Processing RAW files in Lightroom the quick way

Importing RAW files into Lightroom is always an exciting event for us. As it’s the first time since pressing the shutter button, we get a really good look at the images. As with everything in life sometimes we are disappointed, sometimes we are surprised, sometimes we can’t understand why we took that picture. But no matter what the initial emotion, it soon is overtaken by the "it will look better when we do a bit of processing" emotion. That was until recently.

We have just started using the X-Rites ColorChecker Passport in conjunction with Lightroom to produce camera profiles. On its own this has improved the look of our imported pictures. But what has made a big difference is getting Lightroom to do a lot more of the image processing as it imports images. So if you would like to spend less time processing your images, get better quality images this could be of interest.

You can apply a camera profile to any image in Lightroom, no matter what setting was used to import the picture. But keep having to apply the profiles manually can be a bit tiresome and not to say time wasting. This is where Lightroom can help. Lightroom will apply your beautifully made profiles, as it imports the image. Not only that but it will also apply any other settings you wish. If you have more than one camera body it will apply the appropriate profile for each body. All this is possible.

You first need to do a bit of preparation work. But when you are finished you will have it so that Lightroom will import your images and apply a bespoke profile and settings to that image. If you have used a high ISO, you can apply a Noise Reduction based on that setting. What you end up with is images imported into Lightroom that have a fair bit of individual processing applied without you having to click a mouse.

What you need, is a set of pictures of the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport to enable you to produce colour profiles. Working mainly outside, taking pictures of wildlife we tend to produce our profiles using daylight. But choose another light source if this is more appropriate for your type of photography.

You need to capture the images used to create the profiles different ISO speeds, so that you can produce profiles for each ISO. One tip that we learnt is that with most modern camera the changes due to high ISO are very small. So we tended to only use a few ISO settings 200, 800, 1600 32000. If Lightroom hasn’t got a profile for ISO setting in the picture it will default to the closest setting. So if you set the ISO to 640 it will use the 800 ISO setting. This keeps down the amount of work you need to do. But you can produce a profile for each ISO setting if you think the improvements are justified.



X-Rite ColorChecker Passport

We also photograph a standard scene at the same time as the ColorChecker Passport. This is so we can compare pictures taken with different camera bodies. More about this later. Do this for each camera body you own. One important tip, make sure that you keep very good records and identify the frames as you go along as you are going to end up with a lot of pictures of colour patches. They all look the same and it can be a difficult task to identify them in Lightroom with having to look at the Metadata.


Standard photograph

Import all your images into Lightroom and start making the camera profiles. One profile for each illuminate, camera body and ISO setting. ColorChecker has one trick I should mention. It can produce profiles that are dual illuminant. Dual illuminant profiles are one profile that contains information for two different light sources, say one for daylight and one for flash. This type of profile is useful, if like us you do occasionally shoot using only electronic flash as a sole illuminant. A dual illuminant can have the daylight and electronic flash profile in one file.

Name the profiles you make with a name that lets you identify it later. Our profiles have names like EOS 1D II 400 D/F 100628. This gives us the camera body, the ISO setting, daylight and flash and the date the profile was created.

Now to get Lightroom to apply the profiles automatically as you import your images. A little known feature of Lightroom or at least one we’ve only just discovered by accident is Lightroom’s ability to set a new default. This default setting is used when importing images.

Preference and the Presets tab. On this tab you will see the two options we are interested in Make defaults specific to camera serial number and Make defaults specific to camera ISO setting. If you want to make the default settings both camera and ISO dependant tick both boxes. If you only want one variable then select either camera or ISO. OK the dialogue boxes.


Select the Make default specific to camera serial number and/or Make defaults specific to camera ISO setting

You have now set Lightroom to look at the metadata in the images it imports for specific camera bodies and ISO settings. If you have not set a default for a particular combination, Lightroom will apply the Adobe Standard default settings.

Next select one of your test images that you shot at the same time as the profile image. You need to know which camera body and ISO setting was used to produce the image. Switch to the Develop module. Scroll down to the Camera Calibration panel and change the profile from Adobe Standard to your new specific profile for this body and ISO setting. If you want you can take the process a step further, make changes to the other develop settings.




Adobe standard settings

We use different camera bodies to take our wildlife pictures, when the images are imported you can see the difference between the bodies even after they have been profiled. So what we do is to make changes to the basic settings. These changes are to try and balance the differences between the camera bodies. One body may require that the exposure setting is a little different.


Our settings for EOS 1D Mk II

What you should be aiming for is when you look at the pictures in Lightroom you can’t tell which body was used. All this balancing and tweaking takes time and the chances are that you will not get it right first time but keep going. You can always change the settings again and again.

When you have finished all your adjustments for your selected image, you need to make these settings the default. Under the Develop menu you will find Set Default Settings click this option. You should then see a dialogue box.

Click the Update to Current Settings. Your develop settings, camera profile, are now the default.


Make your settings for this camera and ISO

Once you have finished doing this for your camera bodies and different ISO settings it is time to test. But take our advice and go and have a long tea break before you start, as by now you tend to be a bit over imaged.

Shoot a series of test pictures using all your bodies. Import these pictures into Lightroom. Under the Import settings dialogue make sure that under the Information to Apply section you set Develop Settings to None. This may seem an odd choice but what is happening is that Lightroom will apply its default settings to any imported image. As you have changed the Adobe defaults with your defaults these will be those applied.


Import settings used when importing new images

What you should see, with a bit of luck and skill is that no matter what body you took the image on they all look the same. When you look at the Noise a majority of the settings should be nearly there. When you start selecting your best images you have a better idea of how the final image will look. I can say that this little tip has saved us a lot of time and results in better images faster.

Until next time