The way that Adobe handles this is to make what are called Dual Illuminant profiles for every camera that they support. But, a camera shoots in a wide variety of lighting conditions, with temperatures from as low as 2,900K in dim candlelight up to 10,000K in some daylight conditions.

Let’s look a little closer at what this is all about.Ī device like a scanner, or a screen, or a printer / paper / ink combination, has a single colour temperature. One can have a profile for each major difference in colour temperature, or one can make a Dual Illuminant profile. There are two choices when it comes to making profiles. The question can be rightly asked – if raw converters come with profiles for our cameras, why bother to make ones own? The answer lies in the areas of colour temperature and white balance. The profiles that are created are in the form used by both Adobe Camera Raw (Photoshop / Bridge) and Lightroom. It used to be that they were “hidden” in Adobe’s products, but since the summer of 2008 with Lightroom 2.0 and Camera Raw 4.5 they are available, and the company even has a profile editor that allows for the customization of these so-called DNG profiles.īut now xrite has produced a simple and relatively inexpensive product ($99), the xrite ColorChecker Passport, that allows one to create ones own camera profiles, quickly and with little muss or fuss. Adobe has them in Camera Raw and Lightroom. Capture One has profiles available for all of the cameras that it supports, and even has versions for different lighting conditions. Depending on the program these may be visible, or hidden, but they’re there. Anyone doing printing is familiar with the use of printer and paper profiles, and of course we all have profiled our monitors – right?īut less known and understood is that our raw converters also use camera profiles.

Colorchecker passport for mac