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

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

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!

[MadManChan2000]

Did you relaunch LR? With LR, you have to quit & restart the application for the profiles to appear.

Eric

[MadManChan2000]

I am going to start a new thread regarding v3 beta profiles for the D3, D300, and D700. If you wish to discuss this further, please look for that thread:

[Crystal_Evans]

I am a newbie here and just wanna say Hi to everyone. I am Crystal from Louisiana, US.
__________________
free photoshop tutorials

[menno1000]

Hi Eric,

Nice work, i realy like people getting this deep into color.

My observations:

A lot better, indeed the burned out highlight are better.But stil i need to export to PS to make the image "pop"

In dark area's reds and orange are too saturated still. I'd like to sow you samples but i would not put them on public display.

In these files you can easily see what happens when push he blacks slider up. In dark tones a yellow blanket turns first orange and then red.

Same happens with faces. Which is still the biggest problem: The over saturated reds in bronzed (older) faces when a bit underexposed.

Second, i wonder, is it possible to develop an evan better tahn Nikon profile? With real natural colors? Natural greens and yellows for example?

i know, it's not what was the original request but wouldn't that be an awsome selling point?

But i remain very thankful for your work.

Menno

[Guest]

So, how do you define natural colors ?

If you for example tako a photo through the window, then display it in ACR or any other similar software and expect that you will see on the monitor exactly the same as through the window in the nature, I'm affraid that's not gonna happen with any profile

[menno1000]

Hi Vit,

You are absolutly right. Natural is hard to define and non existing. On the other hand, unnatural is pretty easy to define. Like if yellow turns orange, blue is too purple. We are all trying to calibrate printers and monitors and i have the feeling that nikon colors could be improved. Maybe one could closer to natural or high end camera's. Or maybe just different, say Canon like..

I think the new v2 profiles are a lot better in that perspective already. Some odd purple green cast in shadows is now gone.

I noticed you are into improving the colors, interesting, I owned a 400d as well and liked it. Would share your profiles?

Thanks,

Menno

[Guest]

Well, I wouldn't say I wanted to improve colors. I just happened that a group of programmers wrote a software that enabled getting the raw from some Canon compacts. Unfortunately, there were no color specialists among them, so finally I made a software to make camera profiles for them, after I found out that I couldn't come reasonably close with dng profile editor (and also, I didn't have a color checker chart). As a byproduct, I also made a camera standard profile for 400D (with another program), as I wasn't entirely satisfied with the one from Adobe. It is closer to jpeg than the one from Adobe (at least in sRGB space), but to be ownest, on most real life photos, there is no big difference. I will publish it in CHDK forum in a day or two, so check there (I already had intention to do it, but since there was almost nobody interested in profiles for compacts, I didn't do it so far)

[menno1000]

Ok,Thanks.

Menno

[PECourtejoie]

Menno, You can send files using yousendit, or dropbox to Eric by using {his username} at yahoo dot com

[MadManChan2000]

It is indeed possible to build a better profile, Menno. But we would need to do it for every user individually, because every user has a different notion of "better" or "more natural". And sometimes, better is not necessarily more natural. For instance, Velvia was (and is) popular for landscape photography, and I understand how it makes the colors pop, but I don't consider it very natural ...

That said, there are still areas in color where we can improve, and I would not be surprised to see additional advancements made in ACR/LR as time goes on.

Eric

[menno1000]

Hi Eric,

I fully acknowledge what you tell about velvia. What i mend was that i think you and adobe might be able

to create something better, as you clearly did already, than along the lines of Nikon color. And yes more natural, do i state something odd when i describe Nikon as not one of the most neutral color rendering? That's all.Mabe more Canon Kodak NC Hasselblad like.

Anyway, for me the camera v2 is already a step up. Hardly a reason to open NX anymore

Thanks for creating it, i enjoy it now and look forward to the future.

Regards,

Ps

I did sent a Nef that show teh dark tone yellow that turns red when you pull the black slider.

[MadManChan2000]

Thank you, I did receive the sample file safely.

Regarding your suggestion of making color profiles that are more similar to other makers' color styles, you have touched on the very point I was making -- namely, that there are many possibilities, and not everyone agrees which one is best. Some users love "Canon's colors" while others do not, for example. Frankly, all of these are just color presets -- film stocks, if you will.

[hillrg]

MadManChan2000 wrote:

Frankly, all of these are just color presets -- film stocks, if you will.

Pandora's box 

[safo0601]

Hi!

Some months ago I installed the Beta Profiles (D3) on my Mac (OS X 10.6.5).
Till yesterday I was able to choose the V2 Profiles during the import or later.
Now they are in LR3 (3.3) not available any more.
In PS CS4 I can see them.
I copy the beta profiles to  /Library/Application/Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles twice without success.
Does any one know what's the fault?

greetings,

safo

[MadManChan2000]

safo, that is the correct place to which to install the profiles. Make sure in LR when you're trying to select the profile, that you are processing raw files (they will not show up in the Profile popup menu for JPEGs, TIFFs, etc.).

Eric

[safo0601]

Hi Eric,

I only use RAW files.

greetings,

safo

[MadManChan2000]

safo, do you see the original "Camera Standard", etc. profiles in Lightroom?

Are the only ones missing the "v2" ones?

Eric

[safo0601]

That is correct Eric. In LR3 I can't see V2 profiles. The original I can see.

In PS CS4 I see the original and the V2 profiles.

I'm use the same nef file.

greetings,

safo

[MadManChan2000]

Hi safo, I have no explanation for this. CS4/CS5/LR2/LR3 use essentially the same logic to load the profiles. What's visible in one should be visible in the other.

[menno1000]

Thanks again for your respons,

Well, here we could wrap it up. To stick with your metafore: i would like to stick another roll of film into my Nikon once in a while.

A roll of Canon for perhaps.. You can do a lot but still, what you can do with raw conversions you can't do on another level.

I happen to proces more camera raw's and a Canon will never turn into a Nikon vice versa.

Just out a curiosity, would that technically possible to make look up tables to convert one raw (close) to the other?

Menno

[Guest]

It is technically possible to have a profile for Nikon camera that will give you

very similar colors like some Canon camera and vice versa. However, because of different sensors and lenses, it's not possible to match all colors exactly, but you can come quite close (you won't get exactly the same colors even if you have, like me, several different Canon cameras, so who cares)

[menno1000]

Well, I'm still interested.

I did it one time, take 2 brands to a shoot. Impossible, i ended up liking the canon look better for that one but the best shots were made with the nikon.It would just give you a powerful tool in post. I could never post process the v1 into the v2 with LR or PS.My guess is the a lot of Nikon owners love to have access to Canon colors. One has one's lens collection together e.g. for Nikon and to buy say a 5DmkII and a similar lens set would be thousends of euros. If a profile could make you come close..I would pay for that in a heartbeat.

[MadManChan2000]

As Vit describes, yes, it is generally possible to come close, but not exactly.

The more practical issue is that everyone has a somewhat different idea of what colors he or she wants. Instead of shipping thousands of different color presets / styles / profiles, we decided to build tools to allow users to develop their own preferred colors. One such tool is the DNG Profile Editor. It has its limits, of course. One limitation, as Vit probably discovered, is that you need to already have a suitable starting color matrix for a camera; otherwise the lookup tables will not work well. For most camera models, Adobe has already built such starting color matrices, but for the not-officially-supported models (such as the ones via the CHDK route) we don't.

Eric

[menno1000]

Well, Eric I would not want you to make a thousands profiles. I see

your point, you can't please everybody. But looking at Canon and Nikon

is just two. My guess is: If you are able to come close to Canon

colors with a Nikon camera a lot of people are going to be interested.

It is a big market since they have a lot followers. People are ready

to give up a lot of money and effort just to have access to a

different look. So there you go.

I have the Macbeth color checker. I made lot of profiles in studio,

outdoors. But I could not control strange hue behavior with just 24

colors. Let alone tone curves. And again my guess is, no one can.

It will not lead to results nearly as good as you managed to obtain

with the v2 vs v1 profiles. Before your V2 it was easy: One had to use

Nx for best color output but now you came so close it comes to a level

where it does not matter.

So i remain, if you can make a Nikon look like a Canon on your quality

level i am convinced that it will boost sales.

Still I am happy with what you delivered, it puts image quality to

higher level. I'm looking forward to your final version 2 profiles.

Thanks for all responses and discussion, a high level of customer

support.

Good luck with your work.

Menno

[Guest]

menno1000,

In addition to Eric's respont, I will add that you can actually build a profile for your Nikon camera that will return 'Canon colors'. For this, you need to combine a profile for your camera with a profile for one of Canon cameras

Workflow of color conversion in ACR roughly consists of two parts. First part is conversion from sensor color space to Photo Pro color space, which is done with simple matrix operation. Second part is rendering, using two tables - lookup table and tone curve table. So you have Adobe standard profiles for different cameras. Each profile has different set of matrices for the first part of this conversion (unique to camera model), while lookup table in all profiles is the same (actually, there are at least two versions). So, if you use Adobe standard profiles, you will get similar output from different cameras

In your case, you need for instance a Camera Standard profile for one Canon camera and a profile for your Nikon camera. If you replace color matrices in Canon profile with matrices from Nikon profile, you will get what you want. For this, you can use Sandy's utility dcpTool, which can convert a profile from binary form to a xml text file and text file to binary. You need to copy sections ColorMatrix1, ColorMatrix2, ForwardMatrix1, ForwardMatrix2 from Nikon profile to Canon profile, and to modify a line which describes profile name. Then, convert resulting text file back to binary form (with different filename) and save it to the folder with other profiles for your camera. Actually, it's a 5 min job

Anyway, there are some problems here.

First problem: first part of color conversion, using matrices, is just an aproximation. So if you use Adobe standard profile for Canon camera and Nikon camera, result won't be exactly the same. The same will happen here - result won't match output from Canon camera exactly, but should be more-or-less similar

Second problem: guys in Adobe changed the workflow in some last camera profiles (including some v2 profiles), so you can't use those profiles this way. These profiles have size about 277 kB. You can use only profiles of size 112 kB. For that reason, you also can't combine my profile for 400D with a profile for Nikon camera