Sunset RAW Problem

I've also included Lightroom colour profiles generated with a QPcard & software. I've found these to consistently give the most natural colour rendition. (See my post here )

But comments above re WB & highlights/shadows are also very valid. Especially as these can throw off what you might think of as a 'proper' exposure - especially in the highlights of the sun.

Matt

Thanks for all your suggestions. After some experimentation, I can announce that the result is ... (drum roll...) ... none of the above. Highlight correction was 'off' in camera and in software. WB produced 'interesting' changes to the sky but not much change to the sun. Other software settings seemed OK and compatible with camera settings.

However... some wild experimentation with Affinity Photo (which is what I'm most familiar with) suggests that the problem relates to how the blue channel is processed. The only blue is in the sun and (quite reasonably) it's contentrated at the RH end of the histogram. Reducing blue at the far RH end (via Curves) brings yellow bands to the sun, which is reasonable because R+G+B = white, R+G = yellow. The precise result was very sensitive to the adjustment made. Which suggests to me that the differences in the sun are the result of small differences in the way the RAW engines deal with a pretty extreme case where one of the channels is way up against the RH end of the histogram. If blue were dominant, the differences wouldn't be very obvious to the eye, but when the blue is mainly balancing the R and G to give white, a small difference is giving a noticeable change in colour.

How does that sound?

Steve