adobe dng profile editor

A problem I’ve always had with infrared RAW files is pegging the WB temperature slider in ACR.  In other words, there isn’t enough adjustment room in that slider.  The solution is to make your own Infrared Camera Profile.

I can’t take credit for the idea.  I ran into it in this video: http://lightroom-blog.com/2009/05/creating-ir-camera-profile.html

The idea is very simple.

1. Open a DNG file from your camera with the Adobe DNG Profile Editor.
2. Make a WB temperature adjustment and optionally, a WB tint adjustment.
3. Save your new profile.

What you’ll need:

1. A DNG image file from your camera (it doesn’t have to be an infrared image).  If you don’t have Adobe’s DNG Converter, download it and install it so that you can create a DNG file from one of your RAW files.  The Adobe DNG Converter is free.
2. Adobe DNG Profile Editor.  This software is also free.
3. To take advantage of your new Camera Profile you will need ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) or Lightroom.  I’ll use ACR in my explanation here.

So let’s get started.

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Notes:

1. I have found this works well with both IR images from IR converted cameras and IR images from cameras that have not been IR converted.
2. You can use this new IR Camera Profile on both DNG and native RAW images.
3. A big assumption here is that the grass and leaves should be neutral.  That is my goal when converting infrared RAW images and a goal of this post.
   

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Open DNG in Profile Editor

Open Adobe DNG Profile Editor and open a DNG image file from your camera (File/Open DNG Image…).

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Set WB Sliders

Next, select the Color Matrices tab in Adobe DNG Profile Editor and adjust the WB temperature and tint sliders.  I would recommend settings of between -80 and -100 for the temperature and 0 to -50 for the tint.

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Export New Camera Profile

Now export your new Camera Profile (File/Export…).

That’s it.

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Using the new Camera Profile

To use your new camera profile, open an infrared image with ACR or Lightroom and choose your newly created camera profile.  I’ll use ACR in this example.  Here I’ve selected the Camera Calibration tab and selected my new camera profile:

Now select the basic tab in ACR (the first tab) and notice the extra latitude you now have in setting your WB temperature and tint.

Without a custom IR Camera Profile you have no latitude.  In fact the temperature slider is pegged on the left side as shown below – this is with the standard canned camera profile called Adobe Standard.

The White Balance temperature/tint cannot be adjusted enough to get the grass and leaves to neutral without a custom IR Camera Profile.