Stacked images become unsaturated

[AstroBadger]

Hi, ive been using helicon focus for a few months now and from time to time i notice my images are unsaturated once i save them so i thought id try to find the reason for this, ive been able to find people who seem to have the same problem on this forum but not a solution. I've tried saving as tiff and jpeg and using all methods A, B and C. The images appear correctly saturated once the stacking is complete but when i save the image and view it in my files it looks unsaturated, some more than others.

On the attachment i added, the left image is the unsaturated one viewed through the default windows photos software (also unsaturated when in photoshop) and on the right is the stacked image output while it is still in the helicon focus software which appears to be correctly saturated.

Thank you,
Ethan

[Catherine]

Hi Ethan,

I question the viewer you use there. What about Lightroom, Photoshop, or any semi-professional image viewer or editor?

[AstroBadger]

Hi Catherine,

Both photoshop and lightroom show the image as unsaturated which leads me to think it’s something to do with the saving process

[Catherine]

Please send us one of the source images from this stack. Any one. The easiest way is to upload to our private storage.

[AstroBadger]

Unfortunately i dont have a source image of this exact stack but i do have a source image from another stack which has also been unsaturated, i will add an attachment for the comparison between the raw image and unsaturated stacked image and will also upload the raw image to your private storage.

Thank you,
Ethan

[AstroBadger]

Hi Catherine

After some more experience with stacking I have noticed the desaturation only seems to effect the red channel of images. To help this I can boost the saturation of the red channel and the images return closely to their original state.

Also I have noticed that for dark areas of an image when stacked it appears those regions become darker and clipped, therefore cant be recovered. It isn't a big problem but just thought its something that I should mention, I've added an attachment viewed through photoshop of this happening, the raw image is on the left and the stacked is on the right.

Thank you,
Ethan

[Catherine]

Hi Ethan,

Sorry for not replying sooner. Your first screenshot shows the Microsoft Photos viewer. I don't trust it very much, and with the raw extension installed, it displays your CR3 file with much lighter background than Helicon Focus does with the RAW-in-DNG-out decoder. So I can't even replicate your rendering of the source CR3 image in Photos. But I'm also not seeing any difference between Photos showing the saved TIFF and Helicon Focus showing the same TIFF.

Are you using the DNG decoder in Helicon Focus?

[Alan Rockefeller]

I have the same issue and came to the conclusion that it's Photoshop that is not showing the colors correctly. In my case, Windows Photo Viewer shows the colors looking nice and Photoshop has muted colors. Haven't figured out what to do to Photoshop to make it display correctly.

[Catherine]

Could it be that the default color profile in Photoshop is not correct for this image?