Cobalt Presets

[Lynne Pruskowski]

Ihave already been talking about editing pictures with the help of profiles in the past in the articles How I edit my pictures and Emulating Filmlook. This time I will have a look at the Cobalt Image profiles.

I was approached by Cobalt Image to have a look at their portfolio and afterwards they provided me with the Basic Profiles for my three cameras as well as their Kodak Film, Leica Monochrom CCD and Leica M Digital emulations packs.

With rather complicated lighting situations I did notice some clear benefits using the Cobalt profiles though, as they bring out better color detail in the highlights. With neon signs I found this especially noticeable, but I guess when taking pictures of colorful flowers under the sun it will also be visible.

But even if you are not using a Fuji camera there are plenty of options, if you use Lightroom you can find presets and profiles helping you to emulate pretty much every film stock that ever existed (also have a look at my article Emulating FIlmlook for further reference). The quality of these presets varies greatly though.

So now I have Kodak Gold 200 presets from three different suppliers. But all are meant to emulate Kodak Gold 200, so the results will look roughly the same, right? Not at all, as you can see from this comparison:

There are several issues here. How you develope and scan the film can already alter what the results look like. Film and digital react differently to varying light sources. Color negative film has a high latitude in the highlights, digital in the shadows.

Again the question is: how do these compare to a picture taken with an actual roll of Portra 160? Out of the 4 Cobalt profiles the standard one looked closest to me, but I still had to make some white balance, contrast as well as lights/shadows adjustments to come close to the film scan, the blue parts are still lacking the strong green hue though:

I am pretty sure all the suppliers of such profiles have a scan of a color negative where their profile gives a near perfect match, but as soon as you change the developer, scanner or lighting situation it will most likely not be the case anymore.

I shot with Nikon DSLRs in the past, I currently use Sony and Leica mirrorless cameras. Not even once did I have the feeling that the colors of one are significantly better or worse than those of another. If I am not happy with the skin tones I adjust the white balance and/or the orange hue/saturation/luminance. If I am not happy with what the sky looks like, I do the same with the blue hue/saturation/luminance sliders.

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As others above had said the Cobalt Basic Packs are not very good. I also purchased the Fuji pack and frankly I am disappointed and can not recommend. I will stick with DXO FilmPack and Mastin from now on.

As the devices have only colour attributes and no intensity, they don't appear in 'non-zero channels' in the displays and I'm finding it really hard to get rid of them. -Setting them to Black or another colour isn't an option, i actually want to remove the lamps COMPLETELY from the preset. (and preferably without blacking the studio out).

-Incidentally, the problem was caused because of the console's insistance on recording the entire output of the desk by default -rather than just the field you're working into (more of which to follow in later posts).

Also, for LED fixtures you can set them up to have an actual 'virtual' Intensity, by ticking the Fade With Intensity column in the Template Editor.

Congo 4.3.1 has this by default - but obviously if you created the show in an older version of Congo this won't be the case.

Thanks for that. The control that gives you is nice but is there not a quicker way to remove a whole fixture(s) from a preset ? If you had a situation where you wanted to remove a number of devices with numerous different parameters this could take a long time (and be prone to errors / ommisions) a quick way like #, [ CH ]+[ Delete ] would be very handy.

Would using the 'Fade with Intensity' function register an LTP event of 'no colour' ? -We're running the LED's on Submasters and that's why we need to completely remove them from the main playback -(and they keep getting re-recorded back in because of the desk recording live)

Because Congo is not a command line console there is no way to associate a delete command with a specific preset in the way you mention. The way do delete device parameters from presets is as Richard described it - you can choose to delete only selected parameters cell-by-cell, or you can delete entire devices by pressing DELETE in the Device column of the editor.

The Fade with Intensity designation in RGB fixture templates effectively splits the intensity function from the color function in these types of fixtures. The RGB setting is (as it always is) handled as parameter data (no different from the way CMY values are handled) and the channels intensity level is used as a master for the intensity of that device. The intensity portion will follow the intensity rules for the console (HTP operation, affected by the grand master, follows crossfade timing, etc.) and the RGB portion of the channel will be handled as all attributes are handled. Does that make sense?

How do you have attribute recording set up? The console, by default, only records attributes that have been changed (are purple in the Live Attributes tab at the time of the record command). If you have set up attribute recording differently, it may give me a clue about why the LEDs are being recorded into your presets all the time.

The [ Record ] + [ B } thing might be useful, but I'm trying to work out what I'd like to be able to achieve more easily: -better, more obvious access to the contents of Submasters and the ability to alter / update their contents -which seems to have been broken in the newer versions of software; and 'safer' control of what is recorded when you hit [ Record ] -we only rarely actually want to record the live output, and this is causing really big problems amongst our 'occasional' users

At this stage I have only bought the basic DNG profiles for my M10, and am waiting to see what the forthcoming Kodak film pack will be like. However, in the Fred Miranda thread you can see comparisons of some of the film emulation as well as camera emulations. There are some remarkable examples in the thread of M9 emulations as well as emulations of both CCD and CMOS Monochrom files. An interesting example is a M9 B&W JPG emulation in a normal and high-contrast version. @adan has posted about how he achieves, or improves upon, the M9 look with his M10: the Cobalt M9 color emulations may be an easier way to do that, at least for people who are less skilled than adan. The Cobalt film emulations look like they are a lot more accurate than any of the older profile/preset packages available. @evikne has written about his satisfaction with RNI profile/presets: that doesn't match my experience with RNI, and the Cobalt ones seem to look a lot better.

I'm not going to post any profile comparisons, as there is so much of that in the Fred Miranda thread. Below are a few images that I posted recently that were shot is such difficult light that, previously, I only used B&W versions, but that now I like in terms of the color I get using the Cobalt DNG profiles.

Here is another image that I've only used in B&W, and for which the Cobalt profile is useful. I'm interested in shooting directly into noon-day tropical light and how the light can be so strong that it "bleeds". (This one requires double-clicking to get a better view.)

I'm not convinced of any revelatory solution with this over using your own eyes. Just putting the third photo into Photoshop 'Auto Color' and she changes from a green skin lizard to a human skin, and the last photo goes from muddy orange to bright and colourful. I accept if it is your own choice that is up to you, and I like the photos anyway, but as an advert for a profile they don't do it for me.

The advert for the Cobalt profiles is better served by looking at the Fred Miranda thread that I linked, since it has comparison to standard profiles and you can see exactly what the difference is rather than through my processing, which depends on taste. In any case, I am not an advertising agent for Cobalt-Image, which is a small company that, in my view is producing better profiles and emulation presets than anything that I have tried.

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Frog Leaping photobook

I looked, but only because you're making a meal of it and I really dislike what I see in the images you have uploaded. I remain far from convinced, most of the images on the FM thread are also poorly processed, particularly with regard to the flesh tones and there is one where the sitter's hair is turning blue/violet in the shadows and mid tones which does not strike me as being intentional on the part of the author.

There is a very nice black and white which is supposed to emulate a Monochrom image (actually, it's a far better image than the vast majority of Monochrom images seen on this forum) but there's little else to commend anything I see here and on the FM thread.

I see Cobalt being more suited to hair, beauty and fashion photography where a concept is pre-visualised and deliberately constructed than simply trying to emulate other camera output or run of the mill street and landscape work, but if you're happy with what you're getting from it, that's fine.

I'm not saying these profiles can't be useful, but in the Miranda thread there are some distinctly 'iffy' examples of how supposedly good these profiles are. The best comparative renditions start with a good balanced photo and display a pleasing variety of options, but it's the same as ever, a poor input image means a poor output image, so for 50 per profile set it's still a crapshoot. After all these years of digital photography people are still looking for the Holy Grail of rendering images with third party opinions and not their own opinion.

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