AcrCalibrator Updates for ACR 4.4.1 / LR 1.4.1

[egilbert]

Can anyone provide information as to when AcrCalibrator will be
updated to include support for the current version of ACR (4.4.1)?

Adobe provided all new "4.4" profiles with ACR 4.4/4.4.1. While to my
eyes I can so far discern no visible difference between the new
profile and the one upon which my calibration settings were created,
I would like to re-generate my calibration settings to use the current
profile. Moreover, I have need to create some new profiles for some
new lighting conditions, and I cannot do this without reverting back
to ACR 1.3.1 to do so, which again uses the old profile rather than
the new 4.4 profile that is now current.

Any help or information would be most appreciated.

Thank you,
/eddie

[Steve Sprengel]

The new ACR 4.4 profile supposedly fixed colors at the extremes, so perhaps there isn't much different for normal shots, but I plan on using it for new things.

--

Tom updates ACRC very infrequently nowadays, so don't hold your breath.

 

However, if I understand you question, you want to run calibrations the new ACR 4.4 camera-profile that Adobe has added for your and everyone else's cameras and perhaps run calibrations for the old profile as well.

 

This is easy, w/o any modifications to the script.  You merely have to set which profile you want in ACR on your way into Photoshop before running the script, and the script will use whatever you set.

 

If you want to set the new ACR 4.4 profile as your default camera profile, then do the following:

 

Open a RAW or DNG file in ACR (using Bridge or Photoshop).

Using the little menu icon a the right of the tabbed-area title bar (that says Basic when you first start ACR) put a checkmark next to Camera RAW Defaults.

Switch over to the Camera Calibration tab (second from right with a little camera icon)

Change the Camera Profile Name to say ACR 4.4 using the dropdown list.

Using the little menu on the title-bar, again, choose Save New Camera RAW Defaults.

Click Cancel to get out of ACR without saving the Default settings for your RAW--unless you don't care or didn't set anything custom for that particular RAW.

That's it...even though you Cancel, the new Defaults will be saved.

[egilbert]

Ummmm.... thanks for the reply, but it misses my point.

I know how to set the ACR default to use the new profile. I want to
use AcrCalibrator to create new calibration settings for the new
profile(s) in ACR 4.4. However, AcrCalibrator is coded to only allow
function with "supported" versions of ACR, and for the most current
version of AcrCalibrator available for download (v1.2 x114),
"supported versions" of ACR only includes up to 4.3.1. AcrCalibrator
needs to be validated against and updated to include 4.4 and 4.4.1 as
"supported versions", in order to have it run cleanly against these
versions of ACR for calibrating against the new ACR 4.4 profiles.

If I knew for a fact that ACR 1.2 (x114) was 100% compatible with ACR
4.4/4.4.1, I could update the script file myself to include these
versions in the "supported versions" list. My problem is that I do not
know what else Tom usually does to validate his script against updated
versions of ACR prior to adding them to the list of "supported
versions".

Help?

/eddie

[Steve Sprengel]

Sorry, I went into detail about the part you went into detail about, which was using the ACR 4.4 profile in the new ACR versions and it wasn't clear what the question was, other than hoping Tom would keep his script up-to-date, which he hasn't been. 

 

If your question is about whether to update the jsx code to think 4.4.1 is supported, yes, go ahead.  I have had to do this with every release of ACR since Tom does not do it in a timely manner, anymore.

 

ACRC being compatible with a particular version of ACR mainly means it understands how to reset the various sliders that aren't part of the calibration process (Clarity, Vibrance, Split Toning, Linear Toning Curve, etc) to their zero or default values and there is a potential for a new ACR version to have new sliders and even have old sliders removed, and without a compatibility review for each new version of ACR the script might either miss resetting newly added sliders or accidentally try to reset sliders that no longer existed.

 

The good news about the versions of ACR since Tom released his last update in January, is that the ACR sliders didn't change since then, so you can merely update the code to include the newest version of ACR in the list of supported versions and run fully compatible.

 

The bad news is that there are several places to update the version number, but when he added support for 4.2 and 4.3.1 to the January version, he missed two of the three places, so while the script seemed to be compatible, it was really not, meaning it doesn't reset any of the sliders to zero or defaults and you have to do it, yourself. 

 

Since you are comfortable updating the code, double-click on the jsx file (from Windows Explorer) to open it in the ExtendScript Toolkit editor, search for "4.1" and add the current version of ACR to the supportedVersions array initializer list in the three places you find it (just after lines 100, 400 and 450).  If you search for 4.3.1 you will only find one place, and all three places need updated, as you can tell by looking at the comments.

 

Back in January I sent an e-mail to Tom about 2 of the three places being missed, and he agreed it was a bug, but said he was on the road so couldn't fix it immediately, and now its June and still the bug remains. 

 

From using the Lightroom 2.0 beta, it is clear ACR5 will have some more things to reset--at least the localized dodge/burn/saturation paintbrush, so the current script won't be resetting everything it should, but as long as you reset things, yourself (perhaps with a Preset), you could update the code so it thinks its compatible and have it reset most things, still.

 

I am also suspicious the camera calibration may be changing where Photoshop and Lightroom and may support automated calibration and/or ICM files, where scripts like Tom's may be obsolete or at least need extensive revision.  My suspicion is based on comments by Adobe insider Jeff Schewe a couple months ago:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=678&threadid=1353749&enterthread=y#4947980

 

----- Original Message -----

From: egilbert

To: AcrCalibrator