announced in 2002 or 2003 and now it continues its life with another face (M6) no more  

Yeah the MP is the one I keep looking at and wishing I could afford 😢😁

I started digital with a fuji P&S, it didn’t shoot RAW, fitted in my pocket and the lack of RAW meant that the pictures came out as they came out. Simple times!

[jaapv]

20 hours ago, Adam Bonn said:

I seem to recall that the M9M profile was the same as the M9 one, but that was a long time ago so I could be wrong.

I doubt it; the M9M DNG was a linear type which would preclude using the same profile.

[Adam Bonn]

16 minutes ago, jaapv said:

I doubt it; the M9M DNG was a linear type which would preclude using the same profile.

No embedded profile = no ability to have WB values and monochrome cameras still have WB values.. I mean doubt all you want, don’t let me stop you 🙂

The embedded Leica profiles aren’t full fat affairs like the adobe ones.. they contain only the parts that derive the WB values

I can dig out the maths for that if you care?

[Adam Bonn]

22 minutes ago, Adam Bonn said:

I can dig out the maths for that if you care?

It's something along the lines of

Interpolated ColorMatrix (ICM) = (Mired value actual Ill – mired value D65Ill)/(Mired value IllA – Mired value D65 Ill)
Take the inverse of ICM and use it to multiply the 1x3 matrix of camera neutral values (from the AsShotNeutral tag).

 

[jaapv]

I bow to your vastly superior knowledge but there must be a reason that ACR converts to Greyscale by default. And it may be a stupid question but why should there be a 1x3 matrix without Bayer grid? 

[Adam Bonn]

9 hours ago, zeitz said:

The typical digital camera has a Bayer filter which is a one red, one blue and two green pixel arrangement.

Here's what I mean. This is a real Leica M10 ColorMatrix

0.861400    -0.306500    0.046900
-0.561000    1.539300    -0.002100
-0.080600    0.264700    0.754000

This maps from XYZ to un-whitebalanced RAW values

        R.                       G.                  B. 

X.     0.861400    -0.306500    0.046900
Y.     -0.561000    1.539300    -0.002100
Z.     -0.080600    0.264700    0.754000

So for Leica to make RED under the StdA illuminant

Take 0.86 red, minus 0.3 of green and add 0.04 blue

To make GREEN

1.53 of green minus 0.08 of red minus 0.002

and so forth....

When we use the adobe profile the numbers are different, but the principles the same, when we shoot a colorchecker we get different numbers again, but the principle remains the same

These values are then chromatically adapted into the XYZ D50 space, either via a tailored forwardmatrix (adobe/cobalt/me 😇) or by LR/ACR's best guess algorithm (Leica Profile, ColorChecker Profile)

Here's a real adobe ForwardMatrix (from an M9)

0.742300    0.182200    0.039800
0.195900    1.019100    -0.215000
-0.042900    -0.470300    1.338300
 

This handles the XYZ D50 adaptation. It is the backbone of the colours in the profile (and the part that one is changing on the fly with the camera calibration sliders)

The same logic of R = R +/- B, R +/-G holds true from the colormatrix, but there's an important difference..

0.742300   +  0.182200  +  0.039800 = 0.9643
0.195900  +  1.019100   +  -0.215000 = 1
-0.042900  +  -0.470300   +  1.338300 = 0.8251

0.9643
1
0.8251

Is the XYZ D50 white point and the sum of each forwardmatrix row must add up to the corresponding XYZ D50 value.

So if we want to change red from 0.742300 to (say) 0.752300, then we have to drop blue or green to 0.172200  or  0.029800

This is ultimately the challenge of profiling... we have to compromise.

The 3x3 matrix solution is central to adobe/.dcp and won't change with a different CFA (but the density and colours of the CFA will produce different results)

 

I appreciate that you probably didn't need to know all of this, but someone might find it interesting.... maybe....

 

[Adam Bonn]

18 minutes ago, jaapv said:

I bow to your vastly superior knowledge

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic.... if you're not the post I wrote above this one should impress 😂

19 minutes ago, jaapv said:

but there must be a reason that ACR converts to Greyscale by default

Because there is no colour to convert anything so it's trying to treat the DNG like a regular colour conversion file but can't... like a pump still pumps when the well is dry but no water comes out

21 minutes ago, jaapv said:

And it may be a stupid question but why should there be a 1x3 matrix without Bayer grid? 

No stupid questions.. in simpler terms... but possibly not 100% technically accurate

the 1x3 matrix (DNG tag AsShotNeutral) is the camera calculated white point of the un-white-balanced RAW data

This 1x3 matrix is then multiplied by the 3x3 matrices that map from XYZ to RAW data. (it's actually more complicated than that see maths in my post above)

This provides the path that adobe uses to convert the unWB-RAW data into WB XYZ data (ie puts it into a colour space that adobe wants to use)

the 3x3 colormatrices must still exist in a monochrome camera because

a. adobe needs them to work

b. without them they'd be no WB value and monochrome cameras still have WB (AFAIK)

 

[Adam Bonn]

actually @jaapv I just downloaded some monochrom dng samples and LR doesn't let me adjust the WB, so perhaps I'm not correct about the content of a monochrome DNG

However, the explanations I've provided for how LR/ACR works with colour RAW files is accurate (promise)

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[elmars]

Perhaps this helps even though I have no idea how: in early versions of the M10M firmware we could see the white balance setting. It was AWB. So I think a monochrome camera has an internal white balancing.