[conradj]

i use ufraw and the Gimp in my work flow, and have long been frustrated by the awful colours and tones in low light high ISO shots when importing RAW files from both the K-7 and now the K-5, using ufraw. Especially true with skin tones, which of course is where i need accurate colours the most.

Up to now when doing critical work my workaround has been to develop RAW files in-camera to TIF files which i then load into the Gimp.

Does anyone have ICC profiles for the K-5 (and mebbe the K-7) to share? Perhaps that would make life easier.

many thanks.

[newmikey]

Cannot help you on that but I feel your pain. I ended up doing my own ICC profile on the K20D using the XRite Colorchecker Passport. It wasn't so expensive but considering I have only used it once until now and the thing ended up in the bottom drawer, it was somewhat of a daft purchase. Nevertheless, color rendition in my conversions with UFRaw improved greatly with the new profile.

I can now convert a raw which is virtually undistinguishable (colorwise that is) to the Pentax in-camera JPEG. Obviously, I can take that as a starting point and improve the resulting conversion beyond, but that was my starting point.

Don't know what OS you're on but I used the XRite software under Wine on my Linux box and then converted the resulting DCP (DNG Color Profile) profile to ICC with this open-source software: dcp2icc available for Windows, MAC and Linux.

[conradj]

Thanks for the input! i guess i'll eventually go down that route myself. The difference between what the in-cam processing can do with high-ISO shots and what i can do is quite substantial. i'm first going to try extracting the color proflie from the DNG file and running it thru dcp2icc. Man, almost all these programs run in Windows and Mac. Most of my boxes are Linux, only have one Windows box in a corner somewhere.

[Karl Stevens]

A user here developed his own (I haven't tried it) https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/digital-processing-software-printing/1445...c-profile.html

[conradj]

i downloaded Adobe's beta of their DNG Profile Editor and used it to extract the colour profile out of a K-5 DNG, at both 6500K and 2850K, then converted them into ICC profiles using dcp2icc.

Been using those the last few days. They do make PP much easier tho they run out of steam in the shadows of the ISO1000-1250 ambient light portraits i was shooting on Tues. Those still go red; it does gets me in the ballpark for acceptable skin tones so i'm a happy camper.

Not a great shot and has a blown spot, but indicative of what i'm now getting:

K-5, Rokinon 85mm f1.4, ISO1000, 1/15s, f1.8, -0.3EV

The environment has no direct light on the people at the mike and deep red walls ...

--i tried that ICC profile from that post that you linked to, Karl; skin tones are a bit green for what i'm looking for-- have to play with it more to see if it's actually better.

[Digitalis]

The problem with asking for someone else's profile is that your particular camera sensor might behave differently, X-rite have a camera profiling tool that I use. My impression of the the Gimp is that it isn't that great when it comes to colour management, otherwise you wouldn't be having the problems you are having.With my own profiles I have found the K10 handles orange and yellow tones better than the K7 does.

FYI: those skin tones look patchy on my viewsonic monitor - and my eizo monitor shows it with greater clarity.

[newmikey]

The problem with asking for someone else's profile is that your particular camera sensor might behave differently,

Absolutely right!

My impression of the the Gimp is that it isn't that great when it comes to colour management, otherwise you wouldn't be having the problems you are having.

Absolutely wrong! The OP uses UFRaw to convert. GIMP's colour management doesn't really come into it. By the time UFRaw passes on the converted image, it is sRGB already. UFRaw deals with ICC profiles without a hitch.

[jolepp]

See: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/digital-processing-software-printing/1416...ml#post1479207.

[conradj]

The problem with asking for someone else's profile is that your particular camera sensor might behave differently, X-rite have a camera profiling tool that I use. My impression of the the Gimp is that it isn't that great when it comes to colour management, otherwise you wouldn't be having the problems you are having.With my own profiles I have found the K10 handles orange and yellow tones better than the K7 does.

FYI: those skin tones look patchy on my viewsonic monitor - and my eizo monitor shows it with greater clarity.

patches of red with blue in it you mean, and areas that are greenish? That's the way that skin there actually is, tho emphasizing it isn't exactly complimentary. It's all PP tho as by any standard lighting definition the man's face is in shadow, illuminated by bounce light from red purplish walls. Plus colour and contrast modulation is getting pretty iffy by ISO1000-1250, contrast starts to take jumps and stuff go red abruptly.

--o i was just looking for colour profiles that'll bring me reasonably close, so the one embedded in the DNG works. For that matter results from the one i extracted out of the K-7 DNG are actually easier to deal with: less red.

Finding that the ICC profile that Emacs posted works quite well for night time exterior urban and suburban shots.

All happy stuff: since i started using these ICC profiles in ufraw, been spending a quarter of the time i used to in PP.

[conradj]

Here is the same shot, first one inported with ufraw into the gimp without a colour profile, second using Emacs's. The second one needs work, but it's a much better place to start from than the one without a colour profile.


K-5, SMC-FA28-105 IF, ISO80, f11, 15s, EV0, no colour profile



K-5, SMC-FA28-105 IF, ISO80, f11, 15s, EV0, with colour profile