Color Wheel with Wings

A male Bay Tanager in Costa Rica. I think this is one of the more colorful small birds I have ever seen. The female is very different.

Specific Feedback Requested

any
too saturated!
I think the bird colors are accurate but the background probably could use a little desaturation. I’m not sure why my green colors appear so saturated on my monitor. I’m using sRGB color space.
Anyone else have this issue?

Technical Details

iso 6400, 500 PF, f7.1, 2500th, D500

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Amazing bird, but the colors are a little strange here. Do you mean the monitor is set to the sRGB gamut?

Is the monoitor calibrated and profiled? Is the OS actually using the profile?

What monitor and OS? What calibration software?

What is your color mgmt when you import pictures: Do you use LR? What are your PS Color Pref’s set to?

To clarify: Are you asking about the color appearance on your monitor as you work on an image, or here, after you post it?

Your camera will capture a much wider gamut than sRGB or Adobe RGB – almost the same as ProPhoto RGB. If your working space in PS is sRGB or Adobe RGB, the camera’s gamut needs to be brought down into that working space by conversion, not assignment, and the appearance will be well preserved – you’ll scarcely see a difference. (Gamut is n/a in LR, but the monitor’s calibration will affect colors everywhere.) Is it possible that somewhere you “assigned” a profile instead of “converting to”?

Another pitfall on the viewer’s end is posting an image without an embedded profile. That’s not the issue here – you have embedded sRGB.

Diane:
Your technical abilities are far greater than mine. But I will try to explain my workflow to you. Before I get started, I will tell you that the final tiff image on my monitor looks normal and the extra saturation occurs when I convert the tiff image to JPEG using the TK7 web sharpening panel to convert for the web. The TK7 web panel has the sRGB box checked off.
It looks like my color space in light room is set to sRGB 16-bit resolution, 240 dots per inch. And it appears that Photoshop us at the same way.
So this is a little complicated but I will explain how I process an image…

I import all my images into lightroom by date.
I find the image I’m going to use and under file, plug-in extras, I transfer the file to DxO Photo Lab 5.
I use DxO for most of my modifications to the image including exposure, contrast, tone, color accentuation, white balance, sharpening, and initial noise reduction. The file is then exported to light room where I make some final adjustments before sending the image to Photoshop CC. I then use Topaz De Noise, make my final crop, and other image adjustments. Once I am happy with the image, I use the TK7 panel to do very minor sharpening and conversion to JPEG at 72 dots per inch.
It is at this point where I notice the image becomes far more saturated especially with greens.
The image is then imported into NPN.

I haven’t made any adjustments at all to the color space and am basically using the defaults and all the other programs that I use.

Hope this makes some sense?
Thanks for your help.
David

I’m too rushed right now to reply in detail, but you’ve pegged the problem as arising with the use of the TK7 panel to convert to JPEG. (BTW, with a JPEG, the DPI is irrelevant, and a fossil artifact. It’s just the pixel dimensions that matter. But that’s an aside.) Something is happening here, probably with it not being properly converted to sRGB. I haven’t used the TK7 (or 8) panels for export as I export JPEGs from LR, but when you say the sRGB box is checked off, I wonder if that’s the problem. I may have time tomorrow to try this, but others here, including TK himself, have much more experience.

The thing you describe as in LR (set to sRGB etc) isn’t in LR but shows in ACR as the settings to be used on opening in PS. LR takes care of that for you.

I don’t know what happens when you go to DxO instead. I trust LR for the adjustments that you are exporting to DxO for. It’s strange to me to go back and forth like that. I make raw adj’s in LR then go to PS for things I can’t do in LR. Clean and simple. When the .psd appears back in the LR filmstrip I can export a JPEG from there, for the size needed. No more adj’s – just export. No issues.

Try a straight route and see what happens – adjust in LR, open in PS (look at Color Settings to set what you want), then save and export from LR. I’d bet that will work for you. I’d recommend Adobe RGB color space to get the most from your camera without the pitfalls of Pro Photo.)


Here is a version with the background only desaturated and exported as a jpg from PS-CC

The desat version above is not right – too flat. The last one with BG desat is better but you’re trying to do an end run around the problem. Try the simple workflow I suggested above. I suspect the whole image has a mis-interpreted color profile and you can’t correct things like that.


Here is another version using LR and PS CC only

David, to my eyes, while the original background may be slightly strong (particularly in the yellow channel…that glow-in-the-dark yellow/green in front of the bird’s breast). The PS-CC bird looks good, but the background looks flat. I don’t use TK’s panels, so I don’t know what all might be done in them. Adobe’s software all adds saturation as you darken tones, so maybe there’s some darkening in the sharpening panel as well as sharpening.

No time to do a direct comparison now but this last one looks even more saturated in yellows. The HSL panel can control that – but the important thing is, did this workflow give you the same issue of the color appearance changing when you exported a JPEG? (Assuming you exported directly from LR…)

To tame the yellow-greens a bit try the LR-PS version again with the WB lowered a little and Shadows full up and Highlights full down – if you didn’t. That gives this version, on the JPEG. Maybe not so much difference on the raw if you already did the shadow-highlight moves. Reds and colors on the back are not so dark and flat.

Even though this one is more yellowish, I assume exporting from LR solved the change in appearance of the yellows at that last step?? (Set the Color Space choice to sRGB.)

I am confused but the second image on your first post looks perfect to me.
If that is the Raw image, then just leave it alone. Too much processing maybe?

Thanks Dan. I agree with you.

Thanks Diane for all your help with this. It got pretty complicated for me. I’ll try to keep it simpler in the future.

Simpler is almost always better. You have a wonderful camera and shouldn’t need to do a lot of color manipulation beyond global things like white balance and sometimes limited Hue-Sat. Shadows and Highlights are always fair game if the lighting wasn’t ideal. Some images can just be difficult, though.