Hello.
Sorry for the long text, but I would like to describe my request as clear as possible, to avoid missunderstandings.
I’m relatively new to RawTherapee and a little bit confused about it’s Input Profiles. But at first some infos about my working methods, for a better understanding.
I know very well about color management for about 4 years. When I was working with Lightroom in the past (until 2017) I even created my own camera profiles (DCPs) with Xrite stuff. For each shooting or given light condition a seperate one. But over time I stopped doing so, because it wasn’t worth the effort in relation to the benefits…
Since last year I’m working with a custom UniWB setting and ETTR method, which increased the quality of my photos a lot. Together with the UniWB setting I put a custom Picture-Control setting to the camera, with every value set to zero and a custom “anti-tone-curve” to neutralize (or linearize) the camera’s internal used “RAW to Preview-JPG curve”. (To have a close as possible matching RAW-Histogram at the camera’s LCD.) And while I was working with Nikons Capture NX-D the last 2 years, I didn’t had to mind about Input Profiles, because there was nothing like that. So far so good.
But now, with RawTherapee, it’s a diffent story. I could choose whatever I want as a Input Profile. Which makes things not easier…
As I would like to have a starting point in RAW-conversion, which is neutral or flat or linear as possible, I’m trying to find a fitting profile now. At first I tried RawTherapee’s internal camera-specific profile without any other options activated below it. Result was a clipped red channel, which wasn’t clipped in the source file (as RawDigger told me).
Then I fiddled around with the additional options (base exposure, base table, “look”) but the red channel still kept clipped, even more. Then I tried the matching camera profile from Adobe’s DNG-Converter. At first with no additional options activated too. Result was better (Histogramm more neutral) but red channel also a little bit clipped. Then I activated base exposure below and so the red channel stopped clipping while Histogram went even more neutral.
So I was stumbling around, tried “no profile”, “dcraw only”, this and that… With just more and more confusion. Photo looked once more green or blue, once darker or brighter, once more or less saturated, once clipped or not…
(Btw. I still kept the tone curve option within the profiles deactivated, because of neutral as possible starting point.)
So now my questions are:
- Which Profile to choose? None? Dcraw only? RT’s internal one? Adobe’s?
- Which additional option to choose? And maybe why.
- What effect has this “Look”-Table?
I hope that someone around here can lighten my dark a little bit.
Thanks for commenting.
Regards