White Balance Failure, Pentax K10D

I'm a very experienced computer user/photographer with a very simple, but crippling Aperture problem:
White balance. . .doesn't. Using the eye-dropper, either on a spot I'd like to neutralize, or on a known gray target, produces a white balance that's several points too green.
128/128/128 comes out as 128/132/128, etc. Looking at the green-magenta slider shows it pinned all the way to the right on magenta. This happens with either DNG or PEF masters.
It does NOT happen using my Canon 5D files, or my colleague's Nikon captures, leading me to suspect that Apple has somehow come up with a crappy profile for the Pentax. I know Lightroom and ACR had similar early problems with K10D files and white balance.
I've tried all the usual voodoo cures--deleting prefs, reinstalling, etc. Anyone else having this problem? How would I make this known to the Aperture team? I can't seem to find any email support choices in the Apple.com support area?
Anyone have any ideas? Now that I'm mainly using Pentaxes, I'd like Aperture to, I dunno, just work.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried shooting in DNG rather than PEF? I know the file size is much larger, but if the WB and exposure was more accurate it would be worth it to me. I'll try some experiments later.
Yesterday I profiled my K10D with a Gretag MacBeth ColorChecker and a script for Adobe Camera Raw. The idea is to see how the default ACR RAW conversion compares with known values from a GTMB ColorChecker. I was able to calibrate ACR (and thus Lightroom since it uses ACR) to give me very accurate color with the K10D.
However, when I open the RAW exposure of the ColorChecker in Aperture, the exposure (white patch), tonality (grey patches) and colors are really, really far off. I know color is very subjective, but man, I wish Aperture was a little more in the ball park with this one.
I still prefer Aperture to LR, so I hope there's some way to remedy this in the future.

Similar Messages

Pentax K5 / Apple Aperture - White Balance Inconsistency

Used my new Pentax K5 with studio flash for the first time on Saturday. I got some peculiar colour temperature results. Can anyone explain this?
All shots used the following settings:
- Raw DNG
- Adobe RGB
- Camera white balance set to "Flash"
- ISO 100
- 1/180s
- f/11 to f/19
- same lens used throughout ( Pentax A 50mm macro f2.8 )
When I loaded the raw files in to Apple Aperture the colour temperatures of the raw conversions came out as an inconsistent variety of temperatures and tints. As sample, the first ten shots on the "roll" show the following white balance values after raw conversion (prior to any manual adjustments being made):
5759 K / +4
5759 K / +4
5759 K / +4
5759 K / +4
4492 K / -9
4479 K / -7
4463 K/ -8
4469 K / -11
4563 K / -8
4572 K / -8
(For what its worth, 5759 K / +4 looks right to me.)
What is going on? Do I have a camera problem or an Aperture raw conversion problem?

My first question is why are you converting to DNG before importing into Aperture? It appears that Aperture should support the RAW files from that camera.
Second question is how familiar are you with the whole concept of RAW images? You realize that none of the camera settings (apart from shutter speed and aperture) affect the digital RAW file.
One of the strengths and reasons for shooting RAW is the ability to adjust white balance after the shoot. JPG images are extremely limited in their ability to have there white balance adjusted.
RAW conversion software is as much art as science, which is why no two RAW conversion programs will render an image in exactly the same way.
So I would first eliminate the DNG step and then see how that affects the workflow.
regards

Pentax K-3 multi auto white balance

Raw images from the Pentax K-3 with the setting "multi auto white balance" activated have a green color cast when processed in Adobe camera raw (left), Pentax's own Silkypix converter get's the images right (on the right).
Any chance that in the future multi auto white balance will be supported?

Thanks for that! I should have been the wiser photographer before I decided to use this new feature. I've got 8000+ images with multi auto white balance enabled from last trip....

Pentax K10D firmware update causes lens recognition failure

I've previously posted about this in the ACR forum, and raised a feature request there:
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bb6a85c.3bc423bc
Barry Clive Pearson, "+ Camera Raw Feature Requests +" #284, 11 Jun 2007 9:00 am
(#284 in the feature request thread).
Please cater for the new 3-byte Tag63 in the Pentax K10D Makernote, so that lenses can once again be identified in relevant Adobe software.
This isn't simply a request for a new feature. It is a request that Adobe restores an existing feature that has been disrupted by the Pentax K10D 1.20 firmware upgrade. Therefore, I've also started a new thread on the ACR forum in case any Pentax users are puzzled about this regression.
Example of the change: old Tag63: 04 FE; new Tag63: 04 FE 00. The effect is that the DNG LensInfo is now not set up correctly, and the XMP exif/1.0/aux namespace information is not set up at all. So the real name of the lens is not shown.

Pentax K10D: Camera profiles, "ACR 4.x" vs "Pentax 1.00". Which one is broken?

Hardware: Pentax K10D, use DNG raw format.
Software: Pgotoshop CS3, ACR 4.5, Windows.
ACR allows me to select one of four profiles:
(1) ACR 4.4
(2) ACR 3.7
(3) Embedded
(4) Pentax 1.00
And results of this selection is dramatic. And strange, too.
I have one shot with XRtie ColorChecker.
I select "ACR 4.4" (default) profile and set white balance by second gray patch in raw (18% gray) with White Balance Tool. Color temperature is 8000 and tint is -20. Ok.
I select "ACR 3.7" profile, repeat WBT, and get same results. Ok.
I select "Pentax 1.00" profile, and get.... Temperature 11500K and Tint +75!
I know, that profiles change color rendering. It is ok.
But why these two (ACR 4.4 and 3.7 is almost the same) profiles change color rendering SO DIFFERENTLY? Color temperature is universal number, daylight is about 5500K, good flash is always 5500K, D65 light source is 6500K (6504K), etc.
I thought, that good profile should give good neutrals, and in case of controlled light, calculated (by gray patch) color temperature should correspond to light source.
I understand, that different profiles could render skin tones, cyans, shadows and highlights slightly differently, and there are many discussions, which profile is better. But 3500K difference is not "slight difference" and is not question like "I like skin tones with this profile more that ones with another"! Am I right?
It seems, that one of profiles is broken. Which one? Why difference is so huge?

Essentially embedded was broken, not in the colors, but in the white balance mappings. There was an issue with the white balance values in the profiles originally embedded in the Pentax DNG files. As long as you do a click-WB __AFTER__ choosing your profile, the actual colors should be fine (but won't and aren't expected to match the ACR 4.4/3.7 rendering exactly).

White Balance in LR vs. Aperture

I'm comparing LR and Aperture for use with my Pentax K10D. What's amazing is how different the RAW conversion is in each program. I now have a full appreciation of RAW files as "digital negatives" and the software programs as "developers".
For example, a RAW file that appears properly exposed on my K10D will also be properly exposed in LR. However, that same file will be overexposed by 2/3 a stop in Aperture (of course this is recoverable, but interesting nonetheless). I imagine this has something to do with the different tone curves applied to the RAW file by the camera, Aperture and LR. LR seems to be more similar to what is done in-camera on the Pentax K10D.
One thing I can't figure out though is why white balance values would be different in each program. I thought WB was simply stored as a number (kelvin) in the camera, and the RAW converter just reads that number. Clearly I'm mistaken here, because in several test photos I opened in both Aperture and LR, the white balance is dramatically different. (Both WB settings are "as shot"). For example, for the same photo, in Aperture WB was 5950 and in LR it was 4550.
The programs must have a different way of calculating or displaying this info, because when I use Aperture's WB settings in LR, or vice versa, the images don't look the same at all. The tint sliders seem to be very different as well.
Any insight you could offer on this would be appreciated. At the end of the day I can produce very similar results in both programs with adjustments, but I'm trying to figure out which one's default settings are closest to what I prefer.
Finally... what effect do the following preferences have, and is it advisable to use them?:
- "Make defaults specific to camera serial number"
- "Make defaults specific to camera ISO"

If you consistently get White balances in LR that are far off, it could be that the WB decoding algorithm for this camera is wrong. You might want to submit a bug report in that case. You should be able to see the actual white balance in the manufacturer's software (don't know if pentax makes any). You can also open it up in the open source dcraw (or its outstanding GUI derivative
ufraw) program. The author of dcraw has basically cracked all the RAW formats that are in use and it almost always reads white balance correctly. Also, exiftool might read those values.

ACR 3.7 White Balance Problem

I have just installed Photoshop Lightbox 1.0 on my Windows (XP SP2) PC. After importing a few hundred adjusted DNG files into this software, I noticed that many of the images had severe (thankfully easily spotted) pinkish colour casts indicating a serious white point shift. Viewing the same images in Bridge using ACR 3.X (3.2?) revealed no problems. Now I am a bit confused here. Lightbox claims to use ACR 3.7, which is supposed to be a shared resource with Photoshop. However my version of Photoshop CS2 indicated it was using an earlier version. Anyway, I then upgraded my ACR plugin to v3.7 and low and behold the same problem appeared in Bridge / ACR 3.7.
The problem does not affect all images. It seems, though I am not sure, that it is only those images where the white balance had been set to a custom value that are affected. Other settings: exposure, contrast etc, seem to be unaffected. It is possible to fix the problem in the Bridge + Photoshop + ACR 3.7 environment using the previously saved "fixed" images as references. However the problem remains in Lightroom, presumably because the RAW adjustments are stored separately, and is not so easily fixed, as it does not seem to be possible to have two different images side by side while carrying out fine white-point adjustments.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, I am quite furious that this could have happened at all, as it raises serious questions about the backward compatibility of the software and/or the ability of RAW (DNG) files to preserve adjustment information securely against changes in the software environment. What has occurred should be impossible, but evidently is not. Maybe these digital negatives are not so safe after all.
Anybody got any idea what went wrong and how to fix it? Is there a way to reset Lightroom to the externally applied RAW adjustments?

Actually the product I am talking about is ACR 3.7, which is common to Photoshop CS2, Bridge and Lightroom. The Read Me! notes accompanying my installation of Lightroom clearly states that it uses ACR 3.7 (and that upgrading ACR 3.7 in Photoshop would be necessary to ensure consistency, which I have done). The reference to Lightroom was important, as unlike the Photoshop ACR, in my setup, Lightroom does not store the adjustment settings in sidecar XMP files, or, in the case of DNG files, within the files themselves. The problem manifested itself inside Lightroom first, and then, only after I upgraded Photoshop to ACR 3.7, did the problem occur within Bridge and Photoshop. This clearly demonstrates that the problem is ACR 3.7, and not some feature of Lightroom. [It might help therefore, if, in future, you forgot I mentioned Lightroom.]
To answer your next question, the DNG files were created in my camera (Pentax K10D firmware v1.0 & v1.1). ACR defaults are as out of the box except that sharpening is set to be applied in preview only. Data are "written to XMP" rather than a database.
The auto settings may have changed. However, the fault, when it occurs, is a major, and very obvious, shift of white point, not the sort of thing one would expect from a tweaking of the default/auto settings. Anyway it is only adjusted whitepoint settings, not auto ones, that have changed.
I cannot be sure that the problem is specific to DNG, though I suspect it probably is. My older PEF (Pentax RAW) files are unaffected.
I do not think it is acceptable that changes to software should cause changes to the rendering of an image, particularly where that rendering may have been created by careful adjustment. This is a fundamental issue of backward compatibility.

Lightroom 2 - Auto white balance - crash

I'm having intermittent problems while applying auto white balance on some CR2 files in Lightroom 2 running on OS X 10.5.4. When choosing Auto from the list of white balance options, LR waits for a second or two, doesn't update the history panel and the spinning beachball appears. CPU rises to about 100% and there's no other way than to force quit.
So far it happens with, say, one in 50 images (I've been working on approximately 100 images and with 2 this happened).
When I restart I can easily recreate the problem by going through the same routine.
The workaround is working on another image and then going back to the problematic one; then I can apply AWB without any problems.
I can save a (lengthy) hang reporter log file.

Thought I was doing pretty good with LR2, but unfortunately this problem has showed up on my Mac OS X 10.5.4 system. The stalls (i.e., beachball) are when developing CR2 images from a Canon 5D. I experience many occurrences of the problem when going through this folder of RAWs, perhaps 20-30% of the images. Today I thought I had found one that always fails, but turns out not to be the case, although it causes a failure over half the time it is accessed. Same symptoms as described in the above posts: Convert an image's white balance to auto, in either quick-develop or develop. Then when you access the image you get the spinning beachball forever, and have to force-quit. I've also stalled LR with this sequence: in QD, convert WB to auto, switch to develop module, undo the WB change in history by clicking the prior step... LR stalls. Basically I've seen all the same steps as described here, and more.
Also, just for fun I tried everyone's favorite troubleshooting step, i.e., trashing preferences. It made absolutely no difference. The first time I simply clicked on the troublesome image, LR got stuck.
Jao... interestingly, I never saw this problem in the beta in spite of developing many, many images in the beta. If it was known and not fixed, that's quite a concern.

Ufraw forgot default white balance presets

After some upgrade in the recent days, ufraw and gimp-ufraw no longer know the default white-balance presets of "Daylight", "Shade", etc. Additionally, in gimp-ufraw, there is a missing pixmap (red x indicates) next to the still-extant WB options (which are "Camera", "Manual", and "Auto").
Thanks for all help and work, Arch is lovely and great.
EDIT: on x86_64. Forgot to include at first, sorry.
Last edited by cookiecaper (2008-07-24 00:11:03)

In Develop/Basic next to the big 'Turkey Baster' and the WB: there is a dropdown triangle set to 'As Shot'.
Dev is in Kelvin and QD is relative.
Don
Don Ricklin, MacBook 1.83Ghz Duo 2 Core running 10.4.9 & Win XP, Pentax *ist D
http://donricklin.blogspot.com/

Please add white balance adjustment to brush tool!!

Please add to the brush tool the ability to adjust white balance. I know you can currently paint a color over areas, but I would like to see a true white balance control in a brush. This would be quite useful for wedding or event photographers who shoot quickly in varied lighting often without flash.

More specifically, I would like to paint at 5500k or 3500k or whatever color temp I choose, measure, detect, or feel so inclined to. Like I said before, I realize the paint with tint works, but painting a white balance would be much easier. I never mentioned accurate. Accurate photographs in mixed lighting usually look bad (especially when you mix in fluorescent). My clients don't want "accurate" photos, they want what they remembered the event to look like. I don't feel the need to suggest the current features fail in any way to make a suggested improvement upon those features. The current (LR2) demosiac engine works well, but LR3 got an overhaul. Was demosiac in LR1 and LR2 a failure? I believe my suggestion is consistent with the intent of LR. While painting a warming or cooling color would certainly achieve the desired results, painting a preset color balance or manual temp/tint would be quicker. It makes for a better workflow.

White Balance Tool Help

Can someone please tell me how to set Lightroom so the White Balance tool stays active until I deselect it.

Thanks Lee Jay, don't use it much myself. Even so, you can move the image around in Loupe with Pgup and Pgdn. It will sequence right throughtout he whole image from one point right back to the starting point while WB is active.
Don
Don Ricklin, MacBook 1.83Ghz Duo 2 Core, Pentax *ist D
http://donricklin.blogspot.com/

Extended white balance range

I made this request back during beta 3, I think. I shoot an IR-converted dSLR, and would love it if Lightroom's white balance range didn't stop at 2000k. As it is, I have to make radical adjustments to other settings to make images look "correct" in color. Extending the WB range would help considerably.
I would also love it if LR could be made to recognize Canon's "color styles" settings.

Actually this has been requsted a few times previously. So you are not alone.
Don
Don Ricklin, MacBook 1.83Ghz Duo 2 Core running 10.4.8 & Win XP, Pentax *ist D
http://donricklin.blogspot.com/

Uploaded jpegs Lose White Balance on website

I just shot a bunch of real estate house photos and uploaded them to our web site and some of the white balance settings seem to have gotten lost. All the other edits are fine.
Olympus E330 shot in RAW and most used the auto white balance button in LR. They all look fine, even the thumbnail in the upload page.
"Kitchen" at the end is the worst, I tried uploading several times and made sure it was at the final size too:
http://www.bevwaring.com/Listing/ViewListingPhotos.aspx?ListingID=1070576&ShowCompact=Fals e&Preview=False&zoom=22
I have basic Spyder 2 on an LCD.

Compared to the FLikr one I do see a green cast to the Web gallery one. Not nowing that the laminate wasn't greenish original would have helped.
But then my laptop is un color managed.
Don
Don Ricklin, MacBook 1.83Ghz Duo 2 Core running 10.4.9 & Win XP, Pentax *ist D
http://donricklin.blogspot.com/

White Balance Metadata not showing in Adobe Bridge CS6

Hi there, I am running Bridge CS6 on a Mac, and use Canon 5D and 5DMark 111 cameras. I have an issue with Bridge which I can not seem to figure out. Whether I shoot Raw or JPG and I am trying to do some testing for white balance, once I open the images in Bridge, in the little icon panel just below the folders/favourites panel etc I can see the f stop info, speed, metering , ISO etc, but the only icons I get for WB are if use auto - then I see AUTO. But when I do a manual WB like 'cloudy', 'tungsten', or 'shade' etc all I get are the symbols for 'Custom" or "Manual". How do I get the actual symbols for what type of WB i've chosen to show up?
I have purged the Cache - both in the individual folder and the overall Cache in preferences. I have checked that all the boxes are ticked in the preferences panel for the Metadata. So not sure what else to do.
Cheers D

Ok thanks for that, at least I wont be chasing my tail.
I did install the DNG converter 8.3 but I still NEF files as a NEF icon. Any clues to what I may not be doing right there?

Adobe Bridge - White balance metadata

When I browse raw files from my Canon EOS Rebel XT/350D in Adobe Bridge I always look at the Metadata tab to check for the f-stop value, speed, white balance settings, etc. of the currently-selected raw image file.
I noticed that the pictures shot in Automatic White Balance appear on the upper-left portion of the Metadata tab as an icon indicating AWB. However, whenever I take pictures with manually-set white balances, such as shade, day light, tungsten, etc., the metadata tab no longer indicates the white balance I chose, instead, it either shows an icon of a camera or two dashes, as in --.
Is there any way I can set Adobe Bridge to show the appropriate White Balance icon for pictures I take with manually-set white balances?

Hi Curt,
Thanks for your reply. Yes, White Balance is checked in preferences/metadata. All of the Exposure metadata entries are also checked.
I forgot to mention that my version of Camera Raw is 4.5 (the latest).
You know, although White Balance is checked, I cannot find a White Balance text entry on any of the metadata lists (File properties, IPTC core, Camera Data (EXIF), etc.). The only place where I can see the White Balance setting in on the upper left corner of the Metadata tab, under the f-stop value.
Here is a personal question for you: When you browse your pictures in Adobe Bridge and you select one that was taken with a specific White Balance (not Auto), does your Adobe Bridge display an icon for that particular White Balance setting? I just want to eliminate the possibility that this happening only in my computer.
Thanks a lot for your time and attention.

White Balance Failure, Pentax K10D

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