What camera calibrations are available in ColorPerfect's PerfectRAW and where can I get more?

So far we have been able to produce our unique camera calibrations for 829 camera models. This took considerable effort to do because all of our calibrations need to be created from actual RAW photos of a special nature. There really is no way to convert any of the flawed camera "calibrations", "profiles", or "matrices" that come with the various other RAW converter products out there to work with PerfectRAW.

If your camera is not listed below that simply means that we have not yet had an opportunity to shoot suitable imagery with a camera of that kind ourselves and that such imagery also has not yet been supplied by one of our users. Most of our calibrations are built into the most recent ColorPerfect. Any calibrations we created after releasing the latest ColorPerfect are available for download as a single *.pfraw file with currently 142 cameras until we include them in a future version of the plug-in. The table below gives an overview on what cameras were added in which version of ColorPerfect and also on the ones currently available for download.

In addition we link to the camera pages at dpreview.com and list the Version of Adobe DNG Converter that is required for use with MakeTiff for the individual camera models. Regretfully DNG Converter 6.4 is the last one Adobe made available to their PowerPC users. The same applies to users of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and DNG Converter 7.1. Then Adobe decided to limit the support of older operating systems even further and made DNG Converter 8.3 the last version to work on Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, Windows XP and Windows Vista. After which this unfortunate development sped up on the Mac with DNG Converter version 9.5.1 being the last that will run on OS X 10.7 (Lion) and OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), DNG Converter version 9.6.1 the last that will run on OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), DNG Converter version 9.12.1 the last that will run on OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), DNG Converter version 10.5 the last that will run on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), DNG Converter version 11.4.1 the last that will run on macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and DNG Converter version 12.4 the last that will run on macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Important note for Pentax 645D, K20D, K-5 II, K-5 IIs, K-7 owners

When shooting DNG instead of the camera's native PEF raw format with the aforementioned five older Pentax camera models there currently is an oddity in MakeTiff's processing chain due to a bug in dcraw we think. When using Adobe DNG Converter to interpolate (which we usually recommend) the final output Tiff file will be in grayscale mode and only contains the red color channel of the linear sensor data. In our preferred work flow we utilize dcraw to copy the readily interpolated data from DNG Converter's output (an interpolated intermediate DNG file) to a plain 16 bit Tiff file.

To circumvent the problem either shoot in PEF format or for any existing DNGs use MakeTiff's secondary interpolation arrangement. For the latter activate the "show advanced options" checkbox in MakeTiff and then choose "interpolate with dcraw (no DNG)". This will produce regular RGB Tiffs that can be processed normally with ColorPerfect's PerfectRAW.

The name of the required MakeTiff option can be a little misleading in this case as you are starting out from a DNG file. What the "no DNG" means is that no second (intermediate) DNG gets created in MakeTiff's interpolation process as Adobe DNG converter is not used at all.

Loading and saving characterization files with ColorPerfect 2.15 and higher

With ColorPerfect 2.15 and later, characterization files can be stored in any location as plain text files with a freely selectable (short) file name. The only requirement is that you use the specific file extensions instead of *.txt.

Use the file extension .negpos for ColorNeg mode, .colorint for ColorPos mode, and .pfraw for PerfectRAW. After you have selected the entry "User" from the manufacturer menu instead of e.g. Kodak, you can comfortably work with the files by means of file open or save dialogs.

Saving & loading characterization files with the legacy Mac 32 bit ColorNeg and ColorPos plug-ins

For our earlier 32 bit plug-ins for Mac OS X things were a bit less straight forward. We really recommend you to get the free upgrade to ColorPerfect 2.25 which resolves these long standing issues and offers so much more.

Using Photoshop 7 and Photoshop CS with the legacy plug-ins you had to copy all auxiliary files you wanted to use into a specific folder. Using more recent Photoshop versions you could organize your files anywhere and specify the folder and filename to use on the Plug-in's user interface using a workaround.

For those not familiar with this workaround and still wanting to use an outdated plug-in for whatever reason the easiest way to get a *.negpos or *.colorint file to work is storing it under a default file name. If you have never edited the file name read-out on the original ColorNeg plug-in the default is ColorNeg.negpos, for the original ColorPos plug-in it is ColorPos.colorint.

Keeping multiple files with different file names was also possible of course. After selecting the User entry from the Maker list and pressing the Load button the set up screen for the auxiliary file path showed. While it was active what's usually the read out for the name of the current characterization file the plug-in became an editable field where you could specify which file you intended to load (without the file's extension).

Auxiliary file locations for the legacy 32 bit plug-ins on the Mac

The following information is a shortened outtake from an old ReadMe.txt file. If you are familiar with that ReadMe.txt already you might want to stop reading here. Of necessity our 32 bit plug-ins for Mac OS X used an odd convention for the folder location of the auxiliary files. The location varies with the version of Photoshop. We would have preferred a better way of doing this, but at least this oddity does not come up that often in normal usage once it has been resolved.

Adobe Photoshop 7 and Adobe Photoshop CS

The location of auxiliary files for Adobe Photoshop 7 and Photoshop CS is very odd and very nearly the same. To get there, double-click Applications in Finder, then double-click Adobe Photoshop x, where x is either 7 or CS. Now locate the Adobe Photoshop x icon you might normally double-click to start Photoshop, but do not double-click. This icon may or may not have .App after the Adobe Photoshop x. Although it does not appear so, this icon is really a folder. Single click with the right mouse button (or control-click on a single button mouse) to bring up a menu of options. Click on the option Show Package Contents. This will open a new Finder window with a folder Contents (and possibly other items). Double-click Contents. That will disclose several other folders. For Photoshop 7 The folder you want is MacOS, while for Photoshop CS, the folder you want is MacOsClassic. That is the folder where the auxiliary files go, so double-click it and transfer in your *.negpos or *.colorint file(s). ColorPerfect and ColorNeg will always read and write their files to and from this folder, so this is where you will always find them. You can create aliases and place them in other folders for easier access if you often work with these files.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 through CS5

These versions of Adobe Photoshop do not write to a peculiar folder, but neither do they make it easy to control where files go. They pick the root folder instead of the hidden folders described for Photoshop 7 and CS. You can just let ColorPerfect put its files in the root folder if you wish, but as the root folder is not really a good place to put files, we provide a clumsy workaround. The root folder is the one with a path that is a single slash, "/" often shown in Finder as Macintosh HD. Put the file ColorPerfectPath.txt in the root folder, then edit that file to contain the path to where you really want the files. As delivered, the ColorPerfectPath.txt file contains the path /Users/MyUserName/Documents, so if you substitute your actual user name for MyUserName , ColorPerfect will put its files in your Documents folder. The path must be a valid path - that means that if you want to use a new folder, you must first create the new folder yourself (probably using Finder) before it will work. Now go to the target folder in your chosen path and transfer in your *.negpos or *.colorint file(s). ColorPerfect will always read and write its files to and from this folder. It is possible to change this path from within ColorPerfect whenever you load or save a file.