ICC Profiles and ProphotoRGB in Leaf Aptus 75

[NNN634758084811211079]

Good evening,

I recently made a shot for a wine company, and I use a lot of tracing paper or Rosco diffuser to get wonderful degrades on the strip lights.

I usually shoot with proPhoto RGB on ICC profile, and Aptus 75 Product on curve. When I processed the image as TIFF through CO7, using ProPhoto RGB color space, and oppened it in Photoshop, the degrade was smaller, and was struggling quiet a bit at the edges, where a nice, continuous degradé in CO, turned into a sort of smudge that ruined the degradé.

A lot of questions poped up, about the Aptus workflow and I want to post some of them:

1. When I processed it as in Leaf ProPhoto RGB, the smudge was less noticeable, than when I processed in "regular" ProPhoto RGB. Is there a diferente between the ProPhoto RGB color space available in the Aptus menu and the "regular" Photoshop PPRGB color space? (Later I processed from ProPhoto to Adobe RGB in CO, and the problem desappeared, so I assume it was an inability from the monitor to read that particular color and hue (is this correct?)).

2. When I tried to use the raw .mos file, runned through Leaf Raw Converter, and opened it on PS, the raw file was about 1 entire stop under the exposure I add on the CO image. I was expecting some loss, particularly in contrast, but that much on the light exposure itself was something that concerned me.
Having this said, what are the ICC Profile/Curve specifications that are truer to the raw file? I personally like to have a good raw file, to work on later, with minimum changes on exposure, contrast, etc, but find that very difficult when you HAVE to select both the ICC Profile and the Curve. The ICC Profile presents dozens of options for portrait and product and this and that, which seem quiet out of place for such a professional product. I personally prefer to work with light, rather than dozens of profiles, from which I constantly try to choose the best fitting and least damaging. If I´m not mistaken, there are 17 profiles to choose from. In my case I allways go with the ProRGB one...
I´ve also "tested" all the curve profiles, but found that none was as remotely close, in result, to the raw file.
I´ve read the manuals more than once to try to find the most "honest" profile combination, in order to produce a picture that has is root on the raw file (and will be reflected on the raw file), and not on, in my oppinion, an excessive amount of digital profile plays.
Is there an answer to this question? The most honest play between ICC and Curve, in order to work on a photograph, and not on a digital preseted manipulation from the start?

Don´t get me wrong, this is not an "angry against the product" type of post.
I just want to understand the ProRGB problem, and why are there so many preseted profiles on the Aptus, that you seem not to be able to escape from, because even on the Back menu, you have to choose something.
I´ve managed with it for some time, but in this particular image, with this particular light, it was really quiet a shock to see that the profiled image on CO (simply ProRGB and Aptus Product) was so far away from the raw, that start working up from the raw to recover the degradé didn´t even made sense, in a time using perspective.

How can we work in a more "natural" way, without facing this excessive preseted profiling in CO, in relation to the final raw file?

Best Regards,
Diogo Sousa

[yaya]

Hi Diogo,

It sounds like there is some kind of mismatch between your colour settings in Capture One and in photoshop. You need to check that they both use the same rendering intent and to set Photoshop to use the operating system/s colour management engine.
In Photoshop check that it doesn't do any conversion when the image is opened.
Also it is not clear from your post if you have the ICC profile set in the Basic Characteristics tool (i.e. Input Profile) or in the Processing tab (i.e. Output Profile).

In general, if you have one of the Leaf Profiles set in the Basic Characteristics tool and Adobe RGB as the Output profiles and if you have Photohsop set to "Perceptual" and to "Preserve Embedded Profile" then the processed image should look the same as the one in Capture One, providing that you are using the same screen and the same magnification - the latter is specifically relevant when looking at fine gradients.

With regards to the choice of different profiles. We have made them to suit various applications and scenes, which is quite unique, especially compared to Adobe where you have to make them by yourself in order to achieve good results. You can read more in this PDF: http://www.mamiyaleaf.com/assets/files/documentation/techbull_leaf_image_profiles.pdf It is quite old but still is very useful.

You mention "RAW" and wanting to see the original RAW look. You can try the Linear or the Linear scientific curves but note that you have to use them during CAPTURE as otherwise you will be under exposing your images.

Our profiles are designed to be used in a production environment where there is a need to get from capture to output (print or web) as smoothly and as quickly as possible. They are based on many years of practical experience in the prepress business with commercial print (CMYK press) being the main output.

If you need further explanation I suggest that you speak to your local Mamiya Leaf dealer or contact us through a support case

BR
Yair

[NNN634758084811211079]

Thanks Yair,

i´ll make the necessary adjustments and readjustments you specified

Thank you very much.

Regards,
Diogo Sousa

[frederic_h]

Hi Yair,

I suppose it's perfectly fine to select a Leaf profile in the base characteristics, select ProPhoto for your recipe and open it in Photoshop using ProPhoto as the default RGB space (it never asks for a conversion if I proceed like this anyway) ?

The only thing I have noticed is that the picture seems to be slightly less saturated once opened in Photoshop, but that's fairly minimal. Could it be because I've Adobe ACE conversion engine selected instead of Apple CMM ?

Thanks!

Best,
Frederic

[yaya]

Hi Yair,

I suppose it's perfectly fine to select a Leaf profile in the base characteristics, select ProPhoto for your recipe and open it in Photoshop using ProPhoto as the default RGB space (it never asks for a conversion if I proceed like this anyway) ?

The only thing I have noticed is that the picture seems to be slightly less saturated once opened in Photoshop, but that's fairly minimal. Could it be because I've Adobe ACE conversion engine selected instead of Apple CMM ?

Thanks!

Best,
Frederic

Hi Frederic,

Adobe's and Apple's engines work differently so it could well be that you see different results. Also you need to set the same rendering intent in Capture One and Photoshop.

BR

Yair