Why colors are so dull ?

[makspyat]

Hi everyone!

I am using Nikon D90 and every single picture taken with my camera looks under-saturated in AfterShor Pro 2. Please have a look at 2 pictures, one is a NEF file displayed in AfterShot Pro a/o any adjustments and another one is a TIFF file generated by Nikon Capture NX-D from the same RAW file.

NEF in ASP vs TIFF generated in Nikon Capture NX-D

Before you say that Nikon does not publish their camera profiles and Corel reverse engineers that and so exact color matching is impossible, let me assure you that I am seeing almost 100% identical images in many 3rd-party viewers. such as XnView, RawTherapee, even Corel's own PaintShop Pro, ironically, renders NEF files much "better" than ASP!

I have been trying to fix that with the help of my own settings profile, but without much success because it appears that there is no common color saturation adjustment for pictures with different white balance.

So, my question is: is there any way to fix or adjust settings in AfterShot Pro?

Unfortunately I cannot use AfterShot Pro unless colors are rendered 100% right, despite of all other powerful tools available in ASP. I just do not want to spend my time fixing every single picture!

[afx]

100% right does not exist. It is all relative.

In my eyes both images are off, just in different directions.

In general, a slight vibrance adjustment plus a slight S curve work wonders.
And on your sample,the image on the right is way oversaturated.

cheers
afx

[makspyat]

I took the image at the sunset, which explains somewhat unusual colors in Capture NX-D. It pretty accurate, though.

[nipponichi]

Interesting ...
With Fuji X-Trans I face the issue that red and pink are totally oversaturated (compared to Capture1, Darktable, ...)
Reducing saturation or vibrance affect all other colors, and modifying red channel only causes ugly artefacts ...

[benoitgphoto]

Are you using in camera VIVID adjustment by any chance or bumping saturation in camera ? Nikon software reads in camera Picture Control adjustments where the other RAW converters don't. Also, it might be possible that other converters apply some sort of preset or curve automatically upon downloading or import and I think it is something possible with ASP (not sure since I haven't tried this yet).

My opinion is the left colours (ASP) are much better than the right one (Nikon) even though both seem off. Usually, Nikon softwares gives the best results with NEF files but in this case, the result is way over saturated and this is why I am asking if you changed the in camera picture control adjustments.

[ferdinand-paris]

Before you say that Nikon does not publish their camera profiles and Corel reverse engineers that and so exact color matching is impossible, let me assure you that I am seeing almost 100% identical images in many 3rd-party viewers. such as XnView, RawTherapee, even Corel's own PaintShop Pro, ironically, renders NEF files much "better" than ASP!

A program that is just a viewer, which I think XnView is, is only showing you the embedded preview in the RAW. This is created by the camera using the settings at the time, and is a preview of what you would have got if you had shot JPG. So a comparison of your file in a program like that vs ASP is in effect a comparison of ASP with the camera's JPG engine + the camera settings.

Different raw converters have different default settings. Default settings are just that - they're designed to be tweaked. Personally I find Adobe default conversions to be flat and under-saturated as well. I'm a little puzzled why they do that, as they don't always look the best in raw converter comparisons. I think it's the same reason that people shoot a "neutral" look profile in their camera when they shoot JPG - it gives them a better starting point for editing. Easier to add saturation and contrast than remove it. The issue for me is not the starting point, but how easily I can get an image to where I want it to be.

That said, I've always struggled with the NEF colours in ASP. I preferred Bibble5 and the old Kodak colour engine and still use it in preference to ASP. YMMV. I'm not wild about the Fuji RAF colours either.