Adobe has announced a major update to the Camera Profiles feature in Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom CC and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).
They're now known simply as Profiles, and Adobe is looking to make them easier to find by moving them to the Basic panel (they used to be tucked away under Camera Calibration), while Lightroom CC users will find them at the top of the Edit panel.
Never come across a profile before? For raw files, a profile is essentially a set of adjustments that give a distinct and uniform 'look' to images.
Adobe builds profiles for pretty much every camera make and model, using some clever deep imaging science, along with consideration for each sensor's characteristics and filter design.
Until now there's been a single profile known as Adobe Standard, but Adobe is introducing six new Adobe Raw profiles, with the intention of providing a unified look and feel to your images regardless of what camera you've shot with.
As a result of feedback from photographers, Adobe Standard disappears and makes way for Adobe Color, while there are another five profiles to choose from.
Adobe raw profiles
Adobe Color: designed to improve the look and rendering of warm tones, improving the transitions between certain color ranges, and slightly increasing the starting contrast of your photos.
Adobe Monochrome: tuned to be a great starting point for any black and white photograph, resulting in better tonal separation and contrast than photos that started off in Adobe Standard and were converted into black and white.
Adobe Portrait: optimized for all skin tones, providing more control and better reproduction of skin tones. With less contrast and saturation applied to skin tones throughout the photo, you get more control and precision for critical portraiture.
Adobe Landscape: designed for landscape photos, with more vibrant skies and foliage tones.
Adobe Neutral: provides a starting point with a very low amount of contrast, useful for photos for which you want the most control or that have very difficult tonal ranges.
Adobe Vivid: provides a punchy, saturated starting point.
New Creative profiles
There are also Creative profiles, which can be applied to both raw files and non-raw files like JPEGs. These are broken down into four profile groups – Artistic, Black & White, Modern, and are designed to give a distinct look and feel to your photos.
They come with a 3D Lookup Table (LUT) to offer a level of control that until now has been reserved for Photoshop users. As well as this, Creative Profiles also can be tweaked using a new Amount slider, enabling you to adjust the strength of the effect according to your taste.
Other updates
Lightroom Classic CC users will find the powerful Dehaze control more accessible, as it's now found within the Basic Panel, while the Tone Curve panel size has been expanded to enable more precise adjustments. CC desktop users get support for NAS (Network Attached Storage) along with some bug fixes.
If you're a CC subscriber, you can take advantage of the free update now.