Trying to keep RAWs real

Which camera profile would you recommend as well as saturation and Vibrance settings for keeping a RAW conversion real. I see so much that is overdone and sometimes I just want to take a straight up photograph with the flexibility of a RAW file. Is camera neutral the best for that? I have made the X-rite profiles and they usually end up with too much yellow and orange and blue saturation for me. So hard to keep it real it seems!

Canon says that it's Faithful Picture Style is colorimetrically accurate for daylight (D50). I imagine Adobe takes that into account when making the emulation profiles. The Neutral DNG Profile, OTOH, is "dual illuminant", which means it has LUTs for two light environments, D65 and 2800K, and interpolates between them for light sources in the middle - so I suppose it is most accurate at either 2800K or 6500K and "almost" at other temps.

(Maybe Kirk can comment on this.)

My only comment would be that your raw converter has no way of knowing what you think is "real" - whether you use custom DCPs or the ones provided by LR/ACR, it sounds as if your idea of what is real is less saturated than whatever the default settings in your converter provides as output. Maybe?

My advice would be to pick about 5 to 10 images that represent the majority of shooting conditions and subject matter, convert those raw files according to your "unreal" workflow and study each image carefully to come up with a list of what you find objectionable. Then, using the tools available in your raw converter, adjust or correct the faults until the images appear "real" - if you find that, across all of these images, a trend emerges in terms of the corrections you applied, make a preset in LR/ACR that contains these corrections and make that preset the default for imported images. It will hopefully provide a better starting point for your raw file conversion workflow.

Other than that, it is difficult to suggest anything because, like your raw converter, I do not know what you consider "real" and what your raw workflow currently consists of. Do you have a clear idea of what you want your images to look like? If you don't it is often difficult to achieve a final image, regardless of the application you use to make it.

kirk

There's no such thing as "real."

My right eye sees colors a little differently than my left eye. Right eye is much more saturated, and a little more magenta tint.

There is certainly such a thing as real color, it can be measured scientifically. But real is always a moving target. An individual's perception of is just one aspect of color, and often "color correct" isn't the correct color. If one corrects the skin tone of someone facing the sunset to the same color values as someone sitting in the studio, it won't look "real".

Processing images is every bit as important as how the picture was taken, and can be every bit of an artistic interpretation too.

Perhaps I should say, realistic. I'm always after realistic and it's just frustrating trying to process sometimes to achieve just that. It would be a nice starting point anyways

If you are after realistic, DPP and Picture style Faithful should do well. Editing options in DPP are indeed limited, but for a realistic result should generally suffice.

Although I'm not that strict, I like DPP very much - shooting portraits mainly.

You have to first make sure you have your white balance set correctly on each image, or your picture style settings or profiles aren't really going to be of any use. Always WB first, then determine your picture parameters. I uses a variation of faithful personally.