Adobe has finally made the powerful Camera Profiles feature much easier to find and they have dramatically expanded what camera profiles can do for us while we are fine-tuning our images in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic.
Think of the Camera Profile choices as if they were different types of film. When you change the Camera Profile, you are changing the way that Photoshop Lightroom interprets the raw file’s baseline color and tonal information.
For those who had experience photographing with film, think of this like the choices that we used to make when deciding whether to load our cameras with Kodak Kodachrome, Fuji Velvia, or a more muted film like Kodak Portra. Some of the Camera Raw Profiles add more contrast and saturation into your images. Other Camera Raw Profiles create a muted, lower contrast interpretation of the pre-pixel data.
Back in the film days, we often chose one type of film over another for their baseline interpretation of color saturation and contrast. Each Camera Raw Profile is analogous to a particular type of film and there is no universally correct setting. The Profile that you choose to use is simply a reflection of your taste in color and contrast for that particular image.
The new Adobe Color camera profile, for example, is designed to be the “one-size” fits all option with a good balance of contrast and saturation that should work well on the average color image. Adobe Monochrome, on the other hand, is designed to create a strong starting point for the average black and white conversion.
In addition, Adobe has introduced a new Profile Browser feature and created a whole new category of camera profiles. Where things get really interesting though are the new camera profiles in the Artistic, Modern, Black and White, and Vintage group.
Unlike traditional camera raw profiles, these creative profiles can make changes to your images that would otherwise be impossible using Lightroom alone. A brand new Amount slider appears if you select one of these creative camera profiles. Using this slider, you can increase or decrease the strength of the changes that this camera profile creates to give your image more or less of the desired effect.
