by
MichelB » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:20 am
Here is how I see this camera profile choice:
First, it is not something new, since many brands offer different choices, such as neutral, faithful, portrait, landscape (Canon)... Based on your subject and rendering intent, this choice changes the colors to make them more like what the average viewer expects. In the film days you would choose Agfachrome for portraits, Fuji for foliage, Ekatchrome or Kodachrome for travel shots. The truth in colors for different subjects and different culture is exactly that: subjective.
The above choices are set in camera for jpegs and are tagged for raw conversion. With Canon's softwares, DPP or RIT, the tags are interpreted. With older versions of ACR, those tags could not be interpreted. Now Adobe tried to mimic those effects with more or less success. This gives you the opportunity to start your editing in ACR with better settings for, say, skin, sky or foliage. I often have a quick look to find the best starting point.
Those choices are just like presets.
The new thing is that in the beta profiles package, you have the opportunity to make your own presets. For this task, I agree with you Don, not everybody will make good use of this feature. But... I am convinced there may be a possibility for creative purposes.