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Strange color Issue with HDR Merge when "Automatically remove ghosts" is selected


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I have 5 bracketed exposures that work great in HDR Merge, but only if I leave "Automatically remove ghosts" unchecked. I would like to correct ghosting, but when I select that option, the subject takes on a yellow hue from the surrounding environment, even though none of the source photos show that hue on the subject.

I've attached one finished JPG that has correct color, but shows ghosting because the option was unchecked, as well as on JPG that has corrected ghosting but altered color. I've also attached a ZIP file with source images if you wish to experiment.

Any thoughts? Anything I can try? I'm on macOS 12.6.3, Affinity Photo version 2.0.4

Here are the things I've tried but did not work:

  • Using JPGs instead of TIFFs as source files
  • Switching to OpenGL in Performance settings
  • Unchecking the Tone Mapping option in HDR Merge

P2030015_HDR-Edit_CorrectColor.jpg

P2030015_HDR-Edit_GhostReduction.jpg

P2030015-19.zip

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One option would be to omit the outlying exposures (P2030016 and P2030019) and leave de-ghosting turned off when you do the HDR merge.

This will avoid introducing the blurred whisker in the long-exposure image:

1227553028_Screenshot2023-02-04at12_14_24.thumb.png.59187af4f58b8e5eea0e53ab60ded8e4.png

 

(Out of focus? Camera shake? Cat shake?) 

 

With the following settings:

 

2142298126_Screenshot2023-02-04at10_44_19.png.5e7f1968cc591c1af7fffbb1cabde725.png

 

I get a tone mapped image like this:

 

1995411936_Screenshot2023-02-04at12_20_00.thumb.png.f0569146f376ebef3dbeb234c9038ad8.png

You can then make further destructive tweaks in the Tone Mapping persona or non-destructive adjustments in the Photo persona.

Not sure about the reasons for colour cast, but it might also be worth trying with the original out-of-camera images, and checking the camera's Color Space settings. The files you uploaded have an sRGB profile but if the originals were shot using AdobeRGB the conversion may have caused issues. 

 

 

 

Affinity Photo 2.0.3,  Affinity Designer 2.0.3, Affinity Publisher 2.0.3, Mac OSX 13, 2018 MacBook Pro 15" Intel.

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1 hour ago, h_d said:

One option would be to omit the outlying exposures (P2030016 and P2030019) and leave de-ghosting turned off when you do the HDR merge.

That is an excellent suggestion—it did not occur to me to omit some of the exposures. You're right, using just 3 works well without ghosting. I've been considering going back to 3 exposures instead of 5 since I don't usually see much gain from 5; maybe this is a sign from the universe telling me to do that.

 

1 hour ago, h_d said:

Not sure about the reasons for colour cast, but it might also be worth trying with the original out-of-camera images, and checking the camera's Color Space settings. The files you uploaded have an sRGB profile but if the originals were shot using AdobeRGB the conversion may have caused issues. 

The original images out of camera were Olympus RAW files (ORF). I don't see a clear way to check what color profile they have by default in AFP, but I do see that they are RGB/32, and the AFP file is RGB/16. Does that indicate 32-bit vs 16-bit? Could that be the cause?

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2 hours ago, Ian Tompkins said:

I don't see a clear way to check what color profile they have by default in AFP,

There's a camera setting for the E-M1 MkII that switches between AdobeRGB and sRGB. As far as I can tell, the only way you can check the setting in Affinity Photo's Develop persona is via

Window-Metadata-Raw Data and then scroll through hunting for the ICC Profile:

369870141_Screenshot2023-02-04at16_49_15.png.deb802dadcd4c7ecd21324215a36acda.png

 

(This is from a Panasonic .rw2 file.)

But I have to confess I'm clutching at straws offering that as a solution. It may also be something in your RAW conversion settings.  If you could zip and upload the original .orf files someone might be able to double-check.

Affinity Photo 2.0.3,  Affinity Designer 2.0.3, Affinity Publisher 2.0.3, Mac OSX 13, 2018 MacBook Pro 15" Intel.

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Both JPEG and TIFF seems RBG/8 (8 bit color depth). I would advise to export TIFF/16, especially in case you have outflown highlights for best quality.

Next, when you start stacking, deactivate "tone mapping". You have then the chance using the clone tool to manually clone-in the best source image, before tone mapping.

IF you want to go deeper, use the regular stack (not HDR stack) to see how the images differ and where ghosting is happening.You may have to exclude images which are deviating too much.

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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4 hours ago, h_d said:

There's a camera setting for the E-M1 MkII that switches between AdobeRGB and sRGB. As far as I can tell, the only way you can check the setting in Affinity Photo's Develop persona is via

Window-Metadata-Raw Data and then scroll through hunting for the ICC Profile:

Thanks for this, I couldn't find it earlier. My camera must be set for sRGB, this is the entry similar to your screenshot:

<photoshop:ICCProfile>sRGB IEC61966-2.1</photoshop:ICCProfile>

 

 

4 hours ago, h_d said:

But I have to confess I'm clutching at straws offering that as a solution. It may also be something in your RAW conversion settings.  If you could zip and upload the original .orf files someone might be able to double-check.

Sure, attached!

P2030015-19_RAW.zip

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4 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Both JPEG and TIFF seems RBG/8 (8 bit color depth). I would advise to export TIFF/16, especially in case you have outflown highlights for best quality.

I did end up trying TIFF/16 from the RAW files. That did not resolve the color cast issue, but definitely agree I should do this for merges in the future. It was an oversight when I batched out the TIFFs.

 

4 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Next, when you start stacking, deactivate "tone mapping". You have then the chance using the clone tool to manually clone-in the best source image, before tone mapping.

IF you want to go deeper, use the regular stack (not HDR stack) to see how the images differ and where ghosting is happening.You may have to exclude images which are deviating too much.

Wow! I did not know you could delay the tone mapping for later, nor did I really understand how the Sources panel worked. After some experimentation, I finally understand: if I have a layer that was merged from sources and I pick the Clone Brush Tool, it shows all the sources and I can clone in from any of them. This is perfect, and probably the preferable method for subjects like this anyway. Thank you very much for mentioning this.

Ultimately it would still be nice to know what's going on with the color cast issue and wether it's a bug that needs to be reported, as I can see the manual cloning approach being a non-starter for some subjects, such as dense trees in a landscape. The method you described provides a great solution, though.

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11 minutes ago, Ian Tompkins said:

Ultimately it would still be nice to know what's going on with the color cast issue and wether it's a bug that needs to be reported, as I can see the manual cloning approach being a non-starter for some subjects, such as dense trees in a landscape. The method you described provides a great solution, though.

The probable cause: all images are heavy yellow tinted. Use the „vector-scope“ tool, everything is at the Yellow line.

The image with the highest exposure shows a strong yellow tint all over dark areas, and it seems the HDR merge has naturally chosen this image as source for dark areas based on it is very sharp and has the highes brightness in dark areas.

In my view „by design“ and no bug. Simply exclude this image from stacking. Or pre-process and remove yellow color cast from all images during RAW development.

 

Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080

LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5

iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589

Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps.

 

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