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How to Get Great Portrait Color from a Sony a7R3 & Adobe | 4K
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Jul 25, 2023
How to Get Great Portrait Color from a Sony a7R3 & Adobe | This video is a followup to the Color Science comparison between the Sony a7R3 and the Canon 5D Mark IV. It concluded that skin tones weren't nearly as good with the a7R3. This video shows how to fix that and get great portrait color from the a7R3! Get the profiles by becoming a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott Visit the Image Gallery: http://bit.ly/Sonya7R3ig Purchase the a7R III: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2D6ibNO | Amazon: http://amzn.to/2CNxOvH | Amazon.ca: http://amzn.to/2CNYz36 | Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2CRGvWM Purchase the 5D Mark IV: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/2cLng3e | Amazon: http://amzn.to/2mAJ7MX Strap of Choice: Peak Design Slide Lite: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2BsubH2 | Amazon: http://amzn.to/2GcxINh | Amazon Canada http://amzn.to/2Fa5Yr7 | Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2n6ALxC Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/dustinabbott Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Make a donation via Paypal: paypal.me/dustinTWI Get a discount off all Skylum Editing Software (Luminar, Aurora HDR, AirMagic) by using code DUSTINHDR at checkout: http://bit.ly/LuminarDLA Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | Check me out on: Personal Website: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Google+: http://bit.ly/24PjMzv | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Twitter: http://bit.ly/1RyYxIH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu My filming setup: Sony a7R III: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2D6ibNO or Amazon: http://amzn.to/2CNxOvH | or | Sony a9 @ B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2HyWIyt or Amazon: https://amzn.to/2s1vYE0 Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 RXD @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2FA00la or Amazon https://amzn.to/2G2kaEr
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and a couple of days ago I released this video segment here
0:12
where I compared the color rendition from the Canon 5D Mark 4, the color science, to the new Sony
0:18
A7R3. Now, as a response to that, as I've kind of come to expect when I do these kind of
0:26
comparison type videos, I had a lot of the typical reactions slash overreactions of people that
0:34
you know, kind of range from questioning my methodology to those who said, yes, Canon's better
0:41
and I'm canceling my order for the Sony A7R3. Now, obviously, those of you that went to either one
0:49
of those extremes probably missed the nuance of what I was trying to do personally, because I am not
0:54
trying to dish on the A7R3. I think it's a fantastic camera and it's one that I will be owning here in another week or so
1:04
And so obviously I'm not content to just say can in color is better than Sony
1:09
Sony skin tones I don't really like. And neither am I interested in changing my workflow, which was some of your suggestions was
1:17
well, you need to do X program capture pro or you need to use this piece of software to get
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appropriate Sony colors. Well, bottom line is that I have a workflow that I'm heavily invested in
1:29
and I have been for many years now and I'm not interested in having to change that workflow
1:34
And so what I'm here to do today is to show you how that I've spent a little bit of time
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over the last few days trying to develop some color profiles to tweak the output that I'm
1:45
getting from this camera and so that I can get skin tones and thus, you know, for portrait work
1:51
that I actually like. And so I'm, I'm going to jump in and quickly demonstrate to you what I've done and then I'll give you a little bit of wrap up at the end with a little bit of information on how you might be able to get those profiles
2:03
All right, so here is the out-of-camera result from the Canon and, you know, as you can see, you know, it's just a very nice, nuanced result
2:12
This is the auto-white balance, which has done a pretty good job. I would probably dial in a little bit more warmth just because I prefer it
2:21
but skin colors, of course, look nice and there's room for processing
2:27
Now, if you play with the actual profiles down here, the calibration profiles
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in this case, all I've done is just use the Adobe standard, kind of the default
2:37
and that's what I showed you in that last episode. Now, in this case, dialing in the camera portrait option from Canon is probably a little bit heavy for my taste
2:48
It's a nice contrasty result. I think it's maybe a little too heavy in contrast
2:54
But anyway, that just gives you an idea. And the one other step I've taken here is just given a just 200 Kelvin increase
3:03
or 300, I guess, 4,300 to 4,500 Kelvin value to warm it up a little bit
3:11
Now, a secondary result that we'll look at is here. This is the straight out of camera result as you can see And so in this case here I have done just some mild editing to taste here
3:25
And so I'll pop out for a second, let you see them both side by side
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So here you can see what I've done. I have taken, this is the out-of-camera result on the left and then the edited result on the right
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So basically all I've done is I've added a little bit of saturation and a little bit of vibrance
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and I've also increased the contrast a bit, but as you can see, not quite as heavily
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as what the in-camera profile did. And so this is still in Adobe RGB
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Now here is the out-of-camera Sony result with the very same process that I've shown you so far
3:58
And, you know, looking at it kind of natively, it doesn't look too bad
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And I looked at that, you know, in this kind of lighting setup, I thought, oh, you know, that's pretty decent
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But then I put it side by side with the cannon and, well, all of a sudden you can see as you begin to look at the skin tones
4:17
how much more kind of, you know, in some way, sallow the skin tones look on the Sony
4:23
And you can definitely see that kind of green tinge everywhere that's just not as pleasing as the tones out of the cannon
4:32
which are, you know, closer to accuracy in terms of the skin tones
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So obviously I'm not content to, since I'm going to be shooting the A7R
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and since I do like what it's able to produce, I thought I would work at trying to produce
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a kind of more even result, a better, more pleasing skin tone result that I was looking for
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One thing that really stood out to me when I looked at it was the hair, which, as you can see on the Sony
4:59
definitely has kind of a green tint to it natively, and so I wanted to work at developing color profiles
5:06
that would allow me to eliminate that somewhat. it. So here you can see my edited result, which, you know, while it still shows a little bit of
5:16
that green tinging is a little bit more natural looking, but also very important to me is that
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the skin tones are much more, to me, more pleasing looking. They don't have the same kind
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of salinas to them. There's a little bit more brightness and kind of the appropriate pink color
5:34
that should be there. And you look at this side in particular and you see just a much
5:39
more kind of natural looking. There's almost a bit of a waxy quality there which is very disturbing when I'm looking at this level of
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detail at my own skin. But I definitely prefer the look on the left to that on
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the right. So let me show you how I achieve that. So the main thing that I
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have done here is I have developed a profile here utilizing the camera
6:03
portrait setting. Now in the camera I actually prefer to use the Sony profile that I
6:08
like in Cameron for JPEGs is actually called light. In this case, I find that using a portrait setting
6:15
for portraits was better. But what I've had to do, as you can see
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as I've had to go through and I've had to do a little bit of editing to the actual calibration of it
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to get better skin tones out of it. And so if you want to just note these values here
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and so as you can see I mostly had to really pull back greens here and I also change the hue of it a bit to eliminate some of those kind of green tent there and so you can see some of the the things that I may hear and then of course what I do is
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I create that as a profile and so you if you don't know how to do that process there's lots of
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videos that will show you how and so then you can just do it as a one click now the other thing too
6:57
is that I've just made a change here and a probably I'll eventually I'll make my own custom S curve here
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or, you know, tone curve that will suit a little bit better
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Here I've just used an out-of-box option. And so here you see kind of the linear version, which frankly to me it lacks a little bit
7:16
of contrast. And so I like the medium contrast look, which adds contrast, but it's not too heavy
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And going to a strong contrast is not bad, actually, but it's a little bit kind of like
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that first canon profile that I showed you, which is just a little bit heavy for
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my taste. The other thing that I've done is just the general saturation
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levels I've pulled down just a little bit, just to get a little bit more natural
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skin tones to me. And then here I have just the one final thing that I've done
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is that I change the Kelvin value just a little bit and the tent. And so the
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let's go, so I've changed it to 4304 just to show you as shot the way that looked
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You can see it's still got a little bit of that green bias, but in this case
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warming it up a little bit and then changing the hue to somewhere around there
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That's a little bit heavy. I think it was a four value before. Changing it to that has a little bit more natural end result
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So give you one more example where I have applied that here
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And so in this case, if I were to reset all of this and we look at the original image
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this is the image out of camera. and then, you know, the image results
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So there's one of the options there. And then here's a secondary option that right now I would warm that up a little bit
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You know, maybe let's try our values we did before. Looking pretty nice there now with it warmed up a bit
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Now this is actually a variation using the camera light, what I use in camera
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And so here, if you want to look at those values, a little less extreme here because there's less native saturated
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out of the box and the camera light profile. And so I had to do a little bit less tweaking there
9:07
I did still, however, moving up here, I did change that point curve to the medium contrast
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And I did do the same kind of slight desaturating. But then, you know, a nice looking result there
9:22
from, you know, the way that it could look. And then there is also the, finally there's the technique that I
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oops, we got, let's go back to this. There is the technique that I showed you before, and that is using this camera portrait option
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So here I'll give you a look at these side by side, so you can kind of compare skin tones
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You know, two different approaches. This one is a little bit more saturated skin tones, and so, I mean, you can kind of choose which you like better
9:52
But you know in these cases I ended up with an end result that I like out of the Sony A7R and this is Mark 3 And so in this case I was using the Tamron 85 millimeter F1 and this is at F2
10:07
But as you can see, of course, lots of detail here for portraits and an end result that, you know
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after a little bit of tweaking, I'm happy with. And so maybe these profiles can help you to get an end result that you like as well
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and here is a very mildly tweaked result out of the cannon
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So obviously, skin tones look good there, but going to the Sony here
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I don't think that that is a radically different result there from the Sony
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And so, you know, it is doable with a little bit of effort
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So as you can see, in my opinion, we were able to make a significant improvement
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without a whole lot of work there to the skin tones on the A7R3
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images. And of course, again, this was using the exact same lens on both cameras. And so I'm trying
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to equalize conditions as much as possible. And unlike my previous outdoor portrait test
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obviously these conditions were entirely controlled. And so those of you that like to complain
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about methodology, obviously that's not a factor. There's no outside variables in that
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other than if you're discontented, I've used Adobe. So yes, with the Canon raw files, for me
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I didn't have to do as much work to get an end result, a skin tone that I liked. But for me, most
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importantly is, is that, you know, once you've kind of developed, develop presets or import
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presets that in Adobe Lightroom, it's very simple then to apply those, even when you're importing
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the images into your catalog and quickly have images that you like. And so for me, I'm happy to
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have invested that work because it means that I'm going to feel, you know, much more content in shooting
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portraits and using both the amazing resolution from this, trying out some, you know, different
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lenses that are specific to the Sony body and of course that awesome IAF, which really, I think
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that the chief advantage to IAF is that it really allows you to move faster in your workflow
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and not worry so much about composition, about getting a focus point on the eye and worrying
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that it might be off. It's a pretty amazing piece of technology. So I'm looking forward to utilizing that
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So obviously you're able, if you pause the video to you. cap to you know copy over some of those features if you course if you like the end result
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that you saw there you're able to copy over some of those settings and develop your own preset however if you are a a patron I have uploaded to the Patreon the patrons page I
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have uploaded both a couple of those raw samples from each camera for you to work
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with but I've also output three of those lightroom profiles that are ready to go all
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you've got to do is download them and import them and you're ready to go
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And you can find out a lot of instruction on how to do that easily on the internet. I'm Dustin Abbott
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If you'll look in the description down below, you'll find, you know, all the typical linkage. You can look at photo galleries
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You can follow me on social media. You can find buying links there for these cameras as well
13:02
And of course, if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching
13:07
Have a great day
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