Working with Profiles in Lightroom Mobile

I’m excited to announce several updates to Lightroom CC on mobile devices  starting with the new and enhanced Raw and Creative Profiles. While the concept of Profiles isn’t new to Lightroom, in this release, their power has been greatly enhanced.
If you’re not familiar with raw profiles, here is a overview of the key concepts :
Profiles
A profile is a set of instructions that is used to render a photograph, converting it from raw camera information into the colors and tones that we see.

• Every raw image must have a profile applied (and can only have one profile at a time).
• Profiles are nondestructive and can be changed  at any time without any loss of quality.
• To access and change profiles in Edit mode, tap the Profiles icon along the bottom of the screen)

• There are no “right” or wrong” profiles: they’re like filling in a pie – some people will choose cherry and others prefer peach.
• Previous to this release, Adobe applied the Camera Default profile to all raw files captured using Lightroom on a mobile device. Adobe Standard was the default profile applied to other camera raw files  (camera files synced from the desktop, for example).

Adobe Raw Profiles
There are six new Adobe Raw profiles which can be applied to raw files. The new default profile for raw files in Lightroom Classic is Adobe Color for color images and Adobe Monochrome for Black & White images.

Adobe Color — was designed to be a great starting point for any image. The goal of this profile is to render a relatively neutral, baseline image that closely matches the original colors and tones in the original scene. It assumes that you want the ultimate control over refining and adjusting images in order to achieve the exact look that you want. In comparison to the previous default profile, Adobe Color is a bit warmer in the reds, yellow and oranges, has a very small increase in contrast, and, it does a better job of moving highlights between color spaces.

Adobe Monochrome — ­was carefully tuned to be the best starting point for any black and white image. This profile slightly shifts colors as they are converted to grayscale – brightening the warmer colors and darkening the cooler colors. It also adds a small amount of contrast but allows lots of headroom for editing.

The additional four Adobe Raw profiles that were created as starting points for specific types of images:

Adobe Landscape — ­adds a bit more saturation to all of the colors in an image and renders more vibrant blues and greens. While this profile adds a slight amount of contrast to the overall image, it also helps to maintain details by slightly compressing the  highlight and shadow values in scenes with significant contrast.

Adobe Neutral — ­reduces color saturation as well as contrast , rendering a flatter, low contrast version of the image. It‘s designed to give you the most headroom for post processing. This a great profile to start with if you have an image with delicate colors and gradients.

Adobe Portrait — ­is tailored especially for portrait images. It has a slightly more gentle tone curve and is optimized for skin tones.

Adobe Vivid — ­adds vibrance and contrast while still rendering natural skin tones and is a great place to start for images of people in a landscape.

If the image that you’re working with isn’t set to Adobe Color by default, most likely one of two things is happening:

You’re working on a non-raw photograph (like a JPEG or TIFF) – in which case the profile will just say Color because all of the rendering was done already (either in another raw processor or within the camera itself) and you can’t apply a raw profile to a non-raw file.

You’re working with a legacy file – in which case you will see the previously embedded profile which you can choose to change at any time (Lightroom won’t automatically update legacy files using the new profiles as doing so would change the look of the image.)

Adobe Camera Matching Raw Profiles
In addition, Adobe created and ships Adobe Camera Matching profiles. These profiles are designed to match the preset “styles” that can be set using the menus on a camera. Because the style options differ among camera manufacturers, this list of profiles will change depending on your camera.

The Camera Matching monochrome profiles behave differently from other Black and White profiles (Adobe Monochrome, Legacy, and the Creative Profiles), by discarding the color information in the file. Therefore, the Vibrance, Saturation, and HSL sliders, are not available (as they would have no effect). You can however add color tints to these images using the Tone Curve, Split Tone, and color swatch with Local Adjustment tools.
Legacy Raw Profiles
Legacy Raw profiles are also included in order to maintain backwards compatibility when working with legacy files.
Creative Profiles
In addition to Raw profiles, are several groups of  Creative profiles. These profiles are designed to apply more creative, stylistic effects to an image and can be applied to non-raw photographs (like JPEG’s and TIFFs). Creative Profiles can (but aren’t required to) use color lookup tables (LUTs) to remap color and tones enabling new and unique ways of processing images. Lightroom ships with several different Creative profiles including:

Artistic Profiles — these profiles were designed to be more edgy, and typically have stronger color shifts.

B & W Profiles — these profiles were designed to create a more dramatic interpretation of the original image, some of these profiles increase/decrease contrast, others limit the dynamic range, and several emulate the effects of using color filters with film.

Modern Profiles — these profiles were designed to create unique effects that fit in with current photography styles.

Vintage Profiles — these profiles were designed to replicate the effects of analogue imagery.

Creative profiles have an Amount slider which can be used to decrease/increase the intensity of the profile.  Note:  it is up to the creator of the profile to define exactly how far the “intensity” can be changed. In other words, you might see subtle or more aggressive changes on a per-profile basis.

 

Previewing and Applying Profiles

Tap the profile to apply it and tap the check to commit to it. Once a profile has been applied, use any of the other slider controls in any of the other edit stacks to make additional modifications to your images. Profiles don’t change slider values.

Quickly Accessing Favorite Profiles

Tap the star icon to add a profile to the Favorites group. Tap it again to remove it.

In addition, iOS has several new features in this release including:

Geometry — While editing an image, tap the Geometry icon at the bottom of the screen to access the Upright controls including Auto, Level, Vertical, Full, and Guided. When using Guided Upright, drag up to four guides in the image to quickly to straighten perspective in an image. Use the transform controls (Distortion, Vertical, Horizontal, Rotate, Aspect, Scale, X and Y offset), for additional refinement.

Grain — In the Effects panel, use the Grain slider to introduce realistic film grain. Fine tune the amount of Grain, Size, and Roughness as desired.

Enhanced control over Lightroom CC Web shares providing the ability to enable downloads, showing metadata, and location information on shares made to lightroom.adobe.com

Left-handed editing mode on iPad.

iPhone X layout optimizations

In addition, Android and ChromeOS has several new features in this release including:

Details — the new details edit stack enables sharpening and noise reduction options to adjust photographic detail.

Grain — In the Effects panel, use the Grain slider to introduce realistic film grain. Fine tune the amount of Grain, Size, and Roughness as desired.

Enhanced control over Lightroom CC Web shares providing the ability to enable downloads, showing metadata, and location information on shares made to lightroom.adobe.com

This release also contains big fixes and added support for new cameras and lenses.

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