Calibrating or rather, profiling, a camera for colour management is quite difficult to do with Adobe Camera RAW. Let’s just say you need a script that performs some complicated tricks and you need to shoot a GretagMacbeth or other colour chart. It can be a lot more simple, though. DxO Optics Pro has a nifty “Export for ICC Profile” feature.

That feature, which you access from the File menu, has two settings: Linear RAW or DxO Realistic. The first is meant to give you a TIFF file that has an accurate, as raw as possible ICC profile for your camera, while the second gives you a TIFF that has been processed with the DxO Realistic Colour Rendition Profile (that means with the greatest possible color fidelity to the source) . Both TIFF files serve as the basis for your profile, which you’ll create in ProfileMaker Pro or some other colour profiling application.

The most difficult part of profiling (or calibrating if you wish) a dSLR or other digital camera is setting up the camera and the colour target chart so that the profile can be created. The setup requires a good and even exposure. If the chart has been unevenly lit, or there are areas which have been under- or overexposed, you can still create the profile, but not all the colours the profile describes, will be 100% accurate.

I tested this capability of DxO Optics Pro 4.x that had slipped my attention earlier with a Sony Alpha 100, the GretagMacbeth SG DigitalChecker chart and ProfileMaker Pro 5.0.8. Indoors the chart needed a very careful lighting setup before ProfileMaker was happy with the exposure. Indoors, you have control over the lighting, but outdoors you don’t --so, expect an outdoors profile (if that makes sense at all; not in my opinion --better just set the white balance with the ExpoDisc) to be much harder to expose correctly.

Two Colour Target Options

Anyway, I used the Export Linear RAW option first, then also exported using DxO’s Realistic option, and then created a profile for both these targets. The QuickTime movie of the ICC profile shows you the result of the profile in 3D space, as it is shown in ColorThink Pro. I think you’ll agree the results are quite good. The Linear RAW based profile showed a large gap in the darker areas, whereas DxO Natural plugged that hole neatly. This means the profile created with the DxO Realistic option, is more balanced and using it will give better results, provided you let DxO Optics Pro do its thing with its automatic corrections for lens and body flaws.

I also ran a self-portrait photo through it to see if the colours would change (I am not showing you the portrait --much too ugly). They did, but only in a very subtle way. I was wearing a dark blue shirt, and that one had more detail when using the DxO Realistic based profile --that was expected. My skin colour looked very good, and wasn’t affected by the profile --again, what I expected. My conclusion is once again: DxO Optics Pro 4.x is a great RAW converter and photograph quality enhancement application. It is a tad better at RAW conversion than both Adobe Camera RAW and (even) Phase One Capture One Pro. But it excels at correcting flaws in photos that are generated by the camera body and the lens.

To round up this article, I’ll run you through the procedure to create a camera profile for use with DxO Optics Pro 4.x.

• Take a correctly and evenly exposed photograph of a colour chart in your camera’s RAW mode. To ProfileMaker Pro, it’s all indifferent what you will be using, as long as you have the correct reference file for the colour target chart on your system.
• Import the image of the colour target in DxO Optics Pro 4.x. Select the image and select “Export for ICC Profile” from the File menu. Choose the option you want to use for your profile. Save this file in a convenient place (your Desktop is the easiest).
• Open ProfileMaker Pro and select Camera from the tab menu. Select the correct reference file for your target and import the TIFF file generated by DxO Optics Pro in the previous step. Create the profile and save it to the ColorSync folder, adding the “.icc” extension in the process (ProfileMaker Pro on the Mac doesn’t add the extension automatically).
• Go back to DxO Optics Pro 4.x, open any photograph in there, go to the Enhance tab, and select the Colour panel. There, instead of selecting the Color Setting “As Shot”, scroll down the list, and select your profile. The colours will now subtly change, and if everything went well, the photo should look better. You can now colour correct all your camera’s photos using its colour space properly shown through in the colours on-screen.