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Adobe Lens Profile Creator

Welcome to the prerelease of Adobe® Lens Profile Creator. Lens Profile Creator is a free utility that enables the easy creation of lens profiles for use in the Adobe Photoshop® family of products, such as Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe Camera Raw® and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom®. A lens profile describes the types of optical aberrations that exist in a particular lens and prescribes how to correct the lens distortions in an image captured from the same lens.

Specifically, Lens Profile Creator characterizes three common types of lens aberrations, namely the geometric distortion, the lateral chromatic aberration and the vignette. The general process of creating a custom lens profile for your lens involves capturing a set of checkerboard images using your specific camera and lens, converting the set of raw format images into the standard Digital Negative (DNG) file format using the Adobe Camera Raw processor, and importing the raw DNG images (or the JPEG/TIFF images if you prefer creating lens profiles for the non-raw workflow) in the Lens Profile Creator to generate the custom lens profile. You could also submit the lens profiles that you have created for your lens from inside the Lens Profile Creator to share with the rest of the user community.


Lens Profile Creator is great for photographers at any level who’d like to create a custom lens profile for their own lens. We’re excited about the new utility and we hope that you will find it very useful too.

Getting Started

Follow these steps to get started with the Lens Profile Creator:

  1. Download the Lens Profile Creator prerelease
  2. The Lens Profile Creator does not require installation. Simply unzip the zip file on Windows or unpack the DMG file on Mac OSX, and run the software.
  3. For a quick demo, run the software and import the sample checkerboard images (JPEGs) provided as part of the application package, and generate a lens profile. Please refer to the Lens Profile Creator User Guide for how to use the application.
  4. Select any one of the checkerboard PDF files provided as part of the application package that best satisfies your constraints, print it and mount it on a planar surface with sufficient ambient lighting, and start shooting multiple checkerboard images (a minimum of three images are required, but nine are recommended) for each camera/lens settings that you are interested in obtaining the lens profiles for. Please refer to the Lens Profile Creator Calibration Chart Shooting Quick Start Guide or the full Calibration Chart Shooting Guide.
  5. If you are creating the lens profiles for your raw image processing workflow, batch convert the captured raw images into the standard Digital Negative (DNG) file format using the Camera Raw processor. This will maximally preserve all lens related EXIF metadata for embedding into the lens profiles that enables automatic lens profile matching later.
  6. Process the raw DNG images (or the JPEG/TIFF images if you prefer creating lens profiles for the non-raw workflow) through the Lens Profile Creator to create the custom lens profile.
  7. Save the lens profiles that you have created into the specific lens profiles folder(s) that Photoshop CS5, Camera Raw and Lightroom would be looking for them for lens corrections. Please refer to the Lens Profile Creator User Guide that documents such information. The Lens Profile Creator will save to such lens profile folder location by default.
  8. Submit the lens profiles that you have created for your lens from inside the Lens Profile Creator to share with the rest of the user community.
  9. Ask questions and share your feedback in the Lens Profile Creator forum

    Please note that your submission of comments, ideas, feature requests and techniques on this and other Adobe maintained forums, as well as Adobe's right to use such materials, is governed by the Terms of Use.

Community

Below you'll find references and links to help you participate in the Lens Profile Creator community.

Online Forum

Ask questions and discuss ideas with other Lens Profile Creator users in the Labs forums.

Please note that your submission of comments, ideas, feature requests and techniques on this and other Adobe maintained forums, as well as Adobe's right to use such materials, is governed by the Terms of Use.

Resources

If you want to learn more about releases on Labs as well as other Adobe technologies, visiting a user group or connecting with an Adobe Community Expert is a great place to start.

Product Details


Documentation

The following documentation describes how to be successful with the Lens Profile Creator technology.

FAQ

What is a lens profile?
A lens profile describes the types of optical aberrations that exist in a particular lens and prescribes how to correct the lens distortions in an image captured from the same lens.
What is Lens Profile Creator?
Lens Profile Creator is a free utility that enables the easy creation of lens profiles for use in the Photoshop family of products, such as Photoshop CS5, Camera Raw and Photoshop Lightroom.
Who should try Lens Profile Creator?
Lens Profile Creator is great for photographers at any level who’d like to create a custom lens profile for their own lens.
Which platforms are supported?
The Lens Profile Creator is provided for both Macintosh and Windows platforms.
Where can I post issues and comments?
Please use the Labs forum for Lens Profile Creator to ask questions and post issues/comments.

See answers to more frequently asked questions

System Requirements

Lens Profile Creator’s recommended basic system requirements (i.e., CPU, operating system, and memory) are the same as the Adobe Photoshop CS5 requirements.

Release Notes

This release of the Lens Profile Creator is prerelease software and is designed for evaluation purposes only. The software contained within the installer is not final; but, many portions of the technology are fully implemented and ready for you to try and discuss.

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