Photo AI shifts the white balance

Converting multiple files using the Lightroom - Photo AI - Lightroom workflow. I noticed my RAW images (Sonly ILCE - 6400 ARW files) shift the White Balance Temp and Tint slightly. As an example the original ARW file shows “as shot” values 5300/+18 while after Photo AI processing the values shift to 5100/+24. This is really annoying and very undesired shift as it makes images too warm.
I tend to process 100’s of files through the Photo AI using default “autopilot” settings and it is really unrealistic I go and adjust the white balance on every image over and over again.
I just noticed one thing the Color Profile in Lightroom changes from “Adobe Color” to “Camera Standard” after Photo AI processing. Manually changing it back to Adobe Standard removes the yellowish color tint from the image, however, the actual value of the Color and Tint remain unchanged (different from the original)

Steps to reproduce issue:

  1. Imported multiple files from Sony ILCE - 6400 into Lightroom
  2. Selected one or more of the ARW files
  3. In Lightroom open the File/Plugin Extras menu and select “Process with Photo AI”
  4. This opens the files in Photo AI using the RAW format
  5. Accepted the default “autopilot” settings and click on “Save to Adobe Lightroom Classic Plugin”
  6. The DNG file gets created and displayed in Lightroom
  7. Verify the White Balance values and see they are slightly different from the original

Topaz Photo AI v1.3.1 on Mac Studio (M1)

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Thanks for reporting this. Could you send some of these files to my Dropbox so I can reproduce this and share with my team to fix?

You can securely submit your image(s) to my Dropbox using the link below. Please be sure to send me a note to let me know you sent something.
Dropbox File Request

Having images from a range of ISO levels would be best to make sure we are getting the right colors and white balance for each ISO level.

I uploaded 3 files. All of them start with _TWM*.ARW at different ISO. After I process them through Topaz Photo AI they all come back to Lightroom as .DNG file with White Balance, Tint, and Color Profile changed.
Thanks for looking into this, Tomas

Thanks for sending the files Tomas. I reproduced the shift in the white balance temp and tint values.

It doesn’t seem to be affecting the image colors on my computer, although the values are changing. The camera profile is also the same on my computer. The images are starting and ending with Camera Standard.

Most significant is the change in the lens correction, which is lost in the Topaz Photo AI processed version. However, checking “Enable Profile Corrections” fixes this.
image

Are you seeing the same behavior or is it different for you?

The temp and tint are changing and I definitely can see the change in the image.
And yes the lens correction is lost after the Topaz processing but as you said it is easy to fix. The color shift is not that easy as it may be different for every of 100’s pictures.
This is the values of the original ARW file:
image
This is after Topaz Photo AI processing:
image

Also there is another issue (?) of the file size. it grows from original ARW of 24MB to DNG of 137MB. This is over 100MB difference. I understand the DNG file gets bigger but this seems to be excessive
image
image
image

The white balance can be fixed if I have some examples. Please upload a few ARW files with different white balance values.

You can securely submit your image(s) to my Dropbox using the link below. Please be sure to send me a note to let me know you sent something.
Dropbox File Request

The DNG output file size is expected behavior. The original RAW file is likely compressed while our DNG export is full size and uncompressed so the output file is larger. We do not have access to a DNG compression algorithm as that is proprietary to Adobe.

If you need to decrease the DNG file size, use Adobe DNG Converter to compress the DNG file to a smaller size.

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