[argyllcms] Re: Calculate RAW importer profiles ?

  • From: Anders Torger <torger@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2015 11:50:29 +0200

There are (or at least were) ways to extract ICC profiles from NX, and
use them in RawTherapee. The Nikon ICC profiles requires a special kind
of pre-processing of the raw for it to work though, not sure if that
functionality is still up to speed in RT, you could try.

The problem is not that Nikon's raw format is undocumented, it's been
thoroughly reverse-engineered, but the format itself does not contain
any information on how Capture NX renders colors, it's inside that
software, mostly in just a color profile.

And of course, if Nikon's way to render colors is the best or not is a
matter of taste. Other raw converter makers have chosen other colors
because they like that rendition better.

It's generally not about good and bad. If we're talking colorimetric
accuracy as "good", then all are bad, also Nikons own as they're not
designed for that, but insteaad for some sort of subjective
pleasantness.

If you really want to match Nikon's NX color than it's in theory
possible, but I'd guess that you might need to do some custom software
hacks in addition to using Argyll tools to get a working workflow.

I would advice to put yourself in the drivers seat and make your own
profiles from scratch, and compare to Nikon's output and figure out
what subjective aspects you like and apply them manually. If you want
colorimetric accuracy for reproduction work using Argyll tools are
great, if you want to make an all-around profile you may want to have a
look at my new project "DCamProf".

/Anders

On 07/27/2015 11:06:50 AM, Adriaan van Os wrote:

Graeme Gill wrote:
Adriaan van Os wrote:

Overall it seems like a task with a few "gotchas", and therefore
would be a project. So that raises the question of whether it is
really worthwhile. If you like what a particular RAW processor
does,
why not just use it ?

I hate the Nikon Capture NX software (both the software and the
licensing policies are horrible).
The output of other RAW processors is not good enough. And the
situation that a camera manufacturer
keeps the data format of your very own pictures secret, is simply not
acceptable
<http://www.openraw.org/info/index.html>. Everyone shooting RAW,
faces
this situation.

Regards,

Adriaan van Os






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