Building 'camera native' profiles for ACR/Lr, here's how.

[agorabasta]

ACR is always using some kind of colour/tone profile, even if the 'camera calibration' module is switched off. For example - with the Nex cams it uses the 'adobe standard', with a700 it uses the 'ACR 4.2' (the same as 'ACR 4.4'); those profiles are obviously embedded too deep in the proggie and cannot be disabled completely by switching off the calibration module - they can be only bypassed if some external profile is used in the calibration module.

At the same time, the raw files contain the embedded colour matrices (basic profiles) that are always better than whatever is supplied by Adobe. I find that colour translation by native colour matrix is normally very close to that achieved with carefully hand-coded profiles. And original manufacturer has every reason to better know their product properties, thus all the unavoidable compromises coded into the embedded colour matrices have every chance to be about optimal.

So here's how to extract the native colour matrix profile from the camera raw - open a raw DNG image of a Macbeth checker in Adobe 'DNG profile editor'; use the 'build color table' function for 'both color tables'; then under the 'Edit' menu do the 'clear all adjustments'; now just export a profile - that would be exactly the camera native matrix profile for ACR/Lr.
And it doesn't really matter what temperature and/or quality that Macbeth chart image was, the results don't change at all. You may use some raw image from IR, for example. Just use the image taken with the right cam type

The resulting profiles may be then adjusted somewhat further with the HSL corrections, but may well be used as they are. They are pretty good actually. So I'd advise the use of HSL presets directly in ACR/Lr rather than bending such 'native' profiles any further.

[Winston]

use the 'build color table' function for 'both color tables'

Where is this?
Everything you do seems to require a base profile.
Are you using Beta2?

[agorabasta]

Sorry, that's actually 'create color table'. It's at the rightmost tab labelled 'chart'. And it's the same Beta 2.

It doesn't matter that some base profile is loaded with the DNG image as the editor builds a new 'ColorChecker' profile with 'create color table'.

The result never depends neither on the initially loaded profile nor on the particular chart image properties.

[Winston]

How do you avoid using the base profile?

[agorabasta]

You replied while I was editing my post for clarity, please see above.

[agorabasta]

Seems like some further clarification is really needed.
I always did it having first opened some recipe that was presaved earlier, and contained some 'ColorChecker' profile embedded already. Thus all further actions were done without interference from Adobe original profiles. If done directly upon Adobe profiles, it doesn't work.

[agorabasta]

Actually, it works from Adobe standard profile for the Nex. Must be due to the fact that the Nex standard profile is not too bad. So this procedure corrects its greens and blues by a few degrees in hue and it becomes nearly perfect.
With a700 all the Adobe supplied profiles are too far from real thing, and they cannot even make a starting point.

[Winston]

The A700 X-Rite profile is very similar to the last one you published.

[agorabasta]

Being of any semblance of an Xrite generated profile result could hardly make a positive characteristic. Profiles generated by Xrite plugin/standalone proggies are generally far worse than even those generated by 'DNG profile editor'.
And neither of automatic profile generators could ever produce real image colour/tone transitions you may see in this example below -

[Winston]

What am I supposed to compare this to?
I don't see anything special about the image except for the green cast in parts of the yellow object.

[agorabasta]

Here goes for comparison, first an xrite profile generated at exactly the same lighting, then the same crop with my hand-tuned profile as above -

[Winston]

They are indeed different. What does a color cheker look like?

[agorabasta]

With xrite it looks truly bad, as usual.

here goes, names tell the history and of the story -

[agorabasta]

The profiles that are extracted through the procedure I initially described really are some simple matrix profiles that ACR uses when it finds no profiles for the particular camera in its registered folders.
In case of the A700 it is just the 'ACR 4.4' profile that is always present there as one option of the drop-down list. For other cameras it's some 'Matrix' profile that is offered only if there are no profile files in the registered folders, normally those matrix profiles are not available.
But those 'Matrix' profiles are actually considerably better than 'Adobe Standard' ones, it is so at least for the Nex and for the A500.

So I post those extracted matrices below.

[agorabasta]

Code: Select all

<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 4.2-c020 1.124078, Tue Sep 11 2007 23:21:40        ">
   <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
      <rdf:Description rdf:about=""
            xmlns:dngclr="http://ns.adobe.com/dng-profile-editor/1.0/">
         <dngclr:Version>1.0</dngclr:Version>
         <dngclr:ToneCurve rdf:parseType="Resource">
            <dngclr:Edit0 rdf:parseType="Resource">
               <dngclr:X>0</dngclr:X>
               <dngclr:Y>0</dngclr:Y>
            </dngclr:Edit0>
            <dngclr:Edit1 rdf:parseType="Resource">
               <dngclr:X>255</dngclr:X>
               <dngclr:Y>255</dngclr:Y>
            </dngclr:Edit1>
         </dngclr:ToneCurve>
         <dngclr:TunerRedHue1>0</dngclr:TunerRedHue1>
         <dngclr:TunerRedSaturation1>0</dngclr:TunerRedSaturation1>
         <dngclr:TunerGreenHue1>0</dngclr:TunerGreenHue1>
         <dngclr:TunerGreenSaturation1>0</dngclr:TunerGreenSaturation1>
         <dngclr:TunerBlueHue1>0</dngclr:TunerBlueHue1>
         <dngclr:TunerBlueSaturation1>0</dngclr:TunerBlueSaturation1>
         <dngclr:TunerTemperature1>0</dngclr:TunerTemperature1>
         <dngclr:TunerTint1>0</dngclr:TunerTint1>
         <dngclr:InternalName>Matrix extracted</dngclr:InternalName>
         <dngclr:Copyright/>
         <dngclr:EmbedPolicy>3</dngclr:EmbedPolicy>
         <dngclr:BaseToneCurve>0</dngclr:BaseToneCurve>
         <dngclr:BaseProfile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dngclr:BaseProfile>
         <dngclr:BaseProfileFingerprint>624CBA3C14AED6327D14AC60F75839A1</dngclr:BaseProfileFingerprint>
         <dngclr:BaseProfileModelName>Sony NEX-5</dngclr:BaseProfileModelName>
         <dngclr:BaseProfileUIName>ColorChecker</dngclr:BaseProfileUIName>
      </rdf:Description>
   </rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta>