Leica M11 -purplish tint ???

[bcaslis]

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7 hours ago, don daniel said:

We will never agree on this. I think my Z9 has already proven a thousand times that you are wrong with this claim. And as for Leica: I would be happy with a better reliability of the white balance, especially concerning the tint. And Leica can do that much better, namely with the M10-R. But you resist the idea that Leica should make any optimization here at all. And I wonder why you do that. It simply helps no one.

I had a Z9 for over a year and have a Z8 now. These cameras have three different AWB options, which one is "right"? While I think the Nikon AWB is better than most, if you think it always right, I have a bridge to sell you. And there is a difference between a technically correct white balance and how it appears to your eye. The Leica one is not perfect but it is not as bad as this thread makes it out to be.

[lct]

2 hours ago, bcaslis said:

The Leica one is not perfect but it is not as bad as this thread makes it out to be.

Mine is not perfect either but at the same good enough level as my digital CL. Not as good as my old Canon 5D but better than my M240. Most of my M11 pics are shot in auto WB actually. Tweaking them in PP is not difficult, less so than with my Fuji X-E2 and its oversatured orange and cyan colors. I would miss iCorrect if it did not work with my old Macs (10.13.8) but there are Adobe users in this thread and i guess they can find similar tools in LR, PS or PS Elements.

[Guest]

1. Despite a lot of back and forth, I am grateful for some of the perspectives and ideas shared in this long thread. Thanks to all!

2. I have found a workaround for the issue of M11 colors with Lightroom: Using DXO Photolab Elite 7, I am batch exporting new raw images taken with the M11 *as DNG*. This preserves all the editing flexibility of Lightroom, which many of us have been using for more than a decade, which provides a motivation to stick with the familiar toolkit. At the same time, the DXO-processed DNG has different colors, resulting in big differences/improvements.

Here is the comparison of an image with difficult colors, white balance 'as shot' in both cases. Both would require further adjustments, but to my taste, LR is much farther off from a reasonable baseline:
Lightroom Classic (current version Nov 2023, Leica DNG imported from M11, Adobe Standard' profile):

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Lightroom Classic (same version, but using DXO 7 DNG imported in Lightroom, Lightroom also showing 'Adobe Standard' profile being used (?)):

Settings used in DXO, no manual adjustments whatsoever:

Edited November 30, 2023 by mzbe

[Budfox]

It's hard to tell which picture is more accurate as I was not there when the pic was taken.

The Lightroom direct import is warmer and maybe with magenta shift, but it may be more accurate if a sunset shot. The DxO is a touch too green in my view.

Perception of tint is very subjective, and made worse by the not insignificant incidence of mild colour blindness in the general population.

[Guest]

17 hours ago, Budfox said:

It's hard to tell which picture is more accurate as I was not there when the pic was taken.

The Lightroom direct import is warmer and maybe with magenta shift, but it may be more accurate if a sunset shot. The DxO is a touch too green in my view.

Perception of tint is very subjective, and made worse by the not insignificant incidence of mild colour blindness in the general population.

I agree - both are off and just based on the automatic white balance in the camera, interpreted by the raw converter.

In many cases, to my taste, DXO is closer to how I perceive the color should be. They significantly invested in their color science in the last 2 releases, including a wider gamut space for internal computations. However, Adobe does unique things to raw files that you will also not experience with Capture One or other raw converters. Notably, the top highlights are somewhat de-saturated. This is a pretty heavy-handed intervention in the actual underlying sensor data. Likewise, with the monochrome sensors, there is no truly linear profile in Lightroom - with a price to pay, depending on motive.

Net/net: Not happy with Adobe, including but not limited to how they and Leica came together to make the world more purple.

P.S.: White balance with the picker tool in Lightroom says that DXO is pretty close. Based on the same camera auto WB (!) - just a different workflow to preprocess with DXO first.

Edited December 2, 2023 by mzbe

[dugby]

On 12/1/2023 at 1:42 AM, mzbe said:

1. Despite a lot of back and forth, I am grateful for some of the perspectives and ideas shared in this long thread. Thanks to all!

2. I have found a workaround for the issue of M11 colors with Lightroom: Using DXO Photolab Elite 7, I am batch exporting new raw images taken with the M11 *as DNG*. This preserves all the editing flexibility of Lightroom, which many of us have been using for more than a decade, which provides a motivation to stick with the familiar toolkit. At the same time, the DXO-processed DNG has different colors, resulting in big differences/improvements.

Here is the comparison of an image with difficult colors, white balance 'as shot' in both cases. Both would require further adjustments, but to my taste, LR is much farther off from a reasonable baseline:
Lightroom Classic (current version Nov 2023, Leica DNG imported from M11, Adobe Standard' profile):

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Lightroom Classic (same version, but using DXO 7 DNG imported in Lightroom, Lightroom also showing 'Adobe Standard' profile being used (?)):

Settings used in DXO, no manual adjustments whatsoever:

If these images were captured In Western Australia, the upper photo is a naturally occurring sunset that we experience.

[MyLeicaWorld]

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I’ve noticed that the capture one for iPad applies -5 tint automatically to M11 files .. 

Edited December 2, 2023 by MyLeicaWorld

[Photoworks]

I did some tests on my computer and I was surprised by the results. this is only one point of view.

Here are M 11 photos in AWB with no adjustments in the different programs. when using M 11 Profiles they look the same or very close in LrC, C1P, and DxO 7.

Purple shift is not present and the colors are very much to what the day was.

1) C1P, DNG and JPG comparison. You can see the little processing Leica does in the JPG.

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here are the comparison between the 3 programs.

Capture one

 

Lightroom

 

DxO 7

 

here are side-by-side

 

to me, any of these programs can offer a good starting point. 
My favorite program is Capture One for editing. it has a few options when other programs come close but not the same
i am not a fan of the DxO, as I find that in most images I have to dial down the setting from initial views. But the DxO pure Ras has gotten so good, I run any image that has noise in it from C1P and it is amazing.

 

[ianforber]

2 minutes ago, Photoworks said:

I did some tests on my computer and I was surprised by the results. this is only one point of view.

Here are M 11 photos in AWB with no adjustments in the different programs. when using M 11 Profiles they look the same or very close in LrC, C1P, and DxO 7.

Purple shift is not present and the colors are very much to what the day was.

1) C1P, DNG and JPG comparison. You can see the little processing Leica does in the JPG.

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!

 

here are the comparison between the 3 programs.

Capture one

 

Lightroom

 

DxO 7

 

here are side-by-side

 

to me, any of these programs can offer a good starting point. 
My favorite program is Capture One for editing. it has a few options when other programs come close but not the same
i am not a fan of the DxO, as I find that in most images I have to dial down the setting from initial views. But the DxO pure Ras has gotten so good, I run any image that has noise in it from C1P and it is amazing.

 

I agree about DxO Pure Raw. It is addictive. My only problem is that I can’t figure a way to run it as a plugin from C1P in the way I can Topaz Denoise. I have to process in DxO PR3 first and then import into CP1. As my laptop is a 2017 MacBook Pro, life is too short to process a decent number of files that way: rather than just going to make a cup of coffee, I need to cook dinner and do the washing up before the files are finished!

[Photoworks]

37 minutes ago, ianforber said:

I agree about DxO Pure Raw. It is addictive. My only problem is that I can’t figure a way to run it as a plugin from C1P in the way I can Topaz Denoise. I have to process in DxO PR3 first and then import into CP1. As my laptop is a 2017 MacBook Pro, life is too short to process a decent number of files that way: rather than just going to make a cup of coffee, I need to cook dinner and do the washing up before the files are finished!

I only process only few pix in DxoPrueRaw. I open it from C1P and it goes back in if you set it up right.

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[don daniel]

@photoworks

Nr 1 and 4 in Lightroom. Which values of tint does LR show in the white balance tool?

[Photoworks]

5 minutes ago, don daniel said:

@photoworks

Nr 1 and 4 in Lightroom. Which values of tint does LR show in the white balance tool?

 

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[sdk]

On 11/29/2023 at 4:51 PM, jaapv said:

Crikey. I am on Sonoma 14.1.1.    I don’t even think that Catalina will run on a Silicon Mac. 

You can run a virtual machine Catalina MacOs in Parallels (it's not just for running Windows on a Mac). But hat of course Parallels costs money. Not worth it probably.

[jaapv]

50 minutes ago, sdk said:

You can run a virtual machine Catalina MacOs in Parallels (it's not just for running Windows on a Mac). But hat of course Parallels costs money. Not worth it probably.

Possibly it runs through Rosetta2. 

[don daniel]

vor 13 Stunden schrieb Photoworks:

 

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Thank you for showing. Generally, I never choose the M11 profile, but Adobe Standard instead, and for sunsets, I also use Adobe Vivid. We are dealing with different lighting situations here. With evening light, twilight, the M11's AWB doesn't fail as much as it does in normal daylight. A slight magenta touch is perfectly okay for sunsets or evening light. However, innthe daylight photo I see some magenta cast. I think I would find a value of +10 in tint better here. You could try out if a value of +10 in Tint would be okay for you with the Adobe Standard profile. Just for the daylight photo.

[ianforber]

On 12/3/2023 at 6:29 PM, Photoworks said:

I only process only few pix in DxoPrueRaw. I open it from C1P and it goes back in if you set it up right.

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Thanks. I’ll have another go. I notice from your screenshot that you used “Open With” rather then “Edit with”. Is that how you usually get it to PR3?
 

[Photoworks]

1 hour ago, ianforber said:

Thanks. I’ll have another go. I notice from your screenshot that you used “Open With” rather then “Edit with”. Is that how you usually get it to PR3?
 

yes

[Adam Bonn]

On 11/28/2023 at 1:50 PM, hmzimelka said:

I've read every comment and often re-read comments in this thread.

The culprit is very likely Leica, with the camera calibration instruction embedded in every DNG file, which is what Adobe works off!

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This is the Leica profile that's embedded into the DNG. If one uses Adobe standard or Adobe color then nothing in this screen shot has any bearing on the end result. 

The effect of the camera's WB is manifest from the AsShotNeutral tag found in the DNG, not the ColorMatrices shown here. 

On 11/28/2023 at 2:07 PM, hmzimelka said:

Because that raw converter has probably made its own colour profile for the M11 from which all subsequent edits are then made. 

A RAW converter needs to have some colour calibration file. Which is why one can buy or download icc or DCP profiles made for specific cameras when the camera manufacturer or RAW converter doesn't create the look that some people like those form https://colorfidelity.com 

Then of course the DNG file has WB data that the RAW converter applies. This can be applied as is, as is likely the case with Adobe products, but other RAW converters will have mapped out a colour cast in their custom profiles and therefor any subsequent WB will look fine on other converters. Creating your own profile using DNG profile editor or other automated means of using a colour checker chart, will also get rid of global tints.

I am certain this magenta cast is thanks to Leica with the data written to the DNG file, and Leica can fix it.

Leica can change the WB behaviour by changing the algorithm that produces the ASN tag. 

An over simplified version of the maths would be

ASN x CMs = colours 

You can patch this somewhat by creating your own profile, which means making new CMs

ASN x New CMs = new colours 

The CMs of the adobe profiles and the Leica profiles are never the same

Every camera ever does not have a limitless well of colour to draw from, it is always a compromise somewhere 

You can see how it works in principle looking at your screen shot of the CM

Top line (either table) 

Take this much red then subtract this much green, subtract this much blue 

Like in all maths the numbers have to go somewhere.. So if (theoretically) we take red out of the red channel, we can't throw it away, we have to distribute it in either/or the green and blue channels. 

Personally if it were me, and I appreciate it's not, M9/10R user here, I'd write a post demosaication PLUT that globally reduced the WB tint and probably try and manipulate the Forward Matrices a bit. 

This would ultimately be a fudge, but it should work reasonably well for a reasonable amount of images 

[Adam Bonn]

Let’s expand a little on the above by referring to the ever helpful Lumariver manual.

https://www.lumariver.com/lrpd-manual/#theory_basics
 

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Meanwhile the DNG contains the nuts and bolts that Leica must (and all DNG enabled devices) must follow

https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/photoshop/pdf/DNG_Spec_1_7_0_0.pdf

The CA part of the above equation is found on the extremely helpful Lindbloom site

http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?ColorCalculator.html

So what’s the take away here?

 

well if XYZ = CM inverse x camera neutral (which it does) and camera neutral isn’t up to snuff (which many of you M11 say) then the whole camera RAW RGB to XYZ D50 pipeline is built on a poor foundations really isn’t it? (Spoiler alert: yes)

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[charlesphoto99]

Note: when discussing color balance issues, sunrise and sunset shots are less than helpful as the color can be defined in many ways. Best to stick to neutral light, with at least one 'gray' subjects  in it, and/or skin tones.