Recreate colours of manufacturer's raw developer in the develop persona?

[Reisender]

Hello everyone!

 

I am not quite sure how to describe my issue. I will most likely mix up the terminology, but I’ll try to gesture at what I mean and use some pictures to illustrate it.

Basically, I find that the way in which colours in my developed pictures relate to each other varies very much from the raw developer of my camera’s manufacturer (Olympus) to the develop persona in photo. I believe the process that produces this relationship is called colour grading?

In any case, I find the colour grading of the Olympus raw developer to be consistently more pleasing than either that of photo or any other developer I have tried.

I am looking for a way to recreate the colours I get via the Olympus developer in Affinity’s develop persona. I am wondering if there’s an automated process that could help me. I have an example of how I would like the colour grading to look like in the pictures produced by the Olympus program. Is there any way for Affinity to read out this information and apply it to the development of the raw file? I know some developers use colour profiles to achieve different looks. Does such a profile already exist for Olympus files or can I recreate it?

But let me describe my problem a little bit more so you know what I am on about. There are a couple of particular characteristics I noticed where Affinity differs from Olympus. Some I have been able to address, others not.

1) The sky consistently displays too much cyan and is too bright. I have been able to address this by shifting the hue shift slider in the HSL adjustment panel to the left as well as slightly decreasing the luminosity of blues and cyans. Can I somehow automate this?

2) The blackpoint is usually a bit higher on the Olympus files. I think this means that a larger proportion of the shadows will be displayed as true black? Can I automate a higher black point in develop? Also, is there a way to have a more pleasing, well, blackpoint rolloff so to speak, where more of the shadows fade into true black but you still get a glimpse of what there is in the shadows? Sorry, not quite sure how to explain this one. I want more blacks in the shadows without a harsh transition, basically.

3) The most important issue: yellows look consistently too green, greens too yellow, and reds not saturated enough in Affinity’s develop persona. I have tried experimenting with HSL, White Balance, Saturation and Vibrance, Curves, etc., but to no avail.

Here are some examples hopefully showing what I mean. First the Olympus file:

I especially like how the yellows in the foreground are displayed. Here's my attempt at developing the picture in Photo:

I have played around quite a bit here, but I find the foreground much to green and the yellows not as pleasing. Another example, first the Olympus file:

Please pay close attention to the flower pot on the pedestal and to the green watering can just below the right side of the bench. Here's my attempt at developing the file in Photo:

Yes, I have played around quite a bit in this one, and I should have saturated the reds more, but the green of the leafs in the flower pot are way too pale, as are the pedals of the flowers itself. The green of the watering can is washed out and shifted towards yellow. No matter how much I played around with HSL, I could not get the can’s colour to match the Olympus file without making everything else look extremely weird.

 

Obviously, my preferred solution would be if I could just feed photo the colours I like about the Olympus file and then start developing from there. If that's not a possibility, does anyone have any idea how I can manually recreate the colours I see in the Olympus file?

 

Thanks so much in advance!

[Gabe]

Hi @Reisender,

Let's start by confirming your Olympus model number. 

Next, can you please upload the sample files on our Dropbox account so we can have a look? https://www.dropbox.com/request/MGv0TvgczwW7cLrZOHhQ

You mention the Olympus program. Is that Olympus Viewer 3? 

The colour might/will be shifted if you use any in-camera adjustments ( tone, colour shift, sharpness, etc) as they will only be read by the native Olympus software. We load the RAW file without any in-camera adjustments. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Reisender]

44 minutes ago, GabrielM said:

Hi @Reisender,

Let's start by confirming your Olympus model number. 

Next, can you please upload the sample files on our Dropbox account so we can have a look? https://www.dropbox.com/request/MGv0TvgczwW7cLrZOHhQ

You mention the Olympus program. Is that Olympus Viewer 3? 

The colour might/will be shifted if you use any in-camera adjustments ( tone, colour shift, sharpness, etc) as they will only be read by the native Olympus software. We load the RAW file without any in-camera adjustments. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

Hi @GabrielM,

Thanks for taking the time, I appreciate it.

The Olympus model is the Olympus O-MD 10 Mk 2. The Olympus programme is Olympus Viewer 3. I do use the default camera settings with the "natural" profile. The only thing I changed from the standard settings is that I reduced the amount of sharpening to "low".

I am currently uploading the files. The affinity jpegs contain some of my further editing attempts. If it helps, I can also upload files directly as they are put out by the OV3 and the Photo develop engine. I have also uploaded the raw files just in case.

I don't think there is any specific fault with the develop persona, as I get similar results with DXO Optics Pro 11. It's just that the Olympus software, both in-camera and in OV3 seems to apply a very pleasing colour profile that I can't recreate in other raw developers. Which means that I usually have to use the extremely clumsy Olympus Viewer 3 to create a tiff before further editing in Affinity. Which is just a very impractical solution.

Cheers!

[Reisender]

Files should be uploaded now. Thanks again!

[Gabe]

Thanks. I'm not too sure how you got faded colours in the Flower photo. This is a side-by-side Affinity photo and Olympus Viewer 3

In the Develop persona, I just increased the Exposure to 0.58 and I added some Sharpness in the detailing studio using the detail and radius slider. Pretty close results. 

Left Olympus, Right Affinity

100%

Same goes for the other one. 

For this one, I have adjusted the exposure, black point, Detail and I've added a bit of curve to the red channel:

This is all done in the develop persona, using Serif Labs RAW engine. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Reisender]

I just recreated your steps, Gabe, and I can now achieve the same results! Thank you so much, I don't know where I went wrong earlier.

Incidentally, is there a way to change the default presets for the different developing riders so that I have a different baseline to work with whenever I open a raw?

[Gabe]

 You can create a preset,  but you will have to apply it every time.