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X-Rite ColorChecker Passport
January 18, 2010

The ability to profile digital cameras has been around for a while, but it’s not something I’ve paid much attention to over the years because I always felt that the conditions that I might find myself in are too variable to try and create custom white balances (WB) or profiles for later use in post production. For example, moving in and out of indoor and outdoor locations with inconsistent lighting for all those locations - think a fast moving wedding photographer, who isn't even going to have time to fuss around to create in-camera WB settings.

Because I shoot in RAW mode, setting the WB after the fact is easy so long as you have some white or neutral patches in the scene to click on for a WB setting. However, we don’t always photograph in areas with convenient white or neutral patches available and those situations don’t always fit within the usual WB choices in RAW convertors, such as Auto, As Shot, Sunny, Cloudy, Shady, Incandescent, Florescent, and Flash. This is why grey and WB cards are useful tools to have in the field.

Take a reference shot of the general scene with the WB card and away you go. Back at home, you pull up the reference image, set the WB and then either individually or batch process the group of photos using that reference WB setting. What could be simpler or better since I would expect that any WB card I use to have been properly manufactured to a set standard to give me a WB appropriate for the lighting conditions I’m in, but maybe there’s a better way yet…

In this review, we look at a new tool that offers the ability to set a reference WB and create a custom profile for the camera being used, the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport (CCP).

Some of you may have heard of the ColorChecker moniker before under the GretagMacbeth name. The ColorChecker is a set of color patches used to provide reference points for white, grey and black points in addition to a number of other reference colors, with some mimicking skin tones.

The regular ColorChecker is available in a large, 8x10 inch size for use in the studio, as well as portable card size for use in the field. However, there’s some risk to using the smaller version in the field due to a lack of protection. These reference cards are not inexpensive with the small, card sized version selling for CAD $85 and the larger one selling for CAD $100. X-Rite recommends replacing ColorCheckers every two years to ensure the consistency and quality of the color patches.

The ColorChecker Passport solves the delicacy issue, as well as throwing in some other features and benefits. At this time, the ColorChecker Passport (CCP) sells for CAD $130 at Vistek or for those in the US, USD $99 at US retailers.

When you open up the package containing the CCP, you handle a sturdily built plastic case comprised of three sections. When closed, the CCP is approximately 3.5x5 inches and about ¼ inch thick. A lanyard is included so that you can wear it around your neck. The CCP can fit easily in a pocket and will only occupy a tiny space inside a camera bag. In other words, there’s no excuse for not having it with you all the time, especially on a serious shoot.

Opening the CCP reveals the card sized ColorChecker along with another card with additional color patches to fine tune skin tones and WB warmer or cooler. The third card built-in is a grey card for creating a custom, in-camera WB. The three-way clamshell design allows the CCP to be self-supporting on top of a surface so that you can photograph it comfortably instead of arm's length away as I tend to do with WB cards.

Prior to using the CCP, I tried to have a WB card, made by Michael Tapes of WhiBal fame, with me all the time (I have three versions of these cards). The easiest thing to do is just leave the card inside the most used camera bags so that I never have to try and remember to bring one with me.

WB cards with black, grey and white sections not only help with WB, but also with exposure as you can easily set the Levels by clicking on the white and black patches. However, the CCP offers a promise to go beyond that and to create a custom camera profile specific for the camera in use in the lighting conditions that the CCP is photographed in.

Not having much, if any experience, with camera calibration, I wondered what kinds of hoops and hurdles I would have to jump through to use the CCP. As it turns out, hardly any and the process is very simple and straightforward to create a custom profile.

If you use Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, you will find the process very convenient once the CCP software creates a profile. The software will save the new profile in the correct folder that Lightroom or ACR use to save and load such profiles.

The CCP comes with a CD to install the software needed to create the profiles. There are two ways to use the software, as a plug-in for Lightroom, which you access through the Export command, or as a standalone application. My samples below is of the standalone application, but I also show what the Lightroom plug-in looks like at the end.

Once you fire it up, instructions in the main work area prompt you to drag a DNG file into the Color Checker window, as seen below.

Below is a Lightroom screen shot of the photo I took of the CCP for creating the camera profile. I exported a DNG version of the RAW file for use with the CCP software. The photo is taken with the same exposure settings that I use to take hockey photos, e.g. 70-200 lens at f2.8, ISO 3200 and plus 1 exposure compensation.

The CCP software takes a few moments to analyze the DNG file and will show you an enlarged view of the ColorChecker's patches. Below is a screen shot of the software automatically detecting and recognizing the color patches. If for whatever reason the software cannot detect the ColorChecker, you are prompted to manually outline the four corners of the patch grid (the green dots) so that the software can analyze the image.

The software will prompt you to name the profile, which in my case shows the camera used and arena I photographed in.

The final step is for the software to create and save the profile in the appropriate folder.

After I finished with creating the profile, I restarted Lightroom and in the Develop module, at the bottom under Camera Calibration, you can see my new profile available in the drop down list.

Below is the start of the process using the Lightroom plug-in (the profile is created in the background, allowing you to continue working in Lightroom, but you still need to restart Lightroom in order to use the new profile):

Let’s discuss how I used the CCP...

As usual, I installed the ColorChecker software on my eight-core PC running 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate. Primary editing monitor is my 30-inch Dell LCD profiled and calibrated with the X-Rite ColorMunki. Primary RAW conversion software is 64-bit Adobe Lightroom 2.6. Camera used for this evaluation is the Canon 7D with the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS USM lens - for the Nikon users uttering sacrilege at my adultery, I'm merely waiting for Nikon's next enthusiast level FX SLR ;^)

At the beginning, I commented on the idea that creating custom camera profiles for every lighting situation, may not be practical because of the variety of lighting we can encounter, sometimes in very quick succession. However, if we find ourselves photographing regularly in a particular venue or lighting condition then having a custom camera profile can make life that much easier during the editing process. I just happen to photograph regularly in a venue with some of the crappiest lighting I’ve ever encountered, a suburban hockey arena that my son’s team plays its home games in.

Regular readers will recall a previous post where I questioned why I was seeing weird red and blue color shifts in my hockey photos. Some kind readers pointed out that the mercury vapour lights used in most hockey arenas phase shift at 60 Hz cycles. The Canon 7D, with its ability to capture photos at 8 fps, is faster than the cycling of the lights, so it captures the shifts of the lights from one color tint to another. The human eye cannot detect such fast cycling, so we never notice any of the phase shifts while watching the games. To refresh everyone's memory, below is a three-frame burst showing some of the light phasing with a blue-red-blue tint.

My first though in using the CCP is to take a burst of photos at 8 fps for 7-8 frames to try and capture the various light shifts and create custom profiles for each color tint. Doing so should ensure that I get a neutral color and white balance for any affected photos no matter what the tint.

Well, you know what they say about best laid plans, and so it was that with three different games in two different arenas, I found that I could not detect enough variation in the light phasing to be able to create custom camera profiles for each tint. At first, I thought that maybe the plus 1 exposure compensation was a factor, so I tried zero compensation, but found that I was still not getting enough of the light phasing. Below is burst of several frames in a row of the CCP with only very subtle difference seen between each frame. I tried alternative compositions with the CCP smaller and farther to the left to let more ice to be seen, but it still did not work.

Although my bright idea did not work (I plan to try again using a different composition), I pressed ahead with using one of the CCP test shots to create a custom camera profile for use in Lightroom.

Let’s check out the results along with some comparisons with other alternatives. The screen shots below are from Lightroom's very convenient Y/Y comparison mode where the original, unedited RAW file is seen at left with the right side image showing what the edit looks like. In the samples below, the only edits shown on the right are only for WB and profile differences. The sample is of my peewee aged son in a recent hockey game.

Original, As Shot WB - no edits to either side
Exposure wise, the photo is fine with the highlights pushed very close to, but not exceeding the right edge of the histogram. Prior to using the CCP, I would not have bothered changing the WB.

Lightroom's Auto WB setting - I would stick with the As Shot WB instead of using Auto

Lightroom's Florescent WB setting - I show this for comparison only, using a WB setting that is closest to what the arena uses for light (mercury vapour) - I would obviously stick with the original WB

Using Lightroom's WB tool to click on the lower portion of the white numbering on the back of the jersey - I would still go with the original WB, as it's cooler and cleaner and looks more right to my eyes

The WB in this sample has been set by using the reference photo of the CCP for only setting the WB and then applying that WB to this image - I would still stick with the original WB for the same reason as the previous sample photo

Finally, we get to applying the new custom camera profile created with the CCP. Here we see a boost in color saturation, cleaner whites and a better skin tone. It's more pleasing to the eye although you might quibble that in this small, sRGB web version, the ice in the custom profile version has a subtle red tint; however, in the larger and actual ProPhoto RGB view in Lightroom, the ice is cleaner and cooler than the original RAW file. There is no doubt to me that the custom profile has created a much superior looking photo.

Another before and after sample using the new custom camera profile

Conclusion
Seeing what the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport did for my recent hockey photos has me sold on the merits on using custom camera profiles wherever and whenever practicable. It lays waste to my previous attitude and assumption of merely clicking on a white portion of an image or using a WB card to set the WB as an utterly ignorant method of getting the most from my RAW files. After seeing the results above, there's no going back to my previous way of editing.

It may still not be convenient for every single situation, but if I know I'm going to be in a certain kind of consistent lighting situation for any period of time, I will definitely use the CCP to make my life easier during the RAW editing and conversion process.

I've only touched upon the most basic and easiest way to use the CCP, as there more advance ways to create custom camera profiles, as well as other ways to use the CCP, but I'm already quite thrilled with the quick and easy method that I've described in this review.

As I use the CCP in other lighting environments and with my other cameras, I will post additional comments and samples in follow-ups to this first look and use.

Link to X-Rite ColorChecker

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