P: Color profile missing after merging Apple ProRaw images into a panorama

This is the official bug thread, and Adobe is pretty good about updating bug reports when there's a change in status. Unfortunately, Adobe rarely indicates when a bug might be fixed.

Hi, is there an update on this bug? It's becoming more apparent as HDR workflows are now much more capable in Lightroom - I am experiencing this bug when I take a photo with the Lightroom camera in HDR mode in the iOS app. After processing, it assigns the "Apple Embedded Color Profile" which doesn't exist on the device. Same problem when I edit in Lightroom Desktop (see screen shot).

Curiously, when I take an Apple ProRaw photo with the iOS camera app and import that into Lightroom, "Apple Embedded Color Profile" is available as a profile choice, but not assigned. Apple ProRaw is assigned instead.

I tried syncing the profile setting from the iOS captured image to the Lightroom captured one and this doesn't work - it does not receive the Apple ProRaw or Embedded Color Profile option.

I am able to edit the Lightroom-captured HDR file by using something generic like Adobe Color, etc. Is this the workaround for now? Or is Lightroom Camera HDR capture being deprecated if the iOS camera has almost the same dynamic range?

Thanks for any updates!

OK. Thanks so much, @johnrellis, for bringing your wealth of knowledge and your helpfulness to this. Increasingly I just Google the problems I encounter, figuring someone else must have been through them already, so I'm glad to be reminded that posting in a forum can be so helpful.

"Could that explain the tags for Process Version 11.0?"

Possibly -- the first Creative Cloud app to edit the photo and save metadata back to the file will write its current process version into it. The process version won't change to "the latest" version until it's edited by a CC app that is using that version.  Lot's of room for confusion here 😆

Thanks, @johnrellis. I hadn't recalled what version of LrC I was running when I imported these photos and initially merged them, but I did update LrC (to 12.4) after I noticed the profile problem and before I started this thread, in hopes of fixing it. Then, as we've been trying things, I downloaded my source images from the OneDrive folder that I shared and imported them into LrC again, just to make sure I was working with the same files that you were. 

Does LrC depend on the Camera Raw files that the Creative Cloud desktop app lists as a separately updateable item? In the past, I think I've sometimes updated LrC without updating any of my other Adobe CC apps and dependencies (I mainly use just LrC), but when I updated LrC to 12.4, I did update Camera Raw as well. Could that explain the tags for Process Version 11.0?

That's interesting about the intentional randomness in the merge process. Thanks.

While poking around in your latest sample files, I noticed that the first Pano was created by LR 12.3 and the second two by 12.4:

Note that 3632-Pano.dng has Process Version 5, even though it was created by LR 12.4.  That appears to be because the first input file 3632.DNG is Process Version 5, while the second and third input files are Process Version 6 (not sure how that might have come about).

My experiments were all done with LR 12.4 / Process Version 6.  So this might account for the different behaviors we're seeing.

Anyway, Adobe has acknowledged the bug and will hopefully sort things out soon.

PS: Each time you run Merge, LR will pick slightly different merge boundaries, resulting in slightly different-sized panoramas. This is because the merge algorithm has randomness built-in, presumably to make the choice of the merge boundaries more efficient.  As a side effect, if you select the Auto Settings option, the resulting develop settings will also be slightly different.

Thanks for your continued interest, @johnrellis. Yes, in that OneDrive folder, I've added the file "2023-07-04 Hike Granite Mtn 3619-Pano after exiftool.dng".

While recreating it, I noticed something else. I tried adding a fourth step (!) to the recipe: remove the merge from LrC and import it, in case that affects how LrC interprets it. It did, in an odd way. LrC showed its profile as Apple ProRaw, yet the image doesn't look at all like the ProRaw profile. Compared to the Adobe profiles, it looks most like Adobe Standard. 

Another curiosity: When I today re-merged another set of my photos from that hike, which had exhibited the same problem yesterday, the problem did not recur. LrC says the output file's profile is ProRaw, and the photo looks ProRaw, which was obvious during the merge preview. I'm not sure what changed since my prior merge of these photos, but I had done something to the first of the three input photos. LrC shows that its Metadata Date is yesterday, during my experiments. I might have inadvertently run exiftool on it, though when I tried today to perform your suggested exiftool recipe (export metadata, run exiftool to set profile, read metadata, merge) on the first photo of my stubborn first set of photos, it didn't help. The result was still missing the embedded color profile. I've added this group of files to OneDrive as "set 2 - result is ProRaw", and I've re-organized the older files into "set 1 - result is not ProRaw". The link again is OneDrive: Apple ProRaw merge color profile. 

Perhaps you could upload the folder of those test files along with the merged dng that you modified unsuccessfully with Exiftool?  I'd like to get to the bottom of this -- thanks.

Hi @johnrellis. Yes, I'm pretty good at following clear instructions of three steps. I might be able to do four or five. 🙂  

Thanks for making a screen recording of it working on your computer. Here's a similar recording of it not working on mine: Wallace exiftool ProRaw. 

When I first tried your workaround, I used whatever exiftool version I installed a few years ago. I then updated to the current version (12.64) just to be safe, but it made no difference.

Hmm, after running Exiftool, did you do step 3, selecting the merged .dng and doing Metadata > Read Metadata From File?  I re-tested my recipe, with both the merged .dng you included in your .zip and with a new one made in my LR, and it worked correctly.   See the screen recording:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6x7hwot99n9d1t/fixing-apple-proraw-panoramas.2023.07.10.mp4?dl=0

It's the field EXIF:ProfileName that LR is failing to copy into the merged .dng -- the other XMP fields are getting set correctly.