Help with M240 RAW/DNG processing - too much orange/pink

[papasnap]

hey redisburning, yeah the JPEGs are just fine - in fact I was surprised by how good they looked (I thought Leica had a bad rep for it's JPEG engine) - but the RAWs more unruly. I'll post some straight RAW to JPEG conversions soon to show what I mean.

also, I do have an older photoshop (CS4 from memory), but would rather stick to LR5 if possible

 

[Ronald M]

Set the white bal correctly to the light source. I use a Whi Bal card in a picture or custom WB made from the card and save it as a camera profile. $25 at B&H, get the big one.
Make sure you are working in 16 bit. 8 will not make smooth transitions. Ie becomes blotchy.

If it is just a flesh problem, then use the adjustment brush on the faces. Do this before adding any saturation.

You will find it is really not a flesh color problem. So here are the full steps.

Calibrate the monitor
Set the WB
Make a camera profile with Adobe profile editor. You will need a color checker or passport color checker. this is a free item from Adobe labs. This neutralizes the color bias Leica builds into the camera attempting to make the image unique. But as you discovered, colors you do not want changed get changed.

ACR and probably LR can be set in preferences to establish that profile as a preset based on camera serial #. All my cameras are profiled and all give very close color, Leica and Nikons.

 

[Jeff S]

Or use an ExpoDisc for WB. Also can serve as an incident meter to set exposure.

Jeff

 

[Godfrey]

I've heard this issue surface from time to time as the M gets out into new users' hands. I think the camera calibration profile in LR is probably not as good as it ought to be.

I would at least use the Xrite Color Checker and Passport software to create a customized profile for the M, and then tweak that with the DNG Profile Editor until I got the default color settings I wanted.

Which version of LR are you running? I would run LR 5.2RC and take advantage of the very latest tweaks to LR.

G