I am currently trying to learn more about DCPs…
Of the DCPs that are included in the RT distribution, some have Tone curves included, some have not.
When/why would one be interested in using a DCP that does not contain a Tone curve?
Indeed, from what I can understand, you can always turn the tone curve off. However, I think it increases the file size quite significantly.
In the instructions on Rawpedia for generating DCP profiles, the switch for adding the Adobe tone curve is omitted, which may be why some profiles don’t have one. It’s only by reading the resources on the DCamProf website, that I saw how to add the tone curve.
True. Size is roughly 2 k for a dcp without a tone curve and about 1,000 k for a dcp with a tone curve.
Another way of creating a dcp with a tone curve is to use the (free) Adobe DNG Profile Editor.
Most of the DCPs shipping with RT that do not have a tone curve were created with the X-Rite profiling software, which does not offer the possibility to add a tone curve.
Most profiles don’t have tone curves because they were created with software which was not capable of adding them and because we wanted RT’s image rendering to be accurate, not attractive. Newer ones do because we now use dcamprof which can add them, and because they make the image less “dull”, something which is a common complaint when one sees what the real raw image looks like for the first time, and because you can turn the curve off if you don’t like it*, so no harm done by including it.
* If you turn on the DCP curve, turn on the DCP look table. If you turn off the DCP curve, turn off the DCP look table.
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