Hmm, I’m reading some confusing things in the last couple of posts. Let’s try to clear things up. I hope this makes things clearer @priort @rogerx and @stuntflyer. Also, please read this page carefully: Color Management - RawPedia
In your camera
In most camera’s your can select profiles such as “Neutral”, “Flat”, “Vivid”, “Landscape”, etc. These only apply to the way the OOC (out-of-camera) JPEGs are produced. It has zero influence over how your raw file looks like.
Replicating the OOC look
A lot of people like the look of their OOC JPEGs, but want the power of editing the raw file. To accommodate this, the people at Adobe have developed Digital Camera Profiles (DCP). These profiles try to emulate the look of the camera’s profiles. If you’ve used Lightroom you have probably seen ‘Adobe Standard’, ‘Adobe Neutral’, ‘Adobe Vivid’ and so on. If you select one of these, you apply Adobe’s idea of how to emulate the colors and tone to get something that comes close to your OOC JPEG. It will never be perfect, because the internals of the camera are not known, but these profiles are the ‘next best thing’.
RawTherapee also supports DCP profiles, so if you like a certain type of default processing from Adobe, you can get the same starting point in RT. Just load a DCP file that comes bundled with Lightroom. On my Windows machine they can be found here: C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles.
What’s in the box?
A DCP profile can contain a few things, but it doesn’t necessarily have all of these:
- In most cases there is a ‘Base table’ that is used to apply a calibrated color transformation to your image. This is an essential element to convert the raw data to correct colors. If you profile does not have a ‘Base table’, make sure you select the ‘Look table’ instead.
- In many cases there is a ‘Tone curve’. This does exactly what I explained before: it applies a preconstructed look to the tones of your image. If you loaded a ‘Adobe Vivid’ DCP file, it emulates how a ‘Vivid’ OOC JPEG would look like. Importantly: if you don’t care about replicating the OOC JPEG look, leave this box unchecked!. You’re much better off using the other tone curve tools in RawTherapee.
- There may also be a ‘Look table’. This also applies a preconstructed look, but changes colors instead of the tones. Again, if you’re not interested in the OOC JPEG look, leave this unchecked.
The problem with profiles
The main issue with enabling ‘Tone curve’ and/or ‘Look table’, is that you have no control over what kind of modifications are made to your raw file. It may give you something aesthetically pleasing with very little work, and that may be good enough for you. But to me, that kind-of goes against the nature of wanting to process raw files and have absolute control over what happens. What you like to do is up to you.
Alternatives
There are multiple ways to adjust the tones in an image with RawTherapee. They can all be used simultaneously if you want, without any problem. You just need to know which one does what.
- The DCP Tone curve is applied very early on in the processing pipeline. Like I said, it applies a preconstructed tone curve without further control over it.
- Tone curve 1 & 2 (first tab). These give your full control over the tones of your image. You can draw a curve to your own liking. The second tone curve is there for further fine-tuning, if you cannot manage all the nuances in the first tone curve. These curves are applied after the exposure controls, but before most other available tools.
- Auto-Matched Tone Curve. If your DCP file doesn’t have an embedded Tone curve, but you still want to get something similar to the OOC JPEG, you can click this button. RawTherapee will analyse the embedded JPEG file inside your raw file (which is usually present) and estimate a tone curve from that. It puts this curve into Tone curve 1. This is a pretty smart method that works very well most of the time.
So, I hope that cleared up most of your questions and made you a little wiser in using RawTherapee.
Some individual points:
I hope this is cleared up now: you can enable both options if you want, but they do different things. I don’t know what you mean by “to go neutral in exposure”.
As I explain in my post, your camera setting has no meaning for how your raw file looks like. If you want to emulate your OOC JPEG look in RawTherapee, use the DCP Tone curve and Look table, or use the Auto-Matched Tone Curve option.
@rogerx I have no idea what you mean by that. What do you consider a mixed result? The profile should work equally well in Lightroom as in RawTherapee.
I think this is false. DCP files are very well understood: http://dcptool.sourceforge.net/.
