civilized ku # 3071 ~ does it ring true?

place mat ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

I haven't posted since early last week, not because I had nothing to write but rather that I was preoccupied by matters color processing wise and I am experiencing a problem with uploading and resizing pictures here on Squarespace. Therefore, today's picture has no embiggen feature.

The problem on Squarespace started on Friday and has yet to be fixed although according to SS support, "[T]he whole image processing part of our platform is being actively looked at. We're hoping for a fix as soon as possible, and our engineers are currently working on it." They're hoping. I'm hoping. When a fix will be had, who knows.

That written, back to matters color processing wise - there have been a couple entries on TOP regarding color - Color Calibration and Color Photoshopping (on which I had a featured comment). And, on another TOP entry, mention was made of book, LIFELIKE: A Book on Color in Digital Photography in which the author attempts to address the "increasing lack of satisfaction with digital color" with techniques which, in a sense, replicate pre-digital film-like color and tonality.

I purchased the book (e-book for MAC platform only) out of curiosity and my return on investment was virtually nonexistent. While his thoughts on color are good and somewhat in line with my own, the author spends way to much digital ink on how past masters in the realm of painting handled color. While a reader might learn something about color theory and its application in painting, I fail to see its relevance to making pictures in the medium of photography.

In addition, his method for obtaining pre-digital color and tonality (film-like) depends on the use of a RAW converter - Raw Photo Processor (RPP) (free software, albeit for the MAC platform only) - which has a rather clunky non-intuitve interface and requires a pretty comprehensive re-think of the RAW conversion process.

I spent a fair amount of time using RPP on images I had previously processed using my standard RAW conversion software - Iridient Developer, a converter which is noted for its natural film-like output - and, quite frankly, it did not produce any results that I couldn't achieve using the ID software. But then again ...

... the results I achieve from ID software are obtained by using my 40+ years of technical color experience. Experience which is put to use in the cause of producing clean, well-balanced natural yet rich (non-garish, non-over saturated) color in my pictures.

None of the above should be understood or construed as a reason not to purchase the book or download RPP and give a try. I am certain that both could be of value to anyone who is interested in exploring color options that are much more life-like than that which is spit out by the 'canned' defaults in LR / CR and other such RAW converters.

Comments

[John]

>>quite frankly, it did not produce any results that I couldn't achieve using the ID software.

Were the results (or non-results) obvious enough to be seen on web posted pictures? My brief experimenting with ID software was not eye-opening... my results with Adobe have been fine. It would be interesting to see examples of the same image processed using various RAW processors. Do you know of any on-line comparisons?