Custom Camera Profiles: My Experience (D200)

[reidthaler]

My D2'' RAW files always imported fairly flat, as expected, so I decided to play around with presets and camera profiles. As suggested by Jack Davis, I started to import with the Auto setting and then playing with the brightness. That was an improvement, by still not as tweaked out of the box as I would have liked.

I dug out the profile I made with the AcrCalibrator found at http://fors.net/chromoholics/index.php that uses a script in PS on a photo of the Gregtag Color chart. I then made a camera profile using the Adobe DNG profile editor. I then tweaked the adobe created profile with just a little "S" curve--2 arrows keys up, 2 arrow keys over, reverse for the lower point.

While I've just created it and have played with a few images it looks the most promising as an import profile of all of them.

Any one else have experience with creating or tweaking profiles to share?

Thanks,

Reid

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Better still Reid, shoot the calibration target, just as you did for the old Fors script, and use the last tab of the DNG profile editor - it's more accurate than using the 6 or 7 sliders.

 

[reidthaler]

Agreed. I made a profile using the chart method and compared that profile to tweaking that profile comparing my screen with the actual chart. While I did a good job of eyeballing my 2nd monitor that visually, the results with chart weren't very good.

Conclusion: Using the chart method with a one-point up and over and down and over s-curve looks to yield the best profile.

Reid

 

[Victoria Bampton]

The other thing is to have a number of proper images open at the same time as you're adjusting the profile - you'll be able to see how your changes affect various images then too.