Omar, my brain hurts now but thank you for posting these. It really helps seeing side by side comparison as well as calibrated before and afters from Sony, Fuji, and Canon. Really keeps your videos unbiased and applicable to everyone. Thanks!
A color checker can be a great tool - but you need to understand what it's useful for. The color checker only works for a given illuminant (light spectrum coming from the lights in to room), a certain space and orientation in the room and the lens used on the camera. there is no "real world" color profile that will make the image right because of all the variables that color science (as an scientific field) involves. So for anyone interested in using color checkers as part of your workflow: bringing one with you on set can be very useful for fixing major mishaps but don't only rely on your preset profiles, because you might be applying a calibration that does more harm than it does good
I try to explain this to people all the time...only person responsible for the colors in your camera is you! It's also a good way to start arguments between photographers :-) So thanks for backing me up! Also...(psst! you're not supposed to touch your color checker...supposedly, our messy human fingers can affect the dyes over time).
Just a cool thing that may interest, if you download RawTherapee, a free RAW processing software, you can actually disable all camera profiles and see the colors the camera sees, without any processing... It's also a great way of understanding what the camera is doing!
Excellent video Omar and a subject often omitted by most. The old " colour science " argument can essentially be disregarded by creating your own profiles😊. Three points however. Firstly you should never touch any of the colour patches on the Xrite passport. Oils from your skin degrade the colours, these patches need to be perfect for the software to work as accurately as possible. Second, I'd generally advise folk to use the Xrite color checker with Xrites own calibration hardware rather than mixing it with a Datacolor spider. They have their own version of the passport. Thirdly, you can create a profile easier in lightroom by exporting directly to X rite Camera Calibration ( edit>>export to>>Xrite Camera Calibration ) rather than dragging a .DNG file into the profile manager seperately. Restart LR and it appears in the Basic's Profile panel the same as you showed here. It does the same thing but literally takes a few seconds to create.😉
Fascinating!! And thank you to talk slowly and such understandable English! Most of English talk too fast to be understandable but yours is just perfect to listen and follow!
Jim carrey face on the right most intro frame had me in stitches! & 4:36 Wow 8:20 blew my mind before you even opened your mouth. Used to think that those swatches were only useful for ultra high end portraiture and fashion editorial shooters but this video was an eye opener. It looks super easy to set up and worth it. Love you OG
year is 1997.. Kodak films tend to magenta and Fuji films are more saturated and tend to green. If the PH of the solution is higher or the temperature is higher, the colors will be wrong. All the checks are made with naked eye using a kodak color card. I am loving this new era of photography... btw.. happy new year Omar!! Wish you all the best !!!
If you are printing, it's good to know what temperature the lighting in the display room will be. Western clients typically have warm tungsten lighting, Eastern tend to have cooler lighting.
Hallo Omar. I have tried to use ColorCal and it works amazing! It supports a lot of colorimeters on the market, even older ones, and the result seems to be more accurate PLUS IT'S FREE!!! The oly negative aspect is that the calibration takes at least half an hour. You must try it
Yeeesss!! I’ve been struggling with color lately; on screen and in print. Very helpful. Looking forward to the monitor calibration and ICC profile for printing videos!
Actually, accurate colors are pleasing colors. The problem with a lack of color accuracy is colors can blend/criss cross into domains they shouldn't be, which can muddle image quality. The whole point is to start off with a base accuracy and edit from there. Kind of like a camera neutral profile, except without all the muted color! Color accuracy also determines starting color hue/saturation/luminance to a degree. This can actually great affect your photo's, even the noise profile of your photo. For example, what if you have a color profile that adds more blue or red....welp, then you're going to see it in your color noise too, when a color accurate image may display it less. It also affects shadows, because again, if a color is darker than accurate, it can lose contrast in the shadow areas. Editing with inaccurate color profiles as a starting point, is like editing with a filter on top of a filter. It can also mess with exposure. For example, let's say you've over exposed an image slightly. In a non-accurate profile, certain colors might not look over exposed at all. Go to color accurate, and you can more readily see which color is over exposed because it will clip. The problem can also happen in the reverse where a color is under exposed but looks properly exposed because of an inaccurate color profile that shifts the relation of things. Let's say you're shooting something red and you want it to look more orange-ish. The non-accurate colors already made it some other shade of red, so you're effectively stretching the color data even more to get the orange hue that you want, because you're editing a fake hue on top of a starting inaccurate hue. You'll find that even artistic filters look better with an accurate color profile as the starting point. After all, filters are just meant to change one color to another color. So let's say you've got a filter that is meant for landscapes, meant to turn a yellowish green into a blue green for example. Well what if your inaccurate color profile is already turning it some shade of blue green or some yellower green? You're then fighting against multiple hues, and losing the intent of what colors that specific filter is supposed to be enhancing! And with that starting color being wrong, you might not even get the best hue when shifting things. The program thinks you're turning absolute red into some other shade, when in reality you're turning some less accurate shade of red into a less accurate shade of orange, which can actually make your colors look more poorly than otherwise, because you're being limited by your starting point. So yes, color accuracy actually matters, and it's what's going to get you the best colors and even dynamic range out of your photo's when you edit them.
@@Purple__ 7:33 I was cringing every time he touched the color tiles. You can see on the light blue patch that there's a dark streak on it that I'm betting will mess with the profiling.
Omar, very good video explaining how confusing color... on monitors, cameras, lenses, different applications AND when printing. All creatives need to understand ALL of these variables. Maybe do more videos explaining each one in detail. Note that photo calibration is very different that video calibration, and Xrite and DataColor even have different charts for photo and video. Then realize these are all prosumer solutions, and you can dive even deeper into very expensive pro systems like Eizo monitors and GRACol systemwide calibration, often used at high-end printing prepres companies. The key to a good solution is being very specific on your software that you use for editing. PhotoShop, LightRoom, CaptureOne... Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve... all have different calibration pros and cons. Personally I use X-Rite Passport for camera profiles. But I use DataColor Spyder for screen calibration. Then I use both Xrite Passport and DataColor ColorChecker for different uses in video and photo stills... it can get very confusing what tool is best for each step. See GRACol and FOGRA for even more professional calibration solutions.
Thank you for the video Omar. It's best to not touch the squares on the Color Checker. Easier said than done, especially when others handle it on set. Also Adobe made a mess of the profiles for later Canon cameras. The curve is way off and Adobe Color make people look like an oompa loompa.
it really only matters if you print. as you said on each screen (pc, mac, android, iOS, etc') you will see different colours. so if you are only uploading your photographs to the web it doesn't really matter. but if you plan on printing your work, then it is a good idea to work with a calibrated setup that includes the camera, your screen and the printer.
I Love the way you make all your videos, they are great!!!! But one thing I don't understand is where should I put the focus point when I make the photo that I will upload to the color checker camera calibration.... Where should I put the focus point,To the subject or to the color checker? Thank you so much ,I Love your channel
Well there is some truth to color science other than the subjective manufacturers interpretations. Color science starts at the CFA's of the sensor. Every sensor has a different color response. Red pixels allow in varying degree's of blue and green light. Blue pixels allow in varying degree's of green and red light, and so on. This means no two sensors will have the same exact output even if you could match everything, because what the sensors reads as a perfect red, would also have a varying degree of blue or green light shifting its luminance, which will slightly shift the shade of color you get, before it even gets translated into color, because the sensor thinks "I see any light that comes through this red pixel as just a shade of red". Which means you'll end up with brighter reds than the actual scene had. Now multiply that by all the other color channels, and you get hue and saturation shifts too. It's easy to see how colors can shift between different sensors, even when you normalize the output between different sensors for color accuracy. In fact, you see that exact result in this video when he showed the spider man comparisons. He blamed it on lenses, and that may have been part of it, but the major part of the difference was exactly because of differences in individual sensor color filter arrays of the different camera's.
I've only just got round to watching this video, which was a bit of an eye opener to myself. How often do you calibrate with the colour checker passport?
You nailed it, great video! Just walk into a Walmart or Best Buy and look at the TV display wall. The same image looks a bit different from brand to brand, even model to model. You are never in control of colors outside of your own little environment. That used to drive me nuts when I first got into digital 15 years ago. Now if it looks close enough from my camera, monitor, printer my Samsung tablet and MotoG screen, I'm just fine.
What about when going on vacations with the family? do I need to get a snap of the colorchecker for every seen? which changes within minutes and sometimes too fast! How do you color check and white balance with the fuji on vacation for the film simulation jpeg files?
I am a little confused, so we use color checker .dng, that we took a photo of with our camera? then upload this photo (.dng) into lightroom and then the lightroom will adjust colors according to that color checker? Or did I misunderstand something?
I would love an ICC profile video for printing from Lightroom. When I was in school, they told us about ICC profiles when printing from Photoshop, but that was, alas, many years ago. Great video!
Omar do you have to create a profile for every lighting situation. For example if you went outside would you have to create a different profile with the passport cheers. Thanks for all the great videos
Not really. A general one with daylight will work on most images. However if you shoot in an orange painted room or a dark wood room that WILL need a new profile.
Thanks for the video. Very educational and truthful video. But for those of us with out an expensive Color checker card or expensive software... EOSHD did wonders to my old a7s colors (specifically the REDS & YELLOWS). That, and White Balancing each scene is vital for getting accurate colors.
1) Starting from first principles I was advised (by Canon's user manual, probably) to capture in the sRGB color space and not Adobe's inside the camera. Something to do with custom publishing workflows; fair enough. 2) Secondly, I'm tired of assumed, accurate white balances from either AWB or "preset" WB settings in the camera. I don't need perfection but would appreciate starting with the best image I can and not spend additional time editing later. I've got an ExpoDisc en route, because (assuming I can position myself where the subject is) it'll report _incident_ light, not _reflected_ light such as gray card (or the Colorchecker ... ) must. If I understand correctly, so long as I like how my camera does color, I can just "fuhgettaboudid" and be good to go in this way ... until it reaches my monitor and printer.
I don't really care for my post above but I'll leave it there anyway. I do realize this video is about seeing/comparing how cameras show color and how you can correct it in post. My white balance diatribe above is a separate thing of course.
Can you do videos regarding printers profiles you mentioned here as well as monitors and their color spaces(srgb and adobe). And question from the other hand- as i see in lots your videos you using apple retina monitor. Are you consider this monitor as a professional monitor for critical color work? Thanks
So if I do my own ICC profile on my LR and Monitor, how is it matching the mpix's printers ICC? Or are you saying accuracy is just one leveled playing field? That iff I calibrate with X-rite, that I'll be in tune with Mpix and any other medium. Or will I have to change my corrected profile once I go to print, and change it back for accurate in-computer sharing. Loaded question, but thanks for the video {subbed}.
I’ve had all the big brand camera brands and not one is perfect in and raw software. I take pics of cars, where different shades of blues are the worst. Then reds are second. Canon did a great job at balancing the correct hues in raw. Nikon has a problem with reds. Fuji had a major problem with blues and reds. Sony A7III is excellent in Capture One Pro. The skin tones are a little off, but easy to fix. Canon and Fuji had great skin tones in Adobe raw. So for the type of shooting with cars and the tough color tones, I stuck with the A7III and process with Capture One Pro. Adobe is awful with Sony. Capture one is amazing now. So it all depends on what you shoot and the process program you use.
I have to try this for my fujifilm xt-3; just about to dump it because the colors do not look natural to me. I feel like I am always dealing with some whacky color. I have my computer calibrated.
Hi Omar, great video. Revisiting this one after watching a recent comparison between the fuji gfx100s and the new hassleblad x2d100c by Matt Granger. It's a relief to know that colour processing can be handled later and effectively 👍🏽
So, when using the x-rite colorchecker, I have to make a new profile for each shooting scene, right? So one for a portrait shoot and a new one for another shoot the next day? I can't just use the same profile for all my images and sessions, right?
Hi Omar! I have a spyder pro 4 to calibrate the monitor but some new versions of Windows 10 don't support it anymore. That's really annoying and frustrating. Have you ever tried other calibration software like DisplayCal ???
Fantastic topic man, i need to understand what color is without relying on the camera profiles or renditions. Thats why i need LR mobile to include the Color calibration tool and drop down menu. If it had that i'd switch to iPad for editing.(off topic :D)
Since i bought my redmi 12c phone i have been wondering why the colors don't look like real life? Aren't we supposed to be making cameras that preduce photos that look more like real life? I thought the better camera i have the more real life like my photos are going to be !?
Hi Omar. Thanks for this video. Was very informative and well timed for me to watch this as I recently started printing on paper and on canvas for clients. Luckily I had no issues so far with the printed material. The last thing you said though was for me very interesting. So I can make an ICC profile and hand it down to the people printing my work? Is this the right interpretation?
I’ve been praising the ColorChecker for well over a decade and it should come with every camera that can shoot raw. Seeing you touched the color patches you can throw yours away and get a new one though, ouch...
Color is ALWAYS subjective. Not only does everyone who checks out your work with their phones/computer screens see a different thing than what you do after doing all of these steps, but even our eyes/brains experience color differently. The "Real" you're talking about is a thing you personally experience. Calibration is very useful when working with multiple devices and you need consistency, but the pursuit of 'absolutely correct' color is some what futile in my opinion. That being said I really hate that I can't turn off the filters modern cameraphones apply that make all colors way too vivid and enhance edges etc...
How do we know that a colour is really what it is? How do different cultures view colours? Do they only use a few basic ones as we do, or do they use many? Too many questions. All I know is that Fuji lets me see on my computer the nearest 'colour truth' to what my eyes saw when the photo was taken.
In science an actual color has to do with the wavelength of light. Like red has a large wavelength and blue a small one. So true red exists but send it to a monitor with a limited color space and forget it. 😊
even after using the custom made profiles, it doesn't matter unless you are printing. because most of our viewers are most probably using a phone that doesn't have a perfect 1080p display even in this era. And then there is this compression facebook and instagram does to your photos.
Yes, RAW files. quite often, not quite correctly display colors, let's call it that. But after unpacking these files, the RAW after primary color correction, and transferring them in the form of TIF, I (mostly) then process files "a film", applied various presets, from natural colors (as in life) can little to stay)))) For me main thing is to catch the "mood" of the frame, and for this we need to change (as well as trimming the frame) color. So I'm not really struggling with the perfect frame color)))
@@ogonzilla For a simple viewer, it does not matter: the right color, or not quite right))) the main Thing is whether his photo image attracts. That's the main thing. The rest is secondary. My personal opinion.
@@ogonzilla You are definitely right-different cameras "see" the world in their own way))) is it Important in the context of this video? Yes. Is it important for the viewer? There is no) Ah, as the so.
Awesome video, thanks man. I appreciate when someone works color accurate and I try to do it myself but at a certain point all the hastle becomes too much. It really depends what you aim to do. If you print large, yeah, it's gonna cost you money to print twice or even worse more than twice. I think the bare minimum of what everyone should do is to calibrate the screen they are working on, since most content will remain digital. Cool video though, enjoyed watching it.
Omar I know I'm late to the party on this video. Love your work. Would a preset of the profile you made work for all your followers or do you take a new shot of the colour thingy majiga everytime you do a shoot. Only as I'd love a starting point preset with the "real" colours
Wonderful video. I have been frustrated printing my photos and seeing the colors look different that what I see on my calibrated monitor. If you could do a video showing how to use the ICC profiles that would be AMAZING!!!
color calibration is a decades long challenge and still not fully working on most of the cameras, due to the inherent weakness of color filters in Bayer sensor, and following calibration variance between different scenes (different light require different calibration and you never have same light condition like in labs in real world scenario. Besides, even under a perfect D50 sunlight condition, object under sunlight and under shadow would require different color profile, but you can never do this since they resides on the same scene
Photographs are not "reality" as such. And printing can not match a monitor because it reflects instead of emits light. Also, in what environment are you looking at your proto's? What is the ambient light there?
That’s why there’s no such thing as straight out of the camera photo that does not need photo editing. Even painters such as Van Gogh, Matisse, etc. have their own definition of red, cyan, etc. I have my own color profile and so are other photographers. Each and everyone have their own color science as the eyes see it. We have our own definition of cinematic color and color grading. So, there’s no such thing as right color of red, etc. as camera brand measurebators would say so in their blogs considering they’re intentionally color blind for the money.
Getting back into photography after a lonnnnnnnng time :-) 30 years to be exact. Found your videos whilst researching Fuji XT100. Thank you so much for all you great videos. Superb! I have a lot to catch up on. I haven’t bought my new camera yet. It seems I’m leaning towards Fuji XT range. But will lay down my cash in the new year rather :-)). PS. You’re hilarious mate. Regards. Jason. U.K.
No, that's still needed. White balance adjusts all colours together until the overall colour balance (white/grey) matches your taste. Calibrating with e.g. a colour checker adjusts the colours individually.
I'd love to see a printer icc profile video. I have a calibrated monitor and used artmill ICC profile and softproofing but there's still variations in shades/hue of red and blue between what i see on screen and what's printed.
You'll never be able to get identical colours from both monitor and print no matter how well you calibrate unfortunately. Calibrating just gets you as close as possible within the gamut limits of your display and output device ( the printer in this case ). Technically you could soft proof and bring all those colours that are out of the printers gamut into line on your display ( assuming your display exceeds the gamut of the printer that is ) and get a very close approximation. Monitors often display colours that far exceed that which most printers can reproduce ( although some printers can reproduce some gamut beyond your monitor too!) A 12 ink printer will produce a wider gamut than an 8 ink printer. Likewise a 99% Adobe RGB display will present a wider gamut than a cheap laptop screen. It's these variables in gamut between devices that make it near impossible to get it perfect. That's assuming your monitor is perfectly calibrated and you are soft proofing against a custom ICC printer profile. Consider also that when you view a monitor it's self emissive where as prints are reflective. If you set your monitor white point to D65 ( 6500K daylight balanced ) then to compare your prints you need to view them in the same temperature of light ( so under a 6500K bulb ). Any variation will alter your perception of colour between monitor and print. Sorry for the long reply, basically it's a minefield to be honest so don't beat yourself up if the two are not exact, just get them as close as you can within the capability of your devices 😉
3:30 - Don't touch the colorchecker tiles tho. Your oils will transfer and up degrading/altering their individual hues.
That was a little painful to watch.
very painful
f... don``t tuch noobster
Morpheus “ Do you think it is red that you are seeing?”
Jonh Coner hahahhaaa
I'm colorblind, so I am completely reliant on my wife to check the colors although she does need calibrating every two months or so.
@The Walking Man
There's a bonafide way to do that, I'm sure.
@The Walking Man
I'm sure, as RAW is how you like it?
@The Walking Man
Yeah, you wouldn't want the f/ to stop due to any stray shots.
Omar, my brain hurts now but thank you for posting these. It really helps seeing side by side comparison as well as calibrated before and afters from Sony, Fuji, and Canon. Really keeps your videos unbiased and applicable to everyone. Thanks!
A color checker can be a great tool - but you need to understand what it's useful for. The color checker only works for a given illuminant (light spectrum coming from the lights in to room), a certain space and orientation in the room and the lens used on the camera. there is no "real world" color profile that will make the image right because of all the variables that color science (as an scientific field) involves.
So for anyone interested in using color checkers as part of your workflow: bringing one with you on set can be very useful for fixing major mishaps but don't only rely on your preset profiles, because you might be applying a calibration that does more harm than it does good
I try to explain this to people all the time...only person responsible for the colors in your camera is you! It's also a good way to start arguments between photographers :-) So thanks for backing me up!
Also...(psst! you're not supposed to touch your color checker...supposedly, our messy human fingers can affect the dyes over time).
How did the algorithm know I needed this video at this exact moment in time 2 years after you created it?? Thank you as always, Omar!
Just a cool thing that may interest, if you download RawTherapee, a free RAW processing software, you can actually disable all camera profiles and see the colors the camera sees, without any processing... It's also a great way of understanding what the camera is doing!
Finally someone on UA-cam that doesn’t blabber about canon colors 😂😂😂
Still love the SOOC color of the Fuji best, but this was very enlightening. Thank you.
Fujifilm jpegs are delicious.
Excellent video Omar and a subject often omitted by most. The old " colour science " argument can essentially be disregarded by creating your own profiles😊. Three points however. Firstly you should never touch any of the colour patches on the Xrite passport. Oils from your skin degrade the colours, these patches need to be perfect for the software to work as accurately as possible. Second, I'd generally advise folk to use the Xrite color checker with Xrites own calibration hardware rather than mixing it with a Datacolor spider. They have their own version of the passport. Thirdly, you can create a profile easier in lightroom by exporting directly to X rite Camera Calibration ( edit>>export to>>Xrite Camera Calibration ) rather than dragging a .DNG file into the profile manager seperately. Restart LR and it appears in the Basic's Profile panel the same as you showed here. It does the same thing but literally takes a few seconds to create.😉
Fascinating!! And thank you to talk slowly and such understandable English! Most of English talk too fast to be understandable but yours is just perfect to listen and follow!
Finally!! Good to be slow me!! 😉
@@ogonzilla exactly! Slow and always with something more than usual photographers are used to share! Thank you for your videos!
Jim carrey face on the right most intro frame had me in stitches! & 4:36 Wow 8:20 blew my mind before you even opened your mouth. Used to think that those swatches were only useful for ultra high end portraiture and fashion editorial shooters but this video was an eye opener. It looks super easy to set up and worth it. Love you OG
*sees the title of the video*
“Well if anyone can describe color, it’s Omar”
year is 1997.. Kodak films tend to magenta and Fuji films are more saturated and tend to green. If the PH of the solution is higher or the temperature is higher, the colors will be wrong. All the checks are made with naked eye using a kodak color card. I am loving this new era of photography... btw.. happy new year Omar!! Wish you all the best !!!
Great instructional video! IMHO, this is the best video I have watched on colour profiles. Love your humour in the starting segment 😂
Thanks so much!
Thanks makes perfect sense. You explained it well. Also it was nice to briefly meet you at Photoplus. Keep up the great work! Tim
Love your style and clear, concise explanations with a splash of humor!
If you are printing, it's good to know what temperature the lighting in the display room will be. Western clients typically have warm tungsten lighting, Eastern tend to have cooler lighting.
Your best „tech“ Video so far... Now, do the Monitor Colour Calibration and the Printer ICC profile stuff. Andalé!
Just a quick question, do you use it for every shoot or just one you created beforehand? Apreciate the video, really helpful!
Hallo Omar. I have tried to use ColorCal and it works amazing! It supports a lot of colorimeters on the market, even older ones, and the result seems to be more accurate PLUS IT'S FREE!!!
The oly negative aspect is that the calibration takes at least half an hour.
You must try it
Yeeesss!! I’ve been struggling with color lately; on screen and in print. Very helpful. Looking forward to the monitor calibration and ICC profile for printing videos!
1 profile to cover all situations? I believe I'm more interested in pleasing colors than accurate colors but a very helpful video!
Actually, accurate colors are pleasing colors. The problem with a lack of color accuracy is colors can blend/criss cross into domains they shouldn't be, which can muddle image quality. The whole point is to start off with a base accuracy and edit from there. Kind of like a camera neutral profile, except without all the muted color! Color accuracy also determines starting color hue/saturation/luminance to a degree. This can actually great affect your photo's, even the noise profile of your photo. For example, what if you have a color profile that adds more blue or red....welp, then you're going to see it in your color noise too, when a color accurate image may display it less.
It also affects shadows, because again, if a color is darker than accurate, it can lose contrast in the shadow areas. Editing with inaccurate color profiles as a starting point, is like editing with a filter on top of a filter. It can also mess with exposure. For example, let's say you've over exposed an image slightly. In a non-accurate profile, certain colors might not look over exposed at all. Go to color accurate, and you can more readily see which color is over exposed because it will clip. The problem can also happen in the reverse where a color is under exposed but looks properly exposed because of an inaccurate color profile that shifts the relation of things.
Let's say you're shooting something red and you want it to look more orange-ish. The non-accurate colors already made it some other shade of red, so you're effectively stretching the color data even more to get the orange hue that you want, because you're editing a fake hue on top of a starting inaccurate hue. You'll find that even artistic filters look better with an accurate color profile as the starting point. After all, filters are just meant to change one color to another color.
So let's say you've got a filter that is meant for landscapes, meant to turn a yellowish green into a blue green for example. Well what if your inaccurate color profile is already turning it some shade of blue green or some yellower green? You're then fighting against multiple hues, and losing the intent of what colors that specific filter is supposed to be enhancing! And with that starting color being wrong, you might not even get the best hue when shifting things. The program thinks you're turning absolute red into some other shade, when in reality you're turning some less accurate shade of red into a less accurate shade of orange, which can actually make your colors look more poorly than otherwise, because you're being limited by your starting point.
So yes, color accuracy actually matters, and it's what's going to get you the best colors and even dynamic range out of your photo's when you edit them.
@@peoplez129 Well said ☺️
Calibrator is a crap. u need a spectrophotometer for such things. Also XRite told that their color checker is not guaranteed to be precise
Not only that, but he also touches the tiles on the colorchecker which transfers oil and grease onto the tiles making them inaccurate
@@Purple__
7:33 I was cringing every time he touched the color tiles. You can see on the light blue patch that there's a dark streak on it that I'm betting will mess with the profiling.
Our eyes calibrated differently
I kinda like Adobe Colors most of the time.
Omar, very good video explaining how confusing color... on monitors, cameras, lenses, different applications AND when printing. All creatives need to understand ALL of these variables. Maybe do more videos explaining each one in detail. Note that photo calibration is very different that video calibration, and Xrite and DataColor even have different charts for photo and video. Then realize these are all prosumer solutions, and you can dive even deeper into very expensive pro systems like Eizo monitors and GRACol systemwide calibration, often used at high-end printing prepres companies. The key to a good solution is being very specific on your software that you use for editing. PhotoShop, LightRoom, CaptureOne... Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve... all have different calibration pros and cons. Personally I use X-Rite Passport for camera profiles. But I use DataColor Spyder for screen calibration. Then I use both Xrite Passport and DataColor ColorChecker for different uses in video and photo stills... it can get very confusing what tool is best for each step. See GRACol and FOGRA for even more professional calibration solutions.
Thank you for the video Omar.
It's best to not touch the squares on the Color Checker. Easier said than done, especially when others handle it on set.
Also Adobe made a mess of the profiles for later Canon cameras. The curve is way off and Adobe Color make people look like an oompa loompa.
Please do the video on monitor calibration...I keep trying with my Spyder Express and it still gets wonky color...
You picked a great topic this time Omar, looking out for the next installment.
This video is pure gold! Thanks for this, it helps alot.
it really only matters if you print.
as you said on each screen (pc, mac, android, iOS, etc') you will see different colours. so if you are only uploading your photographs to the web it doesn't really matter.
but if you plan on printing your work, then it is a good idea to work with a calibrated setup that includes the camera, your screen and the printer.
Do you make custom profiles for every shoot? Or is one good enough?
I Love the way you make all your videos, they are great!!!! But one thing I don't understand is where should I put the focus point when I make the photo that I will upload to the color checker camera calibration.... Where should I put the focus point,To the subject or to the color checker? Thank you so much ,I Love your channel
Focus on the color checker. The software will recognize it anywhere in the picture
Gracias!!!!@@ogonzilla
FINALLY a video that talks some common sense. I'm so sick hearing fanboys talking about color science with ZERO facts behind it
Well there is some truth to color science other than the subjective manufacturers interpretations. Color science starts at the CFA's of the sensor. Every sensor has a different color response. Red pixels allow in varying degree's of blue and green light. Blue pixels allow in varying degree's of green and red light, and so on. This means no two sensors will have the same exact output even if you could match everything, because what the sensors reads as a perfect red, would also have a varying degree of blue or green light shifting its luminance, which will slightly shift the shade of color you get, before it even gets translated into color, because the sensor thinks "I see any light that comes through this red pixel as just a shade of red".
Which means you'll end up with brighter reds than the actual scene had. Now multiply that by all the other color channels, and you get hue and saturation shifts too. It's easy to see how colors can shift between different sensors, even when you normalize the output between different sensors for color accuracy. In fact, you see that exact result in this video when he showed the spider man comparisons. He blamed it on lenses, and that may have been part of it, but the major part of the difference was exactly because of differences in individual sensor color filter arrays of the different camera's.
I've only just got round to watching this video, which was a bit of an eye opener to myself. How often do you calibrate with the colour checker passport?
You nailed it, great video! Just walk into a Walmart or Best Buy and look at the TV display wall. The same image looks a bit different from brand to brand, even model to model. You are never in control of colors outside of your own little environment. That used to drive me nuts when I first got into digital 15 years ago. Now if it looks close enough from my camera, monitor, printer my Samsung tablet and MotoG screen, I'm just fine.
That could've been the theme of the video. Perfect colors (in our own little worlds). 😊
What about when going on vacations with the family? do I need to get a snap of the colorchecker for every seen? which changes within minutes and sometimes too fast! How do you color check and white balance with the fuji on vacation for the film simulation jpeg files?
Very interesting and helpful. I never realized you could get the info from the printing company you may
Lighting makes a HUGE difference as well!!
Lightning even HUGER difference ! I use it all the time :D
I am a little confused, so we use color checker .dng, that we took a photo of with our camera? then upload this photo (.dng) into lightroom and then the lightroom will adjust colors according to that color checker? Or did I misunderstand something?
I would love an ICC profile video for printing from Lightroom. When I was in school, they told us about ICC profiles when printing from Photoshop, but that was, alas, many years ago. Great video!
Omar do you have to create a profile for every lighting situation. For example if you went outside would you have to create a different profile with the passport cheers. Thanks for all the great videos
Not really. A general one with daylight will work on most images. However if you shoot in an orange painted room or a dark wood room that WILL need a new profile.
Thanks for the video. Very educational and truthful video. But for those of us with out an expensive Color checker card or expensive software... EOSHD did wonders to my old a7s colors (specifically the REDS & YELLOWS). That, and White Balancing each scene is vital for getting accurate colors.
Great video Omar! Would be interesting in episode 2 about monitor calibrating and episode 3 about printer profiles !
Yup!!!! Thanks for watching.
María De Jesús Rodríguez’s Profile 😂
The way u explained this colour science topic is excellent..
1) Starting from first principles I was advised (by Canon's user manual, probably) to capture in the sRGB color space and not Adobe's inside the camera. Something to do with custom publishing workflows; fair enough.
2) Secondly, I'm tired of assumed, accurate white balances from either AWB or "preset" WB settings in the camera. I don't need perfection but would appreciate starting with the best image I can and not spend additional time editing later. I've got an ExpoDisc en route, because (assuming I can position myself where the subject is) it'll report _incident_ light, not _reflected_ light such as gray card (or the Colorchecker ... ) must.
If I understand correctly, so long as I like how my camera does color, I can just "fuhgettaboudid" and be good to go in this way ... until it reaches my monitor and printer.
I don't really care for my post above but I'll leave it there anyway. I do realize this video is about seeing/comparing how cameras show color and how you can correct it in post. My white balance diatribe above is a separate thing of course.
Can you do videos regarding printers profiles you mentioned here as well as monitors and their color spaces(srgb and adobe).
And question from the other hand- as i see in lots your videos you using apple retina monitor. Are you consider this monitor as a professional monitor for critical color work? Thanks
So if I do my own ICC profile on my LR and Monitor, how is it matching the mpix's printers ICC? Or are you saying accuracy is just one leveled playing field? That iff I calibrate with X-rite, that I'll be in tune with Mpix and any other medium. Or will I have to change my corrected profile once I go to print, and change it back for accurate in-computer sharing. Loaded question, but thanks for the video {subbed}.
Working on the last part. That will help you. Quick answer is you need the icc from mpix website and upload to LR.
Does the custom color profile work with Premier pro as well ?
would you mind to share your profile for a7iii? i dont have the extra budget to get xrite color yet
How does this color checker work for outside in varying light conditions with clouds, shade, sunlight changing? Is it a moot point in that scenario?
That's more of a white balance topic. The color checker software can create the same true color profile in any white balance.
No one:
Omar: "EVERYONE IS A LiERrRRRRRRRRRRR"
Hahhaa im kidding. I enjoyed this video!!!
Cheers Omar, very interesting, may I ask, when you calibrate your two iMacs and view the same image on both screens, do they look the same? :-)
I don't even know how good is your channel but I siw this statues and boom! Subscribed!
Wouldn’t you need to take a picture of the color checker at each location? I’m assuming colors change everywhere you go and in every situation?
Yup
I’ve had all the big brand camera brands and not one is perfect in and raw software.
I take pics of cars, where different shades of blues are the worst. Then reds are second.
Canon did a great job at balancing the correct hues in raw.
Nikon has a problem with reds.
Fuji had a major problem with blues and reds.
Sony A7III is excellent in Capture One Pro. The skin tones are a little off, but easy to fix.
Canon and Fuji had great skin tones in Adobe raw.
So for the type of shooting with cars and the tough color tones, I stuck with the A7III and process with Capture One Pro. Adobe is awful with Sony. Capture one is amazing now.
So it all depends on what you shoot and the process program you use.
I have to try this for my fujifilm xt-3; just about to dump it because the colors do not look natural to me. I feel like I am always dealing with some whacky color. I have my computer calibrated.
Question Omar: Does Sony have it’s own editing software? If so, can’t you just use theirs since the A7 lll is their camera ?
Hi Omar, great video. Revisiting this one after watching a recent comparison between the fuji gfx100s and the new hassleblad x2d100c by Matt Granger. It's a relief to know that colour processing can be handled later and effectively 👍🏽
So, when using the x-rite colorchecker, I have to make a new profile for each shooting scene, right? So one for a portrait shoot and a new one for another shoot the next day? I can't just use the same profile for all my images and sessions, right?
Same profile made in daylight will work over and over. In strange new lighting then make a new one.
@@ogonzilla Okay thanks Omar 🙂
Hi Omar! I have a spyder pro 4 to calibrate the monitor but some new versions of Windows 10 don't support it anymore. That's really annoying and frustrating. Have you ever tried other calibration software like DisplayCal ???
I have not but been researching them for the next video.
@@ogonzilla That's awesome🏆. Can't wait to see your next video. Have a nice weekend👍
Fantastic topic man, i need to understand what color is without relying on the camera profiles or renditions. Thats why i need LR mobile to include the Color calibration tool and drop down menu. If it had that i'd switch to iPad for editing.(off topic :D)
That music at the end of your video is awesome. I know you've used in a few other videos as well. What is the source?
Since i bought my redmi 12c phone i have been wondering why the colors don't look like real life? Aren't we supposed to be making cameras that preduce photos that look more like real life? I thought the better camera i have the more real life like my photos are going to be !?
Hi Omar. Thanks for this video. Was very informative and well timed for me to watch this as I recently started printing on paper and on canvas for clients. Luckily I had no issues so far with the printed material. The last thing you said though was for me very interesting. So I can make an ICC profile and hand it down to the people printing my work? Is this the right interpretation?
Yes that was helpful. I have the spyder calibrator and have one monitor set up but still get dark prints. It seems so wasteful and stresses me out!
I’ve been praising the ColorChecker for well over a decade and it should come with every camera that can shoot raw.
Seeing you touched the color patches you can throw yours away and get a new one though, ouch...
Color is ALWAYS subjective. Not only does everyone who checks out your work with their phones/computer screens see a different thing than what you do after doing all of these steps, but even our eyes/brains experience color differently. The "Real" you're talking about is a thing you personally experience. Calibration is very useful when working with multiple devices and you need consistency, but the pursuit of 'absolutely correct' color is some what futile in my opinion. That being said I really hate that I can't turn off the filters modern cameraphones apply that make all colors way too vivid and enhance edges etc...
How do we know that a colour is really what it is? How do different cultures view colours? Do they only use a few basic ones as we do, or do they use many? Too many questions. All I know is that Fuji lets me see on my computer the nearest 'colour truth' to what my eyes saw when the photo was taken.
In science an actual color has to do with the wavelength of light. Like red has a large wavelength and blue a small one. So true red exists but send it to a monitor with a limited color space and forget it. 😊
excellent video in every way!!! you just refreshed everything I had learned in the past in under 11 minutes!!
even after using the custom made profiles, it doesn't matter unless you are printing. because most of our viewers are most probably using a phone that doesn't have a perfect 1080p display even in this era. And then there is this compression facebook and instagram does to your photos.
I even see different colour temperature with on eye and the other one.
Yes, RAW files. quite often, not quite correctly display colors, let's call it that. But after unpacking these files, the RAW after primary color correction, and transferring them in the form of TIF, I (mostly) then process files "a film", applied various presets, from natural colors (as in life) can little to stay)))) For me main thing is to catch the "mood" of the frame, and for this we need to change (as well as trimming the frame) color. So I'm not really struggling with the perfect frame color)))
Sounds like more work than this!! 😊 But whatever works for you is great.
@@ogonzilla For a simple viewer, it does not matter: the right color, or not quite right))) the main Thing is whether his photo image attracts. That's the main thing. The rest is secondary. My personal opinion.
@@ogonzilla You are definitely right-different cameras "see" the world in their own way))) is it Important in the context of this video? Yes. Is it important for the viewer? There is no) Ah, as the so.
Awesome video, thanks man. I appreciate when someone works color accurate and I try to do it myself but at a certain point all the hastle becomes too much. It really depends what you aim to do. If you print large, yeah, it's gonna cost you money to print twice or even worse more than twice. I think the bare minimum of what everyone should do is to calibrate the screen they are working on, since most content will remain digital. Cool video though, enjoyed watching it.
Great video. Simply enjoyed learning something new. Very clearly explained. Thanks.
One of the best channels. Love your content. :)
Omar I know I'm late to the party on this video. Love your work. Would a preset of the profile you made work for all your followers or do you take a new shot of the colour thingy majiga everytime you do a shoot.
Only as I'd love a starting point preset with the "real" colours
Wonderful video. I have been frustrated printing my photos and seeing the colors look different that what I see on my calibrated monitor. If you could do a video showing how to use the ICC profiles that would be AMAZING!!!
"you may be looking at it on a Google pixel".
Checks room for hidden cameras.
Would love to see a video on color and printing! Helpful video as always. Thanks O.
color calibration is a decades long challenge and still not fully working on most of the cameras, due to the inherent weakness of color filters in Bayer sensor, and following calibration variance between different scenes (different light require different calibration and you never have same light condition like in labs in real world scenario. Besides, even under a perfect D50 sunlight condition, object under sunlight and under shadow would require different color profile, but you can never do this since they resides on the same scene
7:45 - in practice... Spiderman... LOL XD
Photographs are not "reality" as such. And printing can not match a monitor because it reflects instead of emits light. Also, in what environment are you looking at your proto's? What is the ambient light there?
Totally
That’s why there’s no such thing as straight out of the camera photo that does not need photo editing. Even painters such as Van Gogh, Matisse, etc. have their own definition of red, cyan, etc. I have my own color profile and so are other photographers. Each and everyone have their own color science as the eyes see it. We have our own definition of cinematic color and color grading. So, there’s no such thing as right color of red, etc. as camera brand measurebators would say so in their blogs considering they’re intentionally color blind for the money.
Hi omar! is it possible that can you share the dng file to us? Thanks.
Black and White photos are great too...
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I'll show myself out, thank you !
lol
Getting back into photography after a lonnnnnnnng time :-) 30 years to be exact. Found your videos whilst researching Fuji XT100. Thank you so much for all you great videos. Superb! I have a lot to catch up on. I haven’t bought my new camera yet. It seems I’m leaning towards Fuji XT range. But will lay down my cash in the new year rather :-)). PS. You’re hilarious mate. Regards. Jason. U.K.
Quick question: does this mean you don't have to faff about with white balance?
No, that's still needed. White balance adjusts all colours together until the overall colour balance (white/grey) matches your taste. Calibrating with e.g. a colour checker adjusts the colours individually.
@@Elgsdyr Gotcha. Thanks. Lots of lovely helpful people on this channel!
Very helpful Omar. Would love to see a video on icc profiles. Thanks!
me too
Loving the creativity in your latest videos!
Can't wait to see your Spyder colour calibration video!
Fuji color science is legit accurate. The only problem is shadow value for those colors are custom setting +2.
Accidentally subscribed. I don't regret it
I fully cringed when I saw your fingers on the colour swatches. A great topic for your channel.
I'd love to see a printer icc profile video.
I have a calibrated monitor and used artmill ICC profile and softproofing but there's still variations in shades/hue of red and blue between what i see on screen and what's printed.
You'll never be able to get identical colours from both monitor and print no matter how well you calibrate unfortunately. Calibrating just gets you as close as possible within the gamut limits of your display and output device ( the printer in this case ). Technically you could soft proof and bring all those colours that are out of the printers gamut into line on your display ( assuming your display exceeds the gamut of the printer that is ) and get a very close approximation. Monitors often display colours that far exceed that which most printers can reproduce ( although some printers can reproduce some gamut beyond your monitor too!) A 12 ink printer will produce a wider gamut than an 8 ink printer. Likewise a 99% Adobe RGB display will present a wider gamut than a cheap laptop screen. It's these variables in gamut between devices that make it near impossible to get it perfect. That's assuming your monitor is perfectly calibrated and you are soft proofing against a custom ICC printer profile. Consider also that when you view a monitor it's self emissive where as prints are reflective. If you set your monitor white point to D65 ( 6500K daylight balanced ) then to compare your prints you need to view them in the same temperature of light ( so under a 6500K bulb ). Any variation will alter your perception of colour between monitor and print. Sorry for the long reply, basically it's a minefield to be honest so don't beat yourself up if the two are not exact, just get them as close as you can within the capability of your devices 😉
Thank you Omar!
This video was very helpful. 🙏
Great video, Omar. I would love to see a video on how to use print lab ICC profiles.