Best Way to Go Next to Improve Bright Sky Color?

Question

Hi guys,
I've got most of my colors coming out just about the way I want them in Camera Raw, save for one thing:  My bright blue skies come out kind of drab - especially by comparison to the in-camera JPEGs.  Note the difference, for example, in the sky colors in this representative sample.  I'm using the Camera Standard profile from Adobe with some tweaks to the sliders by default, but none of the sliders available will allow me to saturate the sky color without corrupting the balance of the darker colors.
I wouldn't mind a much more saturated sky but with the bluer color I'm getting from Photoshop, but the real key here is the level of color saturation in the sky.  Clearly the Canon is interpreting the data in the bright sky area pretty differently than Adobe's converter.  In my opinion they're doing a better job of it than Adobe.
My question is this:  In pursuit of more saturated bright colors, should I tweak up my own profile?  Or perhaps should I craft some action steps in Photoshop proper to correct this?  The former would yield a more integrated, direct result, but the latter wouldn't be too bad as I already use an action to convert images from ProPhoto RGB to sRGB.
Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
-Noel

Answer 1

Noel Carboni wrote:
Hi guys,
I've got most of my colors coming out just about the way I want them in Camera Raw, save for one thing:  My bright blue skies come out kind of drab - especially by comparison to the in-camera JPEGs.  Note the difference, for example, in the sky colors in this representative sample.  I'm using the Camera Standard profile from Adobe with some tweaks to the sliders by default, but none of the sliders available will allow me to saturate the sky color without corrupting the balance of the darker colors.
I wouldn't mind a much more saturated sky but with the bluer color I'm getting from Photoshop, but the real key here is the level of color saturation in the sky.  Clearly the Canon is interpreting the data in the bright sky area pretty differently than Adobe's converter.  In my opinion they're doing a better job of it than Adobe.
My question is this:  In pursuit of more saturated bright colors, should I tweak up my own profile?  Or perhaps should I craft some action steps in Photoshop proper to correct this?  The former would yield a more integrated, direct result, but the latter wouldn't be too bad as I already use an action to convert images from ProPhoto RGB to sRGB.
Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
-Noel
Noel,
In short, color transformation from RAW to output color space in ACR consists of transformation by combination of matrix and lookup table operations, and correcting this via tone curve. Tone curve essentially compresses highlights, so that dynamic range of sensor fits into dynamic range of output media (monitor/paper). As result of this, contrast and saturation of highlights is compressed and you have drab sky (and all other highlight colors, just that it's most visible on the sky). On the other side, contrast of midtones and shadows is enhanced, so dark exposed sky/sea/shadows are oversaturated
That's one of the reasons why we need rendering, to make the photo look more natural. In Adobe standard profiles, amount of rendering is moderate (older versions) or close to zero (new versions), where actually only rendering is achieved by tone curve
Manufacturers like Canon, Nikon etc tweak these color profiles to overcome this and other problems (one of them being also handling of blown colors etc). So there are different camera profiles, like Standard, Landscape, Portrait ... However, every manufacturer does this differently, so colors from Canon cameras are different than from Nikon cameras. As I understand Jeff in his previous posts, Adobe team doesn't feel there is a need for additional rendering for some reason ... so Adobe standard profile has minimal amount of rendering
If you want to use Adobe standard profile, you have to live with that, as you can't correct highlights separately from shadows with neither ACR or DNG PE - correction is only 2D (there is a similar tool from Canon that support 3D coorection, but it works only with DPP and Canon cameras). If you like colors from the camera, use Camera profiles in ACR. But built-in camera profiles (and consequently camera profiles from Adobe also) also have some faults  - for instance,  on my 400D, sky that is close to being blown (in raw color space) but still not blown has hue too low and also looks unnatural with cyan tone (sRGB only, while aRGB profile, that is emulated in ACR is better) - like in the photo you posted above. On the other side, on A620 compact, cyan colors have too high hue and too low saturation (to prevent from blown sky turning cyan I presume), making some beautiful beach scenes quite dull etc ...