Splotchy colours in Lightroom - X-T1

[benjaminthomson]

Does anyone else have this problem with converting raw files in lightroom cc?

 

The image on the left is from lightroom, image on the right is from silky pix, much cleaner but I like the skintone more in lightroom.

 

Is there a workaround at all? I've tried increasing color noise reduction, no luck.

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[Trenton Talbot]

If it really bugs you, just run a Surface Blur filter in PS and apply it to color only.

[x-tc]

thats interesting. Lots of yellow patterns. You can also see funny thing going on in whites of eyes and reds on noise.

Did you adjust highlight recovery much?

[ryan]

It looks to me like there's a lot more clarity in the LR image. 

[flysurfer]

Can't issue advice on RAW conversion problems w/o access to the RAW file in question.

[Maurice]

Now i'm curious to try it out in Capture One. Do you have a Dropbox ?

[benjaminthomson]

Now i'm curious to try it out in Capture One. Do you have a Dropbox ?

Yes I'll upload tomorrow Australia time. I'm very interested to see if it getsbthe same results!

[benjaminthomson]

Here's the raw file dudes. Thanks for your help.

 

https://www.yousendit.com/download/bXBieW4zcHZGR0ZqQTlVag

[x-tc]

I see the same pattern in C1P v8.2.  Its even worse using Apple RAW engine via the Preview App.

 

 

If I increase the Moire reduction to 80, in C1P v8.2 the problem goes away.   Using LR CC Adjustment Brush (K) in the Develop module also works.. seems to go away at Moire set to about 50. 

[x-tc]

It was interesting to see how different C1P and LR handled the 1/2 stop overexposure of this shot.   I'm guessing "multi" auto metering program in the X-T1 got it wrong due to the model's dark skin and dark shirt. When I hit the "Auto" button on each tool to fix this, I got completely different results.

- C1P got it mostly right!  It decreasing exposure by 1/4 stop and increasing highlight recover to 70. Shadows mostly left alone. Contrast it did not touch either.

- unfortunately, LR went completely in the other direction, overexposing it even more by a 1/3 stop and increasing shadows to +50 to get the skin and dark shirt to middle gray. At least it did attempt to recover the highlights with -50, ore may just trying to get that to middle gray too.  It also dropped contrast to -25.  What we end up with is something very flat and wrong exposure for a dark skinned person in a black shirt with a gray hat.  The hat is still blown out to boot. LR just looks like it is trying to make everything midtones and middle gray.

 

so it seems that C1P know quite a bit more about what it is actually looking at in the scene before it makes a decision to work exposure. I would not doubt it if they had some algorithm to detecting various skin types.  We have a result with lots good contrast, and no overexposure. Dark skin and shirt below middle gray as it should be.

 

 

 

I'll post the result show you what I am talking about.

[x-tc]

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LR CC "Auto" adjustment:

 

[x-tc]

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Capture One Pro 8.2 "Auto" adjustment:

[x-tc]

Apple Aperture:

Moire adjustment didn't even touch the issue.   Its looks VERY pronounced, much more so than LR or C1P.

Auto Exposure, button did the right thing and lower exposure by 1/3 stop.   No auto shadow/highlights feature in Aperture so those were untouched.

[benjaminthomson]

The image looks fantastic in Capture One, I might have to make the change.

 

Do you have any advice for avoiding moire in the future?

 

Cheers

 

Ben

[x-tc]

Ben,

Sorry, I don't have any advice on how to avoid it.   Just have to know what to look for and how to correct it.  However, it sounds like Silkypix may have detected it automatically and applied the correction for you based on your original post. Although it looks softer than LR.  Did you make it softer in Sillypix or did it do that all on it's own to try to eliminated the moire? I'm surprised to see it that soft "out-of-the-box". 

[benjaminthomson]

No worries. Thanks for your time. I can't remember exact sharpening settings, I may have even turned it off on Silkypix, but it didn't appear to make a difference to the moire no matter the sharpening setting.

[flysurfer]

I don't have a moiré issue in Lightroom as long as I pick appropriate settings in the color noise department. 100/0/100 will do the job for my taste. That said, it's not smart to base RAW converter assessments on a single image, not to mention a RAW converter's auto correction function (which is about as useful as the camera's SR+ is to a professional photographer and has nothing to with "spotchy colors", anyway).

 

Basically, converters that work well with one kind of color moiré have issues with other colors. In the end, they all have their own demoasicing issues. A simple multitarget comparision (which can be the starting point of any remotely serious RAW converter performance comparison) illustrates that there isn't a single "can do it all" software.

 

In this case, I'd personally opt for a slide film rendering, so I quickly made 2 versions in Adobe Lightroom, using Astia (the real Astia, not Fuji's digital in-camera version) and Fortia (a quite unusual choice for portraits, but I liked it in this particular case).

 

 

 

Btw, exposure needed to be raised by 0.1-0.2 EV in order to accommodate the "analog" contrast curve. That would probably have been different with a light-skinned subject.

[Maurice]

Here's my take on it in CO7.2 Express!

 

Sharpening 50

Threshold 0

Noise Reduction 0

Color Noise 75

Contrast 17

Saturation -10

Highlight Recovery 45

Some red color adjustments

 

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I'm not a studio guy, but it seems to me the lighting is not ideal, probably could be a lot softer?

 

I would use the Skin Tone (uniformity) tool but my Pro version trial expired.

 

[Maurice]

Full image area,

at least .. with the crop that i would use.

 

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ps. No hard feelings, but flysurfer's edits look horrible to my taste.

[flysurfer]

In this particular case, Iridient Developer can lead to stellar results thanks to its 3 choices of X-Trans demosaicing. Picking Smooth demosaicing in concert with Iridient Reveal sharpening works for me. Here, I used Iridient's Classic Chrome emulation with a few Lightroom tweaks of the resulting 16-bit TIFF:

 

[Maurice]

That looks great, apart from the blown highlights.

 

Still like to try Iridient some day, but not a Mac user.

[flysurfer]

That's unfortunate. Brian spent weeks improving the film simulations. I had the honor to help, and I think Brian's "unofficial" Fuji colors now look better and are more accurate than the "official" Fuji film simulations in Lightroom and RFC EX 2. Btw, the latter will soon receive the promised update to support all X camera models with film simulations.

[Trenton Talbot]

Did a quick an dirty test using default settings in various converters.

 

LR: some rainbows.

RPP: heavy rainbows.

Apple engine (Preview and Aperture/iPhoto): glittery rainbows.

Darktable: glitter factory explosion.

Photoninja: wicked purple net on a cheek.

Iridient: no artifacts.

C1: no artifacts.

 

The rest (colors, sharpening etc) are the matter of personal taste.

[x-tc]

Did a quick an dirty test using default settings in various converters.

 

LR: some rainbows.

RPP: heavy rainbows.

Apple engine (Preview and Aperture/iPhoto): glittery rainbows.

Darktable: glitter factory explosion.

Photoninja: wicked purple net on a cheek.

Iridient: no artifacts.

C1: no artifacts.

 

The rest (colors, sharpening etc) are the matter of personal taste.

Which version of C1 did you use? I saw the Moire pattern in 8.2 and I still see it in Maurice's CP 7 express post. Look for yellow and magenta color moire pattern on the face zoomed up. Similar to this:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3285146

[benjaminthomson]

Sweet dudes, definitely some things learnt. I'm not much of a studio guy either, still learning on that front, but used a photek soft lighter ii + a gridded softbox, so not sure how to get softer lighting than that.

 

I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I put my final version up here..

 

https://instagram.com/p/2nPDM2Mk27/