Lightroom Camera Profiles
I use Adobe Lightroom to adjust my RAW images and when Adobe introduced the ability to use different camera profiles I played around with them as any camera geek probably would. At that time I found that I preferred the standard profile to the custom camera ones, so I promptly forgot all about them. Until recently that is. (The following is really only meant for camera geeks)
Update: After some more research I realized I made a mistake when I created the profiles. I’ve uploaded new profiles that were made correctly.
What changed is my camera gear. When I first tried camera profiles I was using a Nikon D200 but now I use a D700. With the D200, I remembered that the different profiles only changed the contrast of the image which wasn’t really a big deal, so I just picked a profile I liked and forgot about them. I probably wouldn’t have rediscovered profiles if I hadn’t noticed that the images from the D700 had a reddish/magenta tint to them.
Under daylight it wasn’t that bad, but under artificial lighting it was much more noticeable especially if I had to use the highlight recovery slider. For a while I just chalked this up to be a quirk of the D700 and worked around it, then I read an article online about the new Leica M9. In it the author mentioned how Lightroom does not yet have profiles for the Leica and it hit me. What if I could fix the whole red/magenta tint by just changing the profile!
I immediately opened an image in Lightroom that I had a lot of trouble with and changed the profile in the calibration panel of the Develop module. Eureka! The tint was gone and I was happy. However, being a geek, I wasn’t content with using the built in profiles, so I made my own using Adobe’s DNG profile editor. There are plenty of articles online about how to do this, so please don’t email me any questions. Along with making one for the D700 I also made one for the D300. Both profiles have a bit of extra contrast added to them too. These probably aren’t the most accurate profiles around and may only be suited for my specific cameras, but I like them better than the built-in ones and you may still find them useful:
Google for instructions on how to install them. Oh, these work for Camera Raw too.
Now for the really geeky details. These profiles are made using images of Color Checker cards shot under both 6500K and 2850K lighting. I don’t have any specialized color accurate lighting systems so the two color temperatures were created by using the appropriate gels on a speedlight. That’s why I don’t think they’re that accurate, but they seem to work fine and there’s no way for me to check them.
Update: I made the original profiles using 1/2 CTO and 1/2 CTB gels which was incorrect. The correct gels to use was Full CTO and 1/4 CTB. The above link now points to new profiles made using the correct gels.
