MAWB on the K3

From reading the article I think this facility is just for jpegs and camera settings for both white balance and this enhanced white balance are essentially irrelevant when shooting RAWS.

We can of course already apply selective white balance to different areas in some RAW processors (not just Lightroom Smeggy ) although it takes some work. If Pentax have implemented automatic processing for this in the PDCU converter that will be a first and a plus for them. Provided it does a good job of course and I can see us having the same sort of merry discussions over this as we have had over multi-segment vs c/w exposure.

I didn't


Nigel, I agree that the WB presets are Adobe's idea of how best to represent conditions such as 'Daylight'. 'Tungsten' etc., but the 'as-shot' value purports to be what the camera actually measured.

ACR represents WB as a Colour-Temp and a Tint.
The Colour-Temp is presumably just copied from the camera, but since I don't know how the camera records WB information {whether just a Colour-Temp or Colour-Temp plus other data), I don't know if ACR copies the Tint value from the camera or derives it from the image.


John, I agree that it appears straightforward for camera-produced JPGs. My quest is for understanding how it fits into my workflow (RAW files converted by non Pentax/Ricoh software).

This issue, for me, equates to about zero on the Richter scale of practical problems, but it's fun trying to understand it.

davek

I think that you are probably right.

I'll test whether the ACR 'as-shot' WB value is affected by MAWB v AWB though.

davek

From what I've seen as well, other converters generally don't interpret many camera set parameters. Pdcu is the way to go if you want full implementation of the camera controls.

I just ran a quick test with repeatable results. It seems that if MAWB is enabled, it DOES influence the ACR values for 'as-shot' WB

So use of MAWB does have an effect (albeit not the intended one) on my workflow. .....I'll avoid using it.

davek

I assume it will be in DNGPrivateData for DNGs, and Exif Makernote in PEFs. (In effect, DNGPrivateData is the same as Makernote but wrapped up with a DNG tag).

I note that DNGPrivateData is bigger and has more tags in the K-3 than the K-5IIs, but I haven't a clue at the moment how to interpret the differences.

Adobe Camera Raw V8.2 doesn't, as yet, fully support the K3 so MAWB may not yet be fully implemented.

http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/camera-raw-plug-supported-cameras.html#

Addition

Currently the Pentax K3 isn't on the list for ACR V8.3 either, though it may be in the final release due 31st December 2013.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cameraraw8-3-cc/?tabID=details#tabTop

It also talks about "Separate Auto Temperature and Auto Tint feature. Shift-double-click to invoke "auto temperature" and "auto tint" separately".

I've had a glance through the (very technical) Ricoh Technical Report linked from that page provided earlier - more maths there than I understand for sure. There's a lot about the blending of the different zones to make a natural transition, which is obviously a key element of its success.

But significantly, the 'Post Processing' section is also significant - this is clearly 'in camera' post processing, and the only result from in-camera PP is a JPEG (or TIFF if performing in-camera RAW conversion). So, this seems to support the ideas already expressed above that this MAWB feature must only apply to JPEG output.

I can see no possibility that any third party RAW converter can carry out the calculations even if the data was carried over in the RAW file. As to whether the updated PDCU contains the algorithims to carry out the same computations and construct the WB when rendering the file remains to be seen ....