Global RGB Adjustment

Hi Stevem,

You write:

Hi Neil,

It was not my intention to denigrate or demean the creative process. I have spent, literally, hours trying to get the colour where I want it and still end up with purple skies and yellow grass - this was the basis for my "trial and error" comment. A lot of guides refer to curves, hue & saturation etc adjustments but my (in)experience makes this difficult. What some consider as general knowledge, others do not, such as your comment about setting a permanent eyedropper. How do you do this ?

I can certainly sample colours but I haven't been able to set a fixed reference point.

What I thought were simple questions are proving unanswerable.

I simply want to match the colours from the in-camera JPG algorithm across to the corresponding RAW file without impacting on the quality of the RAW file.

Not so simple.

Agree, it’s not at all.

Sorry about that, I wasn’t at all suggesting that you were somehow demeaning the creative process. Of course not. Meaning can be rather hard to transmit in writing unless it becomes an essay.

I’m afraid I think that for personal input to images (to get “just” what you want not a programmers idea of a “solve all” automation), which I am confident you’ll grow to love, curves and levels (using adjustment layers ideally) are irreplaceable. Any automated process is just that, it may get you closer but not always where you want to be. Like an auto car or auto exposure, its not always just right but in some cases it can get you where you’re going.

I realise that may read as flippant when we are recommending you throw out all the camera maker’s auto processing that goes into making their “optimised” JPEG and start from scratch (the basic capture) with the RAW, but that’s what the pro’s do unless they are in a hell of a rush and the job allows for a “quick” JPEG, journalists come to mind.

DFosse gave a good tip with his recommendation to try the “camera - matching” profiles when processing your RAW.

I did recommend some good books for you to look at, that’s definitely the approach I'd recommend. I like books for this because you can so easily go back to them if a process is forgotten.

Or get some one to one tuition perhaps if you’ve the budget.

Again, not to make the process sound “superior” but in my days as an advertising photographer pro retouchers used to charge $600 an hour, it was considered to be a very highly skilled job. Moving picture “colourists” (who basically do just what you are doing but to video) still get paid that in some cases. Or more.

Of course, Photoshop has democratised the process, but it’s still hard to use it right, so I definitely feel your pain getting started.

You’ve made a great decision to start with the RAW, not the JPEG, don’t give up man, you’ll get there.

When I worked on that book [getting colour right] with Michael, I spent 12 months (yep) teaching him the processes so he could write them up and test the effectiveness. You can benefit from that for a few $. Getting colour right is out of print and will seem a little dated but the levels and curves and image optimisation process hasn’t much changed since Photoshop was launched.

We are all volunteers here on this forum just hoping we can help out a fellow Adobe software user. Most of us who work the Photoshop and colourmanagement forum have spent years learning how to optimise images and, in some cases, how to teach it to others too.

When forum contributors advise that what’s being attempted is something that takes some learning, that’s a fair statement of truth. Honestly.

It’s a horrible transition, I know, going through the purple skies and yellow grass period, but you will get there. We all started out there.

I hope you’ll come to enjoy it.

Start with a good book.

I hope this helps

thanks

neil barstow, colourmanagement