New Nikon D3 and D700 "Camera" v2 beta profiles

[MadManChan2000]

I have posted a zip file containing updated "Camera" color profiles (Camera Standard, Camera Neutral, etc.) for the Nikon D3 and Nikon D700. The zip file contains a copy of the readme, but I'll post it here for convenience, too:

BETA RELEASE NOTES

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Overview

These updated Camera v2 beta profiles for the Nikon D3 and Nikon D700
are designed to reduce banding and highlight color artifacts. Note
that highlight areas may appear a little brighter compared to the
earlier profiles.

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Installation

If you are on Mac OS X, drag the "Camera v2 beta" folder to:

    /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

If you are on Windows XP, drag the "Camera v2 beta" folder to:

    C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

If you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7, drag the "Camera v2 beta"
folder to:

    C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

Note that the above path on Windows Vista and Windows 7 may be hidden
by default. Check your folder settings.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Feedback

The profiles are currently in beta status. Please provide feedback via
the online Adobe user-to-user forums here:

http://forums.adobe.com/community/cameraraw
http://forums.adobe.com/community/lightroom

Thank you!

[dhazeghi]

Excellent!  Just tried out the new Camera profiles on a couple of my more problematic D700 files, and the color posterization I used to see seems to be gone.  Thanks for making these new beta profiles available.  Good work!

[Mishamsk]

This is absolutely great! I was waiting for this day for a long time! I think this is the main thing I wanted from LR version 3!

However there significant changes in overall colour rendering, especially in lightr-blue\green colours but I can live with it.

Thank you!

[ComitSteve]

Will a D3 fit into this Pelican camera case?

http://www.pelicanonline-ralphs.com/1200-case.htm

[panograf.dk]

It is definitely an  improvement, the question is whether the profile is still good enough,  there is still room for improvement, but definitely a step in the right  direction.

Wbr.

Per

[MadManChan2000]

Hi Per, thanks for the feedback, but you'll have to be more specific if you want further improvements. I should add that comparisons to DxO are not useful for this project, because the purpose of these "Camera" profiles is to match the results from NX (whether "good" or "bad"). Just FYI.

Eric

[panograf.dk]

My purpose in showing the raw converting from DXO was not to compare programs, but to show that there is still, albeit smaller, is a problem with Posterization, as I often  have tasks that includes white walls or light pastel colors, this is a  very annoying problem because it is very time  consuming to remove.

It has been a recurring problem  with Nikon profiles, but D3 is worse than ever, so I for that reason  have been forced to use other converters do not have the problem. It has actually been so problematic that I have had 2 times  the camera with Nikon because I was convinced that it was an error in  the camera. But I am very pleased  that Adobe is addressing the problem and hopefully get it resolved
In addition, I can only give  CarstenPix right to automatic CA correction will be very helpful. Although it  has nothing to do with profiles.
Here are some more examples  showing the problem. camera std. V.2 left./ V.1 Right.

Regards.

Per

[MadManChan2000]

Thanks Per. It is clear now. Could you please provide the raw files corresponding to these sample images? They would help me refine further. If so, please use YouSendIt.com with target email address madmanchan2000@yahoo.com.

Thanks,

Eric

[Romain_Th]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for those profiles! My comments :

- Posterization is gone! That is great.

- Colors are pretty much like the one you get from Capture NX and more accurate than previous profile (at least they seem to)

- The previous tone curve was closer to the CNX one than the v2 beta profiles. This one is closer with highlights (except the clipping point) but not mid tones that are brighter.

- Highlights are still clipping 0.5EV earlier than CNX, giving too often burnt highlights (BaselineExposure).

Regards,

Romain

[MadManChan2000]

Thanks Romain. Unfortunately I can't change the BaselineExposure at this point (for reasons of backwards compatibility) but I'll see what I can do about getting the tone curves to match better.

Eric

[CarstenPix]

Just downloaded the v2 D3/D700 profiles.  This now give a much better match to the native camera picture controls as rendered with Capture NX.  Now I have consistency of images in my workflow from camera to lightroom without having to go via NX.

V. 1 gave much too flat colors, especially a brightly sunlit yellow house facade was washed out, but now is very close to NX.  In addition, NX skin tones were warmer, and contrast not as agressive as V1.  V2 seems to have gotten so close now, that for it is in the range of very acceptable.

Also, the de-mosaic of D700 raw fines with fine density leaves, foliage seems to be improved compared to NX.  Nikon D700 always had a tendency to render this type of scenes mushy compared to Canon 5D (just look at Ken Rockwells examples), and I have also experienced the same.  Seems like the new lightroom engine has improved on this.  Also, the sharpening seems to be improved by being able to apply much more sharpening without objectionable artifacts creeping in as soon.  It would be nice to know if I am just hallucinating, or if the developers really have worked on this;-)

For the profiles to match I have to turn off Active D-lighting, a feature which reduces dynamic range in a very fine manner with the D700.

In addition the D-lighting (fine) is NX does a better job than what I can figure out in Lightroom, so this is an area of technology that Adobe should work on (or I need to figure out how to do it better using Lightroom).  As far as I can see, Fill lighting is nowhere near as good, but highlight recover is Lightroom appears better.  I suspects Lightroom "cheats" by extrapolating values from clipped channels, while NX refuses to guess at what non-capture values might be.   (again, I would welcome if the LR developers could comment on this conjecture 😉

Finally, the U point editing in NX in really brilliant and in addition ViewNX is much faster at previewing and zooming on NEF files.

And one more "final", what about the automatic chromatic abberation correction done by NX, would be nice if LR could do it so I don't have to worry about it.

Although I have not yet gotten to a single software package for post-processing, LR3 will probably reduce my dependency on NX, but not VIEW NX.

Sorry about these last off-subject comments, I know this is a camera profile forum...., but mimicing the Picture controls is a big step forward.

Carsten

[MadManChan2000]

Hi Carsten,

Thanks for your comments. I'll try address some of them here.

Regarding demosaic, sharpening, etc. in Lightroom 3 beta 2: yes, these have all undergone refinements relative to Camera Raw 5 / Lightroom 2. No hallucinations on your part (at least not in this regard!).

Regarding fill light: note that the fill light threshold has been adjusted in LR 3 beta 2 and this should result in some reduce artifacts compared to earlier versions. Naturally there is always room for improvement going forward, but that is where things stand today.

The other items you've mentioned are generally already in the Lightroom Feature Requests forum. If you would like to elaborate on any of these, I request that you find the corresponding feature request threads in that sub-forum and append to those appropriately. Thanks.

Eric

[vanstarr]

Hi, overall tonality/contrast rendition are improved.

Reds specifically crimsons and to lesser extent orange are still not rendering true natural colours compared to custom calibrated profiles from a colour chart.

D700 - LR2

Thanks, Rudi

[MadManChan2000]

Hi Rudi, I think you may be misunderstanding the purpose of these profiles. The goal of these profiles is not to produce natural colors. The goal is simply to produce the same rendition that NX produces (whether good or bad, natural or not) -- and hopefully artifact-free. To be clear: The original feature request was, "Please give us colors similar to the camera maker's colors."

Eric

[Ulysses_X]

MadManChan2000 wrote:

The goal is simply to produce the same rendition that NX produces (whether good or bad, natural or not) -- and hopefully artifact-free. To be clear: The original feature request was, "Please give us colors similar to the camera maker's colors."

Eric, thanks very much for the work you've done on these profiles. After working on my own custom camera profiles, I know how much work this takes. So thanks again for the noticeably improved results.

Quick question for you: The following website has some sample images that seem to demonstrate some weaknesses in the way Lightroom produces almost banding-like artifacts when rendering color gradients or defocused areas of color (I see his happen, for example, if there are out-of-focus flowers in the background of wedding images (usually deep reds and deep purples are the worst culprits).

See near the bottom of this page:

http://ishootshows.com/2010/01/22/lightroom-3-vs-nikon-capture-nx-2/

So my other question is: Is this more a function of better calibrating and tweaking for the color table within the DNG Profile Editor? Or is it more a function of tweaking the Tone Cuve?

Thanks!

[stawarz]

Just tried the new D700 profiles, great improvement, far less posterization and strange blocked out dark when using the D2x modes. Keep up the great work, all looks promising!

[takyhonza]

Thank you MadManChan2000 for your effort! I have tried new profiles and they looks great, but I found out some un-smoothness in photo of rainbow.  The transitions of Camera x v2 are not smooth as older Camera x. There is a leap between yellow and green and between cyan and blue. Very similar unsmooth transitions are visible in profile Adobe Standard.

On this link you can download original raw + xmp and exported jpg (Camera Standard v2 vs. Camera Standard beta1):

http://www.edisk.cz/stahni/97416/LR3.ZIP_21.11MB.html

[MadManChan2000]

Takyhonza, thanks for the sample, I will study.

Eric

[hillrg]

Eric, thanks very much for your efforts!  Here is a sample where your changes have helped me (LR rendering done in LR3B2).

The Nikon NX and v2 camera neutral renderings are almost identical, while the v1 camera neutral rendering is blotchy in comparison.

I will look for ones that do not work as well, but this is looking good Eric.

Regards

Rory

[Wayne_Rotz]

Is this just for the D3 or also for the D3s?

[hillrg]

Wayne Rotz wrote:

Is this just for the D3 or also for the D3s?

I saw somewhere that Eric said the profiles for the D3s are different and already "corrected".

Rory

[simdoc1]

It would be helpful to have a confirmation that the D3s profiles are already "optimized". Thanks!

Jeff

[skphotoimages99]

I feel silly asking this, but I am using Vista and I don't have a file called ProgramData

, and for that matter I can't even find one called Camera Raw.  That being said, if I go through adobe labs I have no proble

m istalling their camera profiles, so I am sure there is a place for yours to go.  Do you have any other suggestions

on a way to install there files?  I am so frustrated with my D700's NEF files.

[hillrg]

In the windows explorer, under the folder options > view: make sure you have "show hidden files, folders and drives" checked.

[drtonyb]

I hope that this update to the D3/D700 Nikon Camera profiles will eventually flow through to other Nikon models.  I have very noticable

cyan/magenta banding in some raw images from my D90 camera when Camera profiles are applied, such as Camera Standard.  This banding reduces significantly when I apply the Adobe Standard profile, but doesn't elimate it completely.

Tony