Monthly Archives: August 2010

Lens Profiles for Adobe Lightroom 3 & Camera Raw 6.1+

Judging by my website statistics and recent email correspondence from readers of my Lightroom 3 Feature Review it has become apparent that the Lens Correction Profiles that I had made available are a lot more popular than I expected. Unfortunately, time was tight when I first published the Feature Review, which meant that I was only able to build profiles for use with raw images, and even then for only some of the Canon lenses I own. So, given their popularity and currently restricted availability from Adobe’s own lens profile server, I have decided to finish the job and make all of my lens profiles available from this website. However, before downloading them it might be worth spending a few moments reading about how lens profiles are created.

To create the lens profiles for use with Lightroom 3 and Camera Raw 6.1 I use the Adobe Lens Profile Creator application. This application characterises three common types of lens aberrations, namely geometric distortion, lateral chromatic aberration, and vignetting.

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Site Update

The response to the new What’s New page has been quite encouraging, especially the comments regarding the overall appearance and readability. Some readers will also have noticed that the new Photoshop CS5 Color Management essay that I posted on Saturday uses a similar layout, and this too has been positively received. I have therefore decided to update the remainder of the site so that the appearance is more in line with the What’s New page.  Some material has already been updated and the remainder will be uploaded over the next week or so.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 – Color Management

As it has been since I published my first essay on Color Management back in the days of Photoshop 5, the aim of this essay is to introduce the basic concepts of color management, then to delve into the detail of how Adobe have incorporated these into Photoshop Cs5.

The UI for Photoshop CS5 has changed little since CS4. Likewise, color management in its widest sense is similar in both look and feel to versions dating back as far as CS2. It’s for this reason that this essay is, in the main, simply an update of previous essays rather than a complete rewrite. The one exception being the changes introduced to the Print dialog.

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Lightroom 3.2 and Camera Raw 6.2 Release Candidates

Adobe have just announed public release candidates of Lightroom and Camera Raw. These updates provide support for new camera models from Casio, Leica, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony along over 50 new or improved lens profiles. The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before being made available via Adobe’s automatic update service.

In addition to the new camera and lens support the Lightroom update addresses a number of bugs that surfaced after the release of Lightroom 3. A comprehensive list of bug fixes have been provide on the Lightroom Journal.

While it’s not normal practice to include feature enhancements with a dot release Adobe have included a few in Lightroom 3.2. Of particular interest to many long time users of Lightroom will be the reintroduction of the Metadata Filter feature that allowed users to configure and remember source specific filters (Sticky Filters). However, unlike the previous implementation of this feature it is now hidden way under the File>Library Filters menu (see screen shot).

Lightroom Remember Source Filters

Facebook users will be pleased to learn that a Publish Services plugin for Facebook has also been included with Lightroom 3.2. Last but not least, Lightroom now includes support for Photoshop Elements 9.

More information on where to download a copy along with details of what’s new and improved in Lightroom 3.2 and Camera Raw 6.2 can be found on the Lightroom Journal.