Adobe Lightroom’s Latest Update Changes Camera Profiles and Your Presets

Last Updated on 04/04/2018 by Mark Beckenbach

Camera Profiles become ‘Profiles’ in Adobe’s latest Lightroom Ecosystem update

Adobe is continuing to bring new updates to Lightroom and Camera RAW in an effort to address many of the concerns users have been voicing about the software. In the latest update, announced earlier today, they have decided to completely revamp their Camera Profiles functionality and add it to Lightroom CC. Oh, and they are no longer called Camera Profiles, instead being shortened to simply ‘Profiles’.

Be sure to check out our review of the new update right here.

Camera Profiles

So, what are Profiles? A profile is basically a set of instructions for the image processor, in this case, Lightroom/Camera RAW, to interpret the RAW image data that is held within the RAW file you are looking at. Now, don’t get these confused with presets: the two are totally different tools. The profiles change everything about the image; the color saturation, contrast, etc. Many photographers choose a profile that closely matches what they see out of their camera, which is why these profiles were originally called Camera Profiles. If you’re a Fujifilm camera user, then you’re probably most familiar with them because you can apply a film emulsion simulation to an image easily this way.

At any rate, Adobe has totally revamped the Profiles system and developed six brand new RAW Profiles for photographers to take advantage of when processing their images. Adobe Standard is the RAW Profile most of you are likely familiar with: this was the default one used in Lightroom unless you changed it to another that matched your camera better. But with the addition of these six additional RAW profiles, Adobe is looking to give photographers more options when it comes to base level image processing profiles.

Part of the ideal here, according to Adobe, is to make it easy for photographers to create a familiar, unified look with their images – regardless of what camera was used to capture them. This is why many Lightroom Presets are based on the Adobe Standard profile. It is a reliable and consistent profile.

The six new Adobe RAW Profiles are:

• Adobe Color – This is the new LR default profile, designed to work the best on the widest range of images.
• Adobe Monochrome – Self-explanatory – designed for better black and white images.
• Adobe Portrait – Designed with an emphasis on skin tones and more precession with skin tonality.
• Adobe Landscape – An emphasis on deep skies and vibrant foliage.
• Adobe Neutral – Very low contrast, for those needing to pull the most dynamic range out of their image.
• Adobe Vivid – punchy and vivid saturated color.

Adobe has also added some new functionality in the form of four Creative Profiles that can be applied to both RAW and Jpeg files. These Creative Profiles include 3D LUTs (look up tables) and an ‘Amount Slider’ which will allow you to apply a specially graded look to your images, but also adjust its intensity in a way unavailable before in Lightroom.

3^rd Party Profiles are also coming to Lightroom. Adobe has worked with many 3^rd Party Preset makers (like RNI Films) to develop special Creative Profiles. You can almost look at these new Creative Profiles as a more advanced version of Presets – almost to the point where one has to wonder if the way we use presets now will be getting some changes in the future as well.

Presets

The way presets work is also changing. In our tests with the Beta version of Adobe Lightroom CC, it converted our presets to XMP files. This essentially made it really difficult for us to find the files, which were before a Lightroom catalog file type. But with the conversion to XMPs, things seem to change. On the Mac, it crashed for us pretty often, but we’re optimistic that Adobe’s final version may have the kinks ironed out.

At any rate, as you can see, there are a ton of new reasons to have a look at the latest Lightroom changes. Here is a quick look overall at the changes:

Lightroom CC Desktop

• RAW Profiles
• Creative Profiles
• Support for NAS (Network Attached Storage) Units
• General Bug Fixes

Lightroom CC iOS

• RAW & Creative Profiles
• Geometry Tab
• Grain Options
• Left-handed Mode
• Enhanced control over Web Shares
• Support for the latest cameras
• iPhone X layout optimizations

Lightroom CC for Android/ChromeOS

• RAW & Creative Profiles
• Details tab with Sharpening & noise reduction
• Grain Options
• Enhanced control over Web Shares
• Support for the latest cameras

For more details and information regarding these changes and the updates to Lightroom, you can learn more over on the Adobe website.