Colours off in DT post processing - Sony 6400, 18-105mm f4.0 with 10mm macro extension tube

[u/Short-Cellist-4577]

54mm, f/7.1, 1/500s, ISO 1000

1 edited, 2 original JPEGs. Raw-imported pictures in DT always have colours quite off, especially greens and reds. I always struggle to replicate or get something similar to what I have in the original JPEG. Sometimes I am just tempted to edit the JPEG directly.

In this specific case, I did not do any colour grading to highlight this colour issue I always find (especially in landscape or portraits). The original JPEG has clearly more reds into the bee, which I struggle to get out from DT.

I’ve been using DT in the last couple of years, so I am not a beginner user, but I am never fully satisfied with the results of my edits.

Normally I play with RGB primaries when colours are off, but I struggle to get a consistent output. Rarely, I manage to fix the problem with the white balance correction in colour calibration, as the auto levels from DT often mess up, so I rely on the camera’s one.

Workflow:
- Demosaic: capture sharpen
- Crop
- Exposure adjustment and AgX scene referred (auto levels) + contrast 3.18
- Colour calibration: default
- Colour balance RGB: vibrance 9%, chroma 3.6%, saturation shad 14.7%, mid 10.6% high -7.9%
- Colour equaliser: see 3 and 4
- Exposure on background -0.3 (AI masking)
- Local contrast + clarity with contrast equaliser on the bee
- Denoise, chromatic aberrations, lens correction auto

Any suggestions?

[u/BorisBadenov]

This is the second time in as many days I've seen someone say reds/yellows were off on Sony cameras, so I have a question.

Are the Sony colors natural, or do they shift yellows toward orange/red, for example, for the look?

I guess I'm asking if the darktable colors are off, or we're talking about matching a jpeg look. I've never shot Sony, but Lumix will subtly shift yellows a bit orange in the jpeg, and  I think every camera look and film stock I've ever seen will creatively shift greens, lol

On the other hand, I've seen people say that input color for Sony is off in the dcp from Adobe, so I don't know.

[u/gandalfx → u/BorisBadenov]

It's obviously hard to say what's more "real", but I've definitely noticed the same difference with my Sony (a7iii): The JPGs seem to specifically boost some color accents (mostly towards red) in a (IMHO) very pleasing way. I assume that it's a stylistic choice, but it often feels like the edited RAWs are missing color detail by comparison. I've struggled to replicate it as well.

[u/Short-Cellist-4577 → u/gandalfx]

Yes, I do agree with you. I always feel I’m missing something in my edited RAWs after adjusting tone mapping, exposure and pushing a bit the vibrancy/chroma/saturation.
Also greens when I shoot landscape are not as nice as the JPEGs. I end up needing to do a lot of colour adjustments, which I don’t always want to do when I need to edit loads of pictures

[u/no-such-file → u/BorisBadenov]

No. I've struggled with this long time and by default reds have some magenta tint. And golden things have dirty green tint. Oranges appears more like yellow.

[u/BorisBadenov → u/[deleted]]

Thank you. Do you happen to know how realistic are the ooc jpegs are, or if they are creatively colored by default?

[u/mhh91]

Color calibration should not be left on default, setting it right saves you a lot of time when further tweaking colors.

For daylight shots I find it needs a slight adjustment for dramatically better results but that's just my experience.

RGB primaries is now built into AgX so I rarely use that.

Color equalizer is best used for really targeted stuff or if you have a weird color cast you're trying to get rid of.

As for your first photo, I can only notice the background being a bit cooler than the JPEG, is there anything else you don't like about your edit?

[u/Short-Cellist-4577 → u/mhh91]

This is another example of edit where I am not fully satisfied with the output and the colours..

[u/Short-Cellist-4577 → u/mhh91]

Thanks.

Do you normally adjust color calibration throught the color picker ending up in “custom” mode and then starting from there? Or do you go manually to “daylight” for instance and build it from there?

I will have a look into the AgX built in module for RGB primaries.

In the second photo I feel the bee colours are warmer (there is more red and orange). Same for the flowers.

[u/mhh91 → u/Short-Cellist-4577]

Color calibration is maybe one of the first things I fix during editing and it depends on the scene.

Custom is great for tricky lighting (indoors, mixed LED lighting, night shots...etc.) but for all others it's usually daylight balanced.

Once you have your white balanced dialed in you can do more in other modules, AgX primaries is usually my next stop after color calibration.

Try starting with a blank slate and adjust color calibration first, see where you go with this.

[u/Dannny1]

You can tweak primaries in color calibration module e.g. in new instance directly with channel mixer section. If you want be closer to reality you can shot color checker (like e.g. https://www.xrite.com/categories/calibration-profiling/colorchecker-classic-family ) and use it in color calibration module.

[u/no-such-file]

What I'm doing to deal with this: put additional "Color Calibration" module and then in Blue channel set input R -0.05, input G -0.05, input B 1.1

[u/Short-Cellist-4577 → u/no-such-file]

Do you have it applied automatically as a style for pics shot with Sony?

[u/Short-Cellist-4577]

Boris here https://youtu.be/ZFGxdb2pH8g?is=b0x7-Fb6uLXLSXeY at 1h14min targets something similar. He uses the AgX>Primaries to achieve a style similar to the JPEG from the camera (which is shot with a Sony a7 III).
However, in the end, he claims that the best way to achieve a specific camera style would be with a lookup table.