How a NIPIK look is built, and why it is more than an XMP preset
People ask what the technology is, and whether a NIPIK look is just another preset file. It installs like one. What is inside is built differently, in three layers, and this is what each of them does.
What a regular preset is
A Lightroom preset is a small XMP file that stores slider positions: this much contrast, that tone curve, these HSL values. Click it and Lightroom moves the sliders. That is all it does, and for many jobs it is enough.
Its limit is what it sits on. Before any slider moves, Lightroom has already turned the RAW data into color using a camera profile, and every camera model has a different one. The preset inherits that starting color, whatever it is. Build a preset on one camera and it meets a different starting point on every other. Build it in soft daylight and it meets different light at dinner.
Layer one: a profile measured for your camera
A NIPIK collection begins below the sliders. 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.
Each is built for two lights, daylight and tungsten, and blends between them as you move white balance, so color stays consistent from a ceremony in the sun to a dinner under lamps. And they are calibrated to match each other, so your Sony and your second shooter’s Canon start from the same place.
They are also measured. Each profile is tested against reference color charts with known values. Across all 741 cameras, skin lands about 31% and foliage about 38% closer to the true chart colors than with Adobe Standard, and two cameras typically differ by under 1 ΔE in daylight. How we measure.
Layer two: a look that responds to light
On that foundation sits the look itself, made with a technology we call DYNAMIK. The idea comes from film. Every film stock had its own response to light, and photographers chose a stock for how it behaved. A NIPIK look is designed the same way.
- Skin stays soft. In bright light, faces stay gentle and whites stay clean.
- Each color has a path from shadow to light. Skin stays warm in the shade and turns a touch pinker where the light falls. Greens pick up a little gold in the sun.
- The ends are gentle. Highlights ease into white, and blacks go deep without a color cast.
- The files stay clean. There is no grain, halation or light leak in a NIPIK look.
A slider preset cannot do the second of those, because HSL sliders shift a color by the same amount whether it is dark or bright. More on what film does, and why it is hard to copy.
Layer three: add-ons for the last few percent
No look can know that a guest is standing on a lawn, or that the DJ has switched on a purple light. So a collection comes with add-ons: small presets that each do one job in one click, on top of the look.
Riviera has 36 of them, in five groups: Tools, Light, Fix, Colour and AI. They recover highlights, open shadows, cool tungsten light, take a green cast off people, and more. The nine AI add-ons use Lightroom’s own masks to find faces, the dress, the sky and the background.
What stays yours, and what stays ours
White balance and exposure belong to each photograph, and you set them. After the look, every slider in Lightroom works as usual, and nothing is locked.
The numbers behind the profiles and the looks stay in our lab, the way a film maker keeps an emulsion formula. What they do is described here and on the About page, and you can see it on your own photos.
In Lightroom it all appears the ordinary way: presets and add-ons in the Presets panel, NIPIK Base in the profile browser for RAW photos from your camera. The NIPIK Installer puts everything in place and keeps it up to date. The first collection is Riviera, by Danilo & Sharon.
Questions
Is a NIPIK look an XMP preset?
It installs into Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw as presets and camera profiles, and shows in the Presets panel like any other preset. The difference is what it brings: a profile calibrated for your camera model, and a look designed on top of that profile.
What is DYNAMIK?
DYNAMIK is the name of the technology NIPIK makes its looks with. It shapes how each color behaves from shadow to highlight, the way a film stock has its own response to light.
What is NIPIK Base?
NIPIK Base is the name of NIPIK’s camera profiles: one for each of 741 camera models, calibrated to match each other and built for both daylight and tungsten light.
How is NIPIK different from normal presets?
A normal preset moves sliders on top of whatever color the camera’s profile gives. NIPIK supplies the profile as well, measured for each camera, and builds the look on it, so the look starts from the same color on every camera.
Can I still adjust a photo after applying a look?
Yes. Set white balance and exposure for the photo, apply the look, and adjust any slider you like afterwards.
Will you share how the profiles and looks are made?
No. What they do is public, and so are the measurements. The recipe stays in the lab.
About NIPIK
NIPIK makes Lightroom presets for wedding and portrait photographers, together with the camera profiles they sit on.
Every collection includes NIPIK Base camera profiles for 741 camera models, calibrated to match each other. Every NIPIK Base profile is a dual-illuminant camera profile: it is calibrated for two lights, daylight and tungsten, and Lightroom blends between the two as white balance moves. Measured across all 741 cameras, skin lands about 31% and foliage about 38% closer to the true chart colors than with Adobe Standard.
The first collection is Riviera, by Danilo & Sharon: one look for the whole wedding day, in presets for daylight, flash, lamp-lit rooms and black and white, with 36 one-click add-ons, for Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw on Mac and Windows. The presets for RAW photos are ISO-adaptive: Lightroom sets their noise reduction from the ISO of each photo, leaving it at the default up to ISO 600 and raising it in steps up to ISO 25,600.
You buy a collection once. The free NIPIK Installer puts it on two of your computers and keeps it up to date. A camera that is missing is added on request. See how NIPIK compares.