Dual-illuminant camera profiles: what they are and when they matter

What a dual-illuminant camera profile is

A RAW file holds no finished color. It holds what the sensor measured through its red, green and blue filters, and Lightroom needs a camera profile to turn those readings into the colors you see. The profile is chosen at the top of the Basic panel, and every camera model has its own.

An illuminant is a standard light source used for calibration. A single-illuminant profile was calibrated under one of them. A dual-illuminant camera profile was calibrated under two, and it holds a complete set of color data for each. The two lights are nearly always the same pair: a tungsten lamp at about 2850 K, known as Standard Illuminant A, and daylight at about 6500 K, known as D65.

Those two were chosen because they sit near the two ends of the light photographers work in. Almost everything a wedding offers falls between a lamp and an overcast sky, so a profile that is right at both ends can be right in between.

Why one calibration is not enough

White balance handles part of warm light. It scales the red, green and blue readings until a grey object comes out grey, and that is all it does. Colored objects do not follow the grey.

The reason lies in the light and the sensor together. A tungsten lamp gives out a great deal of red and very little blue. The sensor’s three filters overlap, each letting through a broad band of wavelengths, so the same red dress produces a different mix of readings under a lamp than under the sun. The change is different again for skin, for a green leaf and for a blue suit. After white balance has made the tablecloth white, each of those colors is still off by its own amount.

A profile calibrated only in daylight has no information about this. Used at a candlelit dinner it tends to push skin toward orange, to make reds too strong, and to turn the greens of table flowers toward olive. Photographers correct these by hand in the Color Mixer, at every reception, often without knowing that the cause sits one level below the sliders.

A second calibration, made under tungsten light, records where each color really lands in that light and corrects each one by the amount it needs.

How Lightroom blends the two calibrations

You never choose between the two calibrations. Lightroom does it from the white balance of each photo. At the temperature of the tungsten calibration and below, it uses the tungsten data alone. At the temperature of the daylight calibration and above, it uses the daylight data alone. In between it mixes the two.

The mix is worked out on the reciprocal of the color temperature. That is why the two calibrations contribute equally at about 4000 K, and not at 4700 K, the point halfway along the slider between them.

This has a practical consequence. Setting white balance correctly also selects the right color calibration. Leave a lamp-lit frame at a daylight setting and the photo is orange, and it is also being rendered with the wrong half of the profile. Click the White Balance Selector on the white of a shirt and both are put right at once. Every NIPIK Base profile works this way, with nothing to switch on.

Where you see the difference at a wedding

In daylight you will not see it at all. From about 6500 K upward only the daylight calibration is in use, and a dual-illuminant profile behaves like a single one. The second calibration earns its place when the light turns warm.

• The getting-ready room, when the curtains are half closed and the bedside lamps are on.
• Churches and halls lit by lamps or candles.
• Dinner, the speeches and the cake, which at most weddings happen under tungsten light or warm LEDs.
• The first dance under spotlights, before the flash comes out.

The colors to watch are the ones a viewer knows by heart. Skin is first: under a daylight-only calibration, faces at dinner pick up an orange that Tint does not remove cleanly, because hue and saturation are both off. Reds come next, in lips, roses and the red of a uniform. Then the greens of table flowers and garlands, which should still look like plants.

BeforeAfter

This is the light Riviera - Reception was made for, and it sits on a profile whose tungsten calibration is doing most of the work at that moment. The day’s other changes of light are in one wedding, six kinds of light.

How to check a profile on your own files

Lightroom does not show how many calibrations a profile holds, so the count has to come from whoever made it. What you can check yourself is the result, with two RAW frames of the same person.

1. Find a RAW frame of someone in daylight or open shade, and a frame of the same person under lamps on the same day. Both need something white in them, such as a shirt or a dress. Use frames taken without flash.
2. On each frame, click the White Balance Selector on the white. Expect a value between 5500 and 7500 K on the first and between 2800 and 3400 K on the second.
3. Match exposure so the face is equally bright in both.
4. Set both frames to the profile you want to test, at the top of the Basic panel.
5. Put one frame in Reference View beside the other and compare the skin. With a profile that handles both lights, it reads as the same person in two rooms.
6. Hover over the same part of a cheek in each and read the RGB values under the histogram. Red should be highest and blue lowest in both, with similar gaps between the three.
7. Repeat with a second profile and see which one keeps the two faces closer.

If the lamp-lit face turns a heavier orange than the daylight one after a correct white balance, the profile is not following the light. On a camera NIPIK Base covers, the profile appears in the same browser under the name NIPIK Base, and you can run the test on it like any other.

Where a preset gets its two calibrations from

A preset is a file of slider positions. It contains no calibration of any kind, so the phrase dual-illuminant preset is shorthand: it means the camera profile under the preset has two calibrations. There are three arrangements, and they behave differently under lamps.

The third arrangement gives the maker control of color from the sensor up. It helps you only if a profile exists for your body. A system with profiles for a handful of popular cameras leaves everyone else on the camera’s default profile, with the look sitting on a base it was never tuned for.

NIPIK is the third arrangement. Every NIPIK look is built on NIPIK Base, our own camera profiles, and each of the 741 is dual-illuminant. How the layers fit together is set out in camera profiles, presets and LUTs.

Two cameras in two lights

The second calibration matters twice over when two cameras cover one day. Two bodies differ in daylight by one amount and under tungsten by another, because their sensors respond to the two lights differently. A correction you build to bring a second shooter’s frames to yours at the ceremony stops working at dinner.

Dual-illuminant profiles that are calibrated to match each other give both cameras a calibration for each light, and the same starting point to share. The frames from the church and the frames from the dance floor then need the same thing from you: white balance and exposure. NIPIK Base profiles are dual-illuminant and calibrated to match each other across all 741 camera models, and the workflow for a two-brand wedding is in why the same preset looks different on every camera.

What a profile settles in mixed light

Mixed light is what most people have in mind when they ask about dual-illuminant profiles, so it is worth being exact. A photo has one white balance. From it Lightroom takes one blend of the two calibrations and applies it to the whole frame.

That is the right thing for the common kind of mixed light, where warm and cool sources have blended before they reach the subject: a room with the lamps on and daylight coming through the curtains, measuring about 4000 K everywhere. The profile uses about half of each calibration, which is what that light is.

The other kind is a frame with two separate lights in it, such as a bride lit by a window with a lamp-lit wall behind her. You choose the white balance for her face, and the profile renders her correctly. The wall stays warm, as it did to the eye. If it is too warm, a mask with its own Temperature slider brings it back. LED and fluorescent lamps give light that is uneven across the spectrum, and a small Tint correction is normal with them under any profile.

Riviera has two add-ons for these frames: Fix - Tungsten Light, which cools warm tungsten light, and Fix - Mixed Light, which calms warm mixed light. Each is one click on top of the look. The method for whole rooms is in mixed lighting in wedding photos.

Building a dual-illuminant profile yourself

You can make one. Photograph a reference color chart with your camera under a tungsten lamp and again in daylight, and profiling software will build a dual-illuminant profile for that body from the two frames. It is a sound exercise and it teaches a lot about your camera.

It also has costs. The lighting has to be even and the exposures careful, or the errors go into the profile. The result belongs to one body, so a second camera needs the same work, and two home-made profiles do not match each other unless you make them that way. Each new body starts the job again.

NIPIK Base exists so that you do not have to: a dual-illuminant profile for each of 741 camera models, calibrated to match each other and tested against reference color charts in both lights. How the profiles are made stays in our lab, and how we measure color describes the testing.

What to ask of any preset system

Before buying presets that come with camera profiles, five questions settle most of it.

• Are the profiles camera profiles, made for each camera model, or creative profiles laid over the camera’s own?
• Is every camera profile dual-illuminant, or only some of them?
• Which camera models are covered, and are yours and your second shooter’s among them?
• Were the profiles tested in both lights, against what, and with what result?
• Is there a preset made for warm rooms, or a single preset for the whole day?

A longer list, with our own answer to each question, is on how NIPIK compares. The wider buying questions are in how to choose Lightroom presets.

NIPIK Base: dual-illuminant profiles for 741 cameras

NIPIK Base is our own set of camera profiles, one for each of 741 camera models: Canon, Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Olympus and OM System, Leica, Pentax, Hasselblad, Phase One and more. Every one is a dual-illuminant camera profile, calibrated for daylight and for tungsten, and Lightroom blends between the two as white balance moves. The profiles are also calibrated to match each other, so two cameras at one wedding start from color that is close together.

Measured across all 741 cameras, skin lands about 31% and foliage about 38% closer to the true chart colors than with Adobe Standard. The greens stay closer under tungsten as well, and neutral greys stay neutral.

The look sits on those profiles. Riviera, by Danilo & Sharon, comes as a preset for each light: Riviera for daylight, Riviera - Flash for the dance floor, Riviera - Reception for rooms lit by lamps and candles, and Riviera - B&W. You set white balance and exposure for each photo, and that white balance also tells the profile which light it is in.

Riviera works in Lightroom Classic version 14.4 or newer and in Camera Raw in Photoshop, on Mac and Windows. The free NIPIK Installer puts the profiles and presets in place and keeps them up to date. To check your camera, give Piko, the helper in the corner of every page of nipik.com, the exact model.