Custom Camera Calibration profile for LR with your A7/s/r/ii/rii?

[MikeEvangelist]

I have been primarily using the 'Adobe Standard' camera calibration profile in Lightroom with my A7-cameras, but have always felt the colors (especially greens) weren't quite right. So I decided to dig out the Color Checker target and try making my own profiles. So far, I like the results.

Just curious if other Lightroom users are using the default profiles or their own.

 

[dandrewk]

Yes, I've been using X-rite's Color Checker Pro for a few years. It's one of the first things I do with any new camera. I like how it adds a bit of saturation to reds and greens.

 

[dmward]

I make profiles for all my cameras using a color checker and DNG Profile Editor.
Ive made some by doing both the 5600 and the 2700 images but didn't notice enough of a difference from shooting a chart in bright sun and using that for both.

What I have found is that there is a significant difference when selecting the Base, Adobe, and linear tone curve options.

Base and Adobe are similar so I now just use Base, presuming that Adobe is going to be close to the Adobe default profile. The linear curve results in a nasty, flat image that looks like it has zero gama. It definitely pulls the highlights and shadows away from clipping.

Putting a tone curve onto the image in Lightroom brings back the normal image look. The difference is that I now have much more control over the tone curve.

Definitely worth exploring if you are seriously into controlling color and tonality in an image. Pretty much eliminates the need for brackets and HDR merge for most situations.

 

[dmward]

Here is a composite to illustrate:

Upper left is with Linear profile applied. Upper right is processed image.
Lower left is with base profile applied. Lower right is with essentially the same processing except a stronger tone curve and exposure.
The processing applied was an attempt to get the two processed images to look as similar as possible in a short period of time.

 

[MikeEvangelist]

Here is a composite to illustrate

Thanks for the examples! Very interesting.

So far I've just used the profile tool that X-rite supplies with the color chart, which has no options. I'll definitely have a closer look at the Adobe tool to see how the results compare.