DNG profile editor alternatives

[flashfredrikson]

Hi all,

as I am starting to use lightroom more and more for my phase files, I wonder if there is any software out there which allows for the creation of dng profiles.
Adobe Labs dng profile editor is nice, but misses some features I can not live without, the most important being individual color channels for r, g and b in the curves tool. I have been using Profile Maker/Editor to build custom icc profiles for the phase files, but unfortunately LR does not support icc proflies (and is missing the rgb channels in it's curve tool)
Of course I could use C1 pro 4 (btw, also missing those rgb channels now) which still supports icc profiles for cameras, but I hate it, mostly for it's previews which are imho much to contrasty, harsh and oversharp.

anybody knows something? any help is appreciated!

cheers,
martin

[tho_mas]

Of course I could use C1 pro 4 (btw, also missing those rgb channels now) which still supports icc profiles for cameras, but I hate it, mostly for it's previews which are imho much to contrasty, harsh and oversharp.

If this is the reason to change from C1 to another RAW converter you should rethink your workflow.
As I process my files with sharpening disabled at output I've set a sharpening setting that works okay for the lowres previews at viewing size "to fit". Maybe that will not meet your purposes as you process with shapening applied, I don't know. In this case you could use the Viewer and zoom in to at least 25% viewing size (up from 25% the previes are rendered with full resolution and therefore they are accurate). My setting is that the Viewer is always opened in the background and set to 25%, print size or 50% (whatever I need). I switch to the Viewer with a keyboard shortcut ("alt V" in my case; I think F10 or F11 is C1 default) and minimize it with "cmd M". So I just toggle with "alt V" and "cmd M" to bring the Viewer to front or hide it. Does that work out for you?

[Panopeeper]

Adobe Labs dng profile editor is nice, but misses some features I can not live without, the most important being individual color channels for r, g and b in the curves tool

Martin, I'm afraid you are looking for something, which is not there and can not be there. The DNG profile allows for a curve, and for individual colors it allows for a hue shift as well as for saturation and value multiplications. Curves for the individual color channels would contradict this concept.

In other words: you can achieve the save effect but with different means.

Note, that I am not referring to the DNG Profile Editor but to the DNG specification, which describes what a profile can contain and how that is to be interpreted, i.e. another profile editor can not change on this.

[flashfredrikson]

Thanks Panopeeper,

I didn't know about thos dng specifications. Bummer. I was really hoping for a way to escape the old icc workflow :-)
And there are some things you (or at least I) just can't achieve with the dng profiles, for example bringing the blues up in the shadows and down in the highlights...

cheers,
martin

[madmanchan]

Martin, what you need is 3D editing capability which the DNG Profile Editor does not provide (the DNG PE does 2.5D, so you can lighten the blues, or darken the blues, but not lighten the dark blues and darken the light blues at the same time). Unfortunately I don't know of any publicly-available tools yet which allow you to make such tweaks.

[Panopeeper]

Deleted

[Panopeeper]

Martin.

look around on the Adobe DNG and on the ACR forum. I remember to have seen something from the poster Sandy; she programmed some extention, maybe in this direction.

Be prepared to spend half of a lifetime on the forums. Adobe invested some extraordinary effort to find the worse forum software money can buy, and they succeeded.

Eric,

I don't understand your but not lighten the dark blues and darken the light blues at the same time. I made a try with the profile editor, and I could change the lighter blues to darker, AND the darker ones to lighter.

[Schewe]

I don't understand your but not lighten the dark blues and darken the light blues at the same time. I made a try with the profile editor, and I could change the lighter blues to darker, AND the darker ones to lighter.

Pretty sure Eric meant in a single edit as apposed to targeting a darker blue and then a lighter blue thus putting in multiple color target points–which can be done but can get pretty cluttered if you're gonna do a lot of colors that way.

[sandymc]

look around on the Adobe DNG and on the ACR forum. I remember to have seen something from the poster Sandy; she programmed some extention, maybe in this direction.

The tool is dcpTool - here: http://dcptool.sourceforge.net/

I wouldn't recommend trying to build a profile by hand though. You'd be busy for a very, very long time.

Btw it's "he", not "she" - Scottish ancestry.

Sandy

[flashfredrikson]

Thanks Sandy and all,
not quite what I was looking for, but hey, will code profiles for food :-), my C64 cbasic skills will come in handy...
Gretag's Profile Editor but for dng, that would be the thing. Guess it is just not possible, as far as my understanding goes. Have to stick with the good ole icc profiles then (or at least for now).

cheers,
martin

[Panopeeper]

Martin,

I still don't understand the limitation Eric mentioned above. You CAN create a profile with the profile editor, which makes for example the light blues darker AND the dark blues lighter (ONE profile); I tested this. Give it a try. You need one DNG image with all the colors affected, or several images, but you need as input the light and dark blue *source* in the same editing (and at least one blue in between for locking the colors you don't want to adjust).

Keep in eye, that you have to "lock down" the neighbouring colors to prevent unwanted color adjustments.