DNG shows pink in white areas, but doesn't happen with Camera Raw (Photoshop)

[frank26080115]

Examples shown and uploaded

This has been happening for a while now, and if it does happen I usually fall back to the ARW files instead of the DNG files. But since I just got a new Sony Alpha 1 and Affinity Photo does not open the ARWs, I don't have a fallback, so now this is important.

There's gotta be some simple setting that changes the input colour space to be correct... Help please?

(there are literally no settings inside PureRAW to adjust, I checked, plus, if Photoshop/Camera Raw can see it correctly, Affinity should too)

DSC21112102559-ARW_DxO_DeepPRIME.dng

[user_0815]

It seems that there is data in the raw file which the Affinity raw-engine doesn't handle correctly.

If you are on a Mac, you can switch to the Apple Core Image RAW in the assistant. I don't know how that is on Windows.

I'm not aware of any other settings to try out.

To get rid of that pink, you can do a HDR or a Stack (from the File Menu), but that will skip the raw editing and the highlight recovery.

[firstdefence]

Doesn't happen in the latest version of Affinity Photo on Mac using the serif labs raw engine.

But changing the RAW output to 32bit without a tone curve set, you will get the pink, if you select Apply a tone curve under the tone curve setting the pink will be removed.

[frank26080115]

Woooow

"What is this assistant thing?" I asked myself... I never knew there was such a dialog, so I went to look for it.

It was really hard to find, because my monitor typically looks like this

Once I found it, I tried the 16 bit option and it looks ok, it looks much more vibrant too. Thanks guys

I feel like I've been using Affinity wrong for 2 years...

[user_0815]

Good to know! I wasn't aware that I'm not up to date... 🤦‍♂️

[user_0815]

2 minutes ago, frank26080115 said:

 

... my monitor typically looks like this

 

That's a giant monitor! 😳

[frank26080115]

I am not understanding how you are doing the highlight recovery. I copied your parameters and it made it pink again.

Actually, applying the tone curve looks white but it's really hard to edit the white areas, almost anything I do to it turns it back pink. (if you looked really close, it's still slightly pink)

[DWright]

Can you please try these settings

 

[frank26080115]

This is a rabbit hole... I just tried using RawTherapee for the first time. I can play with the tone curve and recover the highlights. The highlights slider doesn't go negative. There's still a bit more red than I expected.

Adobe Camera Raw can do highlight recovery perfectly with just sliding down the highlights slider

Darktable is nearly impossible to do anything with, the highlights slider doesn't go low enough. The rest of the UI manages to make it more complicated and yet less useful than Affinity.

The easiest way forward is to use Adobe Camera Raw, unless I find a way to accomplish the same with Affinity, or find definitive proof that this is a bug with DxO PureRAW and have them fix it

[frank26080115]

6 minutes ago, DWright said:

Can you please try these settings

 

I can see the pink right from the forum post, drag down the highlights slider, and it all turns pink

[user_0815]

It's important to turn off the default tone curve in the assistant. This will preserve shadows and highlights at the extremes (but also reduce contrast wich you can add back later).

I've recorded the basic steps in this video. Of course, also try the brightness and saturation sliders etc...

But at the raw stage I usually just bring my values in the ball park (avoid clipping) and do the details later.

[frank26080115]

I just paid for the elite version of DxO PhotoLab 5, it's that good. Their implementation of localized masking is jaw droppingly well done (most of the time I can't use Affinity's clarity slider in Develop because it is global). I also need a Lightroom-like photo browser anyways (I've been relying on Windows Explorer thumbnails for 2 years lol)

I will still be using Affinity for the actual touch-ups, it's still great, but I've outgrown Develop.

As for this problem. I really think Affinity/Serif's colour interpretation is just wrong. I can almost "prove" it.

The first experiment is to generate a synthetic DNG file with all 0xFFFF pixels, with as-shot-neutral as [1, 1, 1]. Affinity will show white but if you attempt to adjust white balance, it turns pink (no matter what tint). This happens with BOTH linear raw and bayer filter. DxO won't open the file (it's super picky about what cameras are supported), and Adobe can open the bayer version of the file, and the pure white cannot be changed as the white balance slider is adjusted.

I did play around with the other DNG tags like colour matrix, it has no effect on the results of the experiment.

The second experiment is to shoot a long exposure into a bright light bulb at native ISO. With this experiment, Affinity shifted the white to pink again. DxO was able to open the file and this time the pure white remained pure white. My CS6 copy of Adobe cannot open files from my camera.

Soooo from this I really think something deep inside the Serif raw engine has an affinity for pink

If anybody wants to teach me something about colour science, please do. I've only got some background writing code for OmniVision sensors, de-bayering them and calibrating the data detect reagent colours from PCR DNA samples to find specific gene sequences, some image processing code with OpenCV for fun too.