[Riccidandonno]

I think I have a problem with the colors I get from my 645z.
I have noticed that no matter what I do my files have a ton of red in it.
My work flow consists in the following: I shoot in studio with Elichrome Lights and I always do a custom WB using a Passport ColorChecker and I even create a custom color profile with the same color checker. I import my raw file in LR and I retouch in PS cc. My monitor is profiled regularly calibrated NEC 24w. When I open the files in PS the skin tones of my models is aleays too red and I can't manage to fix this. Maybe the problem is LR?.... but yet I have the same issue if I skip LR and I open my raw files in camera raw.
Anybody else has problems obtaining natural skin tones with the 645z raw files?? I have read of somebody using CaptureOne with CaptureFix... anybody tried that?
I just would love to find a way to shoot and get neutral natural tones without going crazy!
Thank you

[enoeske]

I think I have a problem with the colors I get from my 645z.
I have noticed that no matter what I do my files have a ton of red in it.
My work flow consists in the following: I shoot in studio with Elichrome Lights and I always do a custom WB using a Passport ColorChecker and I even create a custom color profile with the same color checker. I import my raw file in LR and I retouch in PS cc. My monitor is profiled regularly calibrated NEC 24w. When I open the files in PS the skin tones of my models is aleays too red and I can't manage to fix this. Maybe the problem is LR?.... but yet I have the same issue if I skip LR and I open my raw files in camera raw.
Anybody else has problems obtaining natural skin tones with the 645z raw files?? I have read of somebody using CaptureOne with CaptureFix... anybody tried that?
I just would love to find a way to shoot and get neutral natural tones without going crazy!
Thank you

Can you post the raw somewhere for us to look at or at least a jpeg without too much post on it (with exif intact)? Its hard to guess at a solution without seeing the problem.

[TonyW]

Something sounds broken in your colour management pipeline.

Difficult to say exactly what but would be useful to see a raw file. Any chance you can either pm or post a link to one of your raw images from the 645 - it does not have to be anything fancy, it just needs to demonstrate 'too red'

[Fcsnt54]

Its understanding you shoot in raw, but any issue if you shoot a photo in jpeg?

[paulster]

Try some other profiles rather than your own and see how they work out for you:
http://torger.dyndns.org/dcamprof-v0104-pentax-645z-neutral.dcp
http://torger.dyndns.org/dcamprof-v0104-pentax-645z-neutral-plus.dcp

If these look good then it's your profiling workflow and that may help identify the issue. If they still look too red then you need to be looking at your colour calibration workflow probably.

If you like the Anders Torger ones then his Lumariver Profile Designer software is great for creating your own custom profiles. That's what I use now.

If you are able to post a raw file somewhere then also post a jpeg of the same file but with no edits applied in Lightroom, except for the application of your colour profile. That ought to be very telling.

[postnobills]

Use the eyedropper from Photoshop on the appropriate square of the Passport and post the numbers.

[Riccidandonno]

First of all, thanks everybody for your help!
It seems obvious that I`m doing something wrong and hopefully this will help me to find a solution.
Below are 3 links to 3 PSD. files, that you can download, of the same shot exported directly from LR. The one marked with the #1 is exported "as shot" no correction (only a crop to make the file smaller). The one marked with #2 has the profile generated with the Color Checker Passport and no other corrections. The one with #3 is the retouched version which I think would give a visual reference of how much red/yellow/orange the other two files have.
#POSTNOBILLS: the eyedropper on the appropriate square of the Passport (bottom line of the grey, second from the left) gives me 213/213/213. As you can see from the sample it saturates the the reds and yellow a lot. Maybe I do something wrong??
IMGP5573_1.psd - Google Drive
IMGP5573-2.psd - Google Drive
IMGP5573_3.psd - Google Drive

[Riccidandonno]

Try some other profiles rather than your own and see how they work out for you:
http://torger.dyndns.org/dcamprof-v0104-pentax-645z-neutral.dcp
http://torger.dyndns.org/dcamprof-v0104-pentax-645z-neutral-plus.dcp

If these look good then it's your profiling workflow and that may help identify the issue. If they still look too red then you need to be looking at your colour calibration workflow probably.

If you like the Anders Torger ones then his Lumariver Profile Designer software is great for creating your own custom profiles. That's what I use now.

If you are able to post a raw file somewhere then also post a jpeg of the same file but with no edits applied in Lightroom, except for the application of your colour profile. That ought to be very telling.

Thank you Paulster
Can`t manage to see these profiles in Camera Raw (or Lightroom).
Here is where I placed them: Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

[texandrews]

First of all, thanks everybody for your help!
It seems obvious that I`m doing something wrong and hopefully this will help me to find a solution.
Below are 3 links to 3 PSD. files, that you can download, of the same shot exported directly from LR. The one marked with the #1 is exported "as shot" no correction (only a crop to make the file smaller). The one marked with #2 has the profile generated with the Color Checker Passport and no other corrections. The one with #3 is the retouched version which I think would give a visual reference of how much red/yellow/orange the other two files have.
#POSTNOBILLS: the eyedropper on the appropriate square of the Passport (bottom line of the grey, second from the left) gives me 213/213/213. As you can see from the sample it saturates the the reds and yellow a lot. Maybe I do something wrong??
IMGP5573_1.psd - Google Drive
IMGP5573-2.psd - Google Drive
IMGP5573_3.psd - Google Drive

The Color Checker generated file looks "hot" across the board to me---very saturated in all ways.

[TonyW]

Riccidandonno, unfortunately .psd are not really useful in gauging capture problems because they are rendered files.

What would be good to see is an actual raw file either the PEF or DNG to ascertain if capture OK. From what you have supplied there does not appear to be any major issue other than your preference for a different rendering.

Looking at the psd files you posted IMHO none are particularly bad or exhibit anything wrong with the colour:

No 1: As shot but unknown what profile applied in ACR so unknown. In isolation a pleasing skin tone (although only you can say accurate or otherwise). How does the image appear with other Pentax profiles provided by Adobe, Standard, Bright, Neutral etc and the embedded profile

No 2: Your own generated profile has added more red rather than reduced it, so for some reason you have gone in the wrong direction to your desired render

No 3: An edited version showing how you would like to see the image SOOC with profile applied? This look achievable by editing your profile.

Creating a profile depends on personal preferences and/or what you are aiming for, accuracy or pleasing result - they are not necessarily the same!

There is no reason why you could not adjust/edit the profile to match visually what you expect to see for this type of image and other similar.

So I suspect nothing at all wrong with your capture or technique just that your requirements for colour need tweaking in the profile. Happy to look at a raw file if you feel there may be a camera or capture issue

[postnobills]

First of all, thanks everybody for your help!
It seems obvious that I`m doing something wrong and hopefully this will help me to find a solution.
Below are 3 links to 3 PSD. files, that you can download, of the same shot exported directly from LR. The one marked with the #1 is exported "as shot" no correction (only a crop to make the file smaller). The one marked with #2 has the profile generated with the Color Checker Passport and no other corrections. The one with #3 is the retouched version which I think would give a visual reference of how much red/yellow/orange the other two files have.
#POSTNOBILLS:
the eyedropper on the appropriate square of the Passport (bottom line of the grey, second from the left) gives me 213/213/213. As you can see from the sample it saturates the the reds and yellow a lot. Maybe I do something wrong??
IMGP5573_1.psd - Google Drive
IMGP5573-2.psd - Google Drive
IMGP5573_3.psd - Google Drive

Since the eyedropper clearly shows neutral, one might assume all is well up to that point.

However, on my calibrated monitor, the #2 file with the Color Checker Profile is much too red for my taste. Since it's not a raw file, but exported from LR with some sort of processing, I question whether it's really the best point to evaluate the issue.

Lacking any other ideas, I think I'd shoot the model with the Color Checker next to her face and no custom profile and see what happen to the skin tones.

What does that leave to check ? Monitor profile ?

How do known good images display on the monitor ?

Usually, when I get some "poltergeist in the software" deal that I can't figure out, I just burn the whole thing down, set everything back to defaults, and start from zero. More times than not it fixes my problem, which is generally pilot error, but then I never know exactly how I fixed it

[paulster]

Thank you Paulster
Can`t manage to see these profiles in Camera Raw (or Lightroom).
Here is where I placed them: Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

The path is C:\Users\Your_username\AppData \Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfile

Restart Lightroom and you'll see them.

[Kolor-Pikker]

Try using this 645Z profile made courtesy by Torger, a member of GetDPI: Dropbox - dcamprof-v0104-pentax-645z-neutral.dcp
I find it gives me really nice results in many cases, except HDRs, in which case Adobe Standard is preferable to avoid artifacts.

[Riccidandonno]

Riccidandonno, unfortunately .psd are not really useful in gauging capture problems because they are rendered files.

What would be good to see is an actual raw file either the PEF or DNG to ascertain if capture OK. From what you have supplied there does not appear to be any major issue other than your preference for a different rendering.

Looking at the psd files you posted IMHO none are particularly bad or exhibit anything wrong with the colour:

No 1: As shot but unknown what profile applied in ACR so unknown. In isolation a pleasing skin tone (although only you can say accurate or otherwise). How does the image appear with other Pentax profiles provided by Adobe, Standard, Bright, Neutral etc and the embedded profile

No 2: Your own generated profile has added more red rather than reduced it, so for some reason you have gone in the wrong direction to your desired render

No 3: An edited version showing how you would like to see the image SOOC with profile applied? This look achievable by editing your profile.

Creating a profile depends on personal preferences and/or what you are aiming for, accuracy or pleasing result - they are not necessarily the same!

There is no reason why you could not adjust/edit the profile to match visually what you expect to see for this type of image and other similar.

So I suspect nothing at all wrong with your capture or technique just that your requirements for colour need tweaking in the profile. Happy to look at a raw file if you feel there may be a camera or capture issue

I have uploaded the original DNG file.
Yes I agree these are still editable files it`s just annoying to get this overall warm/red tonality. If this was a personal project it could be OK but in commercial photography every image is viewed by a number of professional people everyone with is own specialty but all them very well "trained" at see something wrong. In other words apart from my personal taste, when the photo editor, the retoucher, the printer all complained about my photos because are too hot, then a red flag must go up.
While I was testing different solution yesterday I noticed the following: if I developed the same DNG with the same WB and the same custom profile in Camera Raw or LR I get 2 extremely different results. I always knew that LR and PS don`t render exactly the same colors but the difference here is impressive and the "very red" photos comes from LR while the Camera Raw image is much more neutral.
# POSTNOBILLS: Monitor is calibrated with X-rite Spyder and calibrated images looks fine. As mention above the good thing is that everybody see my images too red so at least I know that the monitor is OK.

DNG FILE: IMGP5573.DNG - Google Drive

---------- Post added 10-30-17 at 01:21 AM ----------

Try using this 645Z profile made courtesy by Torger, a member of GetDPI: Dropbox - dcamprof-v0104-pentax-645z-neutral.dcp
I find it gives me really nice results in many cases, except HDRs, in which case Adobe Standard is preferable to avoid artifacts.

Thanks! I`ll give it try.

[TonyW]

I have uploaded the original DNG file.
Yes I agree these are still editable files it`s just annoying to get this overall warm/red tonality. If this was a personal project it could be OK but in commercial photography every image is viewed by a number of professional people everyone with is own specialty but all them very well "trained" at see something wrong. In other words apart from my personal taste, when the photo editor, the retoucher, the printer all complained about my photos because are too hot, then a red flag must go up.
While I was testing different solution yesterday I noticed the following: if I developed the same DNG with the same WB and the same custom profile in Camera Raw or LR I get 2 extremely different results. I always knew that LR and PS don`t render exactly the same colors but the difference here is impressive and the "very red" photos comes from LR while the Camera Raw image is much more neutral.
# POSTNOBILLS: Monitor is calibrated with X-rite Spyder and calibrated images looks fine. As mention above the good thing is that everybody see my images too red so at least I know that the monitor is OK.
....

Thanks for uploading the DNG. I have just opened it in my system but only given a cursory look. Initial impressions using embedded and Camera Natural profiles I am not seeing excessive red and would say that skin tones fall well into the range expected for caucasians. They may be removed from the way you wish them to appear but at least you can be assured that there is nothing wrong with the initial acquisition.

I flipped through other profiles including one that I made a long time ago named X-Rite. Strangely this when applied adds much more red than I would like to see! - not to make too much of it at this time as I am unsure what I did in making the profile, but still....

Of most concern to me is the section I highlighted as when I open LR and Camera Raw the images display side by side on screen as they should i.e. exactly the same! I cannot see why a custom profile should be any different

Altering the sliders to the same numbers in each displays again exactly the same. Therefore something amiss in your system/workflow (ACR and LR are the same raw engine in a different container), are your versions of Camera Raw the same between LR and ACR?

I am happy to put up a screen grab or two of your DNG including a gif cycling through the Camera Raw profiles if you wish. Not done it now due to requiring your approval first

EDIT:
Impressions on baked and other profiles in LR/ACR observations based on visual impression from Adobe Standard Profile. Note the Neutrals in this image all remained fairly constant regardless of profile applied.

Embedded = A little warmer/redder
DCamProf 0.10.4 = Warmer yellow/red (not an included Adobe profile)
Camera Bright = Shadows touch lighter and warmer towards yellow
Camera Landscape = More yellow
Camera Natural = Less contrast
Camera Portrait = Less contrast more red
Camera Vibrant = Slightly less contrast more yellow
X-Rite = More red. This one my own play and the actual settings and any edits I do not recall but may be similar to what you are observing with your profiling?