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UltravioletPhotography

White balance and raw converters


Adrian

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I have read the recent post on lens testing by Bjorn Rorslett. Very interesting and really useful! Thank you! I have also been doing some tests with old "scallop shell" Nikon lenses and will post some results soon.

 

I would like to ask why most people on this forum seem to prefer Photo Ninja for the raw conversion and calibration rather than Adobe Camera Raw? Has anyone tried Adobe's DNG Profile editor?

 

I am getting rather muddled about white balancing my UV images, and have read and re-read the various posts on this forum! I am going back to square 1 to start over again! I have an X Rite Passport, PTFE disc, and use a Nikon camera (converted D300) with Photoshop.

Adrian Davies

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I can only answer for myself, although Andrea probably would concur to some extent.

 

Put in the simplest possible statement: in Photo Ninja, a click-white operation on a UV-neutral target directly gives the desired outcome. PN handles different cameras with the same ease. My Panasonics (currently chiefly GH-2, for UV video) can do the very nearly the same in camera, but often a minor later correction can be deemed necessary.

 

Thus, with PN, it works.

 

Surely other editors might produce similar results, but I haven't encountered any software doing it in the same trouble-free manner. I'm certain Andrea or others will tell you otherwise as I'm not familiar with all programs out there.

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Hi Adrian,

 

I asked this myself recently,

 

Adobe software cannot white balance the UV (or some IR for that matter) image, as it is too far shifted from what it considers to be the 'range' of white balances. If you want to use it, you can manually white balance an image using the RGB curves in one of the menus to bring the histograms inline, however its more accurate and much faster to use PhotoNinja or Nikon's own software for White Balance. I tried the free Nikon software a few weeks back (View NX2) but found it a bit basic, although it can white balance UV on my D3100

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Andy Perrin

What everyone else said: it white balances with one click (if you have a surface that's UV-white to balance off of). I started off with my aged edition of Adobe (CS6) and found it couldn't get rid of the magenta cast. So I got PN based on forum enthusiasm here and I've really been loving it for overall-image tweaks. My workflow at the moment is:

1) Duplicate all images so I have a backup

2) Adjust duplicates in PN for exposure, colors. Render it.

3) Adjust the render in Photoshop for dust bunnies, and I also prefer the Neat Image denoising plugin to PN's noise reduction software. Sometimes I adjust colors further in PS too, or combine images for HDR and panoramas.

4) Optionally sharpen with Smart Deblur 2.3, and combine the sharpened image with the results of step 3 so that the subject is sharper but background is blurred. (Useful for flowers especially.)

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I use Capture One (free Sony version, although it can process images from other cameras). It offers the same one click-white operation for white balancing. Never tried Photo Ninja.
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You can off course use the adobe software.

 

One way is the use of your own profiles as you mentioned (I use this on my PC, but lost the files as the computer crashed some time ago, when windows tried to repair the system). I have to redo this process (making the profiles), but lazy as I am :

 

Now I am using PhotoshopCC mostly on my Mac.

The trick with PSCC is to make use of the new raw filter.

First you develop the picture normal with ACR (selecting something which is your WB target in the picture), but you will not get the full shift.

Then, when you opened the picture, the next step is to open the raw filter again (when you make a smart object out of your file before starting the raw filter, you can redo, refine the next step). In the raw filter you run the WB process again and then you can do all the further adjustments (even CA correcting seems to work to some degree). This even works with bad or not wb pictures in jpg or tiff etc., but with jpg, already some information is lost and the outcome is not optimal.

 

The wb in the raw filter seems to allow only changes within a reduced band (might be a mathematical thing behind to control resolution and accuracy of the calculations done without to much error). Using the raw filter several times, you can do very nice changes you can not get with using specific filters in one step (its also some mathematics behind this, to explain this).

 

 

 

The only problem is, when you want to copy the settings from one picture to another picture (might work via using a smart object and replacing the smart object, but I have not tested this).

 

With PS then, you can use all the fine plug-ins to remove noise.

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Well, Werner, thank you for this info about how to use ACR for white balancing false colours in UV photos. I'm happy to learn this and I hope it is useful to other members wishing to use ACR !!

 

However, I suppose for now I will stick to the one-click WB in Photo Ninja because for me it is a much simpler approach given that I do not need most of the tools in Photoshop. Other apps which can make a one-click WB or marquee WB (that I know about) are Iridient, Capture One, Raw Therapee and any of the Nikon apps, old or new (NX-D, NX2, View NX). I'm sure there are more that I don't know about.

 

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Note 1: Some cameras can achieve a good pre-set WB in-camera, but then you must use a converter which can recognize and render that pre-set WB correctly. These days it seems almost all raw converters are doing a pretty good job of that, but there can be a little drift sometimes. So even with such a camera (Sony a7R or Lumix GH1 in my case), I still make a raw photo of the Spectralon or PTFE white standard for checking the pre-set WB in the converter and re-balancing if needed.

 

***************

 

Note 2: I'd like to remind everyone that if you forget to use your PTFE, you can usually white balance UV false colours via white-clicking any magenta area of a UV photo. The WB may not be "perfect" on first click. You might have to click around a bit to make sure you are clicking on a "good" patch of magenta.

 

***************

 

Note 3: And finally, please understand that it is not mandatory to white balance your UV false colours. Bjørn and I do this primarily for our botanical photos so that the floral UV signatures are reproducible across different gear platforms. For general UV photography, you are free to apply any colour palette which suits your artistic eye.

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Well, I just tried Photo Ninja for the first time last night, and the 'white click' really does work well. I guess there is no 'marquee' style white balance, like with NX2, correct? But clicking around the pic will get me what I want,

and it works quite well. I am yet unfamiliar with the other features in the program, but I did try shadow and exposure and contrast... which all work a little differently that NX2, but maybe better, not sure.

I don't have the paid copy yet, so I don't know the full features.

Mostly though I was impressed with the white click white balance, seems to work quite well, so I can now recommend that software in place of NX2/NX-D.

NOTE: I have not tried this yet with UV+Blue+Green, or so called BEE VISION, also called UG5/U-330 + S8612 stacks, which I was never able to white balance via PTFE or any other target in NX2, only using 'marquee'.

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A comment to the latter: Photo Ninja click-white operates equally well on captures taken with the BUG filter.
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Steve, note that Photo Ninja's white balance dropper can be dragged for a marquee-like effect.

 

This permits you, for example, to achieve an average white balance by dragging all through a photo or dragging diagonally across it. So even though you do not actually draw a rectangular area, the net effect is the same.

 

I drag in a circular manner in the central area of my small white balance standards for a smaller marquee-like effect when I am preparing white balance presets.

 

Try it !! :)

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Andrea, Oh cool, well I think I tried that, but perhaps that is one of the features that is not enabled with the test version.

I will go try it again.

Thanks.

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It may still work a little differently than an actual marquee tool. But I've managed to always get what I need when trying for an average white balance or an area white balance. Let us know if it works out for what you want to do.

 

BTW, Photo Ninja has the best Shadow lift I've ever seen. (This statement depends, of course, on exactly how much I've ever seen. Hmmmm......)

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I wanted to add that there is no "perfect" white balance attainable across all the converters. Each one produces an ever so slightly different white balance. Interesting, isn't it?

 

I think this happens because each converter uses different colour profiles for the cameras.

 

Seems to be the case that correct colour happens only by using both colour profiles and white balance. (And I'm totally ignoring the effects of the light in which we view all this corrected colour. It gets complicated. Also ignoring colour spaces. Gets even more complicated-er.)

 

Note that an individual camera may vary ever so slightly from a converter's colour profile for that camera. Again, interesting. I think most of the time we would never notice this much because the colour profiles have gotten very good for the various cameras.

 

Any information welcomed on this in case I have something wrong here.

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I agree that the shadows and some other things are better than NX2/NX-D.

It would seem that the 'click and drag eye dropper' feature doesn't work in the trial version. I can do the single point click, but I can't make it into a larger area.

Either it is the reduces features of the trial copy or I don't have something set up right.

post-87-0-92058300-1466913659.jpg

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That looks nice!

 

The Photo Ninja white balance dropper does not draw anything on the screen while you click-drag.

 

From the Photo Ninja Help Button in Color Correction Tool:

The white balance sampler tool is always active when the color correction panel is visible. Click on any spot in the image that should be grey or white, and the tool will automatically calculate a custom white balance correction. Clicking and dragging will average pixel values until the mouse is released.

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Good to know!! Thanks Reed. It's been ages since I looked at Gimp. Every couple of years or so I try to download some of the more popular apps like Gimp or Darktable and learn a little bit about them. Usually I do this in winter when UV is hiding out and thus I'm not busy shooting.
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