What's Going On With the Color Red?
Pindy
Registered Users Posts: 1,089 Major grins
Can anyone explain to me why these red flower pics came out so intense?
example 1:
and here's what the histogram looks like in Aperture:
Here's another, taken a minute later:
The highlights and shadows are fine, so what does is mean when you have big spikes? Is it something about the color red because I've seen this before.
These are CR2 files, converted in Aperture (tried Lightroom 1.1 as well, with almost identical results) and zero processing other than the RAW conversion. Exported as sRGB, full-size JPEGs. What the hell?
Thanks!
example 1:
and here's what the histogram looks like in Aperture:
Here's another, taken a minute later:
The highlights and shadows are fine, so what does is mean when you have big spikes? Is it something about the color red because I've seen this before.
These are CR2 files, converted in Aperture (tried Lightroom 1.1 as well, with almost identical results) and zero processing other than the RAW conversion. Exported as sRGB, full-size JPEGs. What the hell?
Thanks!
0
Comments
i) Input - the raw camera data needs to be understood correctly, if your camera or some other factor introduces hue, saturation or tonal differences from the target model used to create the colour characterization used in the raw camera software you may get less than ideal results. For example, users of Adobe Camera Raw can create a custom calibration to account for specific camera differences under controlled lighting.
ii) Raw Conversion & Enhancing the Rendered Image - there are many controls and functions in modern raw camera data processing software that may or may not behave like rendered pixel editing software like Photoshop, either at the user interface level or under the hood how the commands are processed etc. All of these controls may affect the rendering of the grayscale data to colour, there is always some sort of processing going on before a rendered image is presented for pixel editing in say Photoshop.
In the case of highly saturated objects, saturation often is a trade off for detail. That being said, it is often possible to strike a compromise and have both pleasing saturation and detail. It may take exploration of the controls offered in the raw camera data processing software to see how one may achieve both luminance detail/variation and varying saturation intensity of important hues (as well as subtle hue variation).
Above and beyond what one can do in the rendering process from raw camera data to pixel data to preserve detail and retain saturation, there are Photoshop and other image editing techniques available to enhance exisiting pixel data (the great thing about raw camera data is that one can reprocess additional variations as needed if the initial conversion is not workable). Channel blending is the traditional method of choice for dealing with images such those linked above.
iii) Colour settings - The important details may be out of gamut for the space that you are rendering to from raw camera data. If one performs a relative colorimetric conversion from a large space (Camera RGB, ProPhoto RGB) to a smaller space (Adobe RGB, sRGB) important detail may be lost.
As this detail is out of gamut for the monitor display, you may never even know that it is there in the first place, when developing your raw camera data (unless the raw developer can softproof using perceptual rendering intent to an output space). You would see this out of gamut detail if rendering from raw to a wide gamut space, when you converted to an output profile using perceptual intent (which would likely bring part of this data into the monitors gamut allowing one to see the previously clipped detail).
The images posted have the red channel clipped, data is at/perhaps was beyond the gamut for the posted image space (presumed sRGB). If the data was not clipped in the original raw camera data and it is in the rendered image, then the rendered image does not have the gamut to contain this information and detail may be lost.
As mentioned above, ideally one can recover luminosity variation and detail in the raw conversion process. If working with "ruined" images such as above, one can try to add detail via channel blends to recover the image and make it usable. If one can fix up the issues from raw conversion to opening the image correctly in Photoshop for editing in your chosen RGB working space, then one can make much better enhancements as one has access to better data. The image below is an example of channel blends and a few other simple moves in an attempt to enhance/recover a shot that has lost detail. More on channel blending in these two PDF files:
http://www.ledet.com/margulis/Poetry.pdf
http://www.ledet.com/margulis/Numbers.pdf
Hope this helps,
Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
It can be aggravated in post processing, of course, but probably occurred at the instant of exposure.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
I have a similar discussion going on here. In my case, it was bright red soccer uniforms causing the problem. The short answer is that the meter tends to overexpose heavy reds so if you want to preserve detail in bright reds, you have to watch the red histogram and use negative EV.
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
I think I need to set up a tripod and test exposures on this. What a pain!
That's why I posted this question to Smugmug about EZPrints?
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
Yes, you didn't set the rendering controls to provide what you hope to reproduce.
Can't comment on Aperture but LR is easy. Try lowering the Saturation for red in the HSL controls. You don't need a lot, just enough to bring back some red detail. ALL the controls you need are there! Short of sitting down with you and moving the various rendering sliders, you'll have to try on your own to render the image such it represents the vision of the flower you hope to reproduce.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Have you shot the same subjects under similar lighting as JPG? What does the camera produce?
Regards,
Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
I agree with Andrew that there is a saturation issue. But not only the reds. Some of the green looks pumped also. One question is - alluded to in another post - what kind of exposure came into the raw converter? Let us hope and assume it is not a severe over-exposure.
Next is what were the initial settings in the raw converter. Speaking from a Camera Raw/Lightroom perspective, it is best to start the process with very flat settings because that allows you to better see whether the problem is due to overly-aggressive raw processor settings or something else. By flat settings, I mean zeros for all the luminosity adjustments in the Basic Tab and a linear tone curve in both Point and Parametric Curves. Also check that all the HSB sliders are at zero.
The image will look unappetizing, but that's fine, because it won't stay that way. First thing, check to see whether more detail in the reds appears than what you see now. If necessary, reduce Vibrance, or go to HSL and reduce red saturation to see whether any more detail emerges. If you get more red detail from these procedures, you know the problem is saturation. From this point you would carefully augment contrast taking care not to pump the contrast so high that you land back in the saturation problem. To some extent you can increase contrast and reduce saturation apace and that will give you the combination of "punch" and detail you need. The Clarity setting in Camera Raw also helps for the detail.
Once you've taken this process as far as you can or need in Camera Raw, render it in Photoshop. They key is not to render it with needed detail smothered, because after rendering you cannot get it back unless you return to Camera Raw and change the settings. As long as you preserve the detail from Camera Raw, you can do more if needed in Photoshop.
Mark
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
One thing I haven't grasped is what vibrance does when you turn it down. It was easy to understand that turning it up increases the saturation of the less saturated colors while not oversaturating the ones that were already pretty saturated. Can you help me understand what it does when you turn it down and when that is useful? That I haven't quite understood yet.
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
"pindy"
or from this page:
Pindy's iDisk
the folder "RAW files for Dgrinners"
I have included another file that doesn't appear to be clipping or overexposed, though it comes close, for reference:
I'm starting to think it is a saturation issue too. Will test tonight. I'm also interested to try out the new ACR/LR controls in this regard.
Understood, Mark. it was converted in Aperture with no processing on. In other words, all possible processing modules weren't checked. The RAW module was set to it's default, which I don't believe does anything significant (must confirm this). I've had the experience in Lightroom, before I learned how to turn it off, that the tone curve would default to something other than linear. If this workflow works for people, fine, but I don't understand NOT wanting to see the honest photo first.
Non linear saturation with skin tone protection. In a nutshell, more saturated colors get saturated more than less saturated colors. Quite different from all the other saturation slides I've played with (note, one of the best ways to handle this was using LinoColor's Saturation Curves dialog).
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Image 37 suffers the most, I will comment on that image here (but this applies to all similar images, to various degrees).
1. Raw Conversion
2. sRGB Gamut Limitations
1. Raw Conversion: I can't find the link/image now, but over at ArsTechnica there was a raw camera processing software review article. Four products were compared - Aperture (Apple), Lightroom (Adobe), Capture One (Phase One) & BibblePro (Bibble Labs). In a highly saturated shot of red lobsters, Aperture was the worst at default settings, most detail was blown out, Capture One was the best of them all, making Lightroom seem weak (when compared to Aperture, Lightroom was a clear winner, again at defaults). It obviously depends on the image, some image types suffer more than others.
So, depending on the converter being used, one will get varying results (as expected). That being said, there should be moves that can be made in the converter to reduce saturation (per hue or globally) and bring out luminance detail, so that one is not stuck with a default poor rendering. If it is not possible to do it all in the raw converter to satisfaction, one can create two renderings - one for saturation, one for detail...then combine them in Photoshop.
2. Gamut Issues: The saturated red is out of gamut for sRGB, but not Adobe RGB/ECI-RGB or similar medium gamut RGB editing spaces. One will need to engineer luminance variation into the flower to account for the loss of detail when the larger gamut is converted to sRGB using relative colorimetric intent (sRGB does not offer perceptual gamut compression, only clipping of out of gamut colours via a relcol transform).
Below is a comparison view of your original Aperture default render vs. Pixmantec Raw Shooter (Essentials) 2006 at linear/zeroed settings. Neither are pretty, but the RSE rendering shows slightly more detail. This is before one makes modifications to enhance detail, one can get much better results in current fully featured software that allows for discrete modification of certain hues rather than just global moves.
Regards,
Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
Again, zero/linear settings, as "unprocessed" as things get (in a processed image).
I would hope that you can get Aperture to produce similar results, if not better. Perhaps a future application or OS update will provide better default camera renderings (if I recall things right, the camera profiles are tied to the OS and not the application!).
Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
Default settings are just that, a starting point. And they treat all images the same way. If you like default settings, shoot JPEG. That's a default rendering built (with a great deal of processing and proprietary engineering) when you ask for JPEG.
We're talking rendering here. This isn't color correction. There's no right answer. The reason every Raw processor provides a way to over-ride the default, build a set of rendering instructions and even use them on import should be obvious. Now, if you have a red flower and NO amount of tweaking of controls produces acceptable rendering, we have a big problem! I've yet to see that on modern Raw processing modules.
This is an important primer on the idea of rendering output referred imagery to express how you wish to present the image you captured:
http://www.color.org/documents/ICC_white_paper_20_Digital_photography_color_management_basics.pdf
Karl Lang's piece on rendering is a must read too (long but well worth it):
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
And -
I fully understand that we are talking of rendering here, and what that entails.
I think you are missing my point Andrew. Pindy has problems with zeroed settings, obviously the next step is to explore the tools offered in Aperture to see what can be done to control the very flexible rendering of gray data into colour. It is only sensible to zero things in order to try to get a handle on what is taking place and how to solve the issue at hand.
We know that the luminosity variation exists in there, we just need to increase it. This is a no brainer. The point of comparing different converter's default zero/linear renderings, namely what Pindy has by default from Aperture is that with *zero* work, there is a major quality difference, that one may have to spend valuable time tweaking in Aperture just to get what another package does by default. It is also beneficial to see that unlike Aperture, other packages may be able to offer more acceptable results, either at default or zeroed/linear settings or with more work, simply as a yard stick to compare results to.
I was very impressed with the default renderings provided by Capture One, it appears to blow all the competition away on brief initial inspection. That one can do better by making informed rendering adjustments is simply icing on the cake. It is just as much about comparing different rendering engines in competing products as it is about zero/linear default renderings (which are sub standard by definition).
Now, back to helping Pindy get the most from the raw camera data, I am not going to be distracted again.
Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
I don't use Aperture, but I would imagine it could also do a decent job with this file if the controls are used to pull back the exposure.
Mike
Test.jpg
Bsed on what you said, I looked at Aperture's RAW module really for the first hard look. I had always ignored it until now as, frankly, I couldn't see ANY change when I moved the chroma blur slider and the sharpening didn't seem to make a significant dent. Having said that, there is a "Boost" slider which appears to be a basic saturation control (the red, green & blue diverged from center even more when actuated). Here are examples of the boost slider at each extreme, "0.00" and 1.00"
Full boost:
No boost:
All the data is gray.
Its no more sensible than simply seeing the issue and trying to move a slider that describes what it is you're trying to accomplish. That slider is called Saturation in Aperture after which you can look at selective color tweaks. I can speak for Lightroom much better (I have Aperture, gave up on it). You have a global control over saturation, non linear global control over saturation and selective color (HSL) for hue, saturation and luminance. Move the sliders, in the order provided since LR is built to render top down, left to right (like CR). When you see something you like, make a preset. Oh, in LR you get that nice History list that never dies (unlike Photoshop), virtual copies (play with the rendering using any number of iterations which take up the space of text files), make snapshots etc.
We know? We know the rendering we see isn't preferred.
There is no such package, there probably never will be, what you're asking for isn't possible. If you setup a camera in a copy situation or in a specific illuminant, gamut, dynamic range and so forth, you can. You'll probably have to still roll your own default for that scene but once you do, you're done. MOST people don't capture images this way. The scene is all over the place. Night time, high ISO under tungsten, daylight (at 6am and 8pm with everything in between), 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 100:1 contrast ratio (with everything in between). We're being provided scene referred data and we have to map it output referred.
IF you don't want to do this, shoot JPEG. And we know that's not always the correct or preferred rendering, thats why we photographers shoot Raw.
You CAN quite easily render nearly all images of decent exposure to an acceptable viewing quality using global rendering controls in 90 seconds or less per image. IF you have 99 more, you simply copy and paste the first set of instructions. You can always refine and save a default for THAT kind of scene.
Have you ever printed color in the analog darkroom? This isn't fundamentally different in that a color neg isn't output referred nor is a Raw file. Expecting one setting to be even decent for all images is like expecting every neg to print using the same exposure and filter pack. Not going to happen.
With what kinds of images? And when you find a vastly superior setting that you now save as the new default, what usefulness was finding out the original default wasn't as good? Sorry, this is kind of a "Duh" kind of discovery. You want to compare Auto white and tone balance? OK, again its a default but sure, try it. Ultimately you need to render the images form each converter as closely as possible (not easy), then examine the rendered image side by side in Photoshop at 100%+ to look for processing artifacts, noise reduction, sharpening (even when its off, its not off) etc.
Of all the things you need to examine when looking at two converters, how they produce a default rendering is about the least useful thing to look at IMHO.
That's easy. You can get a DNG from him and load it in CR, set you renderings and save out the XMP, he can import, see the rendering and the settings. My suggestions above about LR apply to CR (we can even make XMP's from each and supply).
Ultimately the easiest and fastest way for Pindy to get up to speed is just play, using the top down, left to right system at least initially. Crank on those sliders, view the rendering on a calibrated and profiled display. Pindy, you can' break anything, you're working with Raw!
This idea of zero work in the converter and then more work in Photoshop is ridiculous. You can do a huge amount of color and tone massaging using the Raw data, such that 90-95% of the work is done before Photoshop ever see's a pixel. Then you need selective tone and color controls. Proper rendering reduces slow and laborious work in Photoshop by a huge amount. When you then think of pasting those instructions onto dozens or hundreds of images and what that would take on rendered Photoshop files, its amazing anyone would look at Photoshop for this task.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Andrew, please don't misunderstand me. I never said I wanted Photoshop to be my go-to guy—I would prefer not to touch it unless I had a specific need of it's more advanced skillset. I would hope that Lightroom or Aperture had the tools to be able to bring back from the edge what I don't really agree is an "over-exposed" photo, all respect to Pathfinder. I thought this was a discussion about RAW-level saturation and conversion which seems to be the problem with this set of shots.
Regardless, explain what you mean by LR/CR's "top-down, left-to-right" design. There are a handful of experiences in my tests which may be precipitating a switch to LR anyway, so the more you know the more you grow. Having said that, I'm interested in reading that Ars RAW conversion article.
Again, thanks for all your help.
The rant if you will wasn't directed at you but to readers in general.
There's a mindset being proposed, without merit I'll add, that one zero out the settings or use defaults in a converter then fix the rendering (this isn't rendering, its color correction) in Photoshop.
Rendering isn't color correction, its color and tone creation. I just want to make it clear that no default settings will work for every image or everyone, just the opposite, you have to roll your own. And, rendering is where all the global and tone heavy lifting should be done.
A truly over exposed image would look awful as a default. An image that is properly exposed for the right, putting as much data as possible in the first stop of highlight looks pretty bad using the default rendering of every converter I've tested. I shoot images plus 1 ½ over the incident meter and can bring them back into full quality, full tone rendering by simply moving the Exposure slider down to roughly minus a stop and a half. There IS no data loss due to highlight clipping and I have more data in the last stop of the Raw file. I found 2 stops does indeed clip true highlight data. When you open a Raw in say CR or LR at normal default exposure settings, you have at least a stop more of data you could have captured in most scenes.
To my eye, and not having the Raw, it appears that's the case. A simple slider on saturation (or in LR, Vibrance), perhaps using the awesome Direct Select tool in LR.'s HSL controls for saturation and if you wish, hue would handle this in about 20 seconds.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Great stuff Pindy, it sounds like you are starting to explore the various controls in Aperture (which I have no experience with), you will no doubt start to see improvements in the renderings once you get a feel for how these affect your images.
I am not sure if it is simply a case of learning to use Aperture, or if even when one has a full working knowledge of the application, it may not be able to produce similar renderings to other packages at their default settings, let alone optimized rendering settings by a knowledgeable user which should be so much better than default or zeroed/flat settings.
If you never see another users conversion of your data with the same or different software, you may never know just how good/bad your converter or conversion settings are. This is another benefit of comparing flat/default settings in other converters, one has a yardstick for comparrison. One knows that one should be able to do better than a default render (unless they are lucky) - so if one can't do similar in one's converter when they know the tools, then one would have to consider that converter to be sub standard for this image type. As a ver 1.0 product, it may just be that Aperture needs to mature more to reach the levels offered by other more mature products.
Below is a four up view of image #37. Upper left is your best attempt so far in Aperture. Upper right is Pixmantec Raw Shooter Essentials. Lower left is Adobe Camera Raw. Lower right is ACR set to -1 exposure compensation.
One can see that your exploration of the boost slider in Aperture has rendered a more detailed result at 0 than 100. This is an incremental step forward for you in solving the issue of poor renderings of detailed red image content. When I was experimenting with RSE, I found that I could extract more luminance detail from the image when I altered the hue slider in a positive direction, in order to make the petals more red (as the other direction makes them more magenta). This was unexpected, so perhaps see what adjusting the hue in Aperture does to the image detail, in addition to WB, reducing saturation, negative exposure and or highlight recovery.
Comparing this Aperture image to a zeroed/flat setting Raw Shooter Essentials conversion, one finds that RSE has slightly better detail and similar saturation, but still lacks major detail at this saturation level.
The Adobe Camera Raw flat/zeroed conversion has reduced saturation and much better luminance detail. One may also note that the ACR version is set to zero exposure compensation (just like Aperture and RSE), but it is slightly darker than Aperture or RSE. This is due to the brightness slider being zeroed, which also helps contribute to the luminance detail being more apparent.
Dropping the ACR exposure value to a negative value, such as -1 stop, detail that was previously invisible is now visible (dew drops on the top of the petals etc).
It has been noted by many in the thread that reducing both saturation in reds and or capturing/rendering the image at a lower exposure value will bring out more detial. For me, it is a given that detail and saturation will be a trade off. One could choose to simply use the raw converter to make the best image that they can and leave it at that, or to render two images and combine them in Photoshop for a better result than what is possible using the raw converter alone (one rendering for colour and one for detail). The exposure and or overall image brightness is another issue. A zero exposure value or slightly brighter may be considered to be the favoured rendering of the image scene, but one is not happy with the lack of detail. When one lightens the negative exposure rendering, one may lose the detail (just as one may lose detail if going for more saturation). This may take more work, either in the raw converter or in Photoshop, to achieve the desired image brightness and detail.
We know that a poor rendering can be made more appealing later in Photoshop, but this is not the goal and just a band aid measure that one can use as a last resort. The goal here is to learn how to use Aperture to create pleasing renderings, exploring the various controls with other controls zeroed will let you see in a case by case basis what effect each slider or other setting has on the image. Once you have a feel for how these controls work in isolation, it will be time to see how they work in combination.
Hope this helps,
Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/
This has certainly taught me that I cannot ignore the RAW conversion defaults in ANY application, and that no single RAW conversion algorhythm is going to be the best for everything. I was interested to learn from the sometimes-fascinating Jardine-Lightroom podcasts (thanks Andrew for the link) that Michael Jonsson sold Pixmantec and went to work for the Lightroom/Adobe RAW team and they are finding ways to incorporate the best of Raw Shooter into Lightroom and ACR.
Your 2 ACR conversions, just as a default, look best to my eyes, though exposure compensation darkens it a bit too much, but I see that this is the trade off. That various H/S/L controls need to be part of this ideal rendering process is also apparent and was unexpected when I set about figuring out WTF was going on. Thanks guys for the education.
Perhaps I need to rely on a better RAW converter. I feel that Aperture's converter is normally very very good, but towards the saturation point, with red, anyways, it's starting to fall apart.
I'm sure that by the time comes, the next Aperture 2.0 release will be great and have some thoughtful feautures and I may wait until that release to decide upon switching (losing all the non-destructive adjustments I've made on 4500 photos isn't appealing, exporting JPEGS to save them is equally unappealing).
I'm starting to feel that Apple shot themselves in the foot with CoreImage, because it relies mostly on the GPU and not the CPU so much, so you will ALWAYS have reduced notebook performance, when compared to desktop performance, because of the range of portable video cards available. I hate the performance of Aperture on my MacBook Pro and LR seems to fly. The laptop is becoming the de facto workstation for a lot of us.
Just thinking out loud, I suppose.
Perhaps. But the bottom line is, forget default settings! They don't describe the qualities possible from any Raw converter. Again, if you can't produce a desired rendering using the supplied controls, then you have a problem and need a different converter. But I suspect that you could produce a reasonably acceptable rendering in Aperture although doing the same in LR and comparing them closely provides the best evidence as to which converter and engine is better for you.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
That's kind of what I'm saying and what I've been doing to further my inquiry. It wasn't about the results when I DIDN'T touch the RAW controls, but rather when I DID. For me, it's "do I like the feel of the controls and the effect they provide?" and "In how many steps can I get what I'm trying to acheive?"
But the conversion stage is but a fraction of the overall adjustment chain. The whole thing has to feel good and look good.
That's what ultimately got me from Aperture to Lightroom. The default rendering for both are surprisingly similar. I found one does one function a bit better than the other, but in the end, I just liked the overall approach used in Lightroom.
Here are two examples.
http://prophoto.typepad.com/bonus/2007/06/review_suppleme_2.html
http://prophoto.typepad.com/bonus/2007/06/review_suppleme_1.html
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Agreed Pindy, it is an important lesson to learn.
Yes, just as saturation and detail is a trade off, exposure and other tonal controls will have a major impact too and yet more trade offs may need to be made.
One can render with say -1 EV to bring out detail, and then attempt to lighten the image to counter this negative exposure move, trying not destroy the detail recovered in exposure by lightening with another control. You may decide that chasing your tail is a waste of time and then not lighten! It is all part of the rendering process, seeing what combination of tools brings out the best from the raw camera data. I would also look at minor tweaks in WB, desaturation of reds, hue modification of reds, highlight recovery etc, as well as exposure (not sure what tools/names are in Aperture).
This may be the case, I guess the jury is still out, this is a v1 product.
Pindy, it sounds like you are fairly happy with Aperture, except for highly saturated/detailed shots of images of a single predominant hue. You obviously need to spend some serious time seeing what is possible in Aperture first, before giving up on your investment. If you wish to do as much work in the raw converter as possible, then you may indeed need a better converter (if you can't do much better with Aperture). That being said, if you simply wish to have some reasonable images (if not better) - one can perform two renders from Aperture, one for colour and one for detail and then combine the two in Photoshop using traditional image editing methods. This is above and beyond the raw process, which with luck you will soon get under control.
Hope this helps,
Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/