Horrible color shift when stacking

[AlisonP]

I have used Helicon Focus for years, have done probably thousands of stacks, and all of a sudden today I am seeing a BIG problem in color shifting. I have never seen this problem before and am really flummoxed and frustrated.

I import images into Helicon directly from my camera SD card. The colors in the stacked results are way off. Attached is a screen shot showing the images on the right side, and the Method B stacked result. There you can clearly see that the orange in the background is much brighter and saturated in the original images than in the stacked result.

As a test, I pulled the images into Lightroom, and then exported them from Lightroom into Zerene using both "Helicon Focus (DNG)" and . The stacked photo after exporting "Helicon Focus (DNG)" has the same problematic color shift, but the stacked photo after exporting "Helicon Focus (TIFF)" does not have that color shift. This suggests that the problem is with the DNG converter.

How do I fix this problem???? I have hundreds of stacks from a recent trip and I certainly don't want to have to pull all of the images into Lightroom to stack them.

Helicon colors problem.jpg

(299.54 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[AlisonP]

Oops, I accidentally cut something out. The third paragraph should read:

As a test, I pulled the images into Lightroom, and then exported them from Lightroom into Zerene using both "Helicon Focus (DNG)" and "Helicon Focus (TIFF)" . The stacked photo after exporting "Helicon Focus (DNG)" has the same problematic color shift, but the stacked photo after exporting "Helicon Focus (TIFF)" does not have that color shift. This suggests that the problem is with the DNG converter.

I just installed the latest Adobe DNG converter, and the problem is still the same when I am stacking the images directly from the SD card,

[Catherine]

Do you have the latest version of the Adobe DNG Converter installed?

[AlisonP]

Yes.

See the last sentence of my previous message: I just installed the latest Adobe DNG converter, and the problem is still the same when I am stacking the images directly from the SD card.

[Catherine]

Sorry, I missed that bit.
You said that Zerene Stacker demonstrates the exact same behavior, so it's probably not a bug in Helicon Focus, but some quirk of the Adobe DNG converter. In that case there is nothing we can do about it, but please upload one of your ORF files to our private storage so that we can study it:

https://cloud.heliconsoft.com/index.php ... i8a2L8Zawn

[AlisonP]

My bad -- that was another typo in my original message. I did not stack these with Zerene, only with Helicon.

To restate the problem,

When importing to Helicon directly from the camera SD card, the colors are clearly off. As a test, I pulled the images into Lightroom, and then exported them from Lightroom into Helicon exporting using both "Helicon Focus (DNG)" and "Helicon Focus (TIFF)" . The stacked photo after exporting "Helicon Focus (DNG)" has the same problematic color shift, but the stacked photo after exporting "Helicon Focus (TIFF)" does not have that color shift. This suggests that the problem is related to the DNG converter.

I installed the latest Adobe DNG converter, and the problem is still the same when I am stacking the images directly from the SD card.

I have now reinstalled Helicon, and the problem is still there.

[Catherine]

Please upload one sample image via the link from my previous post, we will do our best to figure out where the problem is coming from.

[shutterbug]

I don't know whether that was the underlying issue but here's something to keep in mind:

Do NOT use auto-white balance when shooting RAW/DNG stacks. That can't be changed later on and while you can adjust the white balance before exporting TIFF you can't change the white balance in the DNGs.

The individual images may only have some slight variations but than can indeed cause some colour shifts from my experience.

[BobStone]

Couple of comments ... there was a new DNG converter released yesterday, v. 16, as part of Adobe Max. So an easy first thing to try.

A few years ago when looking at DNG issues, I noted that at least some of the XMP data in the output DNG was derived from the last image in the stack. I would look at that last source image to see if it was different than the others. But that was a few years ago and not sure if true today.

[dwightburks]

Ensure color profiles are embedded and consistent across all layers - convert to sRGB or AdobeRGB profile as needed.