ACR camera profile for K-5

Does anyone have a good .dcp camera profile file for the K-5 for use with Adobe Camera RAW, something that comes close to the in-camera JPEG processing and the processing perfomed by the Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4?

For several reasons I like to process RAW files through ACR, rather than the Pentax Utility. However I'm frustrated that I'm never able to obtain quite the right colour balance and the colours never look as good as Pentax processed RAW files. This is particularly noticeable at the moment with the autumn colours - ACR processed files seem to lack depth in reds and orange.

I've tried using the simple and advanced profiles for the K-5 available from rawstudio.org but I don't find these much different from using the embedded profile (which is slightly better than the Adobe Standard).

Am I going to have to produce my own camera profiles, using something like the X-Rite Passport? Does anyone have experience of this? Is it any good?

I certainly don't have any experience of these matters, but it is very interesting, so I'd love to explore it more. These .dcp files, are these the ACR default settings that would be applied to a specific camera's RAW file when opened first?

I was aware that the regular updates to ACR add new support for newer models, but I'd have thought the K5 has been around long enough to have included already.

I am wondering how these profiles would provide specific and different colour renditions as you seem to suggest? Does not camera RAW apply saturation / vibrance globally across the spectrum?

I'm sure others will provide some insight. In any case, are you producing the results from PDCU4 by applying any specific adjustments, or are you saying it gives these results by default just by opening the files? If so, then why not keep bulk processing in PDCU just to carry out the coversion into 16bit TIFF, then you can still continue working on the TIFFs in ACR for further adjustment if you prefer that program.

My experience...

Yes, I found the "Adobe Standard" profiles to be a bit wrong! On the K5 the images are somewhat flat and require contrast adjustments and general fiddling.

In the end I decided to plump for the QPcard203, and am shocked at the difference! Colours are now much more accurate and pleasing and there's a lot less fiddling required (i.e. lower clarity required, lower vibrance) for a good image.

Currently I have only produced profiles for K5 and Q under cloudy conditions. So far, these work well in most lighting conditions (because it's the calibration and not the white balance - which must be separately performed using the regular tools). Using my cloudy profile under tungsten, fluorescent, daylight-ish seems to give excellent results. Lilacs, purples and blues are much more realistic too.

I did wonder about making these profile available for a small charge to cover faff-factors... but I'll need to add daylight (if I ever get any!) and other conditions. Will probably also profile for the Tokina 80-200/2.8 as the colour rendition is slightly different to the DA*16-50 that I profiled the first set by.

Of course, my K5 might be slightly different to yours... but I'm sure it's better than Adobe Standard

Profiling and working through all the combinations is time consuming (I profiled all ISOs on both cameras).


So.... would I recommend the QPcard203? Yes, if you understand colour management and profiling However, once profiled, there's little requirement to process for every shot (unless absolutely colour critical - as in product imaging). So, it's a bit expensive just to try out, but an excellent tool nonetheless.

Matt

Thanks Matt. That's useful info. At this stage I wouldn't intend going to the lengths you have, profiling all ISOs.

Given the time and expense we go to attempt to profile monitors and printers it makes sense that the camera should be correctly profiled too - it seems a false economy not to do so.

The more I play around the more dramatic I find the differences between the various K-5 profile definitions, particularly with reds/oranges/browns. I also now see differences between the in-camera JPEGs and the JPEGs produced through PDCU4. I prefer those produced through PDCU4 - I suspect the rendering may be more accurate than produced in-camera as the process is less time critical (camera JPEG rendering is set to Neutral with no offsets and PDCU4 settings are default). Incidentally, the camera D-Range settings (highlight correction and shadow correction) are applied at the RAW level.

I like the sound of the QPcard203. Some people report obtaining better results with the QP than with the X-Rite ColorChecker....and it's cheaper! However, for simplicity, I'd like to create a dual-illuminant profile to cover the range of normal daylight temperatures (you may be horrified by that idea). Do you know a way of creating a dual illuminant profile using the QPcard? The Adobe DNG Profile Editor only seems to support the X-Rite ColorChecker. If I could resolve that question I'd order a QPcard now.

The beauty is once I've sorted out a few decent profiles I can apply them retrospectively. I look forward to revisiting some of my old landscapes that I could never make look quite right!

Actually, it's worth emailing QPcard directly.

Their software doesn't cover dual illuminant profiles... see this thread: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=43733.0
I'm just in a conversation with them (on a closely related matter) and they are exceedingly helpful and knowledgeable!

The profile for the QPcard is created directly with their software - so the Adobe DNG Profile Editor doesn't even figure in the equation Personally, I've found the results of just a cloudy lit QPcard 203 excellent under most lighting conditions - certainly better than Adobe Standard!

You just shoot DNG/PEF, load it straight into their QPcalibration software, tell it what kind of profile to produce and click the button! Next time you boot up LR, the profile is available in the drop down list

To be honest, it's so quick to produce a profile, there's really no need for dual illuminant profiles - just create a profile for each condition and choose from the drop down list

Other plug ins within QPcalibration allow for fine tuning of colours (QPcalibration Adjust), and inspection (QPcalibration Inspect). Additionally, you can output ICC files instead with a plugin (though not compatible with all RAW converters yet).

FWIW, there are some good "Before & After" images on their site that give an idea - http://www.qpcard.com/en_b2c/abcomparisons

Incidentally, my profiling at all ISOs was done out of curiosity to see how the profile changed over the range. It seems pretty stable from what I could see from a cursory glance, except that things fell apart quite badly at around ISO 12800 (But then QPcard say as much!)

I'll see if I can rustle up a quick LR version that shows the results from the K5 too...

Matt

Some examples...
I have literally only changed the Profile between the two settings. However, as mentioned, before when working only with Adobe Standard I would increase the Clarity & Vibrance to try and bring some "pop" to the image - and I had this as a preset. Once switched over to the QPcard profile I found that these values needed to be much lower! Now I can see that pushing the values with the original Adobe Standard profile produced images that were 'wrong' in a way I couldn't put my finger on...


http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP0495_1k-AdobeStandard.jpg

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP0495_1k-QPcard.jpg

Pinks are much closer to real life and with more detail, while greens are richer.


http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP0521_1k-AdobeStandard.jpg

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP0521_1k-QPcard.jpg

QPcard is definitely more accurate (this was shot in the pouring rain). Brickwork much warmer (as indeed it was), purples & greens showing more detail and accurate rendering, and the vibrant orange and red are now much better controlled.

Matt

Some versions with the Q:
(Note, the DNG has an embedded profile to choose from as well)

Adobe & Embedded show some serious gamut clipping!

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP1904_1k-AdobeStandard.jpg

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP1904_1k-Embedded.jpg

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP1904_1k-QPcard.jpg


Wildly different colours, but the QPcard was what I saw

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP1906_1k-AdobeStandard.jpg

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP1906_1k-Embedded.jpg

http://www.photon.me.uk/pu/qpcard/IMGP1906_1k-QPcard.jpg

There's clearly a difference, although I think the differences I am seeing between Adobe and Pentax rendering are even more apparent.

I have to say that at first sight at 100% zoom I preferred the Abobe version of the pink flowers (your 15:28 posting), perhaps because of the higher contrast. However, when I zoomed in I could see that the pinks are more subtle in the QPcard version, due to the increase in the green channel. Of course, the difficulty with flowers is they're prone to channel clipping, causing loss of detail and colour shifts.

Do you know how well the QPcard profiles outside of sRGB? Presumably the test colours fall inside the sRGB gamut so to profile anything outside would have to be down to extrapolation? It's just I've taken to Photoshop editing in ProPhoto space and then converting to sRGB or the print profile at the end. This may be misguided but I feel it gives me more control about how out-of-gamut colours are handled, plus you retain the printable colours that might otherwise get lost in a Raw to sRGB conversion.

To answer my own question, I see that the QPcalibration application gives the option of setting the level of "soft-clipping" of the gamut. So for ProPhoto set "Gamut matching" to Large (basically no clipping).

So a different profile required for each gamut you intend using? I'd have thought always use "Large" and let ACR take care of the gamut clipping.

Hi all...
No, you generally don't need a different setting for different output spaces.

How it works is like this:
When set at "Large", there's no modifications at all. You get a profile linear all the way out to ProPhoto limits.
When set at "Medium" the saturation softclipping starts at about 80% of Adobe RGB. That's a very saturated colour anyway. This is what I normally recommend.
The "Small" setting is very usable if you KNOW that you're going to print images on a laser color printer or something like that. Also for web-only images, but then you probably want to bump saturation a bit in ACR or lightroom to get some overall "punch".

ACR does not "handle" gamut clipping in any way. It's a purely textbook "relative intent" clipping behavior.

If you want a better handling of clipping (and sRGB...) then the icc-consortium have a beta sRGB icc v4 perceptual profile on their site. But that's rather cumbersome...
ACR>export AdobeRGB>open in Photoshop>convert to sRGBv4 perceptual>convert to sRGBv2 standard IEC profile>save file.

You don't want to publish images with the v4 profile, since most receivers won't be able to interpret it correctly.

Quite a few (eight) of the pigment patches are well outside sRGB, and the greenish blue is actually outside Adobe RGB too.

This doesn't really matter either - since colour perception is linear at XYZ basis. A colour that is "50% saturated" is exactly corresponding to the same hue, but "75% saturated".

I wouldn't recommend trying to calibrate anything against reference patches that are less than 25-30% saturation of the target gamut, but anything well over this is more than enough for any real purpose.

You might get differences against purely monochromatic targets, but out in the real world extremely few hues can even approach this purity. Some lasers and some neons do - but they're the only real-world targets I can think of straight up.
...........

Some people (well - me, and a few colleagues in the business) like to have full manual control over gamuts, so ProPhoto > softproofing > manual editing is the preferred way to get absolutely maximum out of the print chain. But if you're slightly less obsessed with colour than us nutters, then Adobe RGB will cover 99.9% of all inkjet output. Some of the newer 9-pigment printers will go outside ARGB (but only in the darker hues!), but they're well down below perceptual threshold differences. In double-blind tests we've seen no actual output difference.

ProPhoto is good when you have many intermediate steps pulling first one way and then another, but ONLY when the entire chain is 16-bit. When some part of the chain is 8-bit depth, then ProPhot actually hurts the image quite bad. Posterization is amplified by about 300% comparing sRGB or normal inkjet 8-bit to ProPhoto 8-bit.

Please note:
I have a personal business interest in QPcard, so weigh that in when reading my posts regarding this particular matter.

Understood

But your technical experience on this, Joakim, is greatly appreciated!
Matt

Thank you Joakim for your detailed advice.

Last night I ordered a QPcard203 through Color Confidence here in the UK. Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow.

I notice that the flower colours in the photos Matt posted yesterday look less saturated when using the QPcard profile. Is it possible that Matt was using the 'Medium' or 'Small' setting and this has resulted in some soft clipping and reduction in saturation? He says that the QPcard profile colours are as he saw them, and that's what counts.

I work much as you describe. My current preferred workflow is ACR then Photoshop in ProPhoto space and at 16-bits per channel, so I think I'll see how I get on using the 'Large' setting. In ACR I try to eliminate, or at least minimise, any channel clipping before moving to Photoshop. Then in Photoshop I'll soft proof in sRBG or the printer profile. At least Photoshop offers a perceptual intent to handle out of gamut, although in some cases I find relative intent looks better - it's down to the nature and severity of the gamut clipping.

My view is that image editing in ProPhoto space at 16-bit keeps my options open (the English sitting on the fence approach!) and holds on to the information as long as possible. Colours that are out-of-gamut for sRGB might even come in-gamut during the edit.

I see there's a blog about QPcard from an unhappy Swedish photographer. It sounds a bit odd. Do you know the background to this?

http://fotografeivindrohne.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/qpcard-203-erfaringer-qpcard-203-review.html (scroll down for the English version)

Much as I agonise about getting the right colours, I know what I should really be focussing on taking better photos!

Hi Joakim, I've had the earlier QPCard 201 for a few years now.
It seems a excellent product and I would highly recommend it
or the 203 for more options.

I work mostly in Adobe RGB. Is this better than sRGB for
mostly computer viewed images.