Trying to match a filter effect

[sri125]

Hello,

I purchased the Panasonic Lumix lx100 and took it on my first trip. Was quite happy with the built in picture styles called filters in the camera, particularly a filter called "Old days" that renders a bright,soft and nostalgic look to image. For certain images, it works very well and creates a very nice effect. I was shooting at RAW+ JPG and found out on return of my trip that the RAW does not honor this filter. I have the small size JPG to use as a guide while tweaking the colors in Lightroom to match. I have only been partially successful in recreating the filter effect. My workflow so far has been:

1) Open JPG on a seperate window and RAW with ligthroom

2) Start with shadows and hightlights

3) Modify HSL colors, by looking at JPG as guide

4) Save it as preset

5) Test preset on a different image with the filter.

Step 5 is when I realize the preset I create works on few images that have the same gamut of colors, but on a different image, the results do not match JPG.

My questions are:

1) Besides HSL, what other sliders affect the colors ?

2) Is there a better way to reverse engineer the filter effect ?

I work on a Mac, use lightroom 6.

thanks

Sridhar

[Todd Shaner · Accepted solution]

There are numerous "free" Develop presets available that will probably provide similar rendering. Substitute whatever word you like in the below "vintage" search terms to find other types. Just make sure they are compatible with LR 6.

https://www.google.com/search?num=100&client=firefox-b-1-ab&ei=izOsWpL4HM2z5gLo26LAAw&q=lightroom+fr...

[JP Hess]

There's color temperature and tint as well. The reason the raw image doesn't honor that filter is because it's an in-camera setting, and Lightroom cannot read those because every camera maker stores those differently. When you want to use those special filters why not just shoot a large JPEG and use it? Everybody seems to shy away from using JPEG images. They aren't poison and they won't ruin your camera. If you are careful with your exposure you can get excellent images from JPEG. Just my opinion, and it ain't worth much.

A number of years ago my son-in-law and his family took my wife and me on our first trip to Alaska. I had my first little Fuji camera that took raw images. I was intimidated by raw, so most of my images were taken in JPEG format. We drove the RV from Anchorage to Homer, and as we came to the overlook coming into the bay I was overcome with the beauty. This one, I determined, had to be taken in raw. I was excited to get home and compare the images. It's a beautiful image. It printed well. It's one of my favorites. However, I was surprised that I could see little, if any difference between it and the JPEG of the same scene. The image was "perfectly" exposed, no burnt out highlights and no dark shadows. It's just one of those photos that worked.

Since then, most of the time I do shoot raw images. However, occasionally I switch to JPEG to experiment and to torment myself (don't ask why). I am constantly amazed at the quality of the JPEG images. When I shoot a combination of JPEG/raw I often find it difficult to see the difference between the two, and only discover the difference will want to change camera profiles on the JPEG and can't.

All I'm saying is if your camera has features that will work for you, but it's necessary to shoot JPEG images to get those features, then shoot JPEG. Take advantage of all the capabilities your camera has to offer.

[elie_dinur]

My experience with Canon cameras for the last 15 years, and Minolta before that, has been that the Raw conversion software supplied with the camera is at core the same application used in the camera firmware, adapted to run on other platforms. Because of this the maker-supplied app can read and apply the processing instructions written to the Raw's metadata by the camera and then produce an identical jpg in a way that no third party software could ever do. All color processing is built on the foundation of an accurate camera profile and the maker knows exact data about the sensor and the colored micro-filters in front of it - because, after all, they were manufactured to the maker's specifications - that goes into that profile. Adobe can only test actual cameras as they become available and try to reverse-engineer their way back to good profiles. So already from the first step the processing chain is different. Moreover, the ability to read the Maker Notes (camera settings) metadata from hundreds of different camera models from many different makers and converting those settings to equivalent LR settings would vastly bloat LR while sky-rocketing Adobe's costs. Nevertheless, for the last ten years, since Version 2.x, Adobe has supplied alternate profiles for cameras from the major makers that attempt to simulate the various jpg styles in the firmwares. However, the best way to get jpgs like the camera's remains to use the maker's converter.

[Todd Shaner]

sri125  wrote

My questions are:

1) Besides HSL, what other sliders affect the colors ?

2) Is there a better way to reverse engineer the filter effect ?

There's no simple way to "reverse-engineer" the Panasonic creative filters, but you an do that with any LR Develop preset. This will help you to determine what controls are used to produce different effects. From inside LR go to Edit> Preferences> Presets and click on 'Show Lightroom Presets Folder.' Open the 'Lightroom' folder and then the 'Develop Presets' folder. Open any of the preset folders such as 'Lightroom Presets' and then open the .lrtemplate using any text editor. This will show a list of the controls used and their settings. Some of the non-Adobe third-party LR creative plugins install both a custom Develop preset and a camera profile, which isn't as easy to reverse-engineer. What you can do is use one of the 'Camera' named profiles in the Develop module Camera Calibration panel's 'Profile' selector. Next use other Develop controls to obtain the desired rendering and then create a Develop preset that includes those controls. Make sure 'Process Version' and 'Calibration' is also checked. Here's an example for creating a Develop preset that uses the Clarity, Vibrance, Tone Curve and HSL controls along with a 'Camera' named profile

[sri125]

Thanks for your help guys. trshaner, I will try your suggestion.