Colour Balance

Hi,
I'm looking for a set of controls in Aperture that approximates the 'Colour Balance' option in Photoshop. I saved an action in Photoshop that I used to warm my shots.
My setting in photoshop was to drag the Red/Cyan balance slightly to Red and the Yellow/Blue balance slightly to the Yellow, which produced a nice, rounded warmth.
In Aperture, despite detailed colour controls, I can't seem to find one that adjusts the balance in the same way. They are all individually adjusted for Saturation and Luminance etc...
The white balance tool in Aperture doesn't really offer the same control. Its a bit like Colour Balance in PS but without the Cyan/Red & Magenta/Green sliders
Any thoughts?
Thanks.

Yea the wheels themselves take a delicate touch - they really were meant as correction tools to be used with the droppers to neutralize a cast.
Just remember you beginning color theory to get the effect you want with the mid sliders and then save your adjustment as a preset template on a template image - Ian Wood has a writeup on his site if you do not know what I mean.
I remember when this digital thing came along and all of my clients would freak if I sent them an RGB vs CMYK - they had CMYK wired into their print oriented brains.
RB

Similar Messages

Our EFFECT COLOUR CORRECTION COLOUR BALANCE feature doesn't work on solids. Any clues?

Hi, I'm trying to help a friend troubleshoot a light sabre effect. He has followed a series of instructions from the net, but no matter what we try the solid will not change colour using the EFFECT > COLOUR CORRECTION > COLOUR BALANCE feature on the layer.
On the linked page is the file + full instructions:
http://beyondthewallmedia.com/?q=aftereffectsproblem
Could someone more experienced with After Effects please help us out and tell us why this feature isn't working in this project?
"Using your mouse to slide the numbers, drag the 3 “Blue Balance” labels to the right, up to 100 is you wish. This should start to change your glowing white lightsabre into a blue one. Play around with it, till you have the colour you want. You can slide the “Red” and “Green” Balance labels to the left to lessen their effect too."
Would really value someone taking a look at this for us. Thanks.

I agree with Mylenium. There are some serious flaws in the instructions. With no colour in the solid, Color Balance will have no effect.
But your project is also incorrectly built, according to the instructions: you've duplicated the mask 5 times, rather than the layer.
In the precomp, make your solid blue, with just one feathered mask, duplicate the layer 3-5 times, switch all to Add transfer mode.

Bayer Filter and colour balance.

Hi all.
I have recently been acquiring images using a mikrotron MC1363 camera and LV code 'Grab and save to AVI'. I have then used ImageJ to create a stack of U8 images. My problem then arises in that I need to apply a bayer filter and colour balance to the images. I have been sent a correction matrix by mikrotron and extracted pixel intensities from the U8 images, but am now stuck. I don't know how to use the information accrued to give a debayered image of true colour. Any advice would be great.
Attached is:
Tthe MC1363 manual
The matrices supplied by mikrotron (lupa1300)
An image folder containing:
-A true colour image
-A snap taken using the MC1365 of the true colour image
-Images of the colours red, green, blue, white and black extracted from the bottom right hand image, as u8 jpegs.
Thanks.
Dan.
Attachments:
992-EoSens 3CL-MC1364-65-Manual.pdf ‏795 KB

Hi Danbubbles,
The pixels of the Bayer filter are arranged in a checkerboard pattern on the sensor. There are twice as many green as red and blue pixels in order to mimic the higher sensitivity of the human eye towards green light.
Due to the filter each pixel measures only one color. The two remaining colors are estimated (interpolated) using the eight surrounding pixels. This technique is called Bayer demosaicing or Bayer to RGB Conversion.
http://www.stemmer-imaging.co.uk/en/glossary/5287-Bayer-Filter
As far as I'm concerned there exit different "de-bayering" algorithm, which are different in terms of quality and performance, but in general
0#
you "move" a structuring element - which is like a subset of your input-image - across your input-picture starting at row = 0 column = 0, which is indexing the same pixel in both of your input AND output-image: http://www.mathworks.de/help/images/morph6.gif
1#
then you calculate a new value for this particular pixel in your output-image via interpolating the indexed pixel and its adjacent pixels in the input-image, e.g. like described in this pdf:
http://www.matrix-vision.com/tl_files/mv11/Glossary/art_bayermosaic_en.pdf
2#
then you move on to the next pixel which should be at row 0, column 1
repeat, until you reach the pixel at row n, column m
Regards,
Alex
♜♖ LabView 8.6 - LabView 2014 ♖♜

Is the colour balance tool in Photoshop elements or just Photoshop?

I'm doing a diploma in digital photography and I need to use a tool called Colour Balance which my course manual says is in Image>adjustments>Colour Balance. I can't find this. Is it somewhere else in Photoshop elements 8 or isn't it there altogether?

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
MTSTUNER wrote:
Added: There used to be couple of plugins for elements that were very similar to color balance, but i can't seem to locate them yet.
Is this what you were looking for?
It's a free plugin, found it at:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Plugins/Color-Balance.shtml
Ken

Correcting Colour Balance and Density with Nikon D80

When uploading files to iPhoto6 created with a Nikon D80, I am noticing the colour balance and overall density of the files has changed from the thumbnails that appear on the camera. I find I have to make adjustments on many of the uploaded files as they invariably appear too dark on iPhoto.
Is there an incompatibility issue with Nikon's settings as recognised by iPhoto?
Any suggestions on how to tweak the settings on iPhoto to try to match
colour balance and density from the camera?
Macintosh eMac Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I'll look into this with Nikon and get back to you.
I wonder if this color sync issue would also affect the density of the files.
I notice they are about 25% darker than the originals.
When you have two devices there is always the
possibility that they will have a different
definition of what 'red' or 'yellow' is. To overcome
this apple developed ColorSync, a series of color
profiles, used to negotiate that issue. iPhoto
typically uses the sRGB profile. What does your
camera use?
Regards
TD

How to undo all colour balance/saturation effects on a layer to default when recolouring a logo?

I'm recolouring a game logo, and I have seperate areas of this logo on each layer. Because I have little idea on what I'm doing, I need to reset the layers to the same as the default logo because I saved it after recolouring because I'm stupid. Here's what it looks like: http://i.imgur.com/tbHzyJ6.jpg
As you can see in the logo layer, that is the original, and all other layers are seperate areas such as the letters only. However they have all been colour balanced to get that recolour. All layers have been cut into the own section, so the letters layer has only the logo's letters.
I didn't make any layers for image adjustments or anything, was just wondering if there was any way to get the default logo colours back while cut in the same areas which the layers are.
Sorry if this is posted in the wrong place. Thanks!

Please post images on this Forum directly.
With the Layer you want to copy from selected load the Selection of an existing Layer by command-clicking its icon in the Layers Panel, then hit command-J (Layer > New > Layer Via Copy).

ACR/Canon D5 Colour Balance - nasty pinkish skin tones

I use macbook pro, 2.33GHz/3GB 667MHz RAM with CS3 and ACR 4.3.1. I shoot Canon D5.
When I shoot RAW, I get this strange pinkish look to the skin tones that I can't seem to correct. I've experimented with colour balance and hue, and the HSL and camera calibration tools, but not happy yet.
Apologies if this is a basic issue, but would love some advice.
Thanks.

I think that is a standard catch-all message but it really is a poor show that a simple download page is so often unavailable.
Just part of the new look Adobe. It really is a pity there's no serious competition yet, but if they keep going downhill at the present rate there will be!

Colour balance changes when using 3D graphics

Just what the title says. When I start a 3D game or application, the overall colour cast of the screen gains a distinct cool, blue tint. Shut the app off and it's back to normal. Why does the colour profile change? Is there, at least, a way to make the "3D" profile match my regular one which I've already calibrated correctly?

a specific game?

Loss of Colour balance and brightness when burning to DVD

Hi new to Mac and having problems with photos and video that is fine when viewed in iphotos/ivideo/idvd etc or even when printed from or viewed on a PC. All looks great when assembled but as soon as the project is burned to DVD and played on a standalone player, images seem very red and dark. has anybody experienced the same ? do i need to overcompensate /adjust balance before assembling and burning a project. Any ideas would be very helpful.

John, I saw a reply you posted in July to a similar question on the
Premiere Elements forrum, which is good because I think I will have some
extra work to do on this project.
The MPG files originally came from material I originally edited in
Premiere Elements on a MacBook Pro. The source material was AVI files from
a miniDV camcorder. I shot multiple cameras on several nights of a
theatrical production. With the volume of footage and a lack of computing
horse-power, I decided to make shorter segments based on the scenes within
the play. I know this was far from an optimal work-flow (mea culpa) but
that is the reality I face. So now I am looking for the best way forward.
Short of re-editing the whole thing (now that I have CS5.5 on a PC), which
is out of the question, it sounds like my best option is to go back to the
Mac and export the individual scenes as something other than MPG's. I
assume that in Premiere Elements 9, I need to select "Share with
Computer", then NTSC-Widescreen, and then go to the Advanced menu. Should
I then ramp the quality up to maximum? Are there other settings I need to
adjust to maximize the output quality?
At this point, I do not care about the size of the output files, nor do I
care if each 10 minute scene requires all night to render. I just would
like to get better quality clips that I can then use in CS5.5 on my PC to
assemble the full show, added chapter titles, and then print to DVD using
Encore. Any advice you can offer would be most welcome.

Exposure/colour balance change on loading - what have I got switched on?

Hi all
One more question from me as a fairly new user of Lightroom.
My camera is a Nikon D700 and I'm shooting RAW.
When I import images, there's an exposure change once they've loaded. I suspect something automatic is happening but I can't tell what. Possibly an auto-exposure setting somewhere but I can't find it.
I have to admit this happened a few months back when using the Beta release, but I can't remember for the life of me what I changed to put things right.
Both of the 'apply during import' (filter and metadata) settings are at 'none', but I think there's something deeper somewhere making these changes.
Any help, as ever, would be much appreciated.
p.s - I'm certain it's nothing on the camera (such as active D-lighting) as I haven't changed my camera setup and things have been fine before.

You might have changed the camera develop defaults. To reset, go to Develop. In the menus, select Develop -> Set Default Settings.
Another possible cause is something that confuses most new users. Right after import, Lightroom briefly shows a camera-embedded preview of the file. After that it renders it's own images. Lightroom's interpretation might not match Nikon's built-in. You can choose a different profile in the calibration panel to match Nikon's built-in colors. Also, try lowering exposure by some 1/2 stop.

Colour Management - who does what - Some thoughts now the smoke is clearing

First up, thanks very much to everyone who contributed their ideas and expertise to my recent query here, when I was seeking help for a problem with colour management issues when printing a magazine I edit. I have a ton of suggestions to work through and study but the smoke is slowly clearing and it raises some interesting points which I think are worth recounting.
First of all, I have been editing short run magazines now for 25 years, at first part time and later on a professional contract basis. I am not a trained graphic designer nor a trained printer. I did start out training as a graphic designer, many years ago but gave it up for a career in IT (as a networking specialist). That was full time until 10 years ago, although I did some freelance writing and editing in my spare time.
And yes, I did start originally with scissors and cut and paste, and moved on through black and white with spot colour and Pagemaker software to full colour and InDesign today. One thing which may be different about my experience to most of yours is that I am a PC user and always have been. All my editing and graphics work has always been done on a PC - Pagemaker was our DTP package of choice for a long time and we supplemented this with Corel-Draw (which has a range of graphics handling options). All my software is legal and I always register it and keep it up to date. I have used the same graphic designer for quite a few years now and whenever we upgrade our software he goes and gets trained on the latest release.
Around 10 years ago I was offered the chance to edit a specialist short run magazine (not the current one). This was a chance I took and gave up the day job and became a full time freelance. Editing is not my main or only source of income. I am also a freelance writer and photographer and heritage consultant and I have a specialist image library.   I sell my own sell my work - articles and pictures - to the national and local press. I also write books (non fiction) on commission. The magazine editing is really an extension of my interest in historic landscapes. I have never had any complaints, or problems, with the freelance work, photos and archived images I sell. Clients include national newspapers here in the UK, national magazine groups and my books are available in national bookstore chains. I supply my work digitally, naturally, and it includes photos I have taken myself and items which I have scanned into my library of historical images and store on line. No reported colour management issues there.
I have always enjoyed a good relationship with my publishers and printers because I seek to be as professional as possible, which means delivering my stuff on time, to the required standard so that minimum intervention is required from them. This does assume that I have a clear brief from them on what they need from me.
Recently this approach has not been enough to avoid colour management issues with the short run magazine I currently edit. I have been wondering when and where things went astray and date it back to the upgrade to InDesign two years ago. However it may have its roots in my earlier decision to use PCs not Macs for my work.
Until 4 years ago I had used the same printers for magazine editing for many years. They were a well respected firm specialising in short run magazines. They were not far from where I live and work and if there was a problem I would go over and discuss it with them. They were happy, and competent, to handle Pagemaker files generated on a PC and convert my rgb images to cmyk if there was any concern about the colour balance. On a few occasions I paid them to scan a photo for me. However 4 years ago the owner decided to retire and shut up shop. I needed to find a new printers and it had to be someone who specialised in short run magazines and could meet the budget of the charity I edit for. Also someone who could handle copy generated using Pagemaker running on a PC. I chose a printers I had used briefly in the past where I knew some of the staff and was promised PC based Pagemaker would not be a problem. I even got this in writing. I started to send them proofs generated using Pagemaker v7 on my PC.
I soon found that although they had agreed they could handle Pagemaker on a PC in fact they had only a few PC based clients and were using a single ageing PC running Pagemaker to proof their work. In fact nearly all their jobs were Quark based. I was also told we had to supply CMYK images although not given any further requirement so I now did the conversions from rgb to CMYK using my PhotoPaint software. (There are quite a few settings in Corel for the conversion but there was no guidance by the printer on which to use so to be honest it did not occur to me that it might be a problem).
Now of course I understand that the drive to get customers to supply CMYK images was a Quark driven requirement back in the late 1990s. I did not and do not use Quark so knew nothing for this. I did have some early colour problems and font incompatibilities with the new printers and was pressured by their senior Graphic Designer (who designed for their own contract clients) to upgrade to InDesign and provide them with a .pdf, which I was assured would solve all my problems. The .pdf would be the same as the final printed magazine because "it would not require any further intervention by the printers".
I expect you are collectively throwing up your hands in horror at this point, but I think he was speaking genuinely. The creation of a .pdf using InDesign, is widely promoted as the ultimate answer to all printing issues.   I have encountered it recently with a lot of printers' salesmen and my friend, who edits a learned journal, has just been told the same thing by her printers, to get her to upgrade to ID. Incidentally she also uses a PC.
So we upgraded our design process in house to InDesign and our graphic designer went on a course, two courses in fact. When we came to produce our first .pdf using ID, the printers' Senior Graphic designer came on the phone and talked our designer through the ID Export function. I think he may at that time have told him to create a preset profile with MPC and the defaults, but to be honest I don't recall. We were never sent anything in writing about what settings we needed to match theirs. I continued to have intermittant colour management problems but put this down to my photos. Things came to head with the most recent issue where the colours were badly out on the cover, supplied by a press agency and taken by a professional photographer. The printers seemed to have little or no idea about possible causes.
Initially I thought that part of the underlying cause must lie in some mismatch between what I was sending the printers and what they expected to receive so I asked them to specify what I should send. All they said was use Profile preset as MPC setting and accept the defaults which accompany it.
So I came on here looking for a solution. A lot of people were keen to offer their own experience which I really appreciate. However the messages could be conflicting. Some of you suggested it was the underlying cover photo which was at fault, some that it was my monitor which needed better calibration.
Many of you here said that part of the problem, if not the whole problem, was the way I was generating my CMYKs for the printer and I should use Photoshop to do this. You also mentioned a number of possible colour management settings which I should try.
At times the advice seemed to change tack. There were suggestions that the colour management issues I had were nothing to do with the printers, that it was up to me not them. Quite a lot of you said I needed to be better informed about Colour Management issues. I agree, but I had never had any previously (maybe good luck, maybe good support from my previous printer) so I was not even aware that I needed to be better informed. Some of you mildly chastised me for not finding out more and doing more to manage my own colour management with the switch to ID. To which I can only say if I had needed to train up, I would have done. I did not realise I needed to. Nor was my designer aware of the issues as colour management was not really covered on his ID courses which were about typesetting and design.
Some of you even seemed to hint that unless I was prepared to use an expensive high end printer or effectively retrain as a print specialist or get my graphic designer to do so, then I probably shouldn't be in the magazine editing game at all. OK maybe that is a bit harsh but you get the drift.
The fact is that printing is much more accessible these days to all sorts of people and in particular to people with PCs. My brother lives in a large village in an isolated area and produces a village magazine which has been a great success. It is in black and white with spot colour but he would like to move to an all colour issue. He is a bit nervous of the colour management issues as he has no experience of graphic design and is his own designer using a low end entry level design package. He too uses a PC. The printers reps all tell him the same thing they tell me, that all he needs to supply is a .pdf using InDesign.
Somewhere I feel a black hole has developed, maybe back in the 1990s with Quark 4.11. A lot of printers standardised on that, and set up a work flow and prepress dependent on CMYK images as provided by the clients. They assumed the the clients would doing their own colour management. This approach also assumes everyone is using Quark on a Mac with the full range of Adobe software. When it became possible to generate .pdfs using InDesign, this was held out to users as the Holy Grail of magazine printing, even though their workflows and prepress were still based on Quark 4.11 principles. Any underlying colour management issues the clients now have to tackle themselves.
So now we have the situation in which I find myself, having to learn from scratch a good deal about colour management issues so that I can tell the printers what is needed for my magazine. Meanwhile all the printing salesmen, the ones I encounter anyway, are still busy pushing the InDesign to .pdf as the "be all and end all" solution. Some re-education is needed for all parties I think.

I am glad to see that the sun is peeping through the clouds.
I apologise for my Aussie-style straight talk earlier, but as I said before it was not directed personally at you but in the direction of others whom you epitomize, repeating a conversation I have had many times over the last 10 years or so where respectable, well-meaning photographers, designers and other contributors refuse to accept that colour management is being thrust upon them.
It is a simple fact of life, there is this 'new' thing that has butted into the very root of our trades and changed the most basic principles of printing and photography. We expect that this kind of thing does not happen but the industry we now work in is not the same one we trained in twenty years ago.
Many printers are still struggling with the same conflict, so many tradespeople cannot accept this change.
This is exacerbated by the fact that colour management is so complicated to learn and implement and confounded by the fact that the default settings and a clumsy workflow often yield acceptable results with incorrect, generic settings, hence the old 'use InDesign and make a PDF and it will be ok' route.
When the chain of colour management includes the photographer, the photographer's client, the designer, the other designer maybe, the prepress person, and the platemaker, and a single incorrect click by any one of those can kill the CM it is not surprising that in the end when someone is looking back to see where it fell over they usually never find out.....   They will meet someone who says ' I never touched it, I simply opened the file and scaled it and closed it'. And that person will be a reputable photographer or designer (and CLIENT) who has no idea they just broke it. So what do we do? We go with the generic setting that seems to yield adequate results therefore avoiding the confrontation.
You need to understand the situation of the printer who took his business through the 'early' days of colour management, we had all kinds of very reputable sources supplying incorrect files, we did not have the expertise yet to be able to address the entire workflow, it would have meant training photographers and designers all through the best design houses and national institutions, because they blamed the printer. Only in the last few years have I seen these people coming around to the fact that they bear responsibility for implementing their own cm and maintaining it through their own work.
Sadly, many high end sources are still not there, and I mean HIGH end! Probably the ones that don't even visit this forum because they want to keep blaming the printer... They tend to live with the poor quality reproductions and just pull up the worst ones and fiddle with those and try to avoid the 'elephant in the room'.
I am sorry to say that it was not practical for a printer to reject mismanaged files for fear of losing clients who would happily accept less than perfect results in order to avoid the painful truth that was being told to them. The best thing we could do was to gently make those clients aware that their workflow was imperfect and hope to show them how we could help... Many print shops do not have someone knowledgeable enough or patient enough to do this, or the boss does not understand the issue either and tries to work around it to keep his jobs flowing in the expectation that all those experts in the chain will eventually tame the thing.
The many experts on this holy forum are waaaaayyyy ahead of the printing industry in general and photographers and designers in general in their understanding of colour management workflow. I have seen first hand how reputable local industry people and trainers alike are spreading misinformation and bad techniques, when I discovered these forums back in about 2002 I found that they opened up a whole new galaxy of knowledge and facts that actually worked and made sense, unlike what I had been told locally.... This forum taught me what the Adobe text books did not, the Tech' teachers did not, local 'experts' did not!
I tell all interested people to join these forums and learn to discriminate between the good and bad information.

White Balance tool and Camera Calibration Profiles

Downloaded Lightroom v4 Beta 1 for mac but the installer package failed to launch. (com.apple.installer.pagecontroller error -1.) So I've only watched the adobe tv presentations todate.
Anyway just wanted to give some feedback as a pro photographer about use of Lightroom and improvments I would like to see in the next version.
I am a commercial photographer who needs colour accuracy in photographing fashion/garment images - most of my work is reproduced on a printing press for catalogues and brochures. On average a shoot will yeild about 500 images for a client, so workflow is important as they normally want them all!
As a previous user of Capture One Pro v6 and now lightroom v3.6 - the biggest issue I have with Lightroom is the dominace of red tint when setting the white balance from a gray card reference image, shot at the same time as the images to be processed. I'm not adding anything to the images other than doing a white balance, a tweak on exposure and camera neutral setting on profiles.
To obtain a white balance setting I use the combination of an Xrite white balance card and the Q-Card and the old fasioned Kodak Gray cards all mounted on the same surface. I've used spot and ambient light readings on the gray cards to measure exposure and I've used the Adobe DNG Profiler and the Xrite colour checker profiler with the large colour checker card as a reference, (I've made profiles for sunny days, cloudy days, dual illuminant etc etc) and I'm viewing my images on a colour calibrated apple monitor.
Not withstanding all of the above the best results I get out of Lightroom are using the camera profile neutral setting! Everthing else is just too red!! even though the images do look more punchy; for accuracy of actual colour I choose the camera neutral profile.
Well when I say best results, those for colour critical garment photography and skin tones, these results are similar to those obtained from capture one pro v6.
So for the Lightroom v4 I would like to see.
1. White balance RGB values in numbers rather than percentages.
2. Add and delete a colour readouts points with a dropper tool on an image to enable more acurate colour balancing particularly in shadow areas - (already available on capture one pro and adobe photoshop)
3. Curves adjustments in all RGB channels (think you've done this)
4. Output to CMYK profiles.
5. Individual levels channel adjustment for RGB
6. Ability re-organize my tools palette (add and remove) is per Capture One and Photoshop
Regards

The legacy ACR X.x profiles are no more produced nor included for newer cameras (AFAIK, since ACR 5.1/LR 2.1). The Adobe Standard is the new default starting point for these.
While I am at it....are the Canon camera profiles I downloaded for the 1Ds MKII the same as for the 5D MKII or do I have to download different one...I suspect they are the same or Lightroom wouldn't offer them to me...is that correct?
The profiles are different for each camera model, even if they share the same name in the Calibration panel. If you can see them when developing 5DII files, it means the camera-specific profiles are installed for your particular camera model (otherwise, you wouldn't see them).

Color Balance Issue importing from DV Deck Via Firewire...

The fact that searching google and this formum has lead to me finding NO results, I am wondering whether anyone has or is experiencing similar issues..
For some time now, I have been having this issue, which I just realized is not normal. I have a Sony DV Cam Deck which I use to import via Firewire to Premiere CS5.5. Attached to the Sony Deck I also have a small monitor connected to the composite video output.
The color and white balance look fine on the small monitor, however on the import via firewire, there is tinge through it almost like an incorrect white balance.
YES, I have calibrated and Re-Calibrated my Computer monitors using Spyder3 and when viewing photos and other video not imported through the deck, the color is great.. .It is NOT a problem with the Deck because the SAME thing happens with a friends Deck. I am just using the standard Firewire import on the ASUS Motherboard, although I do have a Blackmagic Studio2 card. This does not really come into it during firewire import....
As I said, now that I realized, this has been happening for 2 years or more. I was always color correcting the camera mans footage thinking his whitebalance was out, but after now attaching an external monitor to the Deck whilst firewire import, I notice the color is fine on the monitor. I am in PAL land Australia, but it happens with NTSC footage as well...
Anyone ever experienced this or know of this issue????
Any advice would be greatly appreciated...
Thanks Tony.

The footage is mainly from the same camera, although occasionally I edit two camera shoots so the other camera is a different model, but this also has a different colour balance after imported.. I have used two identical Sony decks, and my latest acquirsition is a Sony HDV Deck that will natuarally play both. I get the same results from all three decks.
Yes I have rendered footage with no correction or effects and watched it back on a Sony TV/Monitor. Colour is out.
I suppose the tinge looks exactly like an incorrect colour temperature setting, but i know it is correct because when I playback the deck directly into a TV through composite it is fine. Example Warm tone Beige Curtains in a Reception Center look like they have a bad green Cast. Skin tones are no where near natural, again a green cast. I am not sure what is going on..
But yes, it has been there for a couple of years and it just hit me like a tone of bricks after getting this new deck. On previous decks, I never had a monitor connected to the composite and only monitored through the firewire so I always assumed the colour white balance on the cameramans camera is out. WHen I set this deck up, I put a montior on the composite. Yesterday as I was importing source footage, I glanced over and it amazed me to see that the composite monitor on the deck had beautiful rich acurate colour on it, whilst what was coming in on the pc screen, even after playing it back on the TV/Monitor, was horrible.
So I thought, Hell all these years I have been spending hours colour correcting footage that was ok to start with but lost somting in the transfer?? HOW?? I haven't got a clue.. It really doesnt make sence and I am still trying different experiments. I am now going to import through the component and svideo outputs of the deck, to see what results I get... I will post that later.. Thank you all.

Photoshop colour profiles and Aperture

The local lab only has Photoshop colour profiles, nothing for Aperture. Any way to utilize these in Aperture?
They recommend their PS RGB profile. If I can't utilize it, I can get an image that is closer to my screen display, if I onscreen proofed using Aperture's generic RGB or sRGB modes. My last print job did not utilize any onscreen proofing beforehand and it shows -- way too blue in the print. Onscreen proofing using either of these RGB modes gets me closer in colour balance to the last print job, but contrast and brightness is still an issue (print is darker and flatter).
Any way to work with these profiles to produce my own custom one, based on a series of test prints?

A colour profile is a colour profile. Photoshop is just an app that uses them - there's no such thing as a PS-specific colour profile.
Copy the profile into either ~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles (specific to that user) or /Library/ColorSync/Profiles (all users) and it should appear in the lists for screen proofing and output profiles in Aperture.
Ian

Original .pdfs colours different (darker) in printed magazine - WHY?

I am running InDesign on a PC (Windows XP). I use it to edit and design a full colour short run magazine which is professionally printed. My problem is that the colours of the final printers proofs and finished magazine are coming through darker in tone, particularly the reds and blues, than the .pdfs I generate using InDesign. On my screen and on the HP printer I use to run off test pages, the .pdfs colours are fine. Somehow the printers' equipment and/or software is making them darker on the final printed magazine, unacceptably so this time.
We generate the magazine using InDesign and send the final .pdfs to the printers via an ftp server service (YouSendIt). The printers then create the final proofs for me to approve and sign off. Sometimes they send me these in the post as printed sheets (sherpas) to sign off. Recently I have been going online to their "Delano" server and approve the proofs on line. Last time round however they had a problem with it and sent me the printed proofs to sign off.
Most of the images we used originate as digital ones and are supplied to us as high res. Occasionally there is a scan. However as the printer uses cmyk images, and insists we convert any rgb images to cmyk before they will process our .pdfs. We do the picture conversion from rgb to cmyk using Photo-paint.
In the past I have had problems with the colour balance of the final proofs being darker than my original .pdfs. Changing colour balance at the pre-press stage is expensive and as it is just about acceptable if the final magazine does not contain too many photos with a lot of grass and sky, then I will let it run.
But it has happened again and is unacceptable. I was sent a very good quality professional photo for the cover (in high res digital format) taken outdoors on a sunny day with a lot of grass and it has inevitably printed too dark on the final cover. (sky is greyish not blue and grass is orange-ish not light green). Same problem throughout.
The printed proofs supplied by the printers this time were too dark, so I phoned up the Production Manager to tell him this before I signed them off. He said not to worry as they were not 100% accurate for colour anyway. To be on the safe side, I marked on all the proofs individually that the colour was too dark, and printed out and sent them a .pdf of the cover, showing the correct colour balance.
Still the printed magazine arrived too dark, just as it was on their proofs. I again complained to the Production Control Manager who put me onto their Technical Support guy, who is not very helpful (always looks at it being customers fault as his first position). He said first of all that it must be my scanning, and conversion from rgb to cmyk. I pointed out the cover photo was not scanned but an original high res digital image supplied by a press agency. So he then said my PC and printer must be at fault.
I have gone back and looked at the colours on previous issues and they are all on the dark side, for example bright blue skies come out greyish, but it only really notices if there is a lot of grass and sky in the pictures. Is the printers software or equipment attempting to compensate for needing extra colour in some way? Also they are primarily a MAC house and I use a PC. Could this affect the colour calibrations?
I need to talk to them again but want to do so from a position of knowing something about how a .pdf gets converted into a final proof and how the colours could get darker, given their tech support is unhelpful.
If it is relevant, this is their printing equipment: Twin Computer-to-Plate lines; Two Heidelberg 8 colour presses .
Any advice anyone can give on what might be causing the final magazine to be darker in tone than my InDesign .pdfs would be appreciated.

Wow – thanks for all your suggestions I am going to have to take a while to digest and try them out and report back.
I am in fact on very good terms with the Production Manager at the printers but I think he has rather been dropped in it, as it seems the unhelpful tech support guy has just left and not been replaced so the Production Control Manager is left trying to sort out advanced technical aspects of prepress for which he has not been trained.
I have to ask why the printers don't give you the information you need up front instead of claiming a .pdf from Indesign is all it takes.
In all this .pdf fine tuning stuff I am reminded of my earlier career in IT. I was involved in setting up an early wide area VOIP network (Voice over Internet Protocol - a sort of Skype to the uninitiated). To make this work we needed a digital switchboard which was configured to the latest European standard and software to match. Everyone assured me that the protocol concerned (let us call it 802.11) was brand new and had not yet had time to develop any variations……of course there were all sorts of problems not least that the line kept dropping and everytime it restarted we got charged a reconnection charge. I won’t bore you with how we got there in the end but needless to say, one man’s VOIP implementation of VOIP using 802.11 is not necessarily another’s.
I am reminded of this in all the issues surrounding exporting .pdfs to get the correct colour balance in the resulting publication. I swear to you this was never mentioned to me as being an issue at any time by anyone when we started down this route.
Meanwhile today I asked the printers’ salesman chasing my business to send their technical spec – pointing out I work on a PC running XP - and this is what I got
A sheet headed “Recommended settings for creating a PDF/X directly from Adobe InDesign CS3. This example was created on Mac OS x 10.5 using InDesign 5.0.1” This is followed by a series of screen prints with the following headings
Check your Transparency Flattener Preset is correctly configured (via the edit menu) this will be selected in the Advanced tab (step 6)
Select File – Export then in Format chose Adobe PDF and name the file, select folder to save it to and click Save
In General select single page to print set compatibility to Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3) and deselect all the list Options and include checkboxes
The Compression tab sets the options for how the PDF will handle resolutions for placed colour, grey scale and monochrome images
The Printers marks should be enabled as below.
Use the Destination and Output Intent profile name relevant to the publication. ISO Coated V2 300 is used here as an example only.
Ensure there are only process colour and no Spot colours. Converting colour to CMYK at the PDF creation stage can give unpredictable results
Select the transparency Flattener previously created. OPI should be disabled. Here is also where you can opt to create a JDF file
Make sure all the options in Security are disabled. Summary lists all the settings that can be applied it can be saved as a text file for reference
Note item 6 – it does not actually tell me what the printers recommended settings for my publication are
And Note also item 7 where it says that converting to colour to CMYK at the PDF creation stage can give unpredictable results

Colour Balance

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