PS: My first impressions - On bodies where I have custom profiles made using the ColorChecker Passport, the advantage seemed less obvious and on the examples I ran, the custom profiles gave a quicker path to the final destination. On camera bodies I did not have custom profiles for, Tony's profiles did well. (Pace Tony, I would not recommend using Auto as a starting point.)
There was a brief "linear profile" craze some years ago. I don't remember who started it, but I remember doing a lot of testing and then rejecting linear over custom profiles.
So I got Tony's linears and tested again, briefly on only 2 images. My opinion is still "meh", not for me. "Auto" is definitely a poor starting choice. It takes a lot of tweaking after auto, and you are better off starting from zero. And even then, it takes a lot of tweaking. A lot more than when starting from a good custom profile with the standard gamma curve.
The only potential benefit I see is in deep shadows. Shadows that are not clipped can be rescued easier with a linear profile. So, maybe do a linear profile conversion and blend that with a "normal" conversion using a luminosity mask for shadows.
redcrown wrote:
There was a brief "linear profile" craze some years ago. I don't remember who started it, but I remember doing a lot of testing and then rejecting linear over custom profiles.
So I got Tony's linears and tested again, briefly on only 2 images. My opinion is still "meh", not for me. "Auto" is definitely a poor starting choice. It takes a lot of tweaking after auto, and you are better off starting from zero. And even then, it takes a lot of tweaking. A lot more than when starting from a good custom profile with the standard gamma curve.
The only potential benefit I see is in deep shadows. Shadows that are not clipped can be rescued easier with a linear profile. So, maybe do a linear profile conversion and blend that with a "normal" conversion using a luminosity mask for shadows....Show more →
Yes, the custom profiles work better. But then, I don't have custom profiles for some of my earlier bodies and Tony's linear profile does better there than any of the canned profiles. In particular, highlight recovery is very good, and as you point out shadows can benefit as well.
Don't know who Tony Kuyper is but in Capture One, you can set it to use a linear tone response curve rather than the standard gamma 2.2. That results in a very dark image but one that can be useful in extracting critical highlight detail. Most camera profiles have a 2.2 gamma baked in because the sensor data is linear and it looks like crap until it's gamma corrected.
Peter Figen wrote:
Don't know who Tony Kuyper is but in Capture One, you can set it to use a linear tone response curve rather than the standard gamma 2.2. That results in a very dark image but one that can be useful in extracting critical highlight detail. Most camera profiles have a 2.2 gamma baked in because the sensor data is linear and it looks like crap until it's gamma corrected.
Tony is the creator of the TK panel, a powerful tool for generating and manipulating luminosity, colour, and saturation masks, plus a whole lot more. The panel plays seamlessly with PS and also includes a slew of PS actions.
