Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [103]
ACR compatible cameras
The list of cameras that are compatible with the latest version of Camera Raw can be found at the Adobe website by following this link: www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html .
New Camera Raw profiles
You have to bear in mind that many of the initial default Camera Raw profiles were achieved through testing a limited number of cameras. It was later discovered that there could be a discernible variation in color response between individual cameras. As a result of this a wider pool of cameras were evaluated and the default profile settings were updated for certain makes of camera, and in some cases newer versions of the default camera profiles were provided. This is why you will sometimes see extra profiles listed that refer to earlier builds of Camera Raw, such as ACR 2.4 or ACR 3.6, etc. (see sidebar on new camera profile availability). More recently, Eric Chan (who works on the Camera Raw engineering team) managed to improve many of the standard ACR profiles as well as extend the range of profiles that can be applied via Camera Raw. For Camera Raw 5.0 or later, the ‘Adobe Standard’ profile is now the new default, and this and the other profiles you see listed in the Profile menu options are the result of improved analysis as well as an effort to match some of the individual camera vendor ‘look settings’ associated with JPEG captured images.
New camera profile availability
Not all the Camera Raw supported cameras have new profiles, so you may not see the full list of profile options for every Camera Raw compatible camera, just the newer and most popular camera models.
Although Adobe Standard in now the recommended default camera profile, it has been necessary to preserve the older profiles, such as ACR 3.6 and ACR 4.4, since these need to be kept in order to satisfy customers who have relied on these previous profile settings. It wouldn't do to find that all your existing Camera Raw processed images suddenly looked different because the profile had been updated. Therefore, in order to maintain backward compatibility, Adobe leave you the choice of which profiles to use. If you are happy to trust the new ‘Adobe Standard’ profile, then I suggest you leave this as the default starting point for all your raw conversions. The difference you'll see with this profile may only be slight, but I think you will find this still represents an improvement and should be left as the new default.
Camera ‘look settings’ profiles
The other profiles you may see listed are designed to let you match some of the camera vendor ‘look settings’. The profile names will vary according to which camera files you are editing, so for Canon cameras Camera Raw offers the following camera profile options: Camera Faithful, Camera Landscape, Camera Neutral, Camera Portrait as well as a Camera Standard option. Nikon users may see Mode 1, Mode 2, Mode 3, Camera Landscape, Camera Neutral, Camera Portrait and Camera Vivid profile options. In Figure 3.63 you can see an example of how these can compare with the older ACR and Adobe Standard profiles.
Figure 3.63 This page shows a comparison of the different camera profiles one can now choose from and the effect these will have on the appearance of an image, which in this case was shot using a Canon EOS 1Ds MkIII camera.Photo: © Jeff Schewe 2008. Model: Alex Kordek @ MOT.
The ‘Camera Standard’ profile is rather clever because Eric has managed here to match the default camera vendor settings for most of the main cameras that are supported by Camera Raw. By choosing the Camera Standard profile you can get the Camera Raw interpretation to pretty much match exactly the default color renderings that are applied by the camera manufacturer software. This means that if you apply the Camera Standard profile as the default setting in the Camera Calibration panel, Camera Raw applies the same kind of default color rendering as the camera vendor's software and