Author Topic: Random colour shift in previews  (Read 3153 times)

Offline bazography

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Random colour shift in previews
« on: June 16, 2015, 12:37:41 PM »
Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 16438 (e61be25)
MacBook Pro OS 10.9.5

I was browsing NEFs recently and noticed that the colours were shifting in some shots (about 20%) but I knew from my camera settings that there should have been no change. Opening the images in Photoshop confirmed the colours were identical.

I've attached a screenshot. Colour Management is turned on. The image on the left represents the 20%. If I turn off CM, the image on the right changes to look like the image on the left. In other words, it would seem that 20% of the images were not being colour managed for some reason, even though CM is turned on.

Also, interesting is that it wasn't always the same 20% of images that had this colour shift. Sometimes an image displaying a colour shift would suddenly fix itself, and then maybe a different image would have a colour shift.

All this happened last week and I didn't have time then to investigate any further. I just tried browsing those images again though, and this time I see no issues at all. So I don't know what to make of it. I know this is probably not very helpful given I can't even repeat the issue myself, but I thought I'd mention it anyway, in case this may have come up before or happened to others.

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Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Random colour shift in previews
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2015, 01:57:29 PM »
Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 16438 (e61be25)
MacBook Pro OS 10.9.5

I was browsing NEFs recently and noticed that the colours were shifting in some shots (about 20%) but I knew from my camera settings that there should have been no change. Opening the images in Photoshop confirmed the colours were identical.

I've attached a screenshot. Colour Management is turned on. The image on the left represents the 20%. If I turn off CM, the image on the right changes to look like the image on the left. In other words, it would seem that 20% of the images were not being colour managed for some reason, even though CM is turned on.

Also, interesting is that it wasn't always the same 20% of images that had this colour shift. Sometimes an image displaying a colour shift would suddenly fix itself, and then maybe a different image would have a colour shift.

All this happened last week and I didn't have time then to investigate any further. I just tried browsing those images again though, and this time I see no issues at all. So I don't know what to make of it. I know this is probably not very helpful given I can't even repeat the issue myself, but I thought I'd mention it anyway, in case this may have come up before or happened to others.

I'd like to see your PM log file.  I see that both of your images are very high resolution and it may be that PM is unable to allocate another full size image in memory to perform the color matching into and fails to complete the operation so the image ends up being shown without color management.

Go to the Help menu and choose Reveal Support Data... and then post the zipped PM log file here.  Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your file.

Thanks,

-Kirk

Offline bazography

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Re: Random colour shift in previews
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2015, 07:01:28 PM »
Thanks... log file attached. They are D800 NEFs so they are indeed very large. Since you mention file size and memory, I wonder if this might be related to the speed issues I've been noticing lately.

PM seems to be quite slow at drawing thumbnails in a contact sheet. With my D800 files it often takes about 2 seconds for each thumbnail to appear when opening a contact sheet (this is after the initial ingest). I'm certain it used to be much faster than that, and it's only in the last few months it seems like PM has really slowed down.

Also, it is frequently very slow in launching, with the icon bouncing for as much as 45 seconds.

Maybe this is all related?

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Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Random colour shift in previews
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2015, 10:48:29 PM »
Errors like this are in your log:

[Tue Jun-16-2015 12:18:16.907][b5cb9000][2251552] PMCache.cpp:2176 cache: load_best_fastest: exception creating color managed image 2b4bc8a|5577afee|/Volumes/More Stuff HD/Pictures/Photo Mechanic Ingest Backup/2015-06-09 2003 Mazda Protege5/20150609 5691 2003 Mazda Protege5.nef|p|dea88382d899d5f6e573b432473ae138|3e8|0|7360|d|0
[Tue Jun-16-2015 12:18:19.410][b3cb1000][2182412] NRFBasicJPEG.cpp:335 Failed to create non-scaled output bitmap of size (7360, 4912)
[Tue Jun-16-2015 12:18:19.410][b3cb1000][2182912] NRFBasicJPEG.cpp:242 DecompressJPEG error loading jpeg from data.
[Tue Jun-16-2015 12:18:19.411][b3cb1000][2176144] NRFPlugin.cpp:755 NRFPluginRawLoadImageScaled() failed to load '/Volumes/More Stuff HD/Pictures/Photo Mechanic Ingest Backup/2015-06-09 2003 Mazda Protege5/20150609 5611 2003 Mazda Protege5.nef' with error 7
[Tue Jun-16-2015 12:18:19.411][b3cb1000][2178236] NRFMacBitmap.cpp:1229 NRF failed to load '/Volumes/More Stuff HD/Pictures/Photo Mechanic Ingest Backup/2015-06-09 2003 Mazda Protege5/20150609 5611 2003 Mazda Protege5.nef' with error 7


Error 7 is an out of memory error.  Check your Caching settings.  More isn't always better.  If you have a high megapixel camera like the D800, your Memory cache setting shouldn't be above 256MB.  Startup slowness can be attributed to a large disk cache (you can set it to empty on quit which will eliminate the cache scan from the startup time) and to disks that are mounted but have spun down and are asleep.

-Kirk

Offline bazography

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Re: Random colour shift in previews
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2015, 11:27:01 AM »
If you have a high megapixel camera like the D800, your Memory cache setting shouldn't be above 256MB.

Good to know, thanks for that. Mine was set to 1024, but I don't recall when or why I came up with that number. I'll use 256 and see how it goes.
Thanks again...