Comments on: Adobe Lightroom 2.2 supports 5D Mark II
Latest version of Adobe's raw-processing software supports Canon's newest SLR and gets built-in profiles to give images a better look.
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This blog sheds light on digital photography subjects such as cameras, photo editing, and Web sites. Shankland joined CNET News in 1998 after a five-year stint as a science writer. He's a lab rat who grew up in Los Alamos, N.M., and graduated from Harvard.
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- by richardkaufmann December 16, 2008 8:50 AM PST
- About profiles... You will get better results if you use Adobe's DNG Profile Editor 2 (free, http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles:Editor) and a Gretag Macbeth Color Checker (~$65, http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=73). The profile editor allows you to build a *custom* color profile for your particular camera (each camera can be a bit different) in about 20 seconds. Lightroom can then be told to apply that profile for all pictures from that particular camera's serial number.
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- by Shankland December 16, 2008 4:31 PM PST
- Thanks for the tip. I haven't looked--I wonder if people have offered profiles for download?
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- by richardkaufmann December 17, 2008 6:58 AM PST
- The profiles that come with Lightroom are specific to a particular make, and they do a great job at creating them. (Thus, there really wouldn't be a market for others to supply them.)
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(3 Comments)I've built profiles for my 1ds iii and my G9, and am very, very happy with the results.
What's different about what I described is that you can profile a particular instance of a camera. There's variability in sensors, and this calibrates YOUR camera to make sure the colors are accurate.
Most folks will be happy with the standard profiles, but us color wonks want to calibrate our monitors, our cameras, and our printers to make sure the entire path is accurate. This can be a path to madness, but when done right makes certain that your aesthetic choices get realized in the final output.
Calibrating your monitor also ensures that your images will still look good on your next system. It's the most important calibration you can do (Pantone Huey is an inexpensive tool for doing this), followed by your camera ($70 for a GretagMacbeth ColorChecker). Calibrating your printer will save paper, but the tools to do it are a bit more expensive. I seem to remember there are third parties that will do this for you (you send in printouts of test targets), but since the best systems are iterative, I'm not sure how this works in practice. Pros and lunatic amateurs might consider the Colormunki calibrator -- it calibrates monitors, projectors and printers, but at a price.
(I work for a company that makes printers, but I don't work on them myself. I am writing as an individual.)