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.

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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!

[MadManChan2000]

Geronimosan, what are your color space settings for NX?

Eric

[Geronimosan]

It was set at the default "Nikon sRGB". Changing it to use the normal sRGB override resulted in pretty much the same image. using the "Adobe RGB" override also produces about the same image.

[Guest]

I'm not familiar with Nikon software, but in the case of Canon, there can also be some differences between sRGB and AdobeRGB. Canon has separate profiles for these color spaces and a kind of perceptual rendering is used. In ACR, there is only one profile for both color spaces. So in case you choose Adobe RGB, you will get aproximation of Canon's perceptual profile, bacause calibration is made on this one I presume, bacause it has bigger gamut. If you choose sRGB, out of gamut colors will be simply clamped into sRGB, instead of compressing into range, which would be done by the camera or DPP software

[Guest]

Hello,

I don't know how things work technically in these two converters, but, from my experience with D700 camera which I own, NX almost completely desaturate dark tones, probably to mask shadow color noise or I don't know why but... I had really hard time to get any saturation for example in people faces when I do shooting in backlight situation, using flash fill, but flash was not enough powerful so it left them relatively dark. These areas in NX are simply gray, no matter what I do to boost saturation there. This looks like "feature" from NX, but I don't really like it, and ACR does much better job for these dark areas - at least for my eyes if not technically.

[Guest]

Canon compacts behave exactly the same way - very dark tones on in-camera jpegs are desaturated or completely gray, for the reason you mentioned. It's usually ok for the photo as is, but if you try to brighten it, in case it's too dark, you get strange results. Fortunately, my 400D doesn't seem to have this 'feature'

So, it's quiestionable whether Adobe camera profiles should precisely copy shadow parts of the camera profile (or other similar features) or do it in more acceptable way. But it was stated by Adobe that intention was to copy the profile as is, no mater how good or bad it is, because that's what people asked for,  which turns out not to be the case here

[MadManChan2000]

We try to match the Canon/Nikon colors using the widest color space available in their respective software (Wide Gamut for the former, ProPhoto for the latter). This is done to minimize chances of clipping.

The problem with choosing sRGB / Adobe RGB and trying to match that, is that then we artificially (and needlessly) constrain the set of working colors. We did not find this to be acceptable.

It is also a reason why we don't match camera JPEGs directly. Camera JPEGs are either in sRGB or Adobe RGB. (This is a good choice, actually. ProPhoto RGB + JPEG exhibit significant problems.)

There are some limitations to our ability to match exactly. For example, we generally do not take into account color noise suppression (and its potential effect on dark tones), because this is strongly ISO dependent.

BTW, nice visualization a few posts ago, Vit -- I like it!

[Guest]

Thanks

Can you comment the difference between the tone curve of original Camera standard profile and v2 profile (I attached similar diagram for v2 profile below). On original profile, tone curve has a "step" on the beginning (visible on middle curve - the brown one), while v2 profile tone curve doesn't. This "step" is compensation for Blacks=5. So, is v2 profile supposed to be used with Blacks=0, or there is some other reason

It's also evident that lookup table is different (especially hue shifts in this Hue segment = 0) , but this is because table in v2 profile maps from raw color space to PhotoPro, while in original profile it just remaps values in PhotoPro color space (I used the same way for CHDK profiles, because it has some advantages we allready discussed before)

[MadManChan2000]

Hi Vit,

The v2 profile is still intended to be used with Blacks = 5 (i.e., the default setting in ACR). The D3/D700 were more difficult for me to tone match because our default shadow/highlight clip points are defined differently than Nikon's default endpoints. The original profiles were designed to match as closely as possible through the entire tonal scale, but could lead to some posterization issues in both the deepest shadows & top stop or 1/2 stop of highlights. For the v2 profiles, I've chosen to use a smoother curve which reduces these artifacts.

You are right about the LUT differences. It helps to avoid clipping issues.

Eric

[Guest]

Thanks. I was just courious about the way you calibrated this profile, because I was dealing with similar problematic for my cameras

I also tried smoothing the bottom part of tone curve when making a profile for 400D, in combination with Blacks=5, but this resulted in deep shadows being darker than on jpeg (like in the case of your v2 profile for D700). After looking at the SDK code and some experimenting, it turned out that Blacks=5 clips bottom part of histogram, and that's why strange bottom part of TC needed. So i decided to use Blacks=0 in my case, which gave accurate result and simplified the calculation

Any chance of eliminating BaselineExposure (and blacks=5) in the future ? However, I'm aware that baseline exposure isn't fixed for the camera. For instance, it's usually -0.25 on 400D, but could be different in some occasions (longer exposure, usage of flash etc)

[photo81]

Hi Eric,

Are you still planning on releasing a finalized version of these profiles? (It'd be nice to get a version with similar-to-Nikon colors, but also without a dramatically steeper tone curve - even if it had to have blacks=0).

If not I'm wondering if it's possible to just adjust the tone curve of an existing profile (but I'm guessing that the color-matching is probably interdependent on the tone curve).

Thanks!

[Guest]

When you alter tone curve, as implemented in ACR, saturation is also altered, but hue remains constant

[MadManChan2000]

Hi photo81, yes, I would like to get a finalized version released. As you say, it may rely on some extra adjustments (which could be easily rolled into a preset). I will follow-up with you offline.

Eric

[DHayMil]

I'd love to see it as well!

DM

[Crystal_Evans]

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

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[b2martin_a]

I tried running the DNG Profile Editor (chart tab) on a D700 image of the ColorChecker using Camera Standard version 2 profile and I get the following error message:

A fatal runtime error has occurred.

Description: invalid hue

Source filename: pe_recipe.cpp

Source line: 2734

The DNG Profile Editor works fine with the D700 Camera Standard regular profile.  I only have a problem with version 2 profiles.  Any comments?

[Guest]

Before I tear into this and start the project...can anyone tell

me if these presets are compatible w/LR v2.4  ??  Thanks

[MadManChan2000]

Yes: LR 2.0 and later.

BTW, the latest LR 2 version is 2.7. Just FYI.

Eric

[b2martin_a]

ManManChan2000, any comment on why the DNG Profile Editor Chart Tab will not run when I select a D700 version 2 profile.  I get an error message as listed in the post above.

[MadManChan2000]

b2martin_a, unfortunately I've not yet had a chance to study this myself yet, but I hope to do so soon. It's been a busy time.

Eric

[photo81]

By the way, Eric sent me his latest version of these profiles (v3) and they look great (closer to the tonal range of the original profiles, while getting rid of all those artifacts). You do have to modify your base exposure to -0.5EV though for them to work, but you can just apply this as a preset or as default settings. Hopefully these will get tested more and publicly released soon.

[Guest]

I'm glad that things are moving in the right direction

Eric, could you publish v3 profile?

menno1000, how did experimental profile perform? I made similar experimental profile for 400D using D700 Camera v2 and results are quite good. It seems that colorimetrical differences between these sensors are quite small. There are some measurments on DxO site, where response to sRGB primary colors is shown. Response to Blue and Green is almost equal (after whitebalancing), while there is some difference in response to Red in blue channel

[menno1000]

+1 for the v3 profiles, I would like to test them too.

[menno1000]

Sorry Vit, i read the thread from my mail and now i notice only half

the messages were displayed in this way. I did not see your download

link, so now i'm gonna look at your profiles!

[MadManChan2000]

Hi Vit, it may take a couple of more days, but yes, I hope to do so soon. The days are just packed ...

Eric

[ionicstorm]

I would love to try out the v3s too One problem, I have recently upgraded from Windows 32bit to 64bit and have place the v2 files in the "C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles" directory as requested, however in 3.3 and 64bit, nothing has appeared, wondered if there was some nack to this?