DNG Profiles in Lightroom 2 - an Old v. New Comparison

Every photo blog out there is currently writing about the new Lightroom 2.0 which, by the way, is an incredible product. The new Adjustment Brush tool takes Lightroom to a whole new level - no more blowing out a whole TIFF simply to do a little dodge and burn in Photoshop... (My hard drive budget thanks you, Adobe!)

I could pile on, but today I'm going to give a quick example of what I've seen this morning with the new DNG Camera Profiles (beta) from Adobe. This is really great stuff!

While many people prefer the Lightroom and Camera Raw workflow compared to the tools provided by their camera's manufacturer, often you'll hear complaints about the Adobe color rendering to be a little off - or at least - a little different.

This has all changed with the introduction of DNG Profiles. Along with a major update to their own "standard" profile (which is not a generic standard, but rather their per-camera standard profile) they've also included Camera Matching profiles which provide results very similar to that of what you get from your manufacturer's software (including Picture Styles). Here's a side-by-side comparison of the ACR 4.4 standard profile and the new DNG standard profile:

Studio Portrait Example Brittanny Canon 5d, 70-200mm f/2.8L @ f/7.1, ISO100
ACR 4.4 Profile		DNG Profile - Adobe Standard

Landscape Example Hoover Dam Canon 30D, Sigma 10-20mm @ f/5.6 1/160sec, ISO100
ACR 4.4 Profile		DNG Profile - Adobe Standard

The first thing that caught my attention was the improvement in skin tones - while the image on its own holds up, when you compare it to the new profile and you quickly see that Brittanny really looks a bit... yellow on the left! The shot of the dam is a little less dramatic, though the slightly reddish tone of the rocks comes through quite nicely on the right.

Note that this new profile is not built into Lightroom 2 as shipped! You need to go to the DNG Profiles page and download the installer. It's very simple to do following the directions and FAQ on their site.

Profile Editor
The camera profile provides you with a good starting point for your RAW images. The standard profiles that ship with all RAW converters work pretty well, but for critical accuracy you'll need to create your own camera profile. The basic process is shooting a color test chart under two specific lighting conditions & then handing that image over to software which reads the values & builds a custom profile for your rig.

Adobe has also released a tool that allows you to tweak existing profiles and to create your own: the DNG Profile Editor. I haven't gotten into this one yet, but it has a lot of promise. For a great writeup on this tool, check out the article on Luminous Landscape.

On DNG
Now that there are over 200+ unique RAW formats it is more important than ever to consider converting over to the DNG Standard. Storing your images in a published standard format like DNG will help to ensure that 30 years from now - when Canon, Nikon, or even Adobe may no longer exist - you'll be able to view your digital images. Even better is that with DNG you can always make updates to your favorite photos when a new piece of software comes around, like the updated profiles we've seen here.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer. Happy shooting!