Colour change while importing Nikon Raw files (.NEF)

[as191519]

Hi there. I posted about this in the subreddit a couple of weeks ago, and was directed here. I've had unrelated PC issues the last couple of weeks (power-related, so won't be anything to do with this), so apologies it taken a little bit of time. You can find the thread here. Included was an image comparing two screenshots, one in Fast Picture Viewer Pro, and one in Develop Persona- with more examples attached here now.

Note in the examples of the #92 Porsche, the colours are still altered, look at the yellow and blue run-off areas and rumble strips. It seems to affect the red/orange/yellow colours the most, but also the purple of the #85 Ford. The whites and paler blues are less affected.

As you can see, the colours are imported differently into AfP. I have the correct lens compensation file (mostly I used a Nikkor 200-500mm on my D3400), although I only learned about this recently and the problem I believe has been happening since well before that.

I've given AfP a quick reset (holding control while opening, resetting any of the options that seem like they might be vaguely related), but that doesn't seem to have had an effect.

I've tried white balance corrections inside AfP's Develop and after developing, using the car's lights as a source (also trying the body for a couple of white cars) and this doesn't have too much effect. As suggested in the reddit post, a minor HSL shift (~-0.5-1) just about works as a counter balance for now, but it'd be nice to get it all sorted..!

The only thing I've come across online that might be of help is someone somewhere suggested Nikon's D-Lighting built into the cameras may cause it, but the setting was turned off. Other thoughts: the camera has two options of colour space, sRGB and Adobe RGB- it had been in the former. Would being in Adobe RGB help? Unfortunately my camera's all packed away now so I can't check whether that makes a different until I return. Camera's white balance setting I believe is auto.

 

Some specs, I don't know what else might be needed: 

AMD Radeon R9 200 GPU

Asus ASUS VS248HR monitor

i5 4960K

 

I'm on holiday from tomorrow until the 18th, so I'm afraid I won't be able to get to my computer in that period to check up details, but I'll still try to answer here at least from time to time, signal allowing.

 

Many thanks.

[Chris B]

Hey as191519, welcome to the Affinity Forums.

Can you make sure you aren't developing to RGB 32 from the Develop Assistant. The sample raw I have from the same camera comes out quite dull if developing to RGB 32 and switching to RGB 16 seemingly fixed it for me.

I've opened the same sample on macOS which can use Apple Core Image RAW which matches the preview I'm seeing in Photoshop and IrfanView.

I think we really need a copy of your image to look into this more accurately. When you are available, would you mind uploading it to this private Dropbox folder. Cheers  

[as191519]

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you, just returned from my travels the other day and have had to fix my PC after having power surges too. Yippee!

I've had a look at the assistant and I'm in RGB 16. There is something in the top left with my camera details that appears to specify RGB 32, is that useful at all? See red ring in attached image. I've also attached screenshots of my preferences and the settings my develop assistant was on- any of those possibly the issue? I'm going to have a play around with the assistant's settings and see what happens. Just about to upload some raws to your folder too.

[as191519]

As a follow-up, here are three further examples. Assitant off with both RGB 16 and 32 selected, and assistant on RGB 32. Changing RGB setting doesn't appear to make much difference, and they're still quite different to the original image as viewed elsewhere. 

I'll also add this image to the Dropbox folder, if that helps.

 

[as191519]

Hi Chris. I'm still a little confused by this issue- although I'm starting to think it may not be an issue at all. Either way I was hoping to get some more information, and see whether we can work this out as I love AF and would dearly love to get back to editing images from this trip, however I want to be certain there isn't a bug or something else involved that's causing the colour change before I do. Most of what I shoot is wildlife and so generally the colours I come across (that gull above being an exception) are duller than these brightly coloured cars.

 

My camera's colour space is set to Adobe RGB over sRGB, if that helps.

 

Anyway, I've noticed today (and this is what's led me to coming back here), that opening these Raw files in Adobe Photoshop Express has the same 'issue' mentnioned above with Affinity Photo- the colours are more vivid and slightly 'off' compared to the previews I see in Windows and in FastPictureViewer. This makes me wonder whether this could be that the editing softwares are processing the Adobe RGB colours differently. I'm going to have a go in daylight tomorrow of taking some identical photos in sRGB and in AdobeRGB and seeing whether this persists. I've had a big hardware overhaul in my Computer over winter so I know it's not anything from my PC doing this at least.

This would make sense to me, although I feel like the images are coming out perhaps a little too vivid. And another confusing thing to me is that as I shoot Raw in NEF files, do they not have any colour space assigned at that point anyway? 

 

I'm sorry if this is just mindless posturing from someone who obviously doesn't know enough about these things..!

[walt.farrell]

53 minutes ago, as191519 said:

I'm going to have a go in daylight tomorrow of taking some identical photos in sRGB and in AdobeRGB and seeing whether this persists.

Make sure you're shooting in Manual, and not in some scene mode. The thumbnail (or JPG) produced by the camera will have any scene-type adjustments in it, but the RAW won't. And the thumbnail is what the OS and some other picture viewers will show you.

[as191519]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Make sure you're shooting in Manual, and not in some scene mode. The thumbnail (or JPG) produced by the camera will have any scene-type adjustments in it, but the RAW won't. And the thumbnail is what the OS and some other picture viewers will show you.

Thanks for your reply. This brings up a couple of other possibilities. I only shoot manual/aperture priority (occasionally macro) so hopefully that won't be it. Unless AP would have the adjustments, as most of those racing images were manual and with wildlife I'm almost always on AP. 

The other is that I have my camera's backlight relatively high (usually +5) as it can be hard to see in the glare sometimes. Could this possibly mean I'm overcompensating slightly taking images and therefore taking more vivid images that I should? I don't need to use the exposure adjuster in-camera very much at all though, so I don't think this would be the issue?

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, as191519 said:

The other is that I have my camera's backlight relatively high (usually +5) as it can be hard to see in the glare sometimes. Could this possibly mean I'm overcompensating slightly taking images and therefore taking more vivid images that I should?

That's an interesting question, but unless you're applying adjustments to try to get that image to look good, I don't think it would matter.

[as191519]

So I took a few quick photos (two each of sRGB and AdobeRGB in each of Manual/AP modes) and the same thing occurs- the same off, vivid, colours when opening in Affinity and Photoshop Express. One thing I was asked about when I first posted this issue on reddit was whether Nikon's Active D Lighting was on, which is isn't. I'm still a bit miffed as to how/why this is happening, but I'm thinking now that it is a bit less of a bug.

I'm going in for a new camera next month anyway, so I'll throughly check the settings before I use it, test it before changing anything at all for this issue etc. Perhaps there is just something slightly off either in settings or the camera I haven't seen? I might try copying some images over to my laptop actually for now as I have Photoshop Express at least on there as well as FPV, which would confirm absolutely that it's not either my PC or my monitor. Should probably grab another copy of Affinity for it the laptop at some point too, thinking about it.