No matter how good your camera is, there will still be imperfections in your images and video. Each lens adds its own issues, from unwanted vignettes and color fringe to visible distortion and perspective problems. But most of these issues can be fixed automatically or with minimal effort through the many options for lens profiles and lens corrections that exist in Adobe Creative Cloud, including applications such as Lightroom, Camera Raw, and After Effects. In this course you'll learn how to build custom profiles for all your camera and lens combinations, using a simple calibration chart and a free utility from Adobe, and apply those profiles to solve problems in different Adobe programs. Whether you are a photographer, video pro, or just a smartphone enthusiast every image can be improved. Start here to learn how to get the data you need to make these enhancements faster and easier.
Instructor. Rich Harrington is a digital video expert, educator, speaker, and author. As a digital video expert and trained business professional, Rich Harrington understands both the creative and management sides of the visual communications industry. He is the founder of the visual communications company in Washington, DC.
He is a certified instructor for Adobe and Apple and a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals Instructor Dream Team. Rich is a popular speaker on the digital video circuit and has served as program manager for conferences hosted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). He has also written several books for the video industry, including An Editor's Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro, From Still to Motion, and Photoshop for Video.
To explore more resources for media professionals and to watch Rich's many podcasts, visit. Related courses. By: Ben Long Course. 2h 32m 59s. By: Chris Orwig Course. 4h 57m 5s.
By: Ben Long Course. 3h 50m 12s. Course Transcript - Once you've got that software downloaded and installed, take a look inside of the folder that has all of the calibration charts. You're going to need at least one of these printed out. In fact, you might need multiple ones.
Let's talk through what these charts are and what they do. The reason why there are so many different charts is that it's to accommodate different sizes. Now, keep in mind that if you could afford to print the larger one, maybe taking it to your local office printer shop, this is going to give you better results. But if you're shooting in a really small space, having such a large chart is going to be problematic.
What you're trying to do is balance out the shooting situation. The issue here is that you need a chart that's going to fill up about half the frame in your camera. I'm in a relatively large studio so it's easy for me to adjust the distance from the camera to the chart itself. If I was using something like a telephoto lens, well, my studio might not be. Practice while you learn with exercise files. Watch this course anytime, anywhere.
Course Contents. Welcome Welcome.
1. The Role of Lens Profiles and Auto Corrections 1. The Role of Lens Profiles and Auto Corrections.
2. The Role of Lens Corrections 2. The Role of Lens Corrections. 3. Building Custom Lens Profiles 3. Building Custom Lens Profiles.
4. Solving Problems in Lightroom 4. Solving Problems in Lightroom. 5. Solving Problems in Adobe Camera Raw 5. Solving Problems in Adobe Camera Raw.
6. Fixing Photos and Videos with Adobe Photoshop 6. Fixing Photos and Videos with Adobe Photoshop. Conclusion Conclusion.
The theory of 'Marginal Gains' states that if you make tiny improvements in all aspects of your performance, then these improvements will all add up and create a significant overall improvement. The theory of Marginal Gains can also help with your photographic workflow. As a travel photographer, I shoot a lot of pictures on a wide variety of subjects. On a recent two day trip to Belgium I came back with well over two thousand pictures, for example. If you're the sort of photographer who relies on sorting everything out on a computer later, then even a couple of days of shooting is going to take you a while to process. As such, it's far better to get everything as close as possible in-camera and have minimal edits left for post-processing. One of the ways in which you can minimize the amount of work you need to do in post-processing is to calibrate your camera.
Many digital photographers are familiar with calibrating their computer monitor to help them get accurate results when adjusting images - some will even go to the trouble of calibrating their printers to get better, more predictable print results. But few think of calibrating their camera. After calibration Whatever the device, the principle of calibration is the same.
You create a custom profile for your device, so that color management capable software can make allowances for any variances. So when you calibrate a monitor, you're measuring how it varies from an agreed standard in how it displays colors. Top flight monitors might not vary all that much, but a lower-end screen might be significantly 'off'. The resulting profile is used to adjust how your images are displayed on that screen, to eliminate the discrepancy. All cameras see colors differently and to recreate a scene as you remember it, you might have to make a number of edits in post-processing to render the colors accurately. Calibration will mean you have a better, more accurate starting point and so each image will, in theory need fewer edits. Calibrating a camera works in a similar way: essentially you are measuring any variance in how it sees the world, and creating a profile to correct these individual differences at the Raw processing stage.
I first became convinced of camera profiling some years ago, when processing some images of an Irish sunset shot on a Nikon D2x. The colors came out too yellow and muted, and not the vibrant purples I remembered from the scene. So, on a whim I created a profile from a calibration image that I had photographed but never used, and then watched amazed as each image preview rendered in exactly the way I recalled. Depending on your camera and light source however, you might not notice such a prominent color shift, but the theory of Marginal Gains teaches us that even apparently unnoticeable improvements in quality will add up. Creating a custom profile for your camera has never been easier. I use the and the plug-in that allows me to create profiles direct from Adobe Lightroom. You can also use the bundled software to create tailor-made camera profiles for Adobe Camera Raw.
Adobe terms these as DNG profiles, but you don't need to convert your Raw files to DNGs (Adobe's Digital Negative format) to use them. ColorChecker Passport photographed in bright sunlight. The actual ColorChecker Passport consists of a standard 24-patch color target in a hard plastic case. You also get a grey card, which can be used for white balance and a color enhancement target, but the most useful is the standard color target. Creating a camera profile To create a camera profile, simply photograph the target under a given light. If you have more than one camera, then use each body, with the same lens if possible. I tend to use a mid-range zoom which is the one I use the most when out shooting.
Since I'm capturing raw files exclusively and not JPEGs, it doesn't matter which color space - Adobe RGB or sRGB - I select in camera, but I always process the files in AdobeRGB since it gives a wider color gamut. You should use the same color space for both the calibration shot and subsequent images which will use the same profile. The following is my workflow, using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. In Lightroom, select the imported image of the calibration target then select the Export command and then select the ColorChecker Passport preset that is loaded when you installed the software that comes with the Passport.
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Simply name your profile and the software does all of the rest. After you restart Lightroom, the resulting profile can then be applied through the Profile pop-up in the Camera Calibration panel of Lightroom. Remember though that you'll only see profiles that are created by the camera that shot any Raw file you have selected. For an enhanced workflow, this profile can be saved as part of a Develop Preset and applied to a batch of applicable pictures. Adobe Lightroom Export dialog showing the ColorChecker Passport interface. The difficult thing is to work out how many calibrations you need to do. In theory you should perform a calibration for each lighting source, lens, and even ISO.
Camera Calibration Software
In practice, unless you work in very controlled conditions this is probably too unwieldy and will slow up your workflow. The trick is to find a balance for your type of shooting between having to create and apply so many different calibrations that it will be too time consuming and having too few profiles to be any use. As with most things to do with calibration, even having calibrated your camera once will be an improvement on most photographers' workflow.
How to use custom profiles Working as a travel photographer, I tend to make a custom profile for each location area. So if I am shooting in the Himalayan region of Ladakh in India, I'll create a profile, and if on the same trip I were to head to a completely different area, such as the lush state of Kerala in the South of India, then I would repeat the process. The ColorChecker Passport software has the ability to combine two different calibrations into a Dual-Illuminant DNG Profile. This gives a more accurate profile for your camera if you are shooting under any lighting source, and not just the sources you have actually profiled. What you'll need to do is shoot two different calibration shots under significantly different light sources. Then select the two calibration images and the software will create a combined camera profile, which is said to be much more accurate when applied under different lighting conditions than a single profile. After calibration The sooner you perform these calibrations, then the sooner you can apply them automatically as a Develop Preset when importing any new images.
If you don't use Adobe Lightroom, then you can use the ColorChecker Passport standalone software to create your DNG Profiles, which can then be applied through some other Raw processing software including Adobe Camera Raw and CaptureOne. Currently, the ColorChecker Passport and DNG profiles are not compatible with Apple Aperture. Steve Davey is a writer and photographer based in London. He juggles a young family with traveling as much as possible to some of the more exotic and photogenic parts of the world. Steve has just released the second edition of, which has been hailed as the leading guide to traveling with a camera. The book is also available on Kindle, iBookstore, Barnes & Noble and Kobo editions.
To complement the first edition of the book, Steve launched his own range of travel photography trips to some of the most photogenic parts of the world. Uniquely falling between a photography tour and a workshop, Steve accompanies each trip providing copious instruction as well as countless photo-opportunities. More detail on these trips and Footprint Travel Photography on. Steve's professional site can be found on.
(unknown member) Working as a travel photographer, I tend to make a custom profile for each location area. No need, the profiles are illuminant specific. You can build one for daylight, use it all day long, morning noon and late afternoon. This is illustrated (and you can test this yourself) here: In this video, we’ll look into the creation and use of DNG camera profiles in three raw converters. The video covers: What are DNG camera profiles, how do they differ from ICC camera profiles. Misconceptions about DNG camera profiles. Just when, and why do you need to build custom DNG camera profiles?
How to build custom DNG camera profiles using the X-rite Passport software. The role of various illuminants on camera sensors and DNG camera profiles. Dual Illuminant DNG camera profiles. Examples of usage of DNG camera profiles in Lightroom, ACR, and Iridient Developer. Low Rez (YouTube): High Rez (download).
Sorry - probably wasn't clear. I mean the geographical location. So if I am heading to the Arctic, I will do a profile there. The same in (for example) North Africa.
Moving between two or three European locations, I would just do the one profile. As you say this is probably not completely necessary, but the daylight in these extremes will vary.
The time of year will also have an effect. As I have the colour target, and as the process only takes a few minutes, then it is a good discipline. I am off to Morocco for two weeks on Sunday. I will do a profile in the first day or so and then set the calibration as the develop process for al future imports/profiles. By the way - clever how you managed to get in the links to your own website;-). (unknown member) I mean the geographical location. The profiles are illuminant specific, the sun in all such locations have the same SPD.
Did you see the video? The image in the park was shot in Ashland OR, the profile was built in Santa Fe NM. The object 93 million miles away that illuminate an object in the Arctic and North Africa is the same illuminate. There's no reason to build so many DNG profiles if you grasp that basic concept.
From Eric Chan at Adobe: It's not the shooting temperature that matters, but the spectrum of the illumination. This is more complex and not easily measurable.
General advice: if you tend to photograph under daylight, not worth building profile for each flavor of daylight, regardless of the color temp. There will be minor variations between D50 and D75 lighting (roughly 5000 K and 7500 K CCT) but this tends to get eliminated once WB is considered.
If you photograph under unusual artifical lighting often, consider building a profile for that lighting. In my reading of the situation, the spectrum of sunlight subtly changes depending on a number of things, including the elevation, directionality of the sun (time of year in the hemispheric extremes) and even distance from the equator. The light is subtly filtered by, and affected by the atmosphere of the place. I guess that 1500 metres elevation and 1000 miles as the crow flies is not enough for a perceptible difference. I travel to a lot of extremes.
Maybe repeat the example at the Dead Sea, and in Lhasa and there might be more of a difference. In practice though, would anyone notice visually - probably not.
It is a workflow thing for me that only takes a few minutes and doesn't reflect any extra cost. Even if the change is only 1%, then the theory of marginal gains (as espoused by the British cycling team) is that all of those 1%s add up! (unknown member) the spectrum of sunlight subtly changes depending on a number of things, including the elevation, directionality of the sun (time of year in the hemispheric extremes). Not in terms of your camera sensor and it's interaction with a DNG profile. It is the SPD that counts: WB is very largely agnostic too, that takes place in another part of the processing path. If you view my video, you'll see that a profile made at 7000 feet can be used at sea level a few thousand miles away. My goal isn't to have you change your workflow.
If you're happy, stick with it. My goal is to provide factual info about DNG profiles. And this has nothing to do with accurate (colorimetric) color, it's about producing pleasing color which is subjective.
Accurate in this context is a marketing buzz word and as yet, no one has produced data that suggests this or that profile produces colorimetric accuracy. Sorry to come to this discussion late, but in real life, my experiences match Steve's. It's true that the sun is the same color the world round, but there are clearly some independent variables out there in the real world that aren't accounted for in the ideas you talk about in your video because there are very visible differences in pictures processed with site-specific profiles vs.
Dual illuminants. I find that each location-and even the same location in different seasons-has a unique effect on the color that gets reflected from objects. The good news is that profiles are easily managed and you don't have to let them clutter up your image editor. (unknown member) You are correct, visually and over location, the sun differs. The spectrum doesn't such you need to build multiple DNG camera profiles. ONE for daylight, should work all day, anywhere. From Adobe engineer Eric Chan: It's not the shooting temperature that matters, but the spectrum of the illumination.
This is more complex and not easily measurable. General advice: if you tend to photograph under daylight, not worth building profile for each flavor of daylight, regardless of the color temp. There will be minor variations between D50 and D75 lighting (roughly 5000 K and 7500 K CCT) but this tends to get eliminated once WB is considered. If you photograph under unusual artifical lighting often, consider building a profile for that lighting. @digidog - @VictorEngel is spot on with his comment. In real life light does not have the same spectrum just because there is a theoretical daylight spectral invariance. Environmental issues can have a huge impact - including the obvious issue of reflected color casts from your surroundings.
Start going into a forest and try your luck. Now you may be happy with a 'good enough' average but frankly then why bother color profiling at all? Just use a standard profile and adjust WB for visual impact - works for the 99% (and nothing wrong with that, people should just know what the trade-off is). PS: I do not think Eric from Adobe is the best source to quote.
At the end of my 5DS/R review I show the very real difference between using Adobe's standard profile and your own. Notice that I come away far better with my own profile with both highlights and shadows - at the same time(!). (unknown member) @digidog - @VictorEngel is spot on with his comment. In real life light does not have the same spectrum just because there is a theoretical daylight spectral invariance. I proved that's not the case in my video.! Various DNG profiles built in differing locations and times of the day IN daylight produce identical results!
Test it yourself. PS: I do not think Eric from Adobe is the best source to quote. You're kidding right? Do you know who Eric Chan from Adobe is? Check out the splash screen credits for ACR and LR. He's the #2 ACR engineer for those products, working with Thomas Knoll. The guy wrote most of the CODE for all the DNG camera profile functionality.
Guys, get your facts straight and check with those who actually know how this works (hint, the actual Adobe engineers!).In this 30 minute video, we’ll look into the creation and use of DNG camera profiles in three raw converters. Low Rez (YouTube). (unknown member) At the end of my 5DS/R review I show the very real difference between using Adobe's standard profile and your own. My ecodial 3.4.
You're missing the point! There ARE differences between Adobe's profile and your own! That's why we build our own profiles. There's no need to build multiple profiles from your own sensor in differing daylight conditions (see below). ONE for daylight, one for Tungsten, one for each specific illuminant. Cleary there's a difference between an Adobe built profile using their sensor and one you build.
What Eric wrote is clear, correct and proven: 'Many flavors of natural daylight are spectrally similar (weighted differently), so this is why a daylight profile tends to work well in many flavors of daylight regardless of the actual CCT (e.g., 4700 K thru 7500 K)'. Listen to Eric, he wrote the software!
Or just do the correct testing as I did in the video. @digidog you prove nothing - and I will - later - post samples showing very clearly why what you write is either nonsense or because you choose to exclude the impact of color casts. I proved that's not the case in my video.! Various DNG profiles built in differing locations and times of the day IN daylight produce identical results! Test it yourself. PS: I do not think Eric from Adobe is the best source to quote. You're kidding right?
Do you know who Eric Chan from Adobe is? I know exactly who he is. He is the person claiming that nothing is wrong with Adobe's 5DS/R profile. That's his credentials to me. Being wrong at a high technical level does not make your views more credible. (unknown member) There is nothing 'wrong' with Adobe's profiles, they differ from yours.
That's why Eric and company provided a means to produce your own profiles; the sensors differ. You can believe whatever nonsense you wish and dismiss the writings specifically about how DNG profiles and illuminants react from the guy who wrote the code. You can also believe the earth is 6000 years old and flat. I'm not interested in religious debates. The facts are the facts, I've proven to myself that what Eric write is correct: the need for differing DNG profile PER SENSOR is only necessary for differing illuminates and their SPDs.
What Is Camera Calibration
There's no visible difference in a profile made months apart, thousands of miles apart in differing daylight conditions. WB is not part of the DNG profiles attributes BY DESIGN. Oh, and BTW, please prove there's something wrong with Adobe's profile colorimetrically IF you can. Otherwise, you're just talking subjective color. No science in that!
(unknown member) Victor. Your text indicates you don't know much about profiles or their goal. A profile defines device behavior. IF the Adobe supplied profile doesn't work on your camera, there are two possibilities, one makes sense and one doesn't. What makes sense is that the one camera sample Adobe used to build their profile is quite different from yours. Again, that's WHY we have provisions to build them.
The other possibility which is unproven by you, is that Adobe deliberately built a bad profile. You've missed the point again I've attempted to point out which is there is NO reason to build multiple DNG camera profiles for the same illuminant/SPD which I proved in my video by doing so! Bringing up a canned profile for a single camera that doesn't work for yours has nothing to do with the fact you do not need to build mutliple profiles for daylight, only one. Eric explained this in the quoted text and unlike you, the guy actually does understand how this all works and wrote the code to do so. (unknown member) Further Victor, IF you have colorimetric proof that the canned profile Adobe built for one sensor is incorrect for that sensor, provide it. Otherwise, what you're writing is your opinion which you are entitled to but not your own made up facts!
IF a slew of Canon sensors are not consistent, which is possible, then it makes sense that a canned profile will not define those differing behaviors. IF you want to place blame, do it where it belongs, with sensors that are not consistent among a group. Of course, you have tested the profile you say is broken on how many differing Canon bodies of the the same make? (unknown member) They are of course different, otherwise we wouldn't build our own. A point you continue to ignore.
This has absolutely nothing to do with creating multiple DNG camera profiles for the same illuminate. Not necessary. Eric Chan who wrote the code as explained this as have I and I've shown it in an actual video. You've got an opinion which has zero basis in both fact or colorimetric proof. We'll agree to disagree, but the more important point is, lurkers here should pretty much dismiss what you're writing as you've provided an opinion without a lick of proof. Meanwhile, I've provided both proof of concept and text from the people who write the software. I'll let those lurkers decide who they should consider having a valid point.
Your points about DNG camera profiles and your inability to prove issues with the original Adobe camera sensor that built the canned profile don't have an ounce of fact or evidence. Until you have more than your uneducated opinion, you're wasting our time. If i can jump in: As i can presume, digidog is probably digital dog (avatar is the same too) or Andrew Rodney, from his articles for monitor calibration etc i learned so much years ago and i was able to understand how in basic theory stuff works (manage to calibrate printer, scanner and monitor by that). But i'm little bit puzzled now, when in comes to camera sensors (but i'm aware for camera calibration option in ps and other software for years).
I do see what digidog is trying to explain about sensor and dng profiles (i't basically, how sensors react on different wavelength, not so much on shooting situations), but than i'm not seeing the final goal, calibrated colours. Ok, I understand, you manage wb and all other stuff in second phase, but then, what's the whole point? What i want from colour test card is to have colours under control or let put it this way: same results in colour fidelity, no matter which camera/sensor i'm using. Same as in monitor world. Can you explain me this: let say you get 5 guys together in same spot etc, everyone using different camera (well, basically it will be enough just using different lens manufacturer). Will dng profile, made by same colour target make same results (same colour for everyone, if they all shoot same scene under same conditions)? From video that i've seen from your link it is explained that dng profile don't manage wb an all other stuff, but what is then calibrated and where then colour target comes in?
In my experience, the automatic generation of a camera profile from a shot of a Colorchecker does not work optimally. Perhaps Adobe have optimised this process for the CFA characteristics of Canon cameras, but when using this approach with my Pentax, I got different colours but not all of them were correct. For anyone needing 100% accurate colours, it would be worth their effort to take a picture of a Colorchecker in every condition and then tweak the image later (through a camera profile or in post) so that the colours are reproduced faithfully. For everyone else, I'd say it is much more fruitful to tweak the colours in post to your liking and where you start from isn't terribly important. It only applies to RAW images, where white balance isn't yet applied. When you photograph the target, you shoot it in RAW as well. After you do the calibration, you still need to white balance images.
The actual color calibration is under Camera Calibration in Lightroom. So you set the calibration, and then you can also do white balance in the basic area of lightroom. If you have taken a picture of the color pro checker under the lighting you are interested in, you can use that to set white balance (and you can even pick different shades of gray for warming or cooling the image. I have used this product. Your can turn the color patches over to expose a nice 18% grey card to use to generate a custom white balance for your camera.
(My Oly EM-1 does this with a button push to generate, a second to use.) One logical workflow is to build a custom white balance, then use that to shoot the color samples for each new location. Use the color patch to build the custom import for lightroom, and import your work (shot raw) using the newly generated import. Take less total time in practice than it took me to type this comment. The imported raw files will have accurate color. Technically, no need to build the custom white balance, but it does give you better color in the camera. The camera white balance will be replaced by the full color re-map during the import. Its a slick system.
I don't use it very often because my needs for absolute color precision normally do not justify its use. Methinks that the vast differences in the way that lenses reproduce colors will influence the calibration. Would that not require you to calibrate the camera/lens combination as a unit and then create a separate profile for each lens? I personally have several vintage Minolta lenses, as well as a new Sigma. The colors out of the sigma are cold with strong blues and greens, while the Minolta are quite warm and orange in comparison. I have one Minolta leans, a 50mm/1.4MD that produces such strong orange/yellow/muddy colors that I have stopped using it.
I am wondering if a camera calibration could make it behave more like my new lenses. I find this obsessing over exact color to be a bit odd. I will say i find alot of the adobe standard profiles un appealing they make peoples skin pinkish. But color does not need to be this exact a science. We never worried about this in the film days. You could compare four different film stocks and theyd all have widely different colors. Perfection wasnt possible and we didnt seek it.
We just wanted pleasing color. I actually like the uncalibrated color of the portrait image better than the calibrated.
Dear Mikael, First, it depends on the balancing algorithm, some will cause clipping where raw data is not clipped. Second, the starting point for the exposure when one shoots for calibration and profiling is what incident exposure meter tells, and that is far from clipping. One can bracket from there up and compare results - preferably, using numbers, and not eyeballing; as we are talking calibration and profiling here. Third, close to clipping point is where one can easily run into non-linearities, and skew the profile. I have a QPCard and see no magic in it.
It glares under the daylight, it is not durable in the field, and I do not see it providing better accuracy. I wonder how it is easier. Speed is irrelevant.
Price is not significantly lower; replacing it twice as often as Passport eats out any savings. If you wish I can collect some QPCards and measure them to see if the manufacturing tolerances and aging affect accuracy. It is easy with a spectrophotometer;). You asked if in camera WB settings affect the raw file or not. It does affect the jpg, the jpg preview embedded in the raw file (thus also the preview on the back of your camera). It also affects how your software will display you picture after you imported it. But only because it applies the same WB setting you selected in your camera.
Try it out, shoot two pictures of the same scene, but with different WB. Then in Lightroom set both pictures to the same WB. They will look exactly the same. Therefore: It doesnt matter at what WB you shoot your Target. I personally shoot always with the cloudy preset, but choose what you like. WB and calibration are two different things.
After you applied your calibration, you still have to set your WB. Because there is also a grey field on the target, you can use that to correct your WB. Where white balance with RAW can matter is with respect to exposure. (1) I took a picture of a snowy mountain in the dim cloudy morning. 'Daylight' WB set. On the camera LCD, the image looked horribly blue.
Looked a bit dimly exposed as well. (2) I took a gray card reference picture with auto WB.
Things look much better and no surprise, but an interesting thing happened with the histograms. (1), the gray/white luminance histogram was pretty much in the middle. But, the blue channel was already near clipping. Wouldn't want to increase exposure. (2), the luminance histogram was shifted a bit to the right and the image looked brighter. Blue channel had been shifted where it belongs.
Didn't need to increase exposure. WB at capture doesn't affect the RAW file, but incorrect WB at capture can affect exposure decisions during review on-site.
I may make a bad decision. I can review RGB histograms on the LCD.
Getting WB.mostly. right is good enough to help w/ exposure, I think. Some of you might find this useful, links to free software downloads and a calibration target to play with. You can download and use the free Adobe DNG Profile Editor from here. Or download the xrite software, I believe the software is free to download. If you want to have a tinker to see what this software can do, I`ll stick up a file of a test target and you can see the changes for yourselves without it costing you anything.
I use both the xrite software and the adobe software, but generally only use the xrite profiles, the adobe profiles are a little flat, there more or less the same as the adobe default profiles. EDIT: One surprising thing is that he says it made the sunset look perfect. But you still need to set the correct white balance and using a white balance card or the white patch on this won't do that it will make everything look like regular daylight. Sadly they don't let you have and easy way to match interesting lighting like golden hour or winter blue evening. It just neutralizes it. But it might help to make the colors overall come out better once you manage to find whatever WB setting it was you needed to make it look like when you were there. The information is partially incorrect - you can NOT create 'a general' profile for all lightening situations combining the ICC profiles!
This is not 'my opinion', this is the fact color correction works. The ICC includes a mathematical matrix transformation from one color space (the concrete colors, how they came) to another color space (how they should have come).
So, let's say you light a scene with a strong blueish light, e.g. Flash, say with a blueish filter, to have the example even better understandable.
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Now you create the ICC: it will transform all the blue-cast colors to be more yellowish. This will DESTROY any image when applied to a total different lightening, say yellowish (candle light)!
And interpolating those 2 extremes cancels their original reason for creation. I was running an ICC profiling service a few years ago, so I understand it a bit. Peace, Andrej.
I think you make the same mistake I did once. The calibration would not shift the bluish grey to neutral grey. That is still WB. Since there are grey patches on the target, the software can start from there. The software knows the supposed differences from grey to the other colors, so it will correct for that. Try it out: If you create your profile with a your bluish lightning, and then apply it to your pictures under the same lightning, it will still be blue.
You can then apply the WB, by using the grey patches. Since they are two seperate steps, a profile works for a much bigger range than just the exact lightning it was created with. Sure, the best results can be had with always creating a new profile, but also a standard profile improves results over the whole temperature range. As the profile you create is meant do undo the CURRENT light. A lot of comments here are wrong, but I can't save the world:o). The folks are happy as-is and won't get it, it's ok, I had also a few years owning spectrometer and playing with calibrating printers/cameras. Once more: the ICC profile is ALWAYS for ONE concrete situation - e.g.
'this flash in this room with these walls reflecting the light'. If anything changes, the ICC will influence the otherwise-behaving color-mismatch in a wrong way. Just imagine one medicine for one illness - you can't average all the medicines together to get THE ONE, as it would neutralize itself - however, under the SAME conditions, the metering-calculation done many times improves the final ICC profile, but just for this one very concrete situation. Just my two cents;-).
Cheers from Switzerland. This sounds more like lightroom calibration to match the camera than camera calibration as the calibration is only appliccable when using lightroom and is only appliccable to a specific light colour.
Change the location and the light and one needs to recalibrate for the new light situation. This then means that for each photo shoot there needs to be a new calibration. How does one then manage within lightroom as it is not possible to automatically have lightroom change claibration profiles automatically to match each photo shoot. This has to be done manually. Yes, this is the problem. Camera color profiling only works under one specific light temp, so for completely controlled shoots (catalog work where the fabric swatches need to be accurate) it's a small help, but for general shooting it's unnecessary.
Who wants accurate color anyway? Most people want bluer skies than the light cyan that exists, greener trees than reality, and healthier more ruddy skin tones. I did many experiments with the McBeth and came to these conclusions. As the author himself writes: The difficult thing is to work out how many calibrations you need to do. In theory you should perform a calibration for each lighting source, lens, and even ISO. In practice, unless you work in very controlled conditions this is probably too unwieldy and will slow up your workflow.
That about sums up my experience. The color after calibration is unrealistic, especially with monks. I have been using Xrite ACR calibrator and Color Checker while ago. They are a joke.
ACR has really bad profiles as is, and it is not that CC and Yrite will fix that. I have also tried whole load of other calibration software packages, and in short - if you want precision, you need color checked SG, ideal lighting, and very expensive profiling software. The common Color Checker useful just to very if the colors are (relatively) OK.
But there is a trick! - If you want precise colors easy, just ask the manufacturer what settings to tick in their in-house RAW developer. The only thing left is precision of white balance. The best way to verify the color precision is: 1. Take a RAW photo of a colorful painting 2.
Load and process the image on a calibrated screen 3. Put a painting one the side of a screen and light it well with light of correct temp If the painting and the monitor image match, you are there. If only it were this simple. 'The brain sees, not the eyes'.
The problem being that in a shot on a sunny day, some colours are in the shade and lit by blue sky only. Getting pleasing colour from a shot is a very complex task and although colorcheckers are brilliant at what they are designed for, they are not a panacea to good colour. Studio work, product shots etc, yes, perfect answer.
Real World scenes with different light sources. I think Adobe, Fuji et al have put a few years thought into this.
Generally Hues will twist as they brighten and darken to 'look' nicer. For instance, the obvious one is that Orange will get redder as it gets darker and yellower as it gets brighter. I have done this.
Used an X-Rite and their software to create DNG profiles - does not work. By does not work, I mean it is not accurate, least not as accurate as using Adobe DNG Profile Editor I know it is not as accurate, because I also downloaded Imatest and used that to measure colour accuracy, saturation, etc.
Of the target. Summary: Colour Checker software causes dark blues and bright colours to be over-saturated by 10-20%, low sat colours are quite good, hue accuracy is good for all colours. It may be better than some cameras, but it gives you X-Rites version of colour and saturation. At least if you use multiple cameras, you may get consistent colour. Adobe DNG Editor is more accurate, but exposure, tone curve and black and white points effect colour saturation.
You need to use a linear curve and after calibration your images look like crap - until you adjust black and white points so that the tone curve matches the tone patches in the colour checker. Good luck with it! Did you know that Amazon sells digital cameras as well as the ColorChecker???
Shocking, isn’t it?? That must mean that every camera review on DPReview is an advertisement as well. More seriously, one of the reasons I am holding on to my camera instead of buying a new one is because I have the Passport and have figured out how to use it effectively.
I am much happier with the color and tonality now than before I bought the Passport. If other people are like me, then Amazon and DPReview are losing money on new camera sales by advertising this product. @raincoat I agree the article was not very informative and in fact left out some very important information - the product does not create a tone curve at all and relies on the default camera raw curve. 'That must mean that every camera review on DPReview is an advertisement as well.' What else do you think it is? For what reason do you think Amazon bought DPReview? I can 100% guarantee you that it was not for the love of photography.
But to enable more sales of cameras through Amazon. This article is pure product placement. Some sort of advertorial and X-Rite might have been paying for it as well. I have no problems with it, though it would be nice if DPReview mentioned that this 'ad' is an actual advertorial.
One thing nobody mentions here is that manufacturer states that the colorchecker is only good for two years and after that you should buy another one. They say the printed colors start to change after that time and your color calibrations won't be precise any more. I have one colorchecker passport from 3 years ago, so maybe it can not be trusted anymore, who knows.
Seem rather expensive if you need to change it every 2 years. And they should also print manufacturing date on the thing in that case, so you know. Of course you'll need to change only if you aquare new cameras or want to recalibrate after it. 'expires' LoL. It can, and in my opinion, should be used this way for a 'Sunny day' profile. You can use Adobe's default profile and have two calibration targets which it will move between as temperature goes up and down.
This gets around the cloudy day, shade type differences but the sunny day, blue sky problem remains and you either need to do some crafty blending or use twisted profiles (like the default Adobe profiles). Effectively opening the same photo twice and doing a layer with luminosity masking is a useful start. DNG profile editor from Adobe allows for the dual calibration. It does not create presets, it creates color profiles that are more accurate than those provided by, let's say Adobe for example.
It creates color profiles that are standardized to a known, repeatable value and it can create them across different models and brands of cameras that shoot raw. There are multiple benefits, 'standardizing' a group of cameras used for a single shoot subject OR more importantly for me, creating a color profile that is accurate versus the raw software's idea of 'pleasing' when I am shooting Product shots.
There are several company's that come to mind, Kodak, Fuji Film, Olympus, to name a few, that have made a ton of money changing what is preconceived to be true color with great results, and financial gain. Not counting some people are just plain color blind. So what is true color is not often able to be reproduced or if it is even accepted by the shooter. When I use auto anything in Photoshop it sure does not suit my idea of a final result.
I guess that is why there is about 200 sliders in the program. I guess what I am saying is I find most shots that I take come out too light and is not hard to just lower the exposure in the editor. There is no way you are going to have any plugin that works for say a landscape shot and the next shot is a street shot or a dimly lit bar. I shoot a lot with my Sigma DP2M and PhotoPro 5.5 does have a gismo that will remember your favorite settings. It does help and saves a lot of time as we all have a different concept of color we like. As someone who does product photography, I would find camera calibration very useful. I sometimes spend a lot of time in post processing, until I get that 'aha' moment, where the on-screen result looks exactly like I remember seeing it.
So having this done more automatically or accurately for me would be nice. Moreover, I have been looking for ways to improve my photography, while I wait to upgrade my camera. For me, this fits the bill. Thanks Steve, for writing this article, and to all the comment posters who have added more details.
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