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am I seeing Leica colour science in Lightroom / camera raw.


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In camera raw or Lightroom, the default colour profile is Adobe colour! The question is, does this override the Leica colour science embedded in the raw file and as a result I may not actually be seeing the true leica colour science. I've found a few videos showing where you choose Leica instead of adobe on the develop panel in Lightroom but they are all a few years old and I can't for the life of me find it in my panel. Thinking that this may have been superseded !!

anybody know the exact situation here?

Thanks in advance folks. 

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Posted (edited)

Adobe Standard is the profile that Adobe has developed for whichever camera produced the image. If it was a Q3, then it is Adobe's profile for the Q3 etc.

The Embedded profile does not usually show up in Lightroom. It is strangely only visible if you check the 'Legacy' profile options under 'Manage Profiles'.

In general I find Adobe Standard is my preferred profile for colour, not Color. I have just compared an image and find Standard to be more neutral, Color to be more saturated, and Embedded to be quite garishly saturated. There are probably different specific colours as well, but I didn't dig deeply.

Adobe does change its Standard profile from time to time. When Leica brings out a new camera it may take a good many months before the Adobe Standard profile settles on something acceptable. I have previously developed my own dual illuminant colour profile for a new camera (the last time was for the SL2-S which I bought at launch), but eventually the Standard profile met my expectations. (I may have read somewhere that with recent cameras Leica has worked with Adobe to develop a Standard profile at launch - but my memory may be faulty!)

Edited by LocalHero1953
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The only Leica Colour Science I can think of is the choice of the Bayer filter and coating of the sensor cover glass. The rest is software...

It lives in the same misty realm as the Leica Look.

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I thought that Leica Color Science was a marketing phrase.  Is it a real, definable thing?  People talk about colors right out of the camera, but isn’t this usually in reference to jpg?  I think that both Fuji and Hasselblad get some traction with their out of camera jpg.  I know that with Hasselblad, you must import out of camera raw files into their Phocus application in order to get a “Hasselblad” look when dealing with raw files.  In other words, the color, contrast and distortion reduction is the end result of software processing.

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Posted (edited)
51 minutes ago, Xavi said:

In Q3 I get a profile that says Adobe Standard V2, and curiously in M 11 I get a profile that says M-11.
 

I'm a bit lost with this.

I've been trying to get to grips with this also!

Adobe creates an "Adobe Standard" profile for every camera it supports. This is a base profile that aims to give a consistent profile across all cameras. The Adobe Color, Adobe Landscape profiles etc, build on the Adobe Standard Profile.

The Adobe Standard profiles are contained in ".dcp" files, which, in the case of a Mac are in a folder contained within the Lightroom Classic Application file (actually a package in MacOs terms). You can see them if you right click on the application and select "View Package Contents". If you look at the folder "contents/resources//CameraProfiles/Adobe Standard" you will see the .dcp files for every camera. In the case of the Q3 there are two, one the original and one for v2. I'm not sure why Adobe created two different profiles, but I guess they needed to change the first attempt, and rather than modify the first version (which would cause unexpected changes for people already using that profile), they created the v2 version for the new profile.

If you look at the .dcp files, you'll also see an Adobe Standard profile file for the M11.

Now, for the M11, I'm also uncertain about the "PROFILE M11" profile, but I think Adobe may be extracting it from the M11 DNG file. There is also a "PROFILE M11 B&W" profile, but that is hidden away in the Legacy profiles section in LR which you have to manually enable using "Manage Profiles". The PROFILE M11 profile is a bit more saturated than the Adobe Standard Version. Again, I'm not sure about this and would appreciate further details if anyone knows.

Edited by Corius
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Leica and Adobe communicate on the DNG conversion in the development phase of the camera, which helps Leica create the appropriate firmware and Adobe to bring out camera-specific profiles immediately on release.

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Hace 6 minutos, jaapv dijo:

Leica y Adobe se comunican sobre la conversión de DNG en la fase de desarrollo de la cámara, lo que ayuda a Leica a crear el firmware adecuado y a Adobe a sacar a la relución los perfiles específicos de la cámara inmediatamente después del lanzamiento.

So, when importing, the appropriate thing would be to apply that profile directly?

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I`m probably going to sound terribly naive here but I`m never happy with the colour of my shots after I process them in PS Elements

 If I do anything I usually end up processing them with the software that comes with Windows.

So apart from maybe re framing /straightening I don`t really "mess" around with them.

Probably 80% of that is because of my lack of skill /judgement .

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1 hour ago, Xavi said:

So, when importing, the appropriate thing would be to apply that profile directly?

The appropriate thing to do would be to apply the profile that gives the best starting point for your edits, either created by yourself ( recommended), Leica, Adobe or downloaded from the Internet. 

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31 minutes ago, Markey said:

I`m probably going to sound terribly naive here but I`m never happy with the colour of my shots after I process them in PS Elements

 If I do anything I usually end up processing them with the software that comes with Windows.

So apart from maybe re framing /straightening I don`t really "mess" around with them.

Probably 80% of that is because of my lack of skill /judgement .

Why don’t you move to ON1.? They offer a load of presets with the tools to tweak them and many excellent tutorials on their website. 

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22 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Why don’t you move to ON1.? They offer a load of presets with the tools to tweak them and many excellent tutorials on their website. 

I`d never heard of it before but just looked it up.

I`ll have a more detailed look tomorrow

Thank you for the suggestion .

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I tested this a few months ago. Unless something changed Abode DOES NOT support Leica colors. It’s unfortunate and quite odd. None of the Adobe profiles match Leica’s jpegs and yes I’ve tested them all including the embedded and legacy ones. It sucks. We should ban together and get Leica and Adobe to add official color support for the Leica Q3 and SL3

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Of course they don’t. Jpg’s are a finished product to the taste of some programmer, profiles for DNG create starting points for further editing. OOC colours do not exist.  Only finished JPG or converted raw files which get their colour after conversion, as assigned by the program you happen to be using. The only colour support there is is you yourself. All the rest are just tools. Leica and Adobe have already coordinated the way their software interacts before the camera was released. 

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Posted (edited)

My understanding the color profile only determines the range of representable colors, not which color within the range. 

I had Kodak nSLR that usingh proPhotoRGB, which was regarded the widest range color profile. I still miss its color rendering. It is the base color file in Adobe Lightroom. When export the picture for print, I choose to convert to adobe RGB.  I haven't pay attention how the color in PropHoto RBG that is out of Adobe RBG range is mapped to Adobe RGB. I assume it is based on some scale-in process, or simply clipping the color out of range to the boundary of Adobe RBG. 

Does so called Leica Color Science exists? comparing Leica digital camera (M, S3, for example) and Fujifilm (XE1, GFX 100sII), shooting same scene at the same time, same position, of course, unless someone has color blind. That is Leica Color science and Fujifilm Color Science.

Edited by Einst_Stein
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Adobe Standard is, as far as I was aware, a profile that Adobe typically develops with input from the company. I believe Leica and Adobe have some level of dialog about how the profile should look. I know they did this with the S3 at the very least. The standard profile is typically the most basic of the profiles. Adobe Color is Adobe's newer interpretation of a more "finished" picture. The profile tends to have a stronger contrast curve, particularly in the shadows. If you are going to be editing the file, I would recommend Adobe Standard if you are not going to spring for something like Cobalt's profiles. Embedded is the profile embedded in the DNG and is used by the OS and other things. With Leica at least, it tends to be a bit more contrasty and more saturated, and it often has more magenta skies (Adobe's skies are always quite cyan to my eyes at least). In the S2, S3 and M9, I think the embedded profile was better than the Adobe profiles, though standard was still quite good. Adobe Color was quite dramatically different in the S3 (not in a good way for me at least). The SL2 and SL2S have pretty nice Adobe Standard colors.

 

In the case above I believe AdobeRGB and ProphotoRGB are just color spaces designed to contain the actual colors in the image, they do not really affect the colors themselves unless the colors are out of gamut. The Kodak SLR would not have been able to capture the entirety of ProPhotoRGB, as no camera has been able to do that as far as I am aware. It would have its "profile" contained within the larger ProPhotoRGB space. The Adobe Standard and Adobe Color etc are methods of translating the colors from the camera, which themselves are then contained in a color space like AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB. I am not an expert though, so I am probably not explaining it perfectly.

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41 minutes ago, Einst_Stein said:

My understanding the color profile only determines the range of representable colors, not which color within the range. 

I had Kodak nSLR that usingh proPhotoRGB, which was regarded the widest range color profile. I still miss its color rendering. It is the base color file in Adobe Lightroom. When export the picture for print, I choose to convert to adobe RGB.  I haven't pay attention how the color in PropHoto RBG that is out of Adobe RBG range is mapped to Adobe RGB. I assume it is based on some scale-in process, or simply clipping the color out of range to the boundary of Adobe RBG. 

Does so called Leica Color Science exists? comparing Leica digital camera (M, S3, for example) and Fujifilm (XE1, GFX 100sII), shooting same scene at the same time, same position, of course, unless someone has color blind. That is Leica Color science and Fujifilm Color Science.

There are no monitors nor printers that can render prophoto so you will never see a difference… Gamut has nothing to do with this thread that is about balance. 

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