P: Adaptive Profiles

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This post applies to Camera Raw.  
Feedback for Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop should be posted here.

Update February 2025:

Adobe has introduced two Adaptive Profiles – Adaptive Color & Adaptive B&W.

Getting started with the Adaptive Profiles: 

• Access a profile inside the profile favorites menu. 
• In addition, there is a new section for Adaptive Profiles in the Profiles browser. 
• Enable the profile and adjust the ‘Amount’ slider as desired. 
• Use the rest of the Camera Raw tools just like you would otherwise. 

Check out the Help Page for more detailed usage information. For more technical information on the underlying technology, please refer to this blog post. 

Please try the profiles and share feedback in this community forum thread. It would help to include details like how you access Camera Raw (via Adobe Bridge or Photoshop), your computer system details, and as much information as possible about what you like or do not like about the resulting image quality. Our team will continually monitor this thread to track issues and improve the future experience. 

Best practices for using the Adaptive Profiles:
 

Try the new profile in the following scenarios: 

• For food scenes. 
• In situations where simply moving Tone and Color sliders may not be sufficient, such as for: high-contrast scenes, landscape or cityscape scenes with skies. 
• For High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) photography, simply select Adaptive Color or Adaptive B&W as a profile and click on the ‘HDR’ button. 
  
  Note: Adaptive Profiles generate HDR and Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) data jointly, creating photos that look consistent with one another. In other words, after applying either of these profiles, if you toggle the HDR button on or off, you will see either the adaptive HDR or SDR look, depending on the position of the toggle.  

To maximize the value of using Adaptive Profiles, please follow these steps: 

• Always start from the Adobe Default or Camera Default rendering (with no other edits) and enable the Adaptive Profile first. 
• Reset any other settings before applying the profile. 
• Make additional global and local edits after assigning the profile, just as you would begin to edit photos with Adobe Color or any other profile. 

Boris Ajdin: Product Manager, Emerging Products Group 

Posted by

[FitzFoto]

If an Adaptive Profile is applied to one of a number of images open in ACR, and the other images open are synched to that image, are a PTGM and an RGBT generated for each image or are those that were generated for the source image applied?

If the latter, perhaps a warning message should be generated, as the results might not reflect what would be achieved by unique Tables.

[drtonyb]

@FitzFoto 

I think the answer to your question is quite obvious: they are unique to each photo.

You can easily determine this for yourself by testing on two photographs: one on the overexposed side (bright) and one on the underexposed side (dark). Adaptive Color will reduce the brightness of the bright image, while increasing the brightness of the dark image. Whether you apply Adaptive Color individually or using Sync from one to the other, the result is the same. If Sync didn't work this way, then Syncing Adaptive Color from a Bright source image to a Dark target image would darken the target image. This doesn't happen.

[FitzFoto]

Now back at my computer, I have been able to test and I agree, the appropriate AP is applied to each image.

[DS256]

After some time my biggest beef with this new feature is that, while it is very useful, provides no feedback on what was changed as we see when AUTO is used. I appreciate the differences between image wide changes of AUTO vs the smaller adjustments of AP. However, under the consideration of learning through feedback, it would benefit photographers to see what was changed by AP. Maybe something like a before/after view where one panel shows the AP enhancment and the other shows masks of the areas that were changed. Personally, this would help with my photography skills.

[jrsforums]

I find that using the history panel, in LRc,  gives me sufficient A:B capability.  The AUTO adjustments are easy to represent as they track directly to the global sliders.  AP adjustments are done in localized areas.  I think trying to represent the areas and adjustments would be quite involved and not very useful (maybe to a very small group??).  In my usage, I either like what it does and move on with other adjustments....or back it out and go down a different path.

[DS256]

@jrsforums in relation to "I find that using the history panel, in LRc,  gives me sufficient A:B capability" AP does not list the changes that have been made. For AUTO you see some of the them in BASIC.

[jrsforums]

@DS256 I believe I said that "...AP adjustments are done in localized areas.  I think trying to represent the areas and adjustments would be quite involved and not very useful...". Also, "...The AUTO adjustments are easy to represent as they track directly to the global sliders..."....global=BASIC.

However, you can SEE the adjustments by mousing over the history panel steps. From having read the Adobe Blog write up on AP, I am not sure much of what they do, under the covers, could be replicated using masks/controls in LRc, so showing it might be impossible and unnecessary....maybe interesting, but let's be pragmatic 😀

[DS256]

@jrsforums yes, we both agree that the AP adjustments are multiple local adjustments across the entire image. My point is disclosure as opposed to hidden. At present I feel with the controls and masking one knows the adjustments made. 

As I was checking, I forgot there is the AMOUNT slider for AP which allows you to set it to zero to which seems to do the same as stepping on/off history steps.

My hope is that with the number of changes made by AP there would be some sort of disclosure or what and where.

[jrsforums]

@DS256 Have you read this....

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/10/14/the-adobe-adaptive-profile

the description below 'How does it works?' describes a process which, I do not believe, can be referenced to the existing masks and sliders available in the current LRc, so would not be helpful to us to use in our own adjustments.

[DS256]

"...describes a process which, I do not believe, can be referenced to the existing masks and sliders available in the current LRc,.."  Oh I completely agree and should have stated I'm looking for a new mechanism to explain the AP changes.

[jrsforums]

@DS256 ...but explaining them only really helps if we have the, new, tools to make similar adjustments, right?  Otherwise, as I said, it is just interesting.  Personally, I'm just happy to be able to view, visually, the changes and, then, make any further adjustments with the tools we have (and any new ones Adobe chooses to give us😀)

[FitzFoto]

Being able to export the mask would be useful.

[jrsforums]

@FitzFoto I do not believe that the "Visualization of the Profile Gain Map" shown in the blog article is an actual map.  Just a representation for explaining it.

[drtonyb]

@FitzFoto 

Read the blog post referenced. There is no 'mask' to export or 'visualise'.

For the PGTM, there is no way to represent thousands of tone curves in any readable or sensible form.

[FitzFoto]

Surely there has to be something that maps where each of those thousands of tone curves is applied.  Is so, it could be rendered as a mask.

[jrsforums]

@FitzFoto 

"Surely there has to be something that maps where each of those thousands of tone curves is applied.  Is so, it could be rendered as a mask."

Possibly, but I do not see as any useful value.  I'd rather Adobe spend their development resources in other areas.

[drtonyb]

@DS256 

"Maybe something like a before/after view where one panel shows the AP enhancment and the other shows masks of the areas that were changed. Personally, this would help with my photography skills."

Not practical and wouldn't help with your photogrpahy skills at all even if it were. The changes are visiualised in the rendered photo; there are no adjustments to see. What could you possible make or understand from seeing thousands of tone curves?

[DS256]

@drtonyb  "What could you possible make or understand from seeing thousands of tone curves?" We don't know till we're shown. For example, exposure changes could indicate that I should have used bracketted shots.

[jrsforums]

@DS256 

"We don't know till we're shown. For example, exposure changes could indicate that I should have used bracketted shots."

it seems to me that most of the info you seek can be seen by visual inspection of AP changes and/or histogram. (Using RawDigger, if RAW histogram needed.)

[cs_p]

now after some time i have to change my early positive impression,  it is absolute useless, it tries to adjusts too many factors which most of the time produce unusable resultes.  the biggest issue is that it does not helps retain the dynmaic range of a capture even when there is plenty of information in the shadow and hightligths area a common adobe problem btw.  it often makes things worse like when you intentinally underexpose.