Is it practical to buy or borrow ICC profiles for Canon 5DS R and DxO Optics Pro

[earlybird]

Hi,
 When I got my Canon 5DS R last summer I was more or less compelled to make my own color profile for use with Adobe Camera RAW. I learned a lot and finally assembled a dual illuminant DNG Profile using Color Checker, DNG Profile Maker, and dcpTool. It has worked pretty well as a general purpose camera profile.

 I just started learning how to use DxO OpticsPro and will probably buy a license for it. I really enjoy its noise reduction but the color rendition seems like it could be better.

 I have been reading a few things about making ICC profilee for Capture One but not much info for DxO Optics Pro. It's not a great time for me to divert attention to making profiles so I am wondering; has anyone has made some that they sell or share? If not, how about a tutorial for use with DxO Optics pro and its standard lighting response? I tried an .icm that alterego posted, in the Capture One forum section, which he offered as suitable for experimenting with Capture One and it is extremely dark in DxO Optics Pro unless I push up the lighting parameters. DxO has lots of tutorials but they all seem sort of cursory in nature. so I haven't really figured out what is "normal" in terms of using the various lighting parameters. I am struggling to "de-reference" my Adobe Camera RAW expectations. For example; The highlights and shadows parameters in DxO seem much more dramatic than what I use in ACR.

 Any thoughts?

 Thank you.

[one iota]

Hi earlybird,

I have been disappointed with the colour rendering applied by DxO to my 5Ds files. While it is excellent for lens corrections and noise reduction it falls way behind the other three of my raw converters in colour rendition. It's also a bit weird when it comes to dealing with extreme highlights and it certainly shifts saturation when you push the shadow and highlight sliders.

I've raised the colour issue directly with DxO and received this reply:

"Thanks for writing in. How does the image look if you apply the "no correction" preset? If it's still not to satisfaction this is likely due to our demosaicing algorithm, and isn't something that can be modified. What you CAN do is go to the color rendering settings and change them to something that works better. Additionally, when exporting, you can set the color profile of your image."

I've created some presets that get me a little closer but as far as I'm aware custom ICC profiles cannot be applied in DxO.

For colour-critical work and high dynamic range images I prefer to use Capture One.

[earlybird]

Thank you for your reply.

I may be confused about DxO OpticsPro's "Color Rendering" option, but there is an input for "Category > ICC Profile" and "Rendering > Import ICC profile". I have assumed that if I imported a .icc profile for my 5DS R that it would effect the color output of DxO OpticsPro when I exported into Photoshop etc.

It seems as if this would be analogous to how DNG profiles conform color within Adobe Camera RAW, but I may be incorrect.

I read a bit more about camera profiling yesterday and it seems as if there are some relatively costly products and a few products which have disappeared from the market. It also seems as if Argyll Color management may be an option but it seems as if the learning curve for Argyll is enormous, especially for someone who doesn't have command prompt skills.

The limited access to camera profiling made me wonder if there was someone offering profiles in a manner similar to how Huelight offers DNG profile for ACR users. Of course, all these ideas may be based on a misunderstanding about what DxO does with the .icc profile you may load in its "Color Rendering" dialog.

[AlterEgo]

you create icc/icm profile and goto : color -> color rendering -> category : icc profile -> rendering : import icc profile -> ... based on linear raw reference ...

I guess (never used DxO - just looked at the trial), for example,  that you need to use purely linear, gamma = 1 export from rawdigger to makeinputicc GUI front end for argyll...

so 5DS R icc/icm profile might be something like this (created from I-R test shot, so quality is AS IS) - attached (just a matrix profile)...

I did not do any serious effort, but profile seems to work OK = http://s26.postimg.org/58f22pd9j/dxo.jpg

[one iota]

Thank you AlterEgo.

I've applied that profile to an image taken of a colorchecker 24 colour macbeth chart and the result is very close to reality and certainly much better than DxO's stock profile.

So I will stand corrected with regards to DxO  being able to employ icc profiles (as should they!).

[earlybird]

Hi AlterEgo,
 Thank for posting the profile.

 I tried it and got some nice results, but using it leaves me a bit further confused by DxO's workflow. For example; I imported it as "linear" and had to manipulate the "Exposure Compensation" and "Selective Tone" settings quite a bit to get a nice result. I did also try importing it as "DxO realistic" and it was a lot harder to make adjustments that resulted in anything useful.

 Furthermore, I am confused by DxO's "Exposure Compensation" function as it seems as if there is a hidden stage of compensation beneath any parameter control. For example; I was working on a landscape that I know was overexposed 1-2/3rd stops but with DxO I had to leave the exposure compensation at "0" to get the "Selective Tone" adjustments to seem useful, and even then they seem to work in unexpected ways.

 In Adobe Camera RAW, if I am working on a photo that I overexposed 1-2/3rd stops I simply use a -1.66 "Exposure" setting as a starting point and the Highlight, Shadows, White and Black parameters seem to function as I intuit.

 I am growing to think that I could choose to use DxO OpticsPro to get some nice results, but it would require learning how to use it by rote habit, while my experience with Adobe Camera RAW seems to translate with my experience in wet lab darkrooms and with widely shared ideas about tonality and shading.

 I understand that I have turned this thread into a wider discussion of RAW conversion but it seems like learning a bit about the color profiling has helped me get some perspective regarding why I was feeling disconcerted while using DxO Optics Pro. It is not just the color management, it is the proprietary and obfuscated character of the DxO app's environment.

[AlterEgo]

but using it leaves me a bit further confused by DxO's workflow.

I am not using DxO myself and I did not spend any time researching how and when DxO applies the colortransform guided by the content of icc/icm container (where you might have various combos of matrices, 1D TRCs, 3D LUTs)... I suggest you to dig deeper and tell us...

for example C1 does apply the color transform from camera Raw RGB coordinates to formal PCS at the end of data processing pipeline and C1 does certain hidden from the user manipulation with the raw data (above regular like black level comp, etc) - see notes about "transfer function" for example in DCamProf documentation... so when we build icc/icm profile for C1 we take that into account and compensate/account for that (if we want to)... the same goes for DxO - you need to research and use proper compensation/accounting when building icc/icm profiles...

as I noted I am not using DxO, so I just read that it expects linear and used gamma 1 so to say to build a simple matrix profile... I have no time or desire at the moment to check what kind of hidden exposure compensation, transfer function DxO does and where... just do some experiments - find out for example if DxO like C1 has a special mode when it generates .tiff for camera profiling - what and how is written in that tiff might be helpful (for example that transfer function for C1 is extracted from such tiff)

[earlybird]

Thank you for the additional comments.

I will post back if I learn anything further.