Anybody else missing the B5 Look Profiles?

[mgoltsman]

I first ran into the look profiles in Kodak PhotoDeskPro software for an old Kodak 14nx DSLR. It was clunky (but so was the rest of the camera), but I found that it did a better job than B4 in highlight recovery. So I used that software and became accustomed to using look profiles because they were the most powerful adjustments it had to offer. In Bibble 5 (I don't recall if Bibble 4 had them but I did not use them there), Look Profiles became 70% of my editing - more often than not a portrait would look right with the Portrait look profile, and I could usually find a good one for landscape and other shots that would make an excellent starting point.

When I loaded some of my photos (the ones with people, primarily) into ASP, it took me a few minutes to realize that they were displayed in the wrong look profile, and a few hours more to realize there are no longer look profiles to select. I see great big long discussions on how to get a dozen settings tweaked just so to come close to one look profile or another (usually Portrait). I suppose eventually I (or someone else) will figure out presets that would mimic all look profiles, but until I have more time to invest in it I am going back to Bibble 5.2.3. I think it is another testament (more of an epitaph) to the strength of Kodak's imaging science expertise - they got all the imaging parameters of the profiles right to be a good fit out of the box for the majority of shots and an excellent starting point for the rest.

I am curious if anyone else feels that way - that Look Profiles were a key feature and that equivalent functionality needs to be defined through available means of product customization. Perhaps a "preset exchange" can be set up in one of the threads that would enable people to share their useful settings?

[andysalay]

I have used changing profile in Bibble 5 quite often. For majority of my shots served Wedding profile well, and in too contrasty situations portrait had provided good starting point. I miss look profilez too. Unfortunately, there was major problem with the Kodak colormanagement engine which causes a lot of headache to me and many others demanding users. It was causing nasty posterization in shadows. There was a lot of noise on the forums and IMO the good name of Bibble was hurt a lot, as the problem lingered so long. According to developers it was unsolvable with Kodak CME. So I am really willing to sacrifice the look profiles for much better shadows. Though, developers had somehow mitigated that problem onsome cameras -on D7000 raws I have discovered that pushing blacks slider to negative values will actually move them out of the problematic area, the posterization dissaper. Then you only need to move blackpoint triangle on curves tool to the right, for increasing contrast. Unfortunately this workaround does not work for my D300 images.
Only the change of colour engine in ASP finally solve this problem for all users of different cameras. So, do miss lookprofiles, but I am happy that now the shadows rendering is perfect.

Regards,
Andy Salay

[tomsi42]

No, I don't miss them at all.I found a setting I liked and used that for all my photos.

There are a few bugs in ASP so it does not handle highlight recovery well. Other than that i like the new rendering enigne.

[DocBrown]

I don't miss the look profiles at all. I want as generic and flat of a look as possible. Product reduced & Portrait reduced came as close to that as I like. Once I set one as the default, I never changed it. ASP is too saturated and has more contrast than I prefer, so I set its defaults to start flatter. Being a Canon owner (20D & 7D), I always liked how DPP rendered an unprocessed .cr2 file, which is a much flatter look than ASP.

[claudermilk]

Me either. I barely used them at all, probably less than 1% of my images. The default worked well enough that I pretty much ignored that "feature."

[GoremanX]

I hated the Look Profiles. 90% of the time, they just screwed up the rendering of my images. I always ended up using the same basic setting for all my pictures. The loss of Look Profiles is an improvement, in my opinion. One less confusing and meaningless setting to worry about. You can easily setup your own set of "Look Profiles" by using presets.

[quadrox]

I hated the Look Profiles. 90% of the time, they just screwed up the rendering of my images. I always ended up using the same basic setting for all my pictures. The loss of Look Profiles is an improvement, in my opinion. One less confusing and meaningless setting to worry about. You can easily setup your own set of "Look Profiles" by using presets.

Fully agree.

[andysalay]

I hated the Look Profiles. 90% of the time, they just screwed up the rendering of my images. I always ended up using the same basic setting for all my pictures. The loss of Look Profiles is an improvement, in my opinion. One less confusing and meaningless setting to worry about. You can easily setup your own set of "Look Profiles" by using presets.

Fully agree.

Interesting. I did not use shuffling of look-profiles often, as I was very satisfied with my "wedding look profile" based defaults, but when needed, I was able to take advantage of different contrast, saturation of the other look profiles. It seems to me that the others who are just bashing look profiles did not properly discover their usage. Why should I hate something I needn't to use, if I am satisfied with my defaults?

Regards.
Andy Salay

[Autark]

I frankly admit to missing the look profiles, although that will probably expose me as being a mediocre photo editor. I used to try a few profiles and see which one suited each shot the best, depending on how much contrast and vibrance I wanted. I understand why they had to go, but I sure would like to have something similar instead.

[bananahead]

I frankly admit to missing the look profiles, although that will probably expose me as being a mediocre photo editor. I used to try a few profiles and see which one suited each shot the best, depending on how much contrast and vibrance I wanted. I understand why they had to go, but I sure would like to have something similar instead.

Me too.

My starting point was always Portrait Reduced because it gave the most neutral look.

[claudermilk]

You could generate some settings that approximate the look & then save a preset.

[springm]

*I* certainly do miss them. 'Product reduced' worked fine for most of my pictures and was the default setting for my DSLR. Up to now I was not able to create a similar preset with contrast, saturation and curves sliders.

The simple removal - without at least presets as replacement - in the new version I see as a hostile act ;

Markus

[Autark]

You could generate some settings that approximate the look & then save a preset.

But presets will override other changes I may have made, while changing a Look Profile would preserve my curves, contrast and vibrance settings, and the like. Therefore, Look Profiles were more flexible.

[Zrubi]

I do really missing them.

Or at least the way to customize the defaults, like the look profile did it before.

[jochen-02]

*I* certainly do miss them. 'Product reduced' worked fine for most of my pictures and was the default setting for my DSLR. Up to now I was not able to create a similar preset with contrast, saturation and curves sliders.

Did you succeed meanwhile in reconstructing "Product Reduced" in AfterShot Pro?