If you use Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, and a Canon SLR, even better a 5D (I, not II), I'd be interested to hear what you have found is the best overall profile to use for your camera.

I'd been using Adobe 3.3. or 4.4 for awhile, then used the DNG Profile editor to create a custom profile with a color-checker card. It seemed to improve some problems I noted consistently with my colors.

However, I've recently taken a more critical eye to it after looking at many pictures in many different scenes. I've decided that the color profile I am using is doing too much of a contrast adjustment in addition to the color adjustments, and furthermore, is pushing colors out of the shadows in a way that is very unappealing to my eye. My pictures start out with just too many blah areas of grey in shadow detail. I am not talking about blocking up the shadows so they clip, I'm talking about too much color being driven out.

I know there are several factors that can "cause" this "problem". Bad exposure of the color checker. Bad monitor profile. Changing tastes. Bad in-camera exposure. So I am going to address what I can this weekend: new monitor profile, new camera profile, etc. But I'd be really interested in hearing what others have found, if you've gone to the same trouble I have.

Thanks!

In the Camera Calibration section of the Develop window I have the "camera neutral" profile selected. I also use a neutral profile in DPP or other software because I think it gives me the closest to what the camera saw. I'll tweak it from there if necessary but I don't go in for too much artistic licence Other profiles tend to give an unrealistic interpretation of the scene that I photographed.

- Alan

Thanks Alan. Between the canon presets, I do prefer neutral also.

With this color checker profile I did, I realize it is only a halfway situation, because the calibration is most effective when the lighting is the same - if the color checker was under incandescent when you snapped it, then the custom profile may not be accurate for a flash-lit shot -but it still seemed to make things better, loosely speaking. Now, I'm sort of coming around to preferring even canon's landscape mode to the custom profile I took.

Not sure what went wrong along the way

I am looking forward to LR3. The beta does seem to show marked improvement. I've never really totally trusted the adobe tools since i learned that there is proprietary color information in the canon files.

The biggest difference with your custom profile is that is is "invariate", it doesn't change it's saturation- and hueshifting behaviour with exposure. Most of the "canned" profiles do this to be more "pleasing".

Actually, profiles that only try to be "accurate" are often seen and perceived as "dull" and unreal. Even if they're the closest to "real" that you can get in a certain situation. The trick is to find exactly WHAT look you're searching after, and knowing it when you see it. And exactly what it's constituents are, so you can recreate it.

But having an accurate starting point always helps, so my base point is always a custom profile. I pp from there. Otherwise, if I don't have an accurate starting point with that certain camera that was used, I use the "Adobe Standard" included from LR2.2 onwards AFAIK.

Thanks theSuede. The monitor recalibration seemed to help, slightly, but I did not get a chance to reshoot the color-checker card and do a new profile. That is an interesting point you raise. Maybe there is a disjoint between a "accurate" profile and an "accurate" perception.

The other issue of course is the the profile is really only accurate for the given light source. I haven't bothered making one for incandescent, flash, etc., and I am not sure that I want to.

For frame of reference, I'm a Capture One user who is strongly considering moving to LR. I use a 5D Mk I. I'm considering it because LR has excellent ability to tweak tones, healing, vignetting, etc. compared to C1 and I don't see C1 catching up anytime soon. I've been testing LR for about a week and will continue to test for the next few months before making the decision. I'm not a pro with pro volume and client demands, so I can take my time.

Anyway, I have found that Adobe Standard works best for me thus far. Maybe it's simply closer to what I was used to (and liked) in C1; I'm not sure. My understanding was that Adobe Standard was camera-specific. Ultimately, as mentioned by theSuede, I think it comes down to personal preference, but I hear what you are saying - it would be nice to know which profile was most consistently color/tone/contrast/etc accurate and then move from there.

I use "Camera Landscape" but set up all my own default settings to work the way I want it to.

Mark