James, Whilst I know very little about profiling and I thought Jorge's answer comprehensive, I do have a suggestion:
The purpose of profiling anything, surely, is to get a predictable output. The solution we use was touched on in Jorge's reply: a Gretag Colourchecker. We have uased one of these for over a year and it is probably one of the best investments we have ever made. At the risk of teaching you 'to suck eggs'!: By photographing this 'magic' card in any lighting set-up, studio or location, and then saving the curve in PS created by sampling the white block with the highlight picker, that curve, when applied to any image taken under identical conditions, will automatically and instantly correct for any colour caste within the cameras white balance settings; the lens; or the light itself as well as adjusting exposure (levels). Applying this procedure to an image produces an almost miraculous transformation. The logic is obvious really; PS knows what a pure white is. Gretag have calibrated their colour checker with a pure white. Marry the two up and bingo!! As purely studio based photographers, we have created a curve for each of our backgrounds and use them on every purchased image. Apart from giving us glorious colour it have saved us literally weeks in production. Now, we very seldom colour correct manually. On the location front, I know of a wedding photographer (the man who introduced me to the Colourchecker) who has his assistant hold the chart where the location shots are to be taken and then applies the curve to all pictures taken in that area. A couple of seconds later and he has 100 colour corrected images! Applying the Colourchecker is surely effective profiling of the camera for any set of circumstances. Hope this helps. Jonathan Coleman Cavendish Studios =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
