Page 1 of 1

Colorcast on final image post render

Posted: 21.04.2018 17:51
by bobrickert
I am focus stacking in dng and everything seems to be working.
I do have a question why there is a color cast on the final image prior to saving (see screenshot below). When the image is saved back to Lightroom there is no color cast.

Re: Colorcast on final image post render

Posted: 22.04.2018 09:20
by BobStone
A number of users have reported this and I have experienced it too. My interpretation is that the image on the left honors the edit settings in the associated XMP file, while the rendered image on the right does not. After you save the rendered image, there is an XMP file created for it. It seems to be a copy of one associated with the last raw image in the stack.(That file name is embedded in the XMP.) The issue of color cast is not particularly important as this is 'fixed' after the save. However it is difficult to do any post render retouching if the final image is too dark.

One alternative is to save all images as TIF files and do the stacking with them. These will display correctly for retouching. Certainly has an impact of disk space though! It may also work in you convert your raw images to DNG format during import. This is an option in Bridge, not sure about Lightroom.

Re: Colorcast on final image post render

Posted: 23.04.2018 09:44
by Stas Yatsenko
This is most likely a bug in Helicon Focus. Note that Focus does NOT take XMP into account. Only the software that created XMP file can read it back and apply it to the image properly.
We sent you a link to new Beta version in a private message, I would appreciate if you check it.

Re: Colorcast on final image post render

Posted: 01.07.2018 03:48
by AlisonP
I have been having the exact same problem for the last month or so. Always the output is darkened, but fine if I go to the retouching window and fine when saved.

If this is a bug I would sure like it fixed soon. Or if there is a beta version with the bug fixed (as indicated above), I would like to try that too.

Re: Colorcast on final image post render

Posted: 01.07.2018 11:52
by BobStone
I want to clarify my previous post … this is what I can glean from using the program.

When saving a raw file stack to DNG, some of the raw file metadata from a 'sidecar' XMP is embedded in the DNG file. Looking at the attribute values there, they have values derived from one of the images in the stack. Here are some values from a 3 frame landscape image DNG file: crs:RawFileName="D85_3056,7,8_B,R10,S5.dng". This must have been written as part of the save as I did not use the suggested name. However, the attribute xmp:CreateDate="2018-06-11T04:21:24.56-04:00" matches the last in the stack, and these are unique to the stack.

Note that the HF suggested name during this example save was D85_3058B,Radius10,Smoothing5.dng … clearly based on the last frame number. (I like to indicate all the frames in the stack.) But in some instances, the data is based on the first image in the stack.

So I believe that the image displayed after the render is based on rendered RGB values. On the Retouching page the metadata is applied and the image appears as expected. Likely the retouch image is generated through the Adobe DNG converter which can interpret the values correctly. I do not think this is a bug, but expected behavior.

Re: Colorcast on final image post render

Posted: 01.07.2018 13:21
by el48tel
The color cast does not appear in the beta 16 of 7.0.0 - it did in some images compiled in beta8 - but I was then running an earlier version of DNG converter

Re: Colorcast on final image post render

Posted: 02.07.2018 12:43
by Stas Yatsenko
This is a bug, looks like color profile was not applied to the final image. This should be fixed in the late beta versions of Helicon Focus 7, you'll find download links in a private message.