P: Adaptive Profiles

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This post applies to Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop.  
Feedback for Camera Raw 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 :

[ChrisBR]

The color version seems to work well for many different scenarios. Not sure about the B&W version - maybe contrast is too light. Have to use it more to get a better handle on it. Thanks for including these two in LR! 

[ACEkin]

For my sensibilities, there is far too much emphasis on midtones. But, it seems to go with the current trend of making everything visible even at the expense of the mood.

[MarkdenHartog]

I am doing product photography, and for this, it is unusable. It becomes contrasty in areas I don't want it to, and it dims displays way too dark

[Marius Gerome]

Is this sort of an improvement to "automatic adjustments" or is it actually a profile thats applied with the same values everywhere? It looks good! Quite different than the camera standard profile, but damn good! Especially in situations when theres no camera profile – like in smartphone "raw" (dng or heic) photos. Really nice!! I just want to know; how? What am I working with? How is it doing the calculation: always with the same values and principles (so you've crafted an universal picture profile) or always based on the image (like what smartphones do when they process a photo).

[jrsforums]

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

[Mathias_DK_]

I am going through a batch of travel photos (landscapes, cityscapes, panos), and I am using the new Adaptive Color on most of them. It is a new workflow, but it is easily 'adaptable' 😉  I find it is great for a starting point (was using Adobe Color Auto a lot before) - and with just a few fixes to contrast and saturation, most photos are good to go. Great time saver, and punchy look to the files. I would ofcourse not use it on portraits or for reproductions. But for most other things, I do like it so far. I do get the 'Shadow' artifact on some images (notably in panoramas), as described in another post here. Makes it unusable on some images.

[Mathias_DK_]

I decided to go full HDR on these travel photos instead of just using Adaptive Profile. It's a first for me editing in HDR, and while the difference does look amazing on my HDR monitor (now I want a better one - any suggestions on PC?), sharing these files with the world becomes a problem. However, I do love how I can shape those last bits in the highlights of even the SDR versions. And Adaptive Profile gives me pretty good microcontrast and histogram as a starting point. From there, I basically just need to control the highlights, contrast and saturation - for the files that can handle it. Any way to 'auto adapt' to my monitor profile (my monitors DR I mean)? Here's the photos - in SDR - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mvejerslev/albums/72177720323999176

[Mathias_DK_]

And here's some potential problem images:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mvejerslev/54342639007/in/album-72177720323999176/ - The seagull, potentially identified as 'the subject' has got a shadow around it. Potentially lit too much, green cast in the shadows.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mvejerslev/54342639132/in/album-72177720323999176/ - bit too HDR, too little midtone contrast, halos around mountains.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mvejerslev/54343744679/in/album-72177720323999176/ - foreground lit too much, halos around the trees, sky behind the trees are lighter.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mvejerslev/54343532751/in/album-72177720323999176/ - too HDR, foreground lit too much.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mvejerslev/54343743309/in/album-72177720323999176/ - shadow around the building

Etc.

In general, I think it did well on these, sometimes difficult, travel images. I also think there are some obvious misses in there. And theres the issue of the 'shadow bug' mentioned. Note I adjusted the highlights manually in HDR on all of these photos.

I also think its great to have a 'lazy option' like an AI Adaptive Profile - it is the 'look' were all getting accustomed to anyway, from AI smartphone photography. However, I think there's often way too much 'haloing' going on.

[Frank_Hirschhausen]

On some Files it works quite good. Even on Portraits Details get carved out that havent been noticed before. Depends on a good Lighting. Its a start...
Only disadvantage is, that Presets dont work anymore the Way they did. Colourgrading and Curve need to be re-invented instead of using a Profile. Anyway, a beatiful new Tool in the Box

[Edward Eastman]

I'm creating a B&W editing course using LrC. I really like how the Adaptive B&W Profile renders a B&W image. It reduces the amount of initial global editing an image requires. I can then go right to local edits using Masking tools.

[bast0425]

I’m very happy with these Adaptive Profiles. Since using them, I no longer have issues with the color rendering of my Sony camera, which I previously found disappointing. Before, achieving the desired image quality required extensive photo development work, unlike the more pleasing color science of Canon mirrorless cameras. These new profiles have truly made my editing workflow much easier, and the results are fantastic. Thank you, Adobe, for addressing this challenge and making color grading so much simpler!

[Carlos Q56]

Hi: to my black and white photos I usually add some sepia using the Color Gradient tool of Lightroom Classic (global, hue 50, saturation 5), but in some cases if I use the new Adaptive B&W it becomes weird, instead of turning into sepia it turns blue. So for B/W I am using the old trusty monochrome profile. Regards.

[3Sixty Photography]

Adaptive seems to be a great starting point for all my cameras. Also, using HDR setting on a single raw file and then previewing for SDR display. It looks like the settings for SDR preview are subtle compared to basic sliders? Is there a way to tone down the HDR profile amount like other profiles? An amount slider my be helpful.

[Joe Foe Toe]

Many of us will be applying Adaptive on post-edit images "just to see."  It would be helpful to know in this case, if Adaptive works off the original RAW, or if its foundation changes to that of the processed image.

[jrsforums]

The first times I tried Adaptive Color...on Camera Raw, before available on LRc...I thought it was awful.....until I realized that I was trying it with the images 'post-edited' using other normal profiles.  The problem was, the Adaptive Color profile did work on the base RAW, but the old slider adjustments from the normal profiles were 'piled' on top of them.  Once I realized this...and reset all the sliders to zero....I got great results that only needed little adjusting.

worth reading:

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

[Joe Foe Toe]

As I suspected - thanks much! With images I've already processed, it's easy enough to give Adaptive a try (and perhaps snapshot) before I reset settings. This will yield a "warped" result, but it's easy enough to try first, "just to see."  And you have the benefit of seeing it with masking. Yes, of course in many cases your masking might need revamping, but sometimes it can be helpful just to see your image from another angle.

[LC331590529y6b]

I really like the concept, but I think the name is misleading. It maybe should be called "Adaptive Exposure", or just make the "Auto" button the Adaptive adjustments. It seems to change the contrast, clarity, and lights and shadows, moreso than the colors.

Also, with the Adaptive B&W, it would be awesome if it would not also effect the B&W Mixer settings for when I go back to one of the color profiles.

[jrsforums]

Naming is always an issue...and open to individual interpretation....

my view....it is an 'Adaptive' profile...one for 'Color'and one for 'B&W'.  It is not indicating just color being adjusted.  It is also adjusting much more than exposure, so that name would be even more misleading.  Again, this is a profile change which does global and local adjustments, the other profiles, plus 'Auto', do only global adjustments.

[djskinner50]

Useful addition to LR. I would like to apply the Adaptive Profile to multiple images after import into LRC. This does not seem to be available. Or have I missed something?

[jrsforums]

Select them, auto sync, apply profile.  It will not be instant, as the AI takes some time....a box will pop up with est. time.  

You may want to consider this for updating previews..I am trying it out...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-adaptive-profiles-color-mono-to-be-ap...

[djskinner50]

Thanks. Works a treat. 

[jrsforums]

Ok....I cannot figure it out.  Pics taken in burst mode, same exposure settings....different look with Adaptive Color.

RAWs and exported jpegs are here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/dgvuorcnmnemzd93osu6e/AGe2ykAVvLsNNQZMY2U7SbM?rlkey=ht68agjo1248gltjm...

this is how they look.  Appreciate someone telling me what I am doing wrong 😀

[Thijs_Photo]

You're not doing anything wrong. Assuming you did not make any adjustments before applying the profile, this is just the "adapative" part at work. It "adapts" to each image and will clearly get it "wrong" (subjectively) some times. In this case two very similar images still produce very different outcomes. Adobe will no doubt tune this over time, to give more images pleasing outcomes. But it will never "get it right" 100% of the time. 

[jrsforums]

I was actually hoping that Adobe would look at the files and results.  The significant difference in final 'brightness' seems strange based on sub second difference in time taken.  Particularly since the base RAWs did not show any brightness difference (no strobes from pro photogs).

[jean-michel Picard]

Image de gauche : profil linéaire du Nikon Z8

Image de droite : profil adaptative N&B Adobe

Export dans Nik Silver Effex

Conversion avec le filtre 024 sans modifications.

Retour dans LRC 14.2

Le profil Adobe est trop lumineux et des détails dans les zones claires sont brûlées.