PCGS Needs to Color Correct "TrueView" Images

I purchased a new little Russian coin, and the TrueView is the most egregiously red-shifted of any of the coins I own as compared to the coin's actual appearance in hand.

Why can PCGS not improve the accuracy of the colors in their photos? It has gotten worse rather than better (this new coin is in one of their newest slabs with the near field communication [NFC] functionality).

I love the little Russian coin, but the color is so off as to be "substantially misleading" in my opinion.

Post your examples of PCGS photos and your photos of the same coins.

MY PHOTO

PCGS "TrueView" PHOTO

 

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MY PHOTOS:




PCGS "TrueView" PHOTOS:

 

Looks like PCGS has tried to accentuate the color and brighten the less toned surfaces rather than display a washed out coin. Color sells. I'd like to see you do a poll. Image one of your coins again (just the coin) and one of their true views WITHOUT saying which is which. My bet is the bright, colorful TV image will get the most votes. Most collectors like bright, colorful, shiny over "original."

PS It appears their image shows more detail. Either stronger light or better focus?

 

Way too much red in those TruViews. Do you think it is the white balance setting or something they are doing in post processing just to make the images appear nicer?

Here is my 1954-S Jefferson Nickel that I crossed from NGC to PCGS MS67.

My photo:




PCGS TruView:



Too much red again!

 

I like your photo best!

Now, a question for you and @brg5658

1. This is probably something the camera does automatically right?
2. If the color balance or white balance is set for one alloy - copper, does it need to be set differently for gold?

 

I always thought that white balance is related to the lights you are using, not what you are photographing. As long as you don't change your light source, you shouldn't need to change your white balance.

That said, I don't know nearly as much about macro photography as some of the others on this forum, I just know how to make the most of the meager equipment that I have. I think we need one of the photography experts to settle the debate about the white balance issue.

 

my photo...



and Tru view..



I love the toning either way.

 

Your images don't show a ton of red shift - but it's certainly there and noticeable! Your coin also isn't deeply or vibrantly toned (light, pastel, satiny surfaces seem to be more accurately displayed in TrueViews). An aside, it is "TrueView", not "TruView" as so many tend to mistype.

I'm not the only one who has complained about their consistent red-shifted images. I have been complaining for at least 6-7 years, even direct to Phil Arnold, and nothing ever changes.

I think it almost must be a combination of their light sources and their post-processing. I don't understand how they can be getting some of the photos they are without boosting saturation on some images. They also tend to light toned coins differently from frosty white coins - toned coin images often take on a more axial-like appearance, which overexaggerates colors. There also seems to be a lack of consistency in how red-shifted a coin's image is...some Morgans seem to be fine, other types of coins - like world coins and medals - seem to suffer from this red-shift sometimes in wildly misleading ways.

 

I do all my own photos, but end up with TVs of some coins because they're required. More often than not, I really don't like the TVs, and color is the biggest reason. When I shoot mine (or anyone else's), I make sure the color is dead nuts on. The TrueView doesn't have the luxury of spending much time with post-processing, as their volume dictates they're a bit of an assembly line, and I don't know how many people are shooting pictures in their department, but you have different skill levels in play, and you can't choose who your photographer is.

TrueView

MessydeskView


TrueView

MessydeskView

 

I don't disagree with your premise but aren't the trueview photos done before encapsulation? You can get very different light angles when you don't have to deal with the plastic reflection. Some colorfull photos I've taken can only be replicated outside of the slab.

 

Angles make a difference. Same lighting and distance with a slight angle on the prettier pictures

 

The pictures I took above were out of the slab. Color shift is not affected by the presence or absence of plastic.

 

Some particular angles or views of coins are difficult in plastic, but the plastic doesn't "remove" the color that TrueView images have supposedly captured.

On the little 10 Kopek I posted - there is ZERO, ZILCH, NADA red/orange color to the coin in hand. There is a bit of blue/green iridescent peripheral toning on the crest side, but none of the deep orange/red toning in the central design.

Below is another example from my collection. This medal is beautiful in hand, but it has no pink/purple hue to it on the obverse - it is green and blue toned. This pink (red-shifted) hue can only come from improper color balance/white-balance. It simply doesn't exist on the medal in hand.


My photos:



PCGS "TrueView":

 

I've noticed the same thing with the True View images they seem to make the coins look like they have fantastic toning/color but, they really don't. It doesn't mean the coin is ugly but, it's not what the coin really looks like in hand. What I've also realized that when you look at images on Heritages Webb site and others too the images of the coins in the slabs are more realistic and seem natural. However, when they show the coin as if it's not in a slab the coin is usually more colorful. Very much like the True view images. I prefer to look at the pictures of coins in their slab because its fairly close to what the coin will look like in hand. Some companies do a better job than others you just need to understand the coin may not look exactly like the pictures. Lighting has a great effect on how a coin looks.

 

hotwheelsearl, posted: "Angles make a difference. Same lighting and distance with a slight angle on the prettier pictures."

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I AGREE TOTALLY! However, @brg5658 (a very accomplished numismatic photographer) DISAGREED 100% with this technique on the NGC forum when I suggested folks try the same thing you've done!

I notice that he has not commented at all about the attractive ANGLED images you have posted. Perhaps @brg5658 has changed his original opinion.

 

Something I've noticed. When I take an image of a coin, I see things on it that I missed under magnification. While I know that the different temperatures of different types of light will change a coin's color, IS IT POSSIBLE that the camera sees colors on coins that are closer to their actual color BECAUSE all humans see a different color when looking at the exact same color patch?

 

No! PCGS "Cooks" their coin pictures. Many dealers on line will show PCGS pictures and then their own pictures. You can really tell the difference.

 

"Closer" is a strange term to apply, since it implies that you know what the true color is. If you have a daylight-balanced light source, your eyes are about as true as you can get. Unless, of course, you have some sort of color-blindness. If you're using a tungsten-balanced light, you've just introduced a color cast that your brain gets used to and compensates for -- a little. Cameras see color a little differently, in that they have a much narrower dynamic range they can see. If you look at DSLR specs, you'll see the detectors rated at a range of EV (Exposure Values) in which they can produce meaningful data. Your eye can see a wider range than most. Your brain also knows how to resolve better shadow and highlight detail simultaneously than a camera detector can -- sort of an adaptive HDR.

Once the camera has taken the picture, it has to be presented to your eye again. This involves a fairly long imaging chain -- detector raw to a viewable image, viewable image to viewing software, viewing software to display, display to eye. Every one of those links in the chain entails some sort of color conversion. The biggest is the raw data to a color space that can be represented as a viewable image. These color spaces include Adobe RGB, sRGB, RGB, all of which have a smaller viewable color gamut than the eye can pick up (think neon highlighters). This image illustrates the size of the color space you can see and that a viewable image can represent. A camera detector can be yet another color gamut that isn't shown here.

Of course, this image is an sRGB image representing the visible spectrum, so it physically can't show you the differences in what you can see, just that you can see more colors than an image can hold.

Going from the viewable image to the viewing software, there's this little thing called "color management." This is how the software decodes an image to be sent to the display hardware, mapping it to a displayable set of colors. Believe it or not, different software handles this differently. If you consider that sRGB is a rather small part of the color space, viewing software (think web browsers) can have its own color management profile to do this translation. It is usually very subtle, but often noticeable. As an exercise, open Chrome and Edge and look at a the same brown large cent in both side by side. You may notice a slight difference, you may not. If you don't, it could be that the display you're using doesn't show the difference. Displays need to be calibrated a standard to give you anything close to the true colors of the image, which by now are actually just the colors the color management profile had indicated are to be displayed. If your monitor is a good one, it supports about 100% of the sRGB gamut. There are wide gamut monitors that can display more, but those only make sense if the color management profile permit those colors to actually reach the display. If your monitor displays less than 100% of the sRGB gamut, you will lose color information. Inexpensive laptops and monitors typically show less than 80%. On top of that, they tend not to be accurately calibrated, and not just in terms of a simple, "rigid" blue or yellow shift that could be corrected with the hue button on your monitor. Maybe the bright reds are too dark, the middle reds are too light, and the dark reds are just right. Trying a single adjustment will not make them all better. Color calibration tools will actually read the monitor's output and create a new color map that's given to the display adapter to help the monitor produce "true" colors. Of course, if you've read this far, you know that "true" set sail a long time ago.

So, while humans tend to see slightly different colors than each other, it still tends to be better than you'll see from a photo, because of the visible color spectrum being larger than usable color gamuts and all the color conversions that are done along the way from the detector to your eye.

 

Thanks for your information. I will state this again. I can examine a coin at forty power while tipping and rotating it. Then, when I look at a micrograph of the same area STUFF SHOWS UP IN THE IMAGE THAT I MISSED. This was especially true with old black and white photographs.

 

This is one reason you will never see me post a color photomicrograph (other than to illustrate why I don't post color photomicrographs). The colors are distracting.