Datacolor Spydercheckr 24 Color Chart

[Janie Mccorey]

Isee that I can use a single white pixel or patch to help correct white balance and, indeed, this is helpful but I am wondering if I can do more. I have the Datacolor SpyderCHECKR 24 color patch and used to make test shots with this in the photo. I know that other software has a very simple way of using the entire chart to optimize white balance correction. Though tedious, I could enter a list of true colors and then select the corresponding pixels in the photo. Does anyone know of an add-on or separate software that would take this information and return the optimized color temperature and tint correction for Affinity Photo. Having such a tool would enable me to get a good starting point for my processing of RAW files.

Unfortunately I don't believe there's such a tool/plugin for Affinity currently, however our devs are working on an integration feature for Spyder devices currently and we hope to include this in a future release.

I made a mistake. Since I had not used it for a while I got mixed up with which SyderCHECK I had. I have the 48 patch one. However, I think it would be nice to support both the 24 patch and 48 patch charts. BUt I would like much more flexibility.

Doesn't we have LUT adjustment layer that could do it? You take your photo with color charts, crop it to keep the chart only, save as pict1 , overpaint/fill your square color samples with their intended values as they intended to be ( I recall the value should be mentioned somewhere, on opposite side maybe or in some pdf doc) and save pic2. Now you have original chart pic and color accurate chart pic

In LUT layer hit "Infer LUT" and it asks you for original image and supposed to be image . or in opposite order maybe. Done . You have a correcting LUT to accurate color rendition. Save as a preset and apply to big image and all other images done with same lighting conditions.

In LUT adjustment layer I hit "infer LUT" and select original photo of the color charts and secondly edited photo of same color charts where I edited all colors squares to their proper numeric ( target) values. Like spectral red be 255,0,0 etc. Those values is written on the back of charts card. DONE . You have LUT transforming layer/preset you can apply to all photos you did in same session/lighting setup you took your original image of color charts card.

At first, the optimal parameters are computed but not applied. You get a quality report about the fitting that lets you decide if you are going to accept or not these settings. At this stage, the profile is not yet a setting but a virtual proposal. Take that as a quote from the dt engineers that let you the opportunity to refuse the service.

Assume the profile quality report based on a color checker states it is bad. How can I improve this? CAT settings do not influence that analysis. I thought I can fine tune the colors using CAT and then recompute the profile to get a better result.

thank you for showing your processing of the image. Indeed you can adjust the settings in CAT tab, so that you may not need the calibration with a color checker. But then, what is the added value by this calibration help? In fact, you cannot intervene to improve the quality of the calibration by a chart.

Another question: You wrote you used the recommended EV and BP compensation correction of the exposure module. If I select automatic mode in exposure module, the whole image becomes really dark as I can watch this from histogram, too. In exposure module I use scene-referred default as preset.

As mentioned in the chapter about color calibration : The settings used in color calibration depend on the chosen CAT space and on any color settings defined earlier in the pipe within the white balance and input color profile modules.

If I use darktable I do use the scene-referred workflow but I do not like the defaults at all and set them manually. Most of the time I do switch to the new chromatic adaption too, but I check both, starting with the legacy one.

As you can see I had to go back/forth to get the exposure correct (as suggested by the Normalize values). Only thing I did not have to do was set the adaption, which is part of the auto applied scene-referred thingy.

There is a small difference in certain colours between them. Which I think is explainable: In both cases CAT16 is used, but the automated version does a bit more tuning and is probably just that bit more precise.

Besides, I had the difficulty to set the brightness for the background of a series of pictures. Using the color picker and Lab space it is practical to set L value to a certain value by changing the exposure.

The recently launched Spyder Checkr Photo has been designed to help creatives achieve consistent and accurate color correction quickly and easily across every one of their cameras, sensors, and lens combinations in Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Camera RAW (in Photoshop), and Hasselblad Phocus. You simply need to use the Spyder Checkr Photo color target cards during their shoots as a color reference.

The tool itself comes with a rigid outer casing to protect the color swatches carried inside. The case (and cards) are small, lightweight, and even have a removable lanyard making storage and transport of the system incredibly easy to do. Inside, the system includes a set of four interchangeable cards that feature 48 color targets with an expanded skin tone offering incredible accuracy that is ideal for portraits.

Then, once you are back in front of your computer ready to start editing, you need to crop the test image down to show just the Spyder Checkr Photo and then send it to the SpyderCheckr software from Datacolor to create a correction profile to import into the app of your preference to ensure you have accurate and consistent colors throughout the rest of your images.

Above I mentioned ensuring the Spyder Checkr Photo is photographed as straight as possible. This is simply because while the Datacolor Spyder Checkr Software is very straightforward and easy to use, you sadly cannot rotate or skew the color swatch pattern to align the patches if the physical card itself was at an odd angle or if any of the color targets are covered. The software allows you to scale, flip, and resize the swatches to accommodate your test shots, but if the cards are not fully opened, it can be difficult to align the image with the swatches.

At this point the app will tell you the calibration preset/profile has been created and saved, letting you either create another calibration or prompting you to exit both the Datacolor software and Lightroom so that it can load the preset(s) into them.

Now that the Portrait preset has been loaded into lightroom, you can apply it to the images taken during this set to make white balance and color calibration incredibly fast throughout the rest of the processing.

Obviously, retouching is subjective and will vary for each client and project, but the bottom line is as far as color accuracy is concerned, you can be sure that your images are accurate and consistent across every project when captured with the Spyder Checkr Photo. From personal experience having used the Spyder Checkr 24 and several other previous generations of color charts, the new Spyder Checkr Photo is a massive improvement in usability.

The new system is much more compact, durable, and easier to carry and travel with safely. Additionally, using the Spyder Checkr Photo before and during light and lens changes on set may seem like a bit of a workflow speedbump at first, but it is a massive time saver when it comes to post-production, especially when dealing with clients and products where the colors have to be 100% accurate.

Below you find the Datacolor SpyderCheckr 48 definition of patches in different color spaces, such as LAB, sRBG and AdobeRGB. Datacolor offers a lousy bitmap of the values which are difficult to read and impossible to use in a structured way. So there you go, a table of all the values that this color chart is suppose to represent:

I just measured the colors with different cameras, always taking pictures of the grey and colored sides of the 24 model. And indeed I found them to be equal. To be specific, I noticed a color difference of less than 1% (except in the darker patch, with around 3%), which is expected considering variations in camera noise and JPEG compression between the shots. Also, if it that were the 10% chart, we would expect the 60% square to be equal to the 50% larger patch. Not only that is clearly not the case, but I found a difference of around 10-12% in color values, which I guess is exactly what we would expect between 50% and 60% which confirms what we can see with our eyes.

In the realm of art, photographers use color subjectively as an element of creative interpretation. Color grading is an art form, and certain photographers are recognized by their post-processing. There are some scenarios though where color accuracy needs to be paramount. One example is in product photography for makeup, clothing, or anything where the color needs to match the product exactly. The Spyder Checkr Photo seems like the ideal tool to guarantee objective color accuracy.

In reading the step-by-step instructions, it would be easy to assume that this is a very time-intensive process. I decided to time the color grading from start to finish. Can you guess how long the entire process took?

When I ran my pictures through the software initially, I have to confess I was slightly irked. My work is known for its vibrancy and bold colors is what I am expected to deliver. I had planned that the software would color correct the whites, blacks, and hues of each color, but I did not think that it would change the luminosity or saturation of the colors. Here is an example of the adjustments it made on one of my photos.

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