I've been using the new Adobe color profiles (Adobe Standard) for my Canon 1D MkIII in ACR CS4 for most of the past year, and I'm really liking the tones MUCH better than the old 4.x profiles.
However, I still don't think Adobe Standard is quite as good as the Canon ones found in Zoombrowser and RIT. I tried the Camera Standard, and it's quite close to the Canon Standard, maybe a bit too harsh on the red (Neutral seems fairly close to the Canon Neutral too).
I really like the output from the Canon software, like RIT, but it's a huge pain to use when working with hundreds of RAW images. ACR's workflow is much better, and is about 400% faster at conversion than RIT.
I was just wondering if others out there would mind sharing feedback on what profiles they like for RAW.
I've created a set of my own profiles using the Adobe Labs DNG Profile Editor, and absolutely love the results - even better (to my eyes) than any of the canned Adobe profiles with the added benefit that you can run separate profiles for different lighting conditions.
One thing I also find about RIT, is that the output is cleaner than ACR at higher ISO's. It's very slight, but noticeable. Also, using the 1D MkIII FlexNR action, the results are better with RIT than ACR. It's more about artifacting than noise I would say.
Another reader who would be interested in seeing this - thanks in advance.
Also, as someone still on CS3 (and 4.x profiles), I was intrigued by your comment that the CS4/5.x profiles are "much better" - would love to hear more about this.
I was hoping to save a few $$$ and not upgrade Photoshop, but if there is a big difference, maybe it's worthwhile just for this.
Before Adobe introduced its new profiles, I found ACR/LR basically unusable for Canon cameras. I agree the new profiles make a big difference.
It's easy enough to customize the settings in ACR for a specific camera model. For the 5D2, I use the Camera Standard profile with a slight red/orange desaturation (in the HSL tool), and a reduced contrast setting (from 25 to 10 or so), and Fill Light = 2. (I also turn off NR since I do this in post using Neat Image.)
This gives results that are close to the my preferred Picture Style setting (Standard Contrast -1), though not identical. I still prefer the Canon conversions for critical images.
If you are suffering with RIT, try DPP. Much faster conversions and results are basically identical (they differ a little, but not enough to worry about). RIT (which implemented a direct port of the in-camera conversion algorithms) is no longer shipping with the latest camera models, so it looks like Canon is dropping this tool anyway.
Here is a comparison I did after the new Adobe profiles became available which illustrates the differences well, I think. In the Canon conversion, note the subtle tonality in the skin tone and the hair that seems missing from ACR even using the Camera Standard profile (shot with a 5D):
Gary - those are perfect examples of the differences that I'm seeing with my newest profiles, with more fidelity and a greater sense of transparency and presence.
Great examples. I agree that there is an almost sickly yellowness with ACR 4.4 that can be eliminated using the newer profiles. I have been using Adobe Standard, and have been fairly pleased. The DPP -1 is still the clear winner to my eye.
Very nice posts guys.
It's funny how the old ACR 4.x and older profiles had that trademark yellow hue to them. Oh I hated that!
I'm going to try the Camera Standard and dial down the reds a bit. Any recommendation to how much?
Too bad that Canon has killed RIT. It had the best noise profile of any RAW conversion by far, and when used with the 1D MkIII FlexNR action, produced the best output of any DSLR. But man, it was SLOOOOOW.
That is the only reason I love DPP, the conversion results are always great. With ACR even using Camera Standard or Adobe Standard look flat and blaaaaaahhh.
I have been trying and trying to get similar results in ACR as I do in DPP, but no dice.
I process most of my pictures in DPP and only those that DPP can't handle I'll throw them into LR for conversions...
RIT is even better for IQ than DPP, especially at higher ISO's.
Using the above recommendations for Camera Standard and red/orange hue tweaks, I can get very close to DPP/RIT, especially the warm colours. The blacks however do have a slight cool cast compared to DPP/RIT output.
Is Capture One around anymore? They used to have nice output back in the day.
