The theory:
With the launch (in beta version) of Adobe adaptive profile In Camera Raw, Adobe continues to innovate the world of photo editing. This new profile uses artificial intelligence to automatically adjust tones and colors based on the content of each image. Designed to optimize light, shadow and color adjustments, it offers a solution that reduces user manual work and improves the editing experience, both for amateur and professional photographers.
What are Adobe's adaptive profiles?
Unlike traditional color profiles, which apply static adjustments, Adobe's adaptive profiles use an AI model to dynamically adapt the appearance of a photo based on its unique characteristics. After training on a wide range of images, the AI can make informed decisions to adjust tones, colors, and contrast.
The correction through PGTM (Pre-Tone Curve Matrix) and RGBT (RGB Tone Curve) in Adobe's adaptive profiles is a process that manages the transformation of the color and tones of the image in a targeted and adaptive way.
1. PGTM: It acts before the tonal curve is applied, affecting the saturation and hue of the base colors to optimize color balance. This matrix transforms the camera's raw colors to prepare them for subsequent adjustments.
2. RGBT: Defines the tonal curve for each color channel (red, green and blue), adjusting contrast, light and shadow. The application of the RGB curve makes it possible to optimize image rendering based on its unique characteristics, increasing tonal depth and preserving details in light and dark areas.
Together, these two tools ensure precise adjustment of tones and colors, ensuring that the adaptive profile can improve the image in an intelligent and dynamic way, adapting to the content and characteristics of the image.
Key Features and Benefits
1. Automatic adjustments with AI: Adobe's AI allows the profile to “learn” from the data collected, adapting to various shooting scenarios: portraits, landscapes, action, and still life. Each image is automatically optimized without the need for manual intervention.
2. Streamlining the workflow: Adaptive profiles apply at the beginning of the editing process, offering immediate improvement. This eliminates most of the manual adjustments needed to balance contrast and color accuracy.
3. Maintaining artistic intent: Although based on machine learning, the adaptive profile allows photographers to maintain creative control. The automatic adjustments act as a basis on which users can intervene to further customize the image.
4. Device compatibility: Adaptive profiles are optimized for both SDR and HDR displays, ensuring consistent color rendering regardless of the device on which the image is displayed. This is crucial for professionals who need to ensure visual consistency across multiple supports.
5. Wide compatibility with photographic genres: Whether it's high-contrast scenes, delicate skin tones in portraits, or complex lighting in commercial shots, the adaptive profile automatically adapts to the photographer's needs.
In practice:
Despite the potential benefits, Adobe's adaptive profiles are not without limitations. While the profile works well in some settings, it doesn't always meet the needs of precise color grading or complex tonal corrections. Furthermore, its effectiveness is limited in applications, such as the reproduction of works of art or technical studio photography, where compliance with specific color standards (such as FADGI or Metamorphoze) is essential.
Inconsistencies have also been found when working with images that require extreme dynamic range adjustments or fine color details. While AI-guided automatic adjustments offer a significant advantage in terms of saving time, the manual control that traditional methods provide is still preferable.
Considerations on results and issues
The concept of adaptive profiles is certainly promising, but the current results show various complexities. The profile tends to flatten the images, depriving them of depth and structure, making it unsuitable for high-key, low-key, still life product images, or portraits in studios and locations where volumes and three-dimensionality are essential. The lack of depth mapping limits correction capabilities, with errors evident in images with complex lighting such as snowy landscapes or portraits in pastel tones.
Another major limitation is the impossibility of selecting a 3D LUT within the profile, thus reducing color correction flexibility. In addition, the fact that the profile is based only on Adobe Standard color profile involves incomplete color management, especially in reds and blues.
The future of adaptive profiles
With the continuous development of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, Adobe's adaptive profiles have the potential to become an indispensable tool for photographers who want to speed up their workflow without compromising quality. However, to meet the needs of professionals, it is necessary to offer greater customization and precision.
In the future, it would be useful for Adobe to introduce a feature that allows photographers to train AI on their files, in order to obtain more personalized and relevant results. In addition, the integration of customized 3D LUTs and the ability to maintain specific deviations in color grading would make adaptive profiles a more valid option for those who work with advanced color needs.
In conclusion, Adobe's adaptive profiles represent an important evolution, but currently, in their beta form, they are more suitable for an amateur audience or for less complex uses. With further developments and customizations, they could become a fundamental tool even for professional photographers, while ensuring efficiency and quality.
Leica Q (Typ 116) - Profile comparison
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. On the left, a photograph taken in an environment with obvious lighting complexities, developed with the Adobe Color profile; on the right, the same image, but with the TheSpack profile. For this comparison, second-generation profiles were used, optimized in 2021, so they are still far from subsequent progress. This image is particularly critical because of a nuance in saturation, which, if not properly normalized, generates irregularities. Often, the result obtained with the Adobe profile leads to a negative judgment on the quality of the file and the camera itself. While using a similar tonal curve for contrast, the TheSpack profile produced a much better result. There is greater chromatic consistency, extension of detail and legibility in all areas of the image. Noise and granularity, evident with Adobe, have been reduced thanks to the structure of the TheSpack profile, designed to correctly balance the output channels. This limit in Adobe profiles often causes a drop in quality that is wrongly attributed to the technical medium. The best detail, superior tonal rendering and the absence of irregularities are not the result of post-production corrections, but of a carefully studied and developed color profile.
Panasonic S1R - Imperceptible defects
We are often used to looking at the whole of an image, losing sight of the detail that defines it. This reflection, in itself, might seem out of place, considering that photography is based on visual perception, on the impact that a subject, light, interpretation and dynamics of a scene transmit to us. It would therefore be natural not to focus on the details. And yet, here comes a great paradox: we invest in expensive lenses, glorifying their performance. We try to correct aberrations, chase resolution, apply textures and contrast masks to emphasize details, and yet we often forget one fundamental element: the color profile, which can destroy all this work. Now looking at the enlarged detail of a photograph developed with the Adobe Color color profile and the same image with TheSpack. The choice of how to intervene on a color profile, which parameters to consider and how to optimize the rendering of a sensor inevitably leads to consequences that impact the final quality of the image. This can even frustrate the work of engineers and designers who have created the highest quality optics. In the image developed with the Adobe Color profile, the light of a neon is dispersed, leaving an obvious halo around the light source. This phenomenon reduces texture in highlights, compromising texture and detail, and altering the overall quality of the photo. A small defect that, however, has a heavy impact on the performance of the lenses and is manifested throughout the image, regardless of the lighting conditions. Obviously, this consideration stems from the fact that a color profile can be generated taking into account different parameters, including those that determine the variation of hue and saturation as the brightness changes. For this reason, we have chosen to divide our system to make it effective in a wide range of situations. We have implemented specific solutions for each individual camera, so as to obtain impeccable results, regardless of the shooting conditions. This approach allows us to guarantee a consistent and accurate color rendering, minimizing deviations that may compromise image quality.
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