[philbaum]

At a local camera club blog, I've noticed that some of my posted pictures have skies that seem a touch to green (and unnatural) compared to photos from some other folks.

Then today I was reviewing an article on ephotozine that compared the Canon 50D with the Pentax K7. Forget the review, but the posted samples in this article that relate to noise, clearly show what i'm talking about. These are only thumbnails but Pentax K7 pics seem to have a green tinge compared to the Canon pics which seem to me to have a more natural blue. Later on, they compare a grass picture which shows a deeper green for the Pentax vice a lighter green for the Canon. This is the article:

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Canon-EOS-50D-vs-Pentax-K7-12984#Verdict

I use Lightroom to process my photos. I use sRGB as a color space and Adobe Standard for a camera color profile. I'm not quite sure how to do it but i suppose i can build a preset that reduces the green slightly or alternatively tweaks the blue hue. Am i on the right track here? Which is the better way to go?

thanks in advance for any advice, Phil

[imtheguy]

We are skipping over the part about printing so for the sake of brevity I will assume you determined the color cast is from the camera. Although I have a K20D instead of the K7 I am assuming the K7 has the same white balance settings that allow you to chose a setting (such as Bright or Natural) and alter the green/magenta balance as well as others. I too didn't like the greenish yellow strenght and altered the settings so JPGs defaulted to the balance I was looking for. PEF/DNG does not have the problem to begin with (for me). Hope this is helpful.

[philbaum]

We are skipping over the part about printing so for the sake of brevity I will assume you determined the color cast is from the camera. Although I have a K20D instead of the K7 I am assuming the K7 has the same white balance settings that allow you to chose a setting (such as Bright or Natural) and alter the green/magenta balance as well as others. I too didn't like the greenish yellow strenght and altered the settings so JPGs defaulted to the balance I was looking for. PEF/DNG does not have the problem to begin with (for me). Hope this is helpful.

Lee,
I use PEF and get the problem, i suppose it might relate to what RAW processor is used. But i like your idea of adjusting the cast in the camera, sounds too easy. I have the k20 as well. Thanks for the tip!!!!

[Ecaterin]

Don't have much of an answer, but I'll say that my K10 always had more green on RAW photos than I wanted, enough that I always changed the RAW settings from 'as shot' to 'daylight,' and often still ended up needing manual adjustments to get natural color. My K-x never does. Using the same software - Elements. My K-x photos need almost nothing adjusted in RAW compared to my K10.

At a local camera club blog, I've noticed that some of my posted pictures have skies that seem a touch to green (and unnatural) compared to photos from some other folks.

Then today I was reviewing an article on ephotozine that compared the Canon 50D with the Pentax K7. Forget the review, but the posted samples in this article that relate to noise, clearly show what i'm talking about. These are only thumbnails but Pentax K7 pics seem to have a green tinge compared to the Canon pics which seem to me to have a more natural blue. Later on, they compare a grass picture which shows a deeper green for the Pentax vice a lighter green for the Canon. This is the article:

Canon EOS 50D vs Pentax K-7 Digital SLR Review

I use Lightroom to process my photos. I use sRGB as a color space and Adobe Standard for a camera color profile. I'm not quite sure how to do it but i suppose i can build a preset that reduces the green slightly or alternatively tweaks the blue hue. Am i on the right track here? Which is the better way to go?

thanks in advance for any advice, Phil

[Marc Sabatella]

If anythingk it's a difference of opinion in WB, not anything to be concerned about regarding the cameras themselves. But FWIW, on my calibrated monitor, the pentax examples in the review you linked to look much more believable to me. Blue skies *do* generally lean more toward green than toward violet. If you'd rather your skies look violet, though, you can indeed just tweak your WB or color settings to get that look.

[Parallax]

My monitor is calibrated as well and the K7 pictures look more natural to me. The clouds in some of the pictures from the Canon actually have a very, very slight reddish tint to them.

[audiobomber]

I have a friend with a Canon 40D and 50D. His 40D has a brown tinge that I find particularly ugly. The 50D is a bit too blue. I've noticed a yellow tinge with Nikon D90 and I dislike that too. I'm very happy with the K20D hue, out of the camera or converted in the Pentax software.

[patrickw]

Phil,

Believe it or not I came onto the forum tonight to post the exact observation you've made. I also find the K7 skies a bit too green, and I'm also shooting PEF files and using Lightroom 2.6.

The first thing to note is that when I demoed Aperture the K7 files didn't render with such turquoise cast to the sky. Also if you choose "Camera Standard" instead of "Adobe Standard" it largely corrects the turquoise skies... but unfortunately I find the colors when choosing Camera Standard to be otherwise inferior -- fake and over-saturated looking. Part of the frustration for me is that I prefer the look of Adobe Standard colors over the other two alternatives I've tried with the camera (Camera Standard and Aperture), except for the greenish cast to the skies.

I have been trying to come up with a preset in Lightroom to achieve a color balance that looks more natural to me. Of course part of the problem is determining what looks really natural, because our brains play tricks on us with color. Sometime in the next couple of days I am going to do a little test with a sky-blue coffee mug I've got so I can actually hold the mug up to the screen to compare the photograph with the object. Not a definitive test by any stretch (being photographed under tungsten lights it will be a somewhat different test of the color rendering) but it'll give me some more data to work with. Another thing I have started doing is shooting a few frames RAW+ each time I go out, so that gives me another color reference later on. (The in-camera JPEGs set to "natural" match neither Adobe Standard or Camera Standard colors fwiw).

Really I got serious about addressing this situation after I photographed some spray-painted graffiti, and the paint was a rather pure cobalt blue, and when I developed the RAW files in Lightroom it was very obvious to me that the color, now teal, was not at all what I'd just been looking at in person an hour before.

So far I have come up with a couple of different Lightroom presets that make the sky less greenish. One does it with the HSL pane and the other down in the camera calibration pane. I came up with these on photos that were dominated by sky and steel, and haven't addressed what they might be doing to grass and trees, etc., which will be the tricky part. Just to give you a starting point here are the settings of my Calibration pane preset at this point:

Green Primary:

Hue -4

Blue Primary:

Hue +15
Saturation +2

My HSL preset looks like this right now:

Hue:

Green -2
Aqua +5
Blue +17

This is very much a work in progress in its earliest stages so I'm not presenting those figures to you as a solution, just a starting point.

Maybe some others using Lightroom will suggest their own approaches to color.

[philbaum]

Thanks everyone, i do appreciate all the comments.

I have a Colorvision Spyder2express calibrated monitor; that monitor does not reflect a Canon violet sky but a robins egg blue sky that looks like what i see out the door. The K20 image i see on my monitor looks like the K7's to me and has that turqoise look to it that i dislike. Next step is to print the dang thing and see what it looks like printed.

If i had my choice and thought it would sell, i'd print nothing but BW :-) Arrgh.

[audiobomber]

Next step is to print the dang thing and see what it looks like printed.

Depends on who prints it? I get different results from the two shops I use.

Have you tried the Pentax/Silkypix software? I find it has better colours for jpeg viewing and raw conversion compared to Lightroom and CS3.

[slinco]

If i had my choice and thought it would sell, i'd print nothing but BW :-) Arrgh.

Yes, now you're talkin'!!

But seriously, accurate white balance is not easy, especially if you want in-camera settings to get it for you. Better to shoot RAW and use a gray card. I use a little key chain size WhiBal. I've got it clipped to my camera strap so it's really easy to use. It's clipped on in a position so I don't even have to take the strap off from around my neck - I can easily hold the card a foot or so in front of the lens and take a shot of it every half hour or so to have an accurate reference. Works great.

I find the K7 auto setting isn't bad, but it usually runs 100-300 degrees cool (in daylight).

[philbaum]

Phil,

Believe it or not I came onto the forum tonight to post the exact observation you've made. I also find the K7 skies a bit too green, and I'm also shooting PEF files and using Lightroom 2.6.

The first thing to note is that when I demoed Aperture the K7 files didn't render with such turquoise cast to the sky. Also if you choose "Camera Standard" instead of "Adobe Standard" it largely corrects the turquoise skies... but unfortunately I find the colors when choosing Camera Standard to be otherwise inferior -- fake and over-saturated looking. Part of the frustration for me is that I prefer the look of Adobe Standard colors over the other two alternatives I've tried with the camera (Camera Standard and Aperture), except for the greenish cast to the skies.

I have been trying to come up with a preset in Lightroom to achieve a color balance that looks more natural to me. Of course part of the problem is determining what looks really natural, because our brains play tricks on us with color. Sometime in the next couple of days I am going to do a little test with a sky-blue coffee mug I've got so I can actually hold the mug up to the screen to compare the photograph with the object. Not a definitive test by any stretch (being photographed under tungsten lights it will be a somewhat different test of the color rendering) but it'll give me some more data to work with. Another thing I have started doing is shooting a few frames RAW+ each time I go out, so that gives me another color reference later on. (The in-camera JPEGs set to "natural" match neither Adobe Standard or Camera Standard colors fwiw).

Really I got serious about addressing this situation after I photographed some spray-painted graffiti, and the paint was a rather pure cobalt blue, and when I developed the RAW files in Lightroom it was very obvious to me that the color, now teal, was not at all what I'd just been looking at in person an hour before.

So far I have come up with a couple of different Lightroom presets that make the sky less greenish. One does it with the HSL pane and the other down in the camera calibration pane. I came up with these on photos that were dominated by sky and steel, and haven't addressed what they might be doing to grass and trees, etc., which will be the tricky part. Just to give you a starting point here are the settings of my Calibration pane preset at this point:

Green Primary:

Hue -4

Blue Primary:

Hue +15
Saturation +2

My HSL preset looks like this right now:

Hue:

Green -2
Aqua +5
Blue +17

This is very much a work in progress in its earliest stages so I'm not presenting those figures to you as a solution, just a starting point.

Maybe some others using Lightroom will suggest their own approaches to color.

Patrickw,
I really appreciate your forwarding the settings above, i'll start giving them a try. I probably would use a preset like this only when using Pentax glass. Having a mixture of Pentax, Sigma and Tamron glass, i recall blue skies with both the Sigma and Tamron glass. So it isn't just the camera but perhaps a combination of factors.

For those suggesting a shift to other software, that approach is certainly valid from all i've heard about SilkyPix software conversion, but i'm wedded to Lightroom now and would find it easier to use a preset than shift to a whole different software.

One think i'm going to try with future theatre shooting, is the manual Custom white balance that K20 offers. It allows me to sit back from the stage, take a picture with something white in the scene, and then select the white object (illuminated by whatever stage lighting is turned on) and do a white balance on that. In the past i've always done white balance after the fact on my RAW images, but it may turn out to be easier to get it closer up front.

Thanks again for all the info, just being aware of the possible issue is part of the solution in itself.

[patrickw]

If I can get to it, I will try to post some examples of skies I have produced with Lightroom (using both Adobe and Camera color settings), Aperture, and also in-camera jpegs.

Fwiw, the Canon skies in your original post also look like they are leaning towards violet on my monitor, but the Pentax skies in that link also look greenish. I also see a little bit of a rosy tinge to some of the Canon clouds as Parallax did.

[jct us101]

I have never noticed a green look to the skies from Pentax. I actually think that Pentax best recorded the actual colors in the sky more than any other camera I've had.

[patrickw]

Here are some sample results using various methods on the same RAW file.

Processed with Apple's Aperture 2 demo:




Processed with Lightroom 2.6, default settings, Adobe Standard settings in Camera Calibration pane:



Processed with Lightroom 2.6, default settings, Camera Standard settings in Camera Calibration pane:



Lightroom 2.6, Adobe Standard, now using my own color preset which slightly changes the blue hues away from green and toward violet: