Invariate Adobe Camera Profiles

OK… that picture has nothing to do with this post… but I hate blog posts without pictures. This picture is taken from the Julington Creek Bridge at sunset in Jacksonville, FL.

When I did my original post about making Untwisted Adobe Camera Profiles, I had meant to go back and create “Invariate” versions as well. What is an Invariate version? Well… as I understand it, it’s kind of like a version that’s between the standard twisted version and the untwisted version. It applies the default twist that Adobe does to make sure the colors are really accurate, but then it doesn’t do any twisting while making adjustments. Kind of the best of both worlds… accurate color and accurate adjustments perhaps?

I honestly haven’t tried it, yet… but I plan to. I was prompted to make this version when Tim Howland, a Canon 40D user, mentioned that the untwisted profiles made his images green. He made an Invariate version of his profile and he said it solved the green problem. So, I wanted to throw these out as an option. I’m going to try them out as soon as I’m done with this post.

Here’s the link: http://thomaslesterphotography.com/downloads/InvariateProfiles.zip

You can use the same download for both Windows and Mac.

Instructions:

• Open the zip file

• Find your camera (if it’s not there, then it doesn’t exist).
• Double click on your camera’s folder. Inside will be the Invariate camera profiles renamed appropriately.
• FOR MAC’s
  • Open a second finder window and go to: Macintosh HD -> Library -> Application Support -> Adobe -> CameraRaw -> CameraProfiles -> Camera -> YOUR CAMERA
• FOR WINDOWS
  • Open a second explorer window and put this path into the address box: “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\Camera”
• Drag the Invariate profiles for your camera into the appropriate folder above.
• Restart LR or Photoshop.

I’m not a windows person. From my last post, I got the following comment from Beat Gossweiler:

Thomas,

Thank you so much for taking the effort to convert all these profiles. I take it they are derived from the current release of ACR, which is 5.5?

One suggestion I have:

I would not put the “custom” profiles into the “All Users” folder, as this is the folder where ACR puts its profiles upon installation. Who knows if they could be lost on a future re-installation.
I would put them into the corresponding “user” folder, e.g. “C:\Documents and Settings\…\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\Camera”, which is where LR also stores its presets. All you have to do is to create a folder “Camera” in “C:\Documents and Settings\…\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\” and copy the camera-specific profile folder into there.
For Mac, I would not know what the corresponding user-specific folder is. Somebody else might help on this.

The profiles will be usable in LR in either case.

Thanks again,
Beat Gossweiler
Switzerland

Also for Windows 7 users, I got the following comment from David Greenberg:

Thanks so much for this. I do want to point out that the Windows paths given here and by Mr. Gossweiler in his post are for XP. Many have moved to Vista or Windows 7, where the folder structure is somewhat different. For these, you want to use either:

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles (instead of “All Users”)

or

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles (where “(username)” is replaced by your own)

David

It won’t cause any damage. These files are in ADDITION to the existing profiles. All your existing profiles will still be available as they are named differently. However use these profiles at your own risk. I am NOT responsible for any thing screwing up.

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