[switters]

I saw a posting over on dpreviews from someone who had calibrated their K10D for ACR, and came up with these settings:

Shadows: -3
Red Hue: -14
Red Sat.: 22
Green Hue: -6
Green Sat: 6
Blue Hue: 13
Blue Sat: -5

Funny, because I just shot a bunch of portraits with a caucasian model, and skin tones appeared very red. I used the following settings and achieved a much more natural look:

Shadows: 0
Red Hue: 17
Red Sat.: 0
Green Hue: -17
Green Sat: 0
Blue Hue: 15

Just wondering what you all use in ACR and/or LR as a "default"?
Blue Sat: -5

[barbosas]

Hi..

The first setings also gave a me red skin tone, but i only have a k100d..

[switters]

Here are some images which demonstrate what I'm speaking of.

#1 - Lightroom (ACR 3.7) default:



#2 - My custom preset (values in post above):



#3 - K10D ACR profile using ACR Calibrator Script by another user:



I imagine how you see the differences will depend on how your monitor is calibrated. I'm using a fully color-managed workflow and the differences are quite significant, though subtle.

I know it's always possible (and often desirable) to tweak the RAW settings on each import, but my intention here is to find a reasonable "default" calibration to start from that lessens my overall post-processing time.

[carpents]

For Caucasian skin tones, I use a variation of:

Shadows: 0
Red Hue: 0 to 10
Red Sat.: 10 to 25
Green Hue: -70
Green Sat: -70
Blue Hue: -25
Blue Sat: To taste, usually not feasible at higher ISOs.

Overall Saturation: Between 0 and -5

[arbutusq]

I have my calibration settings saved as presets in LR and they are pretty similar to the ones others have posted, but since switching to Mac I find that ACR (LR) default calibration looks best. This is puzzling since on PC I hated ACR defaults.

[switters]

See this thread at dpreviews (scroll to bottom) for a comparison of one RAW image in Lightroom, Aperture, Capture One & Bibble:

RAW calibration settings with LR/ACR 3.7 & K10D [Page 1]: Pentax SLR Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

I'm going to try profiling my camera later with the ACR script and see what I get. I'll be using a color chart that is supposed to be very close to the Gretag MacBeth chart which I downloaded for free. I'm not sure if this will provide accurate results, but I'm going to give it a try because so far I still haven't found a basic default settings I like for LR.

I like the colors in Aperture, but it does this weird thing of overexposing 10D files by 2/3 stop. There's no easy way to correct this for all images. Capture One & Bibble provide nice results, but I've grown so accustomed to the workflow in Aperture & LR that I want to stick with either one of those if possible.

[davemdsn]

Camera calibrations are going to vary not only from camera to camera, but from shoot to shoot. Lighting changes can effect calibration. I have three different presets on LR and try all before commiting, sometimes even selecting none. It is not a one size fits all kind of deal. To get really accurate you need to shoot and color checker for each lighting situation and running a Photoshop script on it. I'm not diligent enough, I just have my three (four including "none") and go by eye from there.

[switters]

Interestingly, here's what the author of one of the ACR calibration scripts had to say about the need to calibrate for different lighting conditions:

Support

Basically, he says the daylight profile will work for the vast majority of lighting situations you would encounter. The one exception is tungsten, which he recommends creating a separate profile for.