LR Camera Profile question and Canon Picture Styles???

[Box Brownie]

Hi All

Fuzzy grey cells as I cannot recall now where I came across this aspect

However, it is in part linked to my other thread re Canon 7D RAW PP'ing.

If I open the LR "calibration" in Develop and drop down the Camera specific choices the list says 'Adobe Standard' and then lists the names of the Canon Picture Styles (Faithfull, Neutral, Portrait etc) now though Canon have never disclosed quite what these styles do AFAIK the received wisdom was that that have apart from applied Sharpening, Contrast, Saturation......(now what was the 4th one?) they applied a Tone Curve.

Now these picture styles are specifically associated with the JPEG conversion 'in camera' and indeed if one uses Canon's DPP software it will read the data and apply it as selected to the RAW file conversion.

So is LR "reading" in the self same way DPP and as such is it worth using in LR as a usable baseline for PP'ing camera unique Canon RAW files ~ for the record I did have very quick look at one image and went down the list to see what effect I could see.  The most obvious was the Histogram moving a smallish but measurable amount in the image itself the tone and 'colour' changed.  Therefore do LR and Canon Picture Styles "play nicely" like a starting LR Preset???  I know it ultimately is in the eye of the beholder as to whether the image 'looks right' but what is the opinion hereabouts for using this.

Oh, as mentioned if this was done in camera it is the JPEG that is "processed" so not sure about DPP but as I export my image files as TIFF to work on further in CS5 are the Styles carried through the LR workflow and thus the TIFF has the changes applied???

Sorry in advance if that sounds too rambling but this all part of my continued learning curve with the (especially) the 7D 

TIA for the feedback 

PS For the record ~ when I had the Canon 350D I rarely took RAW so it was JPEGs all the way but I set the in camera Sharpening & Contrast to the very lowest setting and on the 40D I carried that habit over to the User Set version of 'Neutral' Picture Style, though I latterly took mostly RAW.............and force of habit I have set the 7D the same way.  So does the RAW carry the Picture Style data that DPP and LR are actually interpreting???

[Simon Garrett]

The picture styles are not applied to raw files by the camera, but the settings are just written into metadata in the raw file.  Canon raw software reads it and probably applies it (I don't use Canon, but that's what Nikon software does with Nikon raw files).  LR doesn't read the picture styles metadata from the raw file - they're in proprietary Canon format.  The "Camera..." profiles are simulations by Adobe of the similarly-named picture styles, but you have to apply them to the raw file in LR.  You can create presets for different picture styles to semi-automate this. 

Adobe has separate profiles for each camera.  If you choose "Camera Standard" profile, as you have a 7D, LR applies the Adobe Camera Standard profile for the 7D.  There will be a different Camera Standard profile for the 350D say, but you don't have to tell it which camera - Lightroom figures that out from the raw file. 

If the "Camera..." profiles for the 7D are as good as the "Camera..." profiles for Nikon cameras, they'll be very close to the effect of the Canon picture styles. 

[madmanchan]

The "Camera..." profiles in Lr (e.g., "Camera Standard") mimic the result of processing the raw file through Canon's DPP software at default settings (with auto stuff like Auto Lighting Optimizer disabled).  Your choice of in-camera Picture Style menu setting does not affect the setting in Lightroom.  You can change the profiles at any time, e.g., you may have set the in-camera Picture Style to "Faithful" but by default the profile selected for the image in Lightroom is Adobe Standard.  You can set it to "Camera Faithful" or any other profile you want.  You can also use the "Set Default Settings..." item in the Develop menu to set your own preferred default profile, so that all future images imported in Lr use a particular profile.