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Dng Profile Editor Download Mac

In my previous article, I described how to shoot infrared photos. This guide will walk you through processing infrared photos using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CC.

Sep 08, 2021 Download the Adobe DNG SDK. DNG Profile Editor (September 2012) The DNG Profile Editor is a free software utility for creating or editing camera profiles. Free dng profile editor mac download. Design & Photo downloads - DNG Profile Editor by Adobe Systems Inc. And many more programs are available for instant and free download.

These instructions and screenshots were compiled on a MacOS X Yosemite system, though should work equally well for other platforms.

Here is the processed final image of the infrared shot I shared in the last article:

1. Creating an Infrared Camera Profile

To start processing infrared photos, firstly you need to create a new camera profile. This will allow you to cool down the image more than usual and set the correct white balance. To do this, you will need to save your RAW file in the DNG (Digital Negative) format. Then edit the DNG file in the DNG Profile Editor. Here is a step-by-step guide:

1. Download and install Adobe DNG Profile Editor. The Mac version is available here and the Windows version here.

2. Open the RAW image in Adobe Camera Raw and click “Save Image…” in the bottom left corner

3. In the “Save Options” dialog box, choose the destination folder and select “DNG” as the file extension. Then click “Save”:

4. Open the DNG Profile Editor. Then go to “File” -> “Open DNG Image” and select the DNG file you just saved:

5. Once the image is loaded, click on the “Color Matrices” tab:

6. Under “White Balance Calibration”, bring down the “Temperature” and “Tint” values. This will cool down the image and it will start to look more neutral and less red. In my case, I set both values to the minimum (-100):

7. Go to “File” -> “Export Canon EOS 5D Mark III profile” (this name will be different, depending on the make and model of your camera):

Manager

8. Use a descriptive name for the profile (I used Canon EOS 5D Mark III Infrared), then click “Save”:

9. A new camera profile has now been saved. You can now quit the DNG Profile Editor and delete the DNG file created earlier.

Note: These above steps are only required for the first time. The profile will now be saved and can be used by other softwares, such as Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.

Next, we will process a RAW infrared photo in Adobe Camera Raw.


2. The faithful idea

For faithfulness I mean the capability of a system to reproduce a color like it is in the real world. The process to reach this goal starts with a series of color patch (the Colorchecker 24 patch), measures them with a spectrophotometer and passes the spectral data to a software which provides the color values in a specific lighting condition (D50 condition in my case).

When the ideal patches colors are defined, the user can edit the camera profile so that when the raw converter opens the target capture, it renders the color patches as near as possible to the ideal color values.



3. DNG camera profiles
To understand the method we have to know in synthesis the structure of a DNG profile. For details you can refer to this serie of posts (in Italian) on Mauro Boscarol's blog. .

Every profile contains two matrices which describe the behavior of that particular camera model under tungsten light (2856K) and in daylight condition (6500K). Starting from this matrices, ACR calculates in real time the color of the scene via interpolation or extrapolation in accordance with the light that illuminated the scene. ACR takes the information about the lighting condition from the position of the sliders Temp/Tint set by the user in the raw converter user interface.

If the user wants to personalize the generic profile for his camera, the DNG Profile Editor offers two possibilities which he can be used separately, one or the other, or can even be used in synergy.

The first possibility has already been proposed with the sliders of the Calibration Camera tab of Camera Raw and now those sliders are reported in the Color Matrices tab of module; this intervention tweaks linearly the global response of the profile.

The second possibility is represented by the new HSL 2.5D tables in the Color Tables tab of the module. These tables, contrary to the calibration, tweak only selective areas of the profile. The interventions change the chromaticity (Hue + Saturation) of profile zones which can be defined by the user.

For my purpose I used both available tables for the reference illuminants so that the resulting profile keeps validity in all standard lighting condition.

As rule of thumb the calibration intervenes before the HSL tables.

Together with the two HSL 2.5D tables a DNG profile contains a HSL 3D table. This table doesn't tweak the chromaticity but tweaks the real color of a sample (Hue + Saturation + Luminosity), but for now the access to the table is limited to Adobe.

With the release of the new DNG Profile Editor someone could wonder: “Is the calibration process obsolete?”. This is a critical point.

Both calibration and HSL tables are implemented with the same purpose: tweak the profile with regard to a particular requirement: in our case the research of color accuracy. But, if the intent is the same, the way they work makes a big difference.

Dng Profile Editor Download Mac

Normally from a colorimetrical point of view a profile has zones that are right and other which are wrong at different level of gravity.

The calibration, tweaking the chromaticity coordinates of the primaries, make a sort of global trade off of the error on all sectors of a profile. At the end, there isn't a big error in any part of the profile, but zones that before were correct, after the intervention can be a little less right. These zones are (a little) sacrificed in favour of those areas that had some fault. This is the drawback of the process.

HSL tables are conceptually the exact opposite: they don't make global balancing, but take confined zones and stretch them where the user wants to drive them, and leaving not modified the other sectors. If on one hand the pro is the possibility of fine tuning only where the user effectively wants without the fear of altering anything else, on the other hand, the tables have some limits:

  • at the end the profile could show problematic sectors since the user didn’t take them in proper consideration.
    For this problem it should be enough to take more samples, but here rises the collateral effect of the process that has originated my method: the intervention goes to stretch and compress portions of the profile; if these portions are successively expanded in a image along a enough extended tonal range, the phenomenon of posterization could take place, and the image would be damaged. Actually our eyes forgive more easily the absolute accuracy in the hue, in the saturation or even in the lightness of a color, than the lack of smoothness in the tonal transition.
    So, the more samples we take and the more we stretch them, the higher becomes the probability to incur in the posterisation. The calibration for its nature is free from this phenomenon.
  • the tables don't take care about the color of the samples but only regard their chromaticity, which is the color minus luminance. This means that visually very different patches, like white and dark skin, are considered by the module very close because they differ principally for the luminance. This means that the two points are too much close on the chromaticity wheel and then the possibility to introduce damage in the profile if we intervene too much determinately searching for the absolute color precision.
  • for the same reason if we move the slider Lightness we modify all colors with the same chromaticity but with different luminosity, from the darkest to the lightest, with only a reference point, and this means editing blindly. For this reason I avoided interventions on these sliders. (This is the reason why the tables are named 2.5D)

Adobe Dng Profile Editor Download Mac

Summing up, if you want to use the tables it is worth to:

Adobe Profile Editor

1. limit the number of the samples (max 18-20)

2. leave distance between the samples

Free File Editing Software

3. avoid resolute intervention

Adobe Dng Profile Editor Mac

4. avoid the use of Lightness slider.