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.

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

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!

[Thomas Geist]

Eric,

Thank you so much for taking action on this! It must be a daunting task to maintain, update and add to the camera profile list and therefore we all do appreciate your work!

Another profile that caught my eye since quite some time is the Canon 5D Mark II Standard profile. In contrary to the camera's behavior (or that of DPP) this profile renders images in warm light and with low exposure not very well. Especially with skin tones this shows up negatively.

Thanks for listening!

Thomas

[Lance_Lenoir]

Eric outstanding job on these. Just downloaded these profiles and compared them to the profiles that were in Camera Raw 6.

These profiles are much better than the default profiles in Camera Raw 6, much less banding and much better neutrals.

Now if you could just create a set of profiles that would match the colors and curve that Capture One Pro 5 produces

I'd pay good money for that.

Lance

[Rick Walker - Colorado]

Eric, any plans to produce these for the D3X?  Thanks.

[Jason_Replica-aig6BX]

Hi Eric

It's my birthday today and you've just sent me an unexpected but very welcome present!

I don't post much on this forum but thought I'd make the effort to thank you for the hard work and effort you've put into improving this - and other - areas of Camera Raw. I've been working with Photoshop since it's first release here in the UK and have been shooting Nikons about as long. Since the change to digital I've always felt that the Adobe conversions - in Lightroom and Camera Raw - didn't quite give the quality I was getting from NX and NX2.

With the updates to the Camera Raw engine and the new camera profiles - which I presume is replicated in the Lightroom 3 v2 beta that I've been testing - the quality has come on leaps and bounds, so much so that I'm seriously considering moving the majority of my work over to Lightroom 3 when it's released but certainly to Camera Raw in the short to mid-term.

I'll get on with some more serious testing later this week but just thought I drop by and leave a token of my appreciation.

Keep up the good work!

Jason

Replica Imaging Limited - UK

www.replica-imaging.co.uk

[Steve_House]

Confused as to which are the latest versions of these profiles.  Are the profiles listed as the download "v.2 beta" updated profile with files dated March 10, 2010 intended to supercede the profiles included in the Camera Raw update 5.7 with file dates of April 7, 2010,  are they the same as those with the most recent Raw update, or what?

[CarstenPix]

When are these going "Gold"? (shipping)

Carsten

[PeszkoW]

These profiles are very close to the in camera JPG.  Perfect! 

[happygoatee]

Would it be possible to get an updated profile for a D300 as good quality as these?

[vws51]

Really dumb question here, but in my Camera Profiles folder I've got folders named 'Camera', 'Camera beta 1', 'Camera beta 2', and now 'Camera v2 beta'. How do I know which camera profiles are being used in LR3?

[John Blaustein]

Not a dumb question.

In the LR3 Develop Module, scroll down to Camera Calibration.  The second setting down is Profile and it is a dropdown list from which you can choose which profile you want to use.

The question I have is which of the profiles is the most recent?  For example, I show Camera Portrait, Camera Portrait beta 1 and Camera Portrait v2 (for the Nikon D3).  It's the same assortment of choices for Landscape, Natural, Standard and Vivid.  Am I correct that v2 is the most recent version of each set of profiles?

John

[MadManChan2000]

v2 is the beta set of profiles described in the original post at the top of this thread. They are the most recent set but not official / not final.

[John Blaustein]

Thanks, Eric.  Your quick reply and the great profiles are much appreciated.

John

[DHayMil]

I put the two folders "Nikon D700" and Nikon D3 inside the CameraProfiles folder (Mac - 10.5) and also put the Camera v2 beta folder in there as well (first) but LR3 under Camera Calibration/Profile all is see is "Embedded." Any sugestions?

thanks much.

D.

[dorin_nicolaescu]

You're using JPEGs.

[Yammer]

DHayMil wrote:

all is see is "Embedded." Any sugestions?

What Dorin said.

Camera profiles are used for converting raw images, so you need to be working on your raw files, not files which have already been converted.

[DHayMil]

Ah, sorry. I had the NEF and the JPEG next to each other and picked the wrong one.

Thanks again.

D.

[Thomas Geist]

Is there an estimate for when the final profiles will be out?

What happens if I then remove those beta profiles? Will LR fall back to the official profiles or will it not find any profile?

Thanks!

Thomas

[MadManChan2000]

Thomas, images that use the new beta profiles will fall back to using the Adobe Standard profile if you remove the beta profiles. (This is generally true whenever you remove a profile that an image depends on.)

[donovanbond]

Am I assuming (hoping) correctly that the upgrade installation of Lightroom 3 doesn't update these camera profiles? I've been noticing a lot of posterizing as well as magenta and green colour artifacts in neutral tones since upgrading to my D700. I'm really hoping that updating my profiles when I get home will fix things.

[MadManChan2000]

The v2 beta profiles are not included in the LR 3 install.

[Thomas Geist]

LR 3.2 final - any news? Is there an estimated release date for the final profiles?

Thanks!

Thomas

[Steve_House]

Any word on when these will be out of beta?  Will they be replacing the D3 and D700 profiles that are currently included in the Camera Raw 6.2 and LR 3.2 releases or are they going to be added as permanent alternate profiles alongside the current "V1" versions?

I tried searching Adobe Labs for updated information and can't even find any references to the beta profiles ... is there any place to keep tabs on their status?  It's been a long time since the betas came out.

SJH

[photo81]

I'm also wondering if there any sort of ETA on the final versions of these profiles; it's basically been a half year since the V2 beta. Seems like sort of an indefinite project right now?

[Geronimosan]

I may be doing something wrong, but I'm getting drastically different results when I open an NEF file in Capture NX2 versus Lightroom 3 (using both the boxed camera profiles and these beta v2 profiles) from images shot on a D700.

In NX2, I ensured that I was using the "Standard" profile, and in the case of LR3, "Camera Standard v2".

Here are the two different results:

NX2

http://brucebracken.com/photography/v/pptest/1a.jpg.html

LR3

http://brucebracken.com/photography/v/pptest/1b.jpg.html

The LR3 image looks much more color saturated, among other things, but from what I remember, the NX2 image was much closer to how the scene looked when I was doing the shooting.

Can someone help me understand why LR3 produces such a different default image from the NEF file than NX2?

Thanks in advance!

[Guest]

There were many posts about this in the past. So I took a look into Adobe's profiles for D700 (original and beta v2). I have some experience with this, because I made my own program for making dng profiles for some Canon cameras, that are not supported by Adobe. I noticed several things:

First, in the lookup table of both versions of the profile, values for Value segment 0 (= total black) are a simple copy of segment 1 (=dark midtones). My opinion is that this approach is a bit oversimplified, resulting with big differences in dark tones between ACR and NX (oversaturated blue and orange/brown on your picture). Midtones and highlights are much better

Obviously, points for total black can't be calibrated at all. What I did in my program was that I made calibration on very dark tones, and did some recalculation to aproximatelly match camera jpegs. It's not possible to get total match, but I came much closer

Second, there is a difference in tone curve between original D700 profile and beta v2. Tone curve in the original profile has a "notch" in the lowest part, caused by the fact that blacks slider default value should be 5 (according to Adobe). On the beta v2 profile, bottom part of the tone curve is smooth and looks similar to what I got on my profiles with blacks slider set to 0. So I suppose that for this profile (and some other latest profiles), blacks should be set to 0.

It would be nice to get some comment about this from Eric or Jeff

I attached a printscreen from my program that can display a lookup table in the profile, and this is how Hue segment 0 (= red) looks like.

On the left pane, there are value and saturation remapping points (in Photo Pro color space), and on the right, there are hue shifts

Also, there is a tone curve on the left pane (displayed in 3 different scales)