[johnkrumm]

I'm not exactly sure what the embedded profile is that I see as an option on Lightroom when viewing K1 raw files. Is it always the same, or do camera settings change it somehow? Is it a general profile that Pentax made? It's more subdued than the new Lightroom camera profiles. Thanks.

[BigDave]

OK, what is the profile that Lightroom says is there?

[Adam]

There are a few you can choose from, and they correspond to the Custom Image presets (bright, natural, etc.) You can also choose to apply the white balance that the camera recommends.

[johnkrumm]

OK, what is the profile that Lightroom says is there?

The profile options when shooting DNG on the latest update are embedded, Adobe standard, then the camera profiles (bright, natural, portrait, vibrant I think). I was just wondering what the embedded one really meant.

[JensE]

The DNG embedded profile translates the raw sensor readings for the various colors into standard color space coordinates (I would have to look up which one). I.e. it describes the color filter (Bayer matrix) characteristics and sensitivity of the sensor behind that. Besides the color mix via a matrix, it can also employ some non-linerar response curves via lookup tables, impacting the contrast. I think the embedded profile is a simple matrix profile mapping the colors 'faithfully' ('right' translation is subject to your definition of 'optimal') but not impacting contrast. Lightroom has some alternative input profiles, efficiently doing some pre-processing already. Other, like the commercial Huelight ones, apply again different criteria resulting in different color rendition, subjectively more pleasing at least for some people. The input curves are the main ingredient to the color signature which often are mentioned when people compare raw development software.

[Bythorn]

I've only seen the embedded profile on TIFF files, created by either the Pentax software or Photoshop.

[JensE]

Basically the same. Those are the color profiles describing what the TIFF or JPEG RGB values mean, again describing that color space's RGB color coordinates and contrast curves, often represented by a gamma value. Examples are the in-camera options from Pentax: sRGB - generally assumed without an embedded profile and Adobe-RGB. The later can represent a wider range of colors, but for JPEGs, which are limited to 256 distinct values per color component, sRGB is often preferred over Adobe-RGB as it can resolve more subtle color differences.

[Snakeisthestuff]

I noticed that it looks like the natural camera profile is always used when I go with embedded in LR 4.4.1, since my version is not updated anymore it is the only option I have anyway.

I checked DCU and it seems it applies the profile selected in the camera (which was the flat profile in my test example).

Hope that helps.