The Lightroom Camera Profiles

A totally under used Lightroom editing tool!

The camera profile browser inside of Lightroom, Lightroom CC and Lightroom CC Classic opens up a world of extra editing options – But did you even know it was there?

If you’re like me you might have seen the “Camera Profile” section of the develop module and skipped it over. After all, adobe knows what they’re doing right? Why not just leave it on Adobe Color and be done? It turns out that not all camera profiles are created equal, and using different profiles in your edits can be an easy way to improve your final images.

Up your editing game & learn how to access embedded camera raw profiles and make use of the profile browser in the develop module of Lightroom & Lightroom CC Classic.

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hey there awesome person Ryan here at
signature edits and inside this video we
are going to take a quick look at camera
profiles inside of Lightroom what they
are why you should use them and what
they can do with your editing are you
ready let’s get into it
[Music]
okay so we’re gonna make this short and
sweet what are camera profiles well
essentially there are different
algorithms that your camera or Lightroom
use to determine how the colors in your
image are represented on the final
screen so basically it harkens back to
film days when you used to actually take
a photo with your camera on a different
film stock depending on the kind of
final look that you had in mind for your
image so some films might have more
contrast somehow might have more
saturation so you would select a
different film stock depending on what
characteristics you wanted to bring out
in your final image now camera
manufacturers when they switch to
digital pretty much did the same thing
with their camera settings you could
actually select different styles to
emulate different looks so in Canon you
have something in the menu called
picture style on Nikon it’s picture
control Sony has creative styles they
all have slightly different names but
essentially they’re all camera profiles
Adobe inside of Lightroom has the exact
same feature and it’s up here in the
develop module you click here at the top
and you can see that we have Adobe color
landscape portraits standard and vivid
and if we select these Lightroom is
going to interpret the colors
differently in our image and you’ll see
them represented differently on the
screen now this is important because
most people when you’re editing in
Lightroom would recommend that you set
the profile first because it’s going to
dramatically affect how the image looks
so for example this one that we just
cycled through here’s our stock Adobe
color if I go to Adobe vivid you can see
all of a sudden it almost looks like a
fully edited image because it’s just
popped things perfectly out we’ve got
nice contrast going on nice saturation
very different look now what a lot of
people don’t realize with the newer
versions of Lightroom because they’ve
kind of hidden this feature is you can
actually select your cameras original
profiles as well if we go down here
where it says browse we click there
you’ll see that we have Adobe raw the
top seven and then hidden down here
where we have to scroll or minimize this
window we’ve got our camera matching
profiles which will depend on the type
of camera that you’re using and whether
or not you are using and editing a raw
photo inside of Lightroom so because
this photo was shot on a Canon 5d Mark 3
we have five profiles to choose from
faithful landscape neutral portrait and
standard and the reason that this is
important and powerful is that sometimes
you’ll find that an edit is dramatically
easier if you’re using a different
profile so for example if we compare
here’s our Adobe color stock and here is
Hanan standard profile so going back and
forth between the two you can see that
there is a subtle but significant
difference in the way that the colors
come across one has slightly more
contrast than the other one is slightly
more saturated than the other and this
can make a big difference in your final
edit so let me go over to another
example here this is the stock Adobe
color now if we hop over here we can put
on say Adobe vivid big massive change
already and we haven’t adjusted any of
the other editing settings in Lightroom
likewise if we go to canons faithful or
canons standard you can see there’s a
big difference in the saturation of her
hair here so in the standard profile on
Canon we have much more saturated Reds
going on I would say that on the whole
the skin tones seem to be better and the
greens are also radically different
which you can see especially in this
image so this one has Adobe color as its
profile and then if I go to this virtual
copy and select canons standard you’ll
see a massive difference in the way that
the greens are interpreted in the Adobe
profile they’re kind of more yucky to be
honest they’re more saturated they’re
definitely more green and they’re
brighter whereas in the Canon version
the greens are warmer more towards an
orange II red right and if we go to
neutral or towards faithful you’ll see
that it exaggerated so that even more
big massive difference and that’s
totally going to impact the way that
your images feel when you actually edit
them less the camera profiles and I’d
really recommend taking a look at these
before you start editing your next
session just go through and see which
one of these profiles gets your images
to closest to where you’d like them to
be which represents your images the best
because once you get that dialed in
you’re going to have a far easier time
going through the rest of Lightroom and
you’ll be able to get more out of your
images overall so I hope this tutorial
was helpful for you in understanding the
camera profiles section of the develop
module inside of Lightroom and just
gives you more options more tools when
it comes to getting that perfect at it
if it was please hit that like button
for me don’t forget to subscribe for
more great content and tutorials and
leave me a comment below are you
planning on using this is this going to
be helpful for you I’d love to hear
about it
alright I’ll catch you in the next one
peace
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Special Uses For Lightroom Camera Profiles

Camera Profiles actually have more to offer than just the basic camera colors! Its possible to actually create lightroom presets with custom camera profiles that can improve your photography & your editing workflow by giving you more flexibility when editing. For an example of custom camera profiles, check out our Clean & Classic Lightroom Presets: