ACR Camera Profiles?

[adamwilliamking]

Hey I hope someone knows the answer to this..

So, I shoot all night, everything looks good in my viewfinder and I can't FULLY rely on my viewfinder because im shooting strobes on a dark location. Everything looks good until I get home and load everything into adobe acr raw editor. I've read that there are camera profiles for the ACR editor that will give you a default process to work with that is more like the Nikon processing you'd see in NX or something like that.

Does anyone know how to use these profiles?

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Just go on adobe's website and download them, it's pretty easy.

I use them, and I also use the beta profiles because sometimes when highlights blow out, there are weird grey artifacts that come up, so I revert to the beta profile instead, even though the color is a little different.

ex: D2x Mode 3 and D2x Mode 3 Beta 1.

 

[JerryPH]

You are right to not rely on the LCD... but what is wrong with referencing the histograms?

Also, the profiles are not going to fix bad shots, they just do some minor tweaking that can all be improved upon in post anyways. Cutesie... but in the end, not very useful, IMHO.

 

[adamwilliamking]

Just go on adobe's website and download them, it's pretty easy.

I use them, and I also use the beta profiles because sometimes when highlights blow out, there are weird grey artifacts that come up, so I revert to the beta profile instead, even though the color is a little different.

ex: D2x Mode 3 and D2x Mode 3 Beta 1.

Thanks, yeah, I'm more or less asking which drop down tab it is that changes the profile..

You are right to not rely on the LCD... but what is wrong with referencing the histograms?

Also, the profiles are not going to fix bad shots, they just do some minor tweaking that can all be improved upon in post anyways. Cutesie... but in the end, not very useful, IMHO.

I didn't say the shots were bad. I'm simply looking for my acr default to be more like the Nikon processing of a raw file. Also, the acr profile IS the post processing. I'm obviously going to alter the raw file further I just want something that looks a bit closer to what I was looking at all night/day.

 

[Garbz]

No need to download the new profiles. They are out of beta, so the most recent version of Lightroom or Adobe CameraRAW include them already.

The drop down is in the "Camera Calibration" tab. Btw if you use "Camera Standard" then you will still need to edit the contrast defaults in photoshop to match what the camera expects, it'll still be slightly different then the camera, but the calibration fixes the colour difference. The easiest way to do this is take a photo in RAW+JPEG, open up the JPEG on one half of the screen, the RAW on the other, and edit the settings (after changing the profile) till they match. Then save it as the default settings, or set it as a user preset.

 

[KmH]

You are right to not rely on the LCD... but what is wrong with referencing the histograms?

The on camera histogram is for the JPEG shown on the LCD, not the RAW file.

 

[Sherman Banks]

The on camera histogram is for the JPEG shown on the LCD, not the RAW file.

So if you shoot in Standard, the histogram should reflect the RAW image accurately than if shot in another profile? Or does Standard still process some aspects of the RAW file that would change the histogram?

 

[JerryPH]

We have 2 issues tossed in together here... exposure as in the comment made by the OP of:

So, I shoot all night, everything looks good in my viewfinder and I can't FULLY rely on my viewfinder because im shooting strobes on a dark location.

Referencing lighting in a dark location means needing to get the right exposure... at least to me. To do that one should access the histogram, and as I have said before, if your camera can, access not just the luminance but also the RGB histograms. Doesn't matter if it is the JPG or RAW or whatever... exposure is exposure.

Next, come camera profiles. Though it may have *some* effect on exposure, it's main "raison d'etre" is to give you the look or feel of other camera profiles, and that adjusts saturation, sharpness, contrast and a few other settings in often only subtle ways. These are all things that I look at in post anyways, so no matter what profile I have tried to use in the past, it *always* needed tweaking later... so I ended up sometimes doing more basic post work to undo a "feel" that a camera profile added. My favorite profile is the basic Adobe standard one... it is closest to what I want, but still needs work.

The 2nd issue is based on this:

...I can't FULLY rely on my viewfinder because im shooting strobes on a dark location. Everything looks good until I get home and load everything into adobe acr raw editor.

Expecting to have your photo look like your LCD is a little unrealistic. First, you are looking at a tiny JPG embedded in the RAW file and that file shall never look like the RAW file. RAW files *all* need extra work. Even if you are shooting JPG, your LCD can never look like what is on your full sized monitor... monitor calibration (or lack of) is a big reason for this.

The profiles are not created to be settings so that your monitor now looks like the LCD did (that is backwards thinking). The bottom line is that the LCD should not be depended on for any crucial colour or exposure decisions. Use the histogram to help you in the exposure area, and use your monitor and post processing program to give you the final results that you want... not your LCD.

 

[ANDS!]

The D90 has a sick lcd screen. Zoom in, and you can totally "rely" on what you are seeing (just make sure you're not in the shade, or an overly bright area so as to get a misrepresentation of what you're looking at - however if you are checking out your histogram, this shouldn't be a problem).

The problem you are experiencing will not be completely abetted by importing Nikon Camera Profiles for use in ACR. If you (like I do) change any of the camera profile settings IN CAMERA, doesn't matter what you do - Adobe will discard that. It may be tedious to do so, but Using NX to process RAW files and then using your Adobe products suite to manage the JPEGS may well be the better option here.

 

[Garbz]

The D90 has a sick lcd screen. Zoom in, and you can totally "rely" on what you are seeing (just make sure you're not in the shade, or an overly bright area so as to get a misrepresentation of what you're looking at - however if you are checking out your histogram, this shouldn't be a problem).

Sick as it may be I'm sure taking a photo and viewing it under 100% ideal conditions on a D90 will still look completely different than a nice calibrated LCD, and unless you're taking photos in the room that you are editing I doubt you'll end up with ideal lighting.
The LCD has it's place such as checking composition and controlling the camera, but it's not very good at all for checking the exposure and colour without an aid. And this goes for anything from the D100 to the D3.

So if you shoot in Standard, the histogram should reflect the RAW image accurately than if shot in another profile? Or does Standard still process some aspects of the RAW file that would change the histogram?

No. It will MORE accurately reflect but the problem is still that a RAW file contains linear data which must be converted to logarithmic changes in brightnesses before it can be viewed as "normal". This means that a histogram may show sligh clipping on one channel when in fact the camera hasn't clipped any channel in the RAW data. A good example is shooting IR without setting the white balance. The preview on the camera just flashes the "clipped' indicators all over the screen, but take the white balance to 2000K and Lightroom shows that nothing is clipped at all.

 

[adamwilliamking]

The profiles are not created to be settings so that your monitor now looks like the LCD did

Of course not, they were created to better match Nikon's algorithm, that wasn't the question at hand.

 

[adamwilliamking]

Many people who are answering this topic are a bit confused I think.

Camera profiles DO NOT change a default slider setting in ACR.
Its all about algorithms. Click through the profiles in ACR and you'll see major differences.