It has been an interest of mine to create a proper color profile for the Raw DNG files that are created by the CHDK Beta on the Canon Powershot SD780IS / IXUS 100 IS camera. Recently I discovered Adobe Labs free program DNG Profile Editor Beta 2. It let me create a Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom compatible Camera Calibration Profile. I created the custom profile using the Adobe Labs DNG Camera Profile program and calibrated the profile by photographing a color test chart and did extensive manual tweaking.

This solves the problems of major color casts on all of your DNG raw images. Download the free SD780 IS DNG camera profile today and install the file "Canon PowerShot SD780 IS Andrew Standard.dcp" in your Adobe cameraProfiles folder to improve your RAW photo development workflow in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom! This is version 2 of the profile.

Installation Path

Mac OS X:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

or for a single Mac OS X user:

~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

On Windows 2000 / XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

On Windows Vista:

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

For more information about the Adobe tools for creating or modifying Raw Camera Profiles check out:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles

To Download Adobe Labs free program DNG Profile Editor for Mac OS X or Windows:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_dngprofileeditor

Sample DNG Images:

Sea Mine image

Here is a set of unmodified sample images in JPEG and DNG format to compare the results with and without the cameraProfile. If you look closely at the two images you will notice a slight lens distortion correction that Canon applies to the JPEG image that is not present in the DNG. This is easily replicated in Photoshop.

Sea-Mine-DNG-Test-Images.zip

Sunset image

This is a set of a Raw DNG file and Original JPEG image from a Canon PowerShot SD780 IS camera. The image is of a sunset view towards Peggy's Cove Nova Scotia during a rain storm.

DNG-Sunset-sample-image.zip

Using the Custom Profile in Adobe Photoshop

To use the custom camera profile in Adobe Photoshop, load the DNG image shot on your Canon SD780IS camera in the Camera Raw Module. Click on the tab on the right hand side of the screen with the camera icon [Camera Calibration]. Then, from the "Name" pop-up menu, select the "Andrew Standard" profile. The image should now have a more vibrant and accurate color rendition. Click "Save Image" to embed the new profile into the DNG file.

Using the Custom Profile in Adobe Lightroom

In Adobe Lightroom import a CHDK generated DNG image. Then select the Develop mode at the top right of the window. Scroll down to the Camera Calibration section on the sidebar. Change the profile from Embedded to the "Andrew Standard" profile.

In the Camera Profile download above I have provided the recipe file along with the Adobe formatted camera profile. The recipe file was created in the Adobe Labs DNG Profile Editor. The recipe file lets you modify the DNG Camera Profile. I hope you have fun experimenting with the recipe file and can learn something from it. If you come up with any improvements, suggestions, or tips, I would love to hear from you! Remember this is only the second version of my DNG camera profile for the SD780IS and is still very much under development. The next version of this profile is in the works and will be a more developed Dual-Illuminant Camera Profile.

2 Responses to “Calibrating Canon SD780IS CHDK RAW DNG Images using an Adobe Camera Profile”

1. Tobias says:

   November 13, 2010 at 5:07 pm

   I did the same, but with ArgyllCMS process to get a good standard ICC device profile usable in free software.

   In the lab we have ColorChecker SG, the one with the actual pigments. To shoot I went to our »black lab« that has calibrated 6500K fluorescent lighting and made a DNG with Ixus 100IS.

   The lens distortion was problematic for ArgyllCMS to detect the patches. I had to convert to 16-bit using UFRaw (using instrucitons found online) and fiddle a bit to make the patches align with Argyll’s grid.

   Here’s the JPG: http://i.imgur.com/JI6qC.jpg

   I put the rest of my files here: ftp://ftp.tuebingen.mpg.de/kyb/towolf/IXUS
2. Andrew says:

   November 13, 2010 at 6:26 pm

   Good Work Tobias!

   I'm confident that a lot of CHDK / IXUS 100IS users will benefit from your efforts.

   Also, I'm really impressed with the number of color samples that the Digital ColorChecker SG Chart has. That should really improve the quality of the Color Correction.

   Regards,
   Andrew Hazelden