A Camera Raw Tip

[danaltick]

Here's a pretty neat technique I just figured out how to do in Camera Raw.

I actually like to use the Auto command when I'm not bracketing because it automatically sets my black and white points with minimal clipping; however, the exposure usually comes out a little too bright for most shots.  If I adjust the Brightness slider down to give a good exposure and up the contrast a little for some punch, ACR turns off the Auto command, preventing me from saving my preset with Auto activated.  Here's how to get around this:
-- Create and save the preset with Auto activated and do not make any other Tonal adjustments that would deactivate it
-- Manually edit the .xmp preset file and add the following two lines after the AutoTone line:
      <crs:Brightness>+25</crs:Brightness>
      <crs:Contrast>+50</crs:Contrast>

+25 and +50 seem to work well for my EOS20D.  You might want to experiment with those numbers for your camera.

Now I'm free to shoot under varying lighting conditions with varying exposures and still get fairly consistant exposures on ingestion when applying the preset; a very nice convenience.  Makes my RapidFixing much easier.  I only need to adjust the Brightness now, because my black and white points are already fixed for minimal clipping and my exposures are pretty consistent.  Which reminds me, Peter, it would be nice if you added the Brightness control to RapidFixer. 

I would recommend also creating some no-Auto presets for bracketing.

Dan

[jljonathan]

I am looking for the xmp preset file on my mac and can't find it. any hints?

[danaltick]

Jonathan,

If you click on the little menu drop down near the upper right corner of ACR and select "Load Settings", it will take you to the presets directory.

Dan

[danaltick]

Good news!  It looks as though Adobe has fixed the Auto command!  It no longer exposes too bright.  Very nice.  I recreated my Auto presets.  It's great not having to do that manual edit everytime I want to change my existing Auto presets or create new ones.  I'm also using their built-in Adobe Beta1 profiles.  They look great on my CR2 files!   Way to go Adobe!  I'm lovin' it!

Dan

[peterkrogh]

The profiles are very nice - I've switched to using them for my D300 for portraits.

Peter

[danaltick]

Peter,

I'm using the portrait one too.  I had actually created a calibrated profile for my old camera using the Macbeth color chart and my studio lighting with gels to create a daylight shot and tungsten shot.  The new profiling capability enabled me to enter both of them and let ACR interpolate between them.  I think that's helpful when shooting architecture interiors with mixed lighting, which is my focus right now.  However, I do like the new Landscape Beta profile, so I'm probably going to use it now with my new camera for architecture.  I'm sure these profiles already have the interpolation built in.  The DSLR's today render such great color, I have a difficult time justifying input calibration/profiling; especially when I'm going to be swinging the colors all over the place once I'm in the editor; which by the way, I'm also loving 14-bit.  I believe you can actually overlay profiles on top of each other.  If I ever feel like testing it out, I may try overlaying a calibrated camera profile on top of the Adobe profiles to see if I notice much difference.  I would also assume that with each new generation of cameras (i.e. sensors), the deviation between them becomes smaller, and therefore ACR 4.4 calibrations are probably more accurate across a particular line.

Dan

[peterkrogh]

Anyone considering using the se profiles should be using DNG or else it will be a big mess in the future.  THe only way to make sure the files have the profiles is to embed them, and you can only do that with DNGs.
Peter

[danaltick]

Peter,

Definitely.  I played around with that a while back.  I commented on it briefly here http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=3471.msg19066#msg19066.

Dan