Lightroom 4 - Fixing GR RAW color issue with correct color profile

strawhat20

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Decided to create a separate post for this since it was recommended to make it easier to find.

Adobe recently release ACR 8.1 Beta which includes support for the new Richoh GR, but LR4 is not able to read this camera profile provided by ACR.
This shows an unpleasantly color shift, particularly in the red as seen in this post by Ray. The problem is LR4 is using the embedded color profile of the photo instead of the profile provided by ACR.


Quick fix:
  1. Extract/Copy "Pentax Ricoh GR Adobe Standard.dcp" from ACR 8.1 Beta or download the file from here
  2. Shutdown LR if it's still running, then copy the .dcp file from step1 to
    Vista\Win7 - "C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\" or
    Mac "Macintosh HD/Users/[your username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles/"
    **Note**: These folders are normally hidden so you have to unhide them.
  3. Start Lightroom, change profile to "Adobe Standard" under Camera Calibration in Develop Module for your specific photo and you should now see the correct color appear.



Additional detail if your interested in reading.
Lightroom and ACR camera profiles are installed in different directories so LR4 can't read ACR camera profiles.

When LR4 is installed, by default all camera profiles that are read by LR are installed to
Vista\Win7 - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3\Resources\CameraProfiles
Mac - Macintosh HD/Applications/Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.app/Contents/Resources/CameraProfiles/

When ACR is installed, by default all camera profiles that are read by ACR is installed to
Vista\Win7 - C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\Adobe Standard\
Mac - Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

You can also install custom profiles to be read by both Lightroom and ACR. These need to be installed to
Vista\Win7 - "C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\"
Mac "Macintosh HD/Users/[your username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles/".

So there are a total of 3 folders which contain these camera profiles and so lots of confusion on where to place them so they can be seen.
Rule of thumb is, you should install new or custom profiles to the user location, installing them to the program specific default location usually doesn't work and can't be read.
 
Thanks for writing this up! You were instrumental in getting some of us to a solution yesterday ant this post should make it easier for folks just getting the camera to get the color profile right without pulling out hair and swearing at the gods!

Are you active on DPR? If so, you should think about posting this in the Ricoh forum over there. If not, do you mind if I post essentially the same thing? It would be a real service to a pre-selected audience of folks with the same issue over there. At the end of a long thread over there yesterday, I explained this process in FAR less effective terms and without the specific pathways. This would be a good thing to offer up for those folks as well...

Thanks again,

-Ray
 
+1, just don't bring the dpr crowd over here, some of them are scary... :)

And than you Ray for sharing the raw so we can all get to the bottom of the problem.
 
Thanks for writing this up! You were instrumental in getting some of us to a solution yesterday ant this post should make it easier for folks just getting the camera to get the color profile right without pulling out hair and swearing at the gods!

Are you active on DPR? If so, you should think about posting this in the Ricoh forum over there. If not, do you mind if I post essentially the same thing? It would be a real service to a pre-selected audience of folks with the same issue over there. At the end of a long thread over there yesterday, I explained this process in FAR less effective terms and without the specific pathways. This would be a good thing to offer up for those folks as well...

Thanks again,

-Ray

Ray, I'm not an active member on DPR, I do occasionally read some of the threads there. Feel free to post the solution over there. :)

Agree with aleksanderpolo, thanks for posting photos
 
Thanks for this post. I'm currently on the brink if to go to LR4 or LR5 and this is a huge help. Although, personally I have not seen a problem with the reds in my GR

Go shoot some red/orange peppers or tomatoes back to back with another camera! I posted them in a different thread (Strawhat 20 linked to it in his first post in this thread). The "embedded" color profile is pretty bad when there's that much bright red to deal with. Also orange and red neon lights - big time fail. But in most shooting with just bits of not-too-bright red, its not bad and you have to look to even notice. But when its bad, its really bad. But no worries, using the updated profile, ALL is good with the world!

-Ray
 
Thank you for this. I traded in quite a lot of old camera equipment to get the GR and having the correct profile makes a noticeable difference to LR 4.4

Kind regards,

Simon
 
Thanks so much for this. Mine arrived this morning, and despite updating Photoshop with the latest version of Camera Raw, Lightroom did not have an Adobe Standard Profile. I used your fix and it is working fine, now.
 
Hey, just wanted to check up on this update and see if what i am doing is optimal, hopefully you guys have more of a clue than i have:)

I'm using LR 3.6 so I haven't been able to add the ACR profile above, the colors from the ricoh were a little funky and i was getting worried.

However Adobe DNG convertor 8.1 with Ricoh GR support was released a few days ago.

Sooo, i'm taking the ricoh dng raws from the memory card running them through Adobe's standalone convertor then moving them over to Lightroom 3.6
Is this as good as it's going to get for me, I've tried comparing a files directly imported to LR and one run through A.dngConv there is the slightest difference in color and the files show up labeled with ricoh GR metadata but not much else, in lens profile correction/color

I was just hoping for some sort of confirmation that the profile worked optimally and everything was done correctly, since AdngConv is so uniformative and LR 3.6 isn't able to give me all the info needed.

Thanks for any Info.
 
Hard to say - I thought the DNG converter was to convert non-DNG files to DNG format, not for interpreting existing DNG files. Since Ricoh creates DNG files as its raw format, I'm not sure what its doing???

I've been in touch with a guy who writes third party color profiles to work with Lightroom. He initially said a few days back that there was some bug in the way Adobe was dealing with GR files and he'd put his GR profile on hold. Then yesterday, he got back in touch and said that the problem had only been in the "black rendering level" and its fixed in ACR 8.1, so I'd think those of us who'd updated the profile to 8.1 should have been OK right along. I got a quick preview of the profile he's working on for the GR and it was very nice, but basically identical to the Adobe Standard profile in terms of tint and hue (to the extent I even understand the difference!), but just looks a bit deeper and richer. But no real change to the perceived colors of the Adobe Standard profile. So I think those using the Adobe Standard profile that was in the ACR 8.1 release have the "correct" colors from the Ricoh. I think those are what the camera looks like. I personally found them to look just fine about 95% of the time and on the few files where they didn't I think it may have been more of an exposure issue than anything else. I'd taken a bunch of back to back photos with the Nikon on a foggy, misty morning as the sun was coming up and that's one time I saw a big difference between the Nikon and Ricoh colors. I initially preferred the Nikon colors, but the more time I've spent going through those and processing them, the more I've come to like the Ricoh colors! So I think they're fine and whether you like them or not compared to other camera's output is mostly just a matter of personal preference...

How that works with the DNG converter and an older version of lightroom, though, I have absolutely no idea. Have you tried the color profile from ACR 8.1??? It may be that the DNG converter in the same package is doing the job for you - I just don't understand how that works with existing DNG files that don't need to be converted???

I ended up going with the Nikon over the Ricoh, but the colors had nothing to do with that decision - it had more to do with auto-ISO implementation and how that affects the way I shoot on the street, and a few relatively minor interface preferences. But I've come to like the Ricoh colors quite a bit...

-Ray
 
Thanks for the quick reply, I was just as confused having to convert a Ricoh DNG through AdobeDNGConvertor 8.1 to get another dng file, but Adobe specificly mentions support for the Ricoh GR so it must be doing something.(just wish i knew what)

I'll do a few more test comparing the original dng's and 8.1 converted files and see if i can see any bigger differences in LR3.6

I was mostly hoping/wondering if 8.1 would automaticly fix barrel distortion, CA, and colorprofiles but maybe that's a whole other problem, I'm guessing LR5 will be the best all in one solution for using Ricoh GR files.

I don't have a calibrated screen or anything just my macbook pro screen, so i can't/shouldn't be to critical, but the files seem a lot more sensitive to small small changes on the sliders compared to the GRDIII.

On a completely seperate note, did you see any difference using auto WB or MultiP auto, I think reg auto worked better for skin tones, but i'll try check up on that aswell.

Thanks Again.
 
The lens correction (distortion, CA, vignetting, etc) is a different thing - you need a lens profile for that. From what I understand, there isn't one for the GR, yet. I've heard there's one for the Nikon, but I've never seen it. What's more, I did a few raw+jpeg shots with the Nikon and when I compared them back to back, I couldn't see any difference. Most in-camera jpeg engines handle that stuff automatically, so if the raw files come up in Lightroom looking the same as the jpegs, I'm guessing they might contain enough embedded correction information for some sort of correction to be applied automatically. I really don't know much about how this works, but that seems to make sense to me. When I apply a lens profile for another Nikon 18.5mm lens, I see changes in the file and the edges and I can't tell you either looks better or more "right" than the other. So for now, I'm just bringing them to Lightroom as is.

I seemed to get slightly better results using MultiP WB, but shooting raw, its easy enough to tweak unless its waaaaay off...

-Ray
 
I take it some of you guys have installed this correctly ?

I can't seem to find the /CameraRaw folder once I'm in the Adobe folder.........I was able to unhide the ibrary folder using the command+shift+G which unhides folders, but not finding the /CameraRaw folder. Any tips ?

I'm relatively new to Macs so perhaps I'm missing something here.






*************** EDIT: Figured it out


....and yeah, looks great. Had the 1 image where the red looked horrible and this profile did a wonderful job correcting it. Many thanks
 
Hi everyone,

Thanks for the ACR profile!

Just a quick question: which profile do you put within the camera? There is the choice for adobe standard or sRGB? Does that make a difference in the color profile when working on Lightroom?
 
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