Lightroom 2 - camera profiles

[Terry]

I admit that I haven't gone through the information about the new camera profile features in Lightroom. That being said perhaps it will solve some of the niggles we have with Adobe RAW conversions (like red skin tones for the M8). Perhaps we can use this thread as a place to share any profiles we come up with or links to other posted profiles for cameras regularly used by forum members.

 

[LJL]

Terry,
I am assuming you are talking about user developed profiles. I am not a LR user, so this may be out of place, but I did try opening various files in ACR from Bridge. The camera profile options that come up for most of my M8 shots still are ACR 3.6 and ACR 4.4. There does NOT appear to be a newer or revised Camera RAW profile with the ACR 4.5 update. I would assume this is the same engine used in LR2, but really do not know if they have tweaked things beyond the stock ACR converter.

Just thought to offer up that observation.

LJ

 

[Terry]

LJ,
Yes I am thinking about user created profiles. I was really thinking something like the JFI profiles for the M8. It seems to me it would be similar to the market for Photoshop plug-ins but for raw conversions. Luminous Landscape has a write-up on the new functionality and of has lots of different links to the diffferent Adobe sites. I can't post a link to LL from my iPhone but you can't miss it in the what's new section.

Terry

 

[LJL]

Terry,
I am cool on that, and was thinking that is what you were referring to. However, Adobe caught so much flak about the poor conversion profiles for things like the M8, that they did go in and revise it between ACR 3.6 and 4.4. I was just curious if they may have done that tweaking again, but apparently not.

I agree that it would be nice to have a suite of profiles for some cameras, and be able to drop them in to use, much like was done when the M8 first came out and folks like Jamie Roberts created new things for use in C1 to overcome the magenta issue before Leica offered something up and filters were not as available. While that was a bit more extreme, it would be nice to have some options to try. The hardest thing for most folks is wrestling with the tint. They can usually get color temp adjusted, but tint really messes up a lot of people. And learning to vary the saturation in specific color channels is also important, but has been a lot of work in ACR in the past. Having access to drop in good profiles developed by others would always be a good thing.

LJ

 

[Robert Campbell]

More info on profiles for LR2 here:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

There are new profiles plus the ability to create your own. These have to be downloaded seperately, at least for ACR.

I had a look, the provided profiles are really horrible. They seem to change the gamma as well as the colour and as such are completely unsuitable. I am however looking forward to some reputable custom profiles to be released, especially by some big names who make C1 profiles.

 

[stephengilbert]

Luminous Landscape is selling a rather long instructional video for LR 2 that includes an explanation of the camera profile feature and the use of the DNG Profile Editor. It is fairly easy to use, assuming that (unlike me) you are very good at subtle color comparisons. For people who object to LR or ACR's rendition of skin tones, for example, it is fairly simple to create a profile that renders them as you choose.

If you don't mind the cuteness of Michael Reichmann, and are the impatient sort, you can download hours of instruction. I think alot of what Jeff Schewe has to say is valuable, and worth the $34.95.

 

[dfarkas]

Terry,

The lack of support for ICC camera profiles (not just "camera calibration" sliders) is one of the main reasons I use C1 instead of LR. I love all the DAM features of LR, but just plain prefer the color qulaity of C1, especially when I use my own i1 XT generated ICC profiles for the M8.

I'll have to check out the impementation of this "new" feature in LR2.

David

 

[Terry]

David,
It seems like right now people are using all different versions of C1 and there seems to be some frustration as none of the versions is completely up to date with updates. If someone can say definitively this is version to use and it is up to date and not about to be updated I would learn it. I've never seen a book or anything other than trial and error for learning things. Not trying to be negative but there just dot seem to clear answers.