Please welcome my friend Heidi to Go{4}Pro today! Heidi has been kind enough to share an awesome technical trick about camera calibration with all of us.

One of my favorite editing tricks is truly one of the simplest. Like many photographers, I love shooting in RAW format. Probably because I am a perfectionist and love the control that RAW images give me. And the ability to fix white balance, exposure, contrast, sharpening, etc. after the image is taken. When you open up a RAW image in Lightroom or Camera Raw the image doesn’t always look that great. That’s because JPEG images have already had some “work” done to them in camera. But with RAW, you have to do the work yourself. Here’s a picture from a recent shoot right after importing into Lightroom:

Lightroom has applied some “defaults” already: brightness is at 50, contrast is at 25, and blacks are at 5. These are some of the same defaults applied in camera to a JPEG image. So why doesn’t it match what you see on the back of your camera? ‘Cause there is other “stuff” that cameras do. But honestly, I don’t really know what that “stuff” is. And rather than fiddle around with sliders and whatnot, I just go for my secret weapon: Camera Calibration.

While in Develop mode, just scroll on down and you will see the Camera Calibration panel. Click on the pulldown menu next to profile and you will see all sorts of options listed for your camera.
I always choose the “Camera Standard” option (Version 2, which is an updated version for the Nikon D700 which is what I shoot with). But you could play around and see if there are other “starting points” that you prefer. Depending on which camera you shoot with, the names may be different, as it is the camera manufacturer that assigns them. I actually made myself a preset that runs at import and automatically applies the camera calibration to every image. I love it that much!

Can YOU see the difference? Here’s the side by side comparison:

The difference is subtle, but I think it makes a huge difference. The skin is smoother, the colors richer, the highlights are controlled. Even the color shifts slightly. And all I did was simply select “camera calibration”. That’s it. The rest of my editing was a snap. I warmed up the color balance a bit more and then opened it up in Photoshop CS5 for some close scrutiny, applied a little more contrast, sharpened it a bit and I was done. The entire editing process was less then 3 minutes. Here’s the finished image:

Don’t use Lightroom? Never fear! You can do the same thing in Camera Raw! Once again, here is a RAW image, exactly as it defaults when opening up in Camera Raw:
To apply the camera calibration, just click on the little icon that looks like a camera (circled here in red). You will see the same profile options here that you see in Lightroom. Just select the one that you like the best (once again, I always pick “camera standard”) and watch the subtle shift:

Here’s a split screen so you can see it better:

And here’s the finished picture, after I cropped it, adjusted the brightness and contrast sliders (I rarely leave them on the “defaults”), and did some small Photoshop edits:

Go and give it a try next time you are editing pictures! I think you’ll find you just sped up your workflow …

Heidi Lawson is a portrait photographer in Lake Stevens, WA. To see more of Heidi’s work, please visit her website at http://www.wishfulthinkingphotography.com/ or find her on facebook at www.facebook.com/wishfulthinkingphotography

As always please make sure you leave a comment to let Heidi know how much we appreciate her contributing some inspiration for our journey today! If you’d like to be a guest writer, I’d LOVE to have you! You can either send your article in HTML format (all images should be sized below 600 px.) with a self portrait attached or you can use the contact page and send me your ideas first. When emailing in submissions, please title the subject line: Guest Post – Your Article’s Title. Great article topics might be showing us your branding, packaging, how you or clients display art, things that inspire, educate, encourage… Really we’re pretty easy around here!