Hi All,
I'm hoping I can get more help on this topic. I'm still not happy with the
colour rendition in Darktable. Frankly the JPEGs being generated by the
cameras are working out a lot better than anything Darktable does with it's
matrices, or any ICC profile I'm able to create at this point. It feels
like I'm making blind stabs in the dark for these.
I've recently picked up a Canon 6D, upgrading from my Canon 600D (Rebel
T3i). I've also purchased Wolfe's affordable IT8.7 calibration chart, but
thus far I am not happy with the results I'm getting when I create an ICC
profile based on pmjdebruijn's instructions:
https://encrypted.pcode.nl/blog/2010/06/28/darktable-camera-color-profiling/
I notice there's no enhanced matrix for the 6D as an input profile, only
standard. Using Velvia seems to make a difference for some things, but
frankly, skintones are completely messed.
After a lot of frustration in creating ICC profiles which just didn't get
it right at all, I started tweaking the Base Curves of the calibration
image being fed to colprof. I'd adjust the basecurve to make sure they
matched as closely as possible the values inside the Reference files for
the Grey Scale part of the chart. This seemed to have made some difference
for some of the problems with tonality, while others were not. After using
the new profiles for the last week or so... I can tell it's way off. The
profiles I've ended up creating are too bright, they seem to cause the
images to appear overexposed, where they are not. Only the standard color
matrix seems to get anything right in terms of tonality, consistently in
any picture, but slightly underexposed, which seems to solve some of the
highlight issures.
So imagine the equilibrium of trying to balance Base Curves, Unbreak, Tone
Curves & Input Colour Profile. It's too many settings to adjust for every
picture with a different exposure, and there's nothing consistent. Add a
high volume workflow to this, from event photos where all you want to do is
watermark some images, and adjust exposure on others, and this kind
tweaking is putting a huge drain on my time and impeding my workflow to the
point of causing delays in editing these images by days.
My biggest beef of all is also that with skintones is they all have a weird
green thing. I've read before that this is a Canon issue, but none of the
JPEGs demonstrate this, and all the ICC profiles I've created also add
this, with the exception of LabLUT profiles, but those LabLUT based ICCs
seem to add a green tinge to shadows, and have sharp angles in some of the
curves which don't make sense. My guess is that an IT8.7 target doesn't
offer enough swatches to properly calibrate a LUT as a colour profile.
If I could train my camera to watermark the images as it generates a JPG,
which is all I need Darktable to do when I deal with the volume of photos I
end up with at events then I wouldn't worry about this, and while a Canon
6D can do quite a few corrections in camera, including regenerate with
corrected light balance, a different Picture Style, and 1 stop of exposure
adjustment, that's not enough, besides the fact of the tediousness of doing
this all one image at a time, on camera.
Here are my goals:
1. Create something equivalent to Canon Picture Styles as a preset for
whatever modules necessary to make this work properly. If I have to create
an ICC profile/colour matrix for each of these, I'm good with that. But
HOW?
2. FIX THE EVIL GREEN SKIN MONSTERS so that people stop looking like they
are turning into the hulk. Lighttable has a "skintones" range for
adjustment as well as shadows & highlights. How do I do access something
similar, easily within Darktable? Parametric masks? I'm tired of the
green. This needs to be easier and faster to do for me to keep using
Darktable in the long term. Lightroom isn't a good option for me until I
replace my Linux machines with Macs, but for now most Adobe products live
inside a VM, and I'd rather stick with the speed optimizations that DT has
to offer, but these workflow snags are pretty bad right now.
3. Make this work, easily, quickly and every time for images that are
exposed with a flash at the same settings on the same camera, event after
event.
Kindest Regards,
John P Santos
Photographer // Owner
GREENBEEMEDIA.COM
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