10+ years away from photography (It's starting to come back) Might need some reminders.
BECOKA
Posts: 16,960 ✭✭✭
Having a hard time capturing the Luster. Usually comes out muddy in places. I think I'm getting close. I don't remember half of what I used to do so so long ago. 
I did try to polish some of the scuffs and scratches out, helped a little.
There is a real question here:
Does anyone know why when I export from a raw image to jpeg, even if I choose no compression why I lose a bunch of the color? There is quite a bit less color, it's more flat and dull than the raw image. Just loses the vibrancy going to .jpg.
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For coming back after ten years, your photography is still impressive!
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
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https://www.donahuenumismatics.com/.
You shouldn’t export directly from
Raw to jpg you need to run through a processing program. I’m a canon user and I use photo professional without a setting on color/hue saturation the photos are meh, I generally apply a contrast and saturation adjustment to get the color as natural as possible.
My current registry sets:
20th Century Type Set
Virtual DANSCO 7070
Slabbed IHC set - Missing the Anacs Slabbed coins
Adding the obverse.......> @hfjacinto said:
I'm using RawTherapee for white balance and exposure adjustment and then do the editing in GIMP. So are you saying when I'm done with all the layers in GIMP I should not export from GIMP but run it through something like photo professional to keep the colors as close as possible to the original?
I post process in Canon photo professional and then process the tif file if needed in photoshop
My current registry sets:
20th Century Type Set
Virtual DANSCO 7070
Slabbed IHC set - Missing the Anacs Slabbed coins
Thank you.
That's as good as images need to be for me to make an accurate judgement aside from them needing to be in hand for something more definitive. I don't understand how demanding the expectations are now by many.
For me it's OCD, if you saw the original images you would be bummed at the ones I posted.
But yeah, if I saw the ones I posted without reference, they would probably be good enough.
If it were a GTG, I'd say it looks like what they used to call a "commercial unc." or not quite there, but would probably grade 61 or 62 depending on the luster which those issues tend to have.
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You're probably dealing with color profiles that aren't the same. When I process my photos, I go from NEF to DNG and notice a different in the color in the thumbnail. Then in Camera Raw I adjust exposure and white balance. These adjustments are non-destructive, so they actually just append parameterized processing steps to the DNG file. Then Photoshop, where I do cropping and adjust saturation, maybe some spot corrections, all in 16-bit mode. The color space I'm using here is sRGB, and I see a slightly desaturated image compared to what I saw in Camera Raw. I could use a different one, such as Adobe RGB, and it would probably look different. Then I convert to 8-bit and save as a PNG file. Finally, I use Imagemagick scripts to do the desired compositing and convert to JPEG, still sRGB.
There's a good thread discussing this here. There are probably other straightforward tutorials all over the internet on how to choose a color space.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
It sounds like a color space issue as @messydesk mentioned above. The problem is that in RAW the camera captures an image with a very large color and bit depth space. I typically do all of my post processing in Adobe RGB and convert to sRGB at the end. sRGB is a very small color space.
Think of an artists color pallet with an assortment of colors to work with. A large pallet assortment (Adobe RGB) will allow the artist to create a more vibrant painting. A small pallet assortment (sRGB) leaves the artist with fewer choices for color. A good rendering engine will help translate the Adobe RGB to sRGB. But gold is a color that sRGB has a very limited color pallet and there really isn't much you can do about that. You can save you jpg files in the Adobe RGB color space and you will be much happier with the results. You just won't be able to share them as well on the web as the native color space for most web browsers is in sRGB.
Here is a visual reference that compares the Adobe RGB and sRGB color spaces. The large colored area represents the visual spectrum of all colors visible to the human eye. The yellow triangle represents the Adobe RGB color gamut, and the dark blue triangle represents the sRGB color gamut. Any color within an image that falls outside the edges of those triangles is clipped to the closest color to it. This can result in loss of saturation and vibrancy.
Simple solution is, if the images are for personal use and printing, save in Adobe RGB. If you want to share on the web, convert to sRGB and save a copy. Try to use a good color rendering engine such as what is found within the Adobe app suite and it will look pretty good. I've seen bad color rendering engines do a horrible job, it sounds like you are experiencing this.
Thanks for all the inputs. I don't have the funds to buy Adobe products. I'll see if there is a different profile I can add to GIMP that more closely matches when exporting to jpeg.
I've tried working in both RawTherapee and GIMP sRGB as seen here when opening a raw file it asks which profile to use and I've tried both.
Yeah, it's in the generic grade for commercial trading. PCGS MS62+
But it's also in the most affordable MS range for collectors that don't have the funds for anything much better. It's basically bullion with a small numismatic premium.
As far as luster......yeah if Luster were liquid and you held the coin on it's side it would all drip off.
So if I open the jpeg file in GIMP, the colors are accurate, it's when opening with other software or browsers. If I increase the color temperature in other software I can bring back the color pretty close but then the slab color is way off.
This is a screen shot. on the left is in the GIMP editor and on the right is open with the mac preview app. Preview is what it looks like on web browsers too. I've tried embedding the sRGB color profile in the jpeg image but it does not seem to change how other apps view it.
Just adding these thoughts since I can view the jpeg just fine in the original app. I never actually tried that.
Actually I find it funny, my preview app shows the color difference accurately but when posting here, the left image is muted and the right image is muted even more than the whole issue I'm having. But even though I can't show what I see exactly the difference between the two are about the same as what I see.
To be clear, Adobe RGB 1998 is not a color space that is exclusive to Adobe products. It is simply a color space that was developed by Adobe. Adobe RGB 1998 is considered to be a standard color space and is available in nearly every graphics editing application as well as most OS by default.
The issue you are seeing on your mac is how the OS is handling color. Apple has made things a bit more difficult. They developed a color space know as Display P3 which is a variant of DCI-P3 which is a color space developed for the cinema industry. Display P3 is a wide color gamut, but it does not align with Adobe RGB in some areas. Display P3 is the default color space on Apple devices with built in screens. The reasoning for this is that the majority of creatives using Apple products, edit video on them, so the P3 color space is more compatible.
Here are a couple of links that should help you setup your color workflow using the applications you have available.
RAWTherapee default color spaces.
https://discuss.pixls.us/t/how-to-change-default-color-space/2112
Adding additional color spaces to GIMP.
https://facebook.com/notes/digital-photography-school/how-to-add-icc-profiles-in-gimp/231224315610/
Both of these links are old, but the information should be more or less usable.