Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating Profiles

a profile is very different than a preset. In fact, a preset is just a command for light room to shift a slider or choose a specific thing inside of the slider. Like, for instance, your presets can also select a profile. So that's part of a preset. So if I was to go over here and click on Create a Preset and go up, one of the things is treatment and profile. Okay, so a profile can be inside a preset, which means that a profile is different than a pre set presets. Just choosing slider positions and choosing a profile. That's all it's doing. A profile is the underlying definition of color, and that's what makes it so cool. Now profiles have existed inside of light room for years. Almost, I think, all the way back to the very, very beginning. Um, but they were hidden. They were actually hidden way down here in the calibration menu, and nobody ever used them. The only way anyone ever made him is if they had a plug in. So X right would make him for you in a plug in so that you could use a c...

olor checker passport like this one that the model is holding, and it would read the colors, the known colors on that on that color swatch. And then it would create a profile to neutralize all of the color shift that your cameras chip had your camera's sensor. So, uh, that was the old style of profiles, and no one had access to it. Really. Now you have access to the profiles right up here at the very top there at the very, very top of the entire thing. And that's why you do that. First, a profile is the definition of color that you're going to see so red equals what and and a profile can either make red equal bright red, red, equal, darker red. Or it could even mean red equals blue if it wants to, so you can create a profile or you can buy profiles. You can download profiles or make profiles through plug ins that will completely shift the color. So let's take a look at that. Want you to look at this color swatch right here, so I'm gonna change the profile. And as I change the profile, you're going to see that color swatch change first Let's just look at the adobe raw profiles that air inside of adobe raw. So if I do color and then if I go to neutral, look at the way those change, they get more muted. You can see that in her shirt, too. But if I goto portrait, portrait versus standard, not much of a change but portrait versus landscape it's a landscape there. You can see that those colors air really vivid, and so it's changing the underlying colors. And if I do that, I'm a click on landscape just so that you can see nothing has changed here. So even if I if I go in and reset all of my settings so that there's no editing whatsoever done inside of light room itself as I change the profile and you can change it, either you can either change the profile through the profile browser here so you can see what it's gonna look like before you click on it. Or you can just do it in the drop down menu here. And no matter what, it doesn't matter if I choose landscape or if I choose portrait. None of these sliders here changing because they don't have anything to do with the profile. The profile is what is happening to the color before light room starts to adjust it. And so we have all of these great profiles toe work with. Not only do we have the ones that Dobie makes, we have the camera matching ones that air trying to match the actual camera. What you see on the back of the camera when you take the picture, and then also there's some artistic ones that will kind of give you cross process looks. And then you also have, ah, some that like I I make my own this one. I really love this one. I love profiles because profiles are computing the actual color. So if I click on a profile that I really like and close it up now, I can work within that profile and play around with the image itself and adjust the image on top of that profile, which means that if I come over here now and create a preset and say, I want to create a preset and that preset is going to include the profile, so it's going to use that really warm toned color preset our profile. Sorry, and then I can also add other things to it. And I could say, Well, I like what I did with, um Well, in this case, I didn't do much to it, so I would just include the profile alone. And if I had done something else like, let's say I had added a tone curve to that. So I had added kind of ah, rich tone curve. So it was fairly dark, shadows fairly bright. So if I had added that, then I could create a preset that includes the profile and the tone curve. And I can name that and say, This is my warm film with high contrast preset. Put it in the user presets. Actually, let's put it in the new presets and hit create. Remember, we're only putting those two in there and hit create. So now if I ever want to apply that profile to an image, I just simply come to my new presets and I click on that warm film with high contrast and boom. I've changed two things. I've changed some slider positions, but I've also changed this profile so you can see that the profile has been changed and the beauty of a profile is not only is it a really great way to get color effects and black and white effects and things like that, but it's also, uh, manipulable, whereas a preset it. Just Once you click a preset, it slides all the sliders into a position. And then, from there on out, you have to change individual sliders, whereas a profile does a whole bunch of stuff to the image before it ever gets adjusted by light room. And then I can go in and shift it and make it less warm or more war minutes. It's taking the overall effect, and it's pulling it down. So this is like a relative slider. So those of you who were like, I wish I could have presets, that I could slide in and out and get mawr or less intense on that one preset. Now you can, because you have a profile that does the same thing and you can get Mawr or less on that effect so I can just kind of There we go. I like that, and that's the way I'm going to deliver that file. So a profile is a very powerful thing. Now I've shown you how to create a preset, and I've shown you how to import a preset. But I haven't shown you how to make a profile. Making a profile is a lot more complicated because you can't even do it here in light room. You actually have to go into a photo shop. So I'm gonna go into photo shop right now. Actually, first off, I need to find an image, so I'm just gonna grab any image. It doesn't really matter which one. So I'm just gonna look at an image, right? Click that image and show it in the finder. Now, I'm gonna right click it in the finder and I'm gonna open it. So I'm gonna open with photo shop. And because it's a raw file, it's gonna open up camera. Wrong camera. Raw is where you can make. Not only you can make presets here, but you can also make a profile. So I'm going to quickly Ah, adjust this image. So we're just gonna There we go. That's good. It's good enough. And now I'm going to do a couple other things to it, so I'm gonna go into the curve and I'm going to increase the highlights and bring the shadows down just a little bit. Are the the darks up the shadows down? Um, and then I'm going to go into my point curve and in the point curve, I'm going to do some kind of cross process stuff. So let's take the Reds and we're going to Ah, decrease the Reds in the shadows and I'm gonna keep him fairly normal in the highlights so that she doesn't get a green type of face. And then I'm gonna go to the blue and in the blue I'm going to increase the blue in the shadows and I'm gonna decrease the blue in the face. So it's there. OK, so it's got an interesting look to it. And so now what I'm gonna do is here inside of camera raw, which is a little bit different than light room. But it's the same raw processor. It just looks different. So the presets air right here. So these air presets, I could then come to this preset area and at the very bottom there's a little page symbol. That's what I do to create a preset. If I create a preset out of what I've just done, I will have created a preset that just slide sliders. That's all it will do. But instead, if I come into here and I hold down the option key and click on that little new preset sign, I then get an emblem are, ah, dialog box that says new profile. So I'm gonna call this it cross process. Ah, green blue with hi contrast. Okay, so that's gonna be the name of the profile, and I'm going to group that profile in my simple profiles. Now, what I want to do with it is I so you can see right here that is actually figured out what I did. So it's check boxing. The things that I manipulated, and then what I need to do is say, OK, well, basic camera profile, Adobe Standard. I don't need it to be on that specific one. Um, I do need it. Toe have the Parametric Parametric and the point curve e que are the sorry e que curves. I need it to have those, but I don't need it to have anything else. So it's on Lee going to include those two things because that's what creates the effect, not necessarily what I did to the image below it. So the other options that I have here are a little bit more complicated. And I'm not going to get into him too greatly as toe because I'm just gonna tell you what they do. You don't need to do a lot with these things. So the first thing is tone map strength. Just do normal. Go anywhere else. It's gonna be funky. And don't say I didn't warn you. Okay? And then the look up table, you can see that I can either use adobe color is the look up table, or I can create my own look up table. If you're interested in creating your own look up table as a CS v file, Uh, that's a whole nother class because that's you use different programs to do that you create Look up tables if you know how to create, look up tables. Great. Go ahead and create, look up tables and then use those. But for now, just use adobe color. These three things are important. So the minimum amount that you want to be able to use on this is zero. So I'm allowing people to slide this slider all the way to zero. That's that slider that allowed me to change. How much of that profile is using? Um, I put it at zero, and the maximum amount I want is 100%. Or maybe I could go to 150%. They will do that 150% but I'm gonna start it at 50%. So, you see, this is the little amount, the least amount I can use. This is where it's going to start. And this is where it ends at 150%. So it's gonna be fairly subtle. I can go really crazy with it, or I can go not at all with it. So that's just that amount slider that we were using. Um And then, of course, you can create a color look up table as well. We're not going to deal with that because that's a very complicated thing. That's a class for a whole another day. But this is how you create a simple profile once I hit. OK, it has saved that profile. So now I'm just going to cancel out of here, and if I go into my finder up. If I go into my finder and I go into the library on a PC, it might be in a slightly different place. So if you go to the library and you go into the application support and adobe and you go to camera raw, this is camera Raw is where all of this stuff exists. So it's actually in the settings area that you'll find both your presets in your profile. So if you're wondering where those things end up, it's ending up inside of that area. But the beauty of it being in the camera raw folder now, which is completely different than it was two years ago. It's in the camera folder. So now if you create something inside of photo shop in camera raw, it's immediately already shared with light room because Light Room is also looking in that same folder for all of its presets. So if I quit light room and I restarted, then when I come back into light room, I'll be able to use that profile that I made inside of camera raw on any of my images, and I'll also be able to use it inside a camera raw. So if I click on any image, whichever image I want to work with and let's just work with this one because it already has that warm tone on it. Now I can go into my profile browser, and instead of going into this area here, um, let me find our simple profiles. And now I have that one, and I can see how it's down 50% and I can go up or I could go down. So I've created a profile that exists inside of our simple profiles because I have, um, the ability to go into camera raw and create a profile there and then adjust it from there and play around with it. So creating a profile is a really easy way to get a a manageable effect that you can create the effect and then you can play with that effect, which is very different than a than a preset. So presets and profiles, and both presets and profiles exist in the same place inside of the camera raw folder. And if you ever want to go find your presets and know where all that stuff exists, the easiest way to find it is to simply right click any preset and then say show in Finder. If I click on that, it will show me exactly where that particular preset is in the finder, and there it is under the user presets. So any time you want to find something, just simply go find it by right clicking it and going back to it in the finder. You can also grab an entire folder full of presets and put it into that same folder, And as long as it's the new style of ex MP presets, it will just show up the next time you turn on light room. But the best way to import a preset is to go to this plus button and click on import presets, and the best way to import a profile is to go over here and click on this plus button and import a profile here. And, of course, managing profiles is that kind of the same is managing presets. You can turn on and off the ones you don't use. So if I don't want to use any of these artistic ones that Adobe makes, I can just turn them off and they will disappear, but they are somewhat useful. So we'll keep those and hit save. So any time you are inside of light room in the develop module, you are working on a profile. No matter what, there's always a profile assigned to your image. So there's there's, there's always a profile. The question is, which profile are you going to use? So, do you want to use a, um, do you? Do you want to use a normal profile that just gives you regular information like the dhobi portrait profile is always quite nice? Or do you want to go into some kind of an artistic look? And you can either create these profiles yourself or you can buy them and download them or use the ones that are already there. Um, and then you can apply those profiles along with all your other settings, into your presets that you make, and then you'll have a lot of power in creating your imagery really quick with the push of a button. So that is how you use and install and operate with profiles and presets, and I hope that helps you get through your images faster and get better styles on them.