Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Wandering the woods yesterday I shot some plant life shortly after it rained. The light was good and what I see on the screen is reasonably close to what I remember things looking like. Qimage says the green leaves are out of gamut and, as expected, printing is a problem. Perceptual destroys all the contrast and detail.  Relative isn't as bad, but the resulting green is nothing like what it should be. My printer is a Canon PRO-100. Any hints on which way to go with this- less saturation or shift the color to something else or just shoot less green leaves?

http://www.conradhoffman.com/rawtest/DSC_1274.NEF
http://www.conradhoffman.com/rawtest/DSC_1274_.NEF.flt
http://www.conradhoffman.com/rawtest/DSC_1274_.NEF.qrs

Also, not sure how to make the last two save as files rather than display in Chrome.

Thanks!

What kind of paper are you printing on?  This may not print well on matte paper due to the lower gamut.  You could try picking a paper that shows the least areas out of gamut but the best bet is probably to reduce saturation a little.  Since fill light affect saturation, you could try refining the raw and use zero fill light: the -5 fill light is adding saturation.

Regards,
Mike

Being an old black and white darkroom guy, I always use glossy paper for the range. Same with color, one of the Red River glossies. Learned something new again, that negative fill will make the problem worse, not better. So I increased the fill, reduced the saturation and contrast and things did get somewhat better. Still not quite what I remember the scene looked like, but tolerable. Soft proofing is doing a surprisingly good job of predicting what I'll get. I was also surprised to see how bad perceptual rendering can make things. I'm sure there's a problem it solves, but this definitely wasn't it.

Thanks,
Conrad

Your problem wasn’t green. It was the background that was out of gamut. I succeeded in correcting it in CS 6 by desaturating the image. Have a look at the attaches file; it’s the best that I could do. I think it looks ok now

Where is this "attaches file" you speak of?

Just sent image per email as the attached button is not cooperating with me. It lists the attachment but doesn't display it below.

Thanks Bill! After much testing, I discovered that my Red River factory profile gives a wider gamut in the green than my Profile Prism profile. I like the Profile Prism results better in every way, other than the green, so I started a post in the Prism forum. You noted that my image was out of gamut in the shadows, which is exactly what I see with the Red River factory profile. With my profile, the entire green leaves are out of gamut. We'll see what happens if I can improve my Prism profile.