Color shift

[Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de)]

I have some experimental infrared images here. In PTGui 13, the colors are completely distorted. The same project works perfectly in PTGui 11. What's going on?
That's yet another reason why I've stuck with PTGui 11. Every now and then, there are very strange color changes in PTGui 13.

[Erik Krause]

Am 08.06.2026 um 14:13 schrieb Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de):

> In PTGui 13, the colors are
> completely distorted. The same project works perfectly in PTGui 11. What's
> going on?

In your project file, Image Parameters tab, you have a WB temperature of
2000 and Tint of 150. If you set Tint to 0 (or delete WB temperature),
the image turns to the expected colors in Panorama Editor.

If I simply load the image into an empty project, the WB temperature and
Tint fields remain blank. These values were therefore set in your
project file during editing.

There's still something very odd, since if I delete WB temprature in
Image parameters tab and I turn off automatic WB in Pano Editor and set
Temperature to 2000K at a Tint of 28,0645 the resulting image is
completely black and at 27,0968 it's completely white.

However, my understanding of colour management is not sufficient to
explain this. It might have to do with the image containing saturated
colors, which are not defined in the usual color profiles. Joost?

BTW.: With deleted WB temperature in Image parameters tab and 2000K and
Tint between 0 and 20 in Pano Editor you get the typical IR look with
white greenery.

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de

[Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de)]

That's what I mean: 2000 +150 are the correct settings. It's a ordinary JPG. All programs except PTgui display these colors correctly right away.
The white balance in PTGui is set to Automatic. The colors aren't rendered correctly. Period.
The entire WB function in PTGui 13 doesn’t work properly. This is an extreme example where you can immediately notice a color shift.
I’m going to keep using PTGui 11 anyway, because I don’t want to have to check the colors all the time.
The WB function should simply be able to be disabled globally like it was in PTGui 11, the “Automatic” setting isn’t sufficient.

[Erik Krause]

Am 08.06.2026 um 22:25 schrieb Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de):

> That's what I mean: 2000 +150 are the correct settings.

Just out of curiosity: Why do you think those are the correct settings?
And why do you set them anyway? Since if you don't, it works as
expected. I almost never do.

[Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de)]

In this case, it’s an infrared element—a special color layer added as an overlay. Developed in Lightroom with WB values of 2000/150.
But here’s the thing: this is a JPG. Why does PTGui want to reinterpret the very carefully developed colors in a JPG using its one white balance? Sure, you can always turn that off after, but I haven’t found a way to prevent it by default. So when working quickly, unwanted deviations occur time and again, which don’t happen in PTGui 11.

So: How can I prevent PTGui from applying any white balance to JPEGs by default? The automatic function doesn’t prevent this. I use version 13 very rarely. Color deviations occurred in many cases.

[MichaelG]

The problem is the .jpg does not contain any metadata. Nothing (no color information, no color profile, no camera info). That's why the color temperature and the color tint are empty when you load the .jpg. That isn't per se a bad thing but changes a lot of things. Almost every application can handle that - including PTGui. Applications want to work with the color temperature and the tint and set both values in general to 0. As we know 0 is in fact your 2000 / +150 but the application doesn't know. 0 work very well. The values you enter in the image parameters tab are relative to the existing values. The existing values are 0. If you enter 2000 you move the color temperature 2000 units away from the starting point. That in turn results in the unexpected colors. 

The very best you can do use files with embedded metadata. The second best option is (as Erik mentioned) do change the values in PTGui; keep them as they are.

[PTGui Support]

Hi Manuel,

I'm not sure if I fully understand. If I load your image into a new
PTGui project, the white balance is empty and the image looks as
expected. So you are explicitly setting the white balance to 2000?

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

> http://www.erik-krause.de <http://www.erik-krause.de>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "PTGui Support" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to ptgui+un...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:ptgui+un...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptgui/
> f211ef37-6aa9-47ff-8298-69b36be4e85cn%40googlegroups.com <https://
> groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptgui/
> f211ef37-6aa9-47ff-8298-69b36be4e85cn%40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de)]

Dragging JPG images into a new project, the white balance is apparently set automatically. That's different from your experience.
I almost never go into the “Image Parameters” section; I've never changed anything related to white balance there. And the default setting for white balance is “Automatic.”
I haven’t looked into this any further. Under “White Balance,” there’s shoud be a “Off” switch, which would restore the behavior of PTGui 11—reliably.
At least, rendering version 13 projects with PTGui 11 yields the correct result.

[PTGui Support]

Hi Manuel,

If I load your IMG_1184.JPG into PTGui 13.9, the white balance fields in
Image Parameters are empty. But that doesn't matter, it is indeed
possible that it could happen for you with other images. Photoshop may
embed the white balance in the metadata, and PTGui can read this since v13.

Normally this should work fine, if you load an image taken at, say,
3000K, PTGui will output the panorama at 3000K as well and there is no
color shift. It is a useful feature when stitching images taken at mixed
auto white balance.

2000K is outside the practical range of white balances. In fact for IR
it makes no sense to speak of white balance at all, but a raw converter
will still pretend it is a visible spectrum image. In the range below
2000K there is no well defined mapping between white balance and CIE xy
white point values, and I think this is why things go wrong.

Nevertheless it's a bug, even if you load a 2000K image, PTGui should
not change the colors from input to output. This will be fixed.

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

On 6/9/26 11:09, Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de) wrote:
> Dragging JPG images into a new project, the white balance is apparently
> set automatically. That's different from your experience.
> I almost never go into the “Image Parameters” section; I've never
> changed anything related to white balance there. And the default setting
> for white balance is “Automatic.”
> I haven’t looked into this any further. Under “White Balance,” there’s
> shoud be a “Off” switch, which would restore the behavior of PTGui 11—
> reliably.
> At least, rendering version 13 projects with PTGui 11 yields the correct
> result.
> PTGui Support schrieb am Dienstag, 9. Juni 2026 um 09:43:45 UTC+2:
>
> Hi Manuel,
>
> I'm not sure if I fully understand. If I load your image into a new
> PTGui project, the white balance is empty and the image looks as
> expected. So you are explicitly setting the white balance to 2000?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Joost Nieuwenhuijse

> www.ptgui.com <http://www.ptgui.com>

> > http://www.erik-krause.de <http://www.erik-krause.de> <http://

> www.erik-krause.de <http://www.erik-krause.de>>
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> > Groups "PTGui Support" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> send
> > an email to ptgui+un...@googlegroups.com
> > <mailto:ptgui+un...@googlegroups.com>.
> > To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> ptgui/ <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptgui/>
> > f211ef37-6aa9-47ff-8298-69b36be4e85cn%40googlegroups.com
> <http://40googlegroups.com> <https://
> > groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptgui/ <http://groups.google.com/d/
> msgid/ptgui/>
> > f211ef37-6aa9-47ff-8298-69b36be4e85cn%40googlegroups.com
> <http://40googlegroups.com>?
> > utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "PTGui Support" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to ptgui+un...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:ptgui+un...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> ptgui/35ddb09b-fc47-4214-960e-a2cf1b725517n%40googlegroups.com <https://
> groups.google.com/d/msgid/ptgui/35ddb09b-fc47-4214-960e-
> a2cf1b725517n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Manuel Dahmann (kubische-panoramen-de)]

Thanks. The JPG are output from Lightroom. Most of the time they generate WB entrys in the image parameters tab.

Aside from the extreme example with the infrared image, where the discrepancy was very clear, I have, as I mentioned, repeatedly noticed color discrepancies with JPEG inputs. 
It would be great if JPEGs didn’t generate a white balance entry by default, or if that feature could be disabled altogether. 
This uncertainty regarding the colors has so far kept me from upgrading to version 13.