Photoshop Camera Raw Color Problem

[ann shiller]

I am having problems with blue skies becoming blue-green or with the blue on a scrub jay becoming turquoise when they are opened in Camera Raw. The files are NEF format. I live in Lakeland Florida, for all of you moderators from Florida, you know the color of our skies. I've tried searching the forums about this problem as I suspect I'm not the only one. I have seen too many unrealistically colored skies in photographs.

I shoot with a D90 with auto White Balance. I used to edit with NX2, a Nikon product, and it does not interpert blue as blue-green. I am thinking about trying another product such as Capture One but would rather figure out a work around with the Adobe products that I currently own.

Any ideas or comments would be appreciated.

[Dan Brown]

Hi Ann. I use Capture NX2 as my raw converter, do a little editing there (remove any in-camera sharpening and maybe a little NR) and then click "open with" which is set to create a Tiff, which opens into CS5-ACR then edit some more and open into CS5 for my final edit. I haven't seen any color problems as a result. Hope this helps.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

My suggestion is to not use auto WB, and I'm guessing different converters interpret "auto" differently. Simply open the RAW image in ACR, pick an appropriate WB for the scene, and if not quite right, adjust the temperture adjustment slider. I do absolutely as much as I can in ACR, which is usually something like 90% of post-processing, then open in photoshop for finishing touches. regards~Bill

[Roger Clark]

I agree that AWB might be the problem.

Roger

[DickLudwig]

If you want to get accurate color I'd recommend that you use x-rite's ColorChecker Passport. This will get rid of any color cast. Not sure if ColorChecker is compatible with the Nikon software but it works well with Lightroom.

[ann shiller]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try them and see what happens.

[Charles Glatzer]

Try first using a different camera profile in RAW converter. FYI - it is best to make a new dev preset which includes the camera profile of choice. Select for use the dev preset when initially importing images into LR4, etc.

Chas in Santiago