How NIPIK compares

What NIPIK is

NIPIK makes Lightroom presets for wedding and portrait photographers, together with the camera profiles they sit on. A NIPIK collection is built in layers: NIPIK Base camera profiles underneath, one look on top of them in a preset for each kind of light, and one-click add-ons that finish a photo and leave the look’s own settings alone.

Riviera, the first NIPIK collection, is the signature look of Danilo & Sharon, a wedding photography duo who have worked together since 2013 and photograph destination weddings in an editorial style, most often in Italy and the south of France. Riviera is here.

The questions below are the ones worth putting to any preset system of this kind before you buy it. Each is followed by NIPIK’s answer.

Does it come with its own camera profiles?

A preset is a set of slider positions. It acts on color the camera profile has already made, and every camera model has a different profile, so a preset alone gives a slightly different result on each body. A system that brings its own profiles sets the starting color as well.

NIPIK Base is NIPIK’s 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), calibrated to match each other. A NIPIK look is built on those profiles, so it starts from the same color whichever camera took the frame.

Are the profiles dual-illuminant?

A sensor responds to color differently under lamps than under the sun, and each color moves by its own amount. A profile calibrated under one light drifts in the other. A dual-illuminant profile holds two calibrations, and Lightroom mixes them according to the white balance of the photo.

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. That is true of all 741 profiles. A ceremony at 5600 K draws mostly on the daylight calibration and a dinner at 3000 K mostly on the tungsten one, and there is no setting for you to change. What dual-illuminant camera profiles are and when they matter.

Has the color been measured?

Any maker can call its color accurate. Ask what the profiles were tested against, on how many cameras, and what came out.

NIPIK tests its profiles against reference color charts whose true values are known, in daylight and in tungsten light. Measured across all 741 cameras, skin lands about 31% and foliage about 38% closer to the true chart colors than with Adobe Standard. Greens stay closer under tungsten as well, and neutral greys stay neutral. How we measure color describes the test.

Do different camera brands match each other?

Most weddings are shot on more than one body, and a second shooter often brings another brand. Frames from both cameras sit side by side in the gallery, where a difference in skin is seen at once.

Each camera model has its own NIPIK Base profile, and the profiles are calibrated to match each other. In daylight the typical difference between two cameras is under 1 ΔE, about the smallest step the eye can separate side by side. A Sony, a Canon, a Nikon and a Fujifilm start from color that is close together, and one look serves all of them.

Is there a preset for each kind of light?

A wedding moves from window light to noon sun, shade, lamps and flash. A single preset stretched across all of that suits part of the day.

Riviera is one look. It comes as a preset for each kind of wedding light: Riviera for daylight, Riviera - Flash for the dance floor and direct flash, Riviera - Reception for rooms lit by lamps and candles, and Riviera - B&W, with versions of Riviera and B&W for JPEG files. For the frames that fight back there are add-ons named for the problem: Fix - Harsh Light, Fix - Tungsten Light, Fix - Mixed Light and Fix - Green Cast on People.

Do the presets adapt to ISO?

One wedding holds portraits at ISO 100 and dance-floor frames at ISO 6400 or more. A preset with a single fixed noise reduction value is too strong for the first or too weak for the second.

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. A photo between two steps gets a value in between. The same presets switch on Lightroom’s lens corrections. How ISO-adaptive presets work.

Do the finishing tools overwrite the look?

After the look, most photos need one small thing: shadows opened, a sky deepened, a green cast taken off a face. If the tool for that resets sliders the look has set, every fix costs you part of the look.

Riviera’s 36 add-ons are one click each on top of the look. Thirty-four of them arrive as their own mask in Lightroom’s Masking panel, so they stack, and each one can be turned down or removed by itself. Auto Upright and Airy Frame use one Lightroom control each. Nine of the add-ons use Lightroom’s own AI masks to find faces, the dress, the sky and the background, and AI - Clear sets all of those back to zero. How a look, its presets and its add-ons fit together.

Who made the look?

A look worth paying for comes from photographers who deliver weddings with it, and it carries their name.

Riviera, the first NIPIK collection, is the signature look of Danilo & Sharon, a wedding photography duo who have worked together since 2013 and photograph destination weddings in an editorial style, most often in Italy and the south of France. NIPIK builds a look with its photographers on its own technology, DYNAMIK, in which a look is designed as a response to light, the way a film stock had one. Photographers can apply to become a creative partner.

Which cameras are covered, and what happens when you buy a new one?

A system built on camera profiles is useful for the cameras it has profiles for, and that has to include the body you buy next year.

NIPIK Base covers 741 camera models: Canon, Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Olympus and OM System, Leica, Pentax, Hasselblad, Phase One and more. Recent bodies among them include the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and R6 Mark III, the Sony A1 II and A7 V, the Nikon Z8, the Fujifilm X100VI and the Leica SL3-S. To check an exact model, ask Piko, the helper in the corner of every page. New cameras are added on request: a photographer whose camera is missing asks Piko, the helper on every page of nipik.com, or writes to NIPIK, and the profile arrives as a free update through the NIPIK Installer. So far NIPIK Base has grown from 437 camera models to 741.

What do you pay for, and what does it run on?

A collection is bought once, installs on two of the buyer’s computers with the free NIPIK Installer, and receives every update at no extra cost. NIPIK works in Lightroom Classic (version 14.4 or newer) and in Camera Raw in Photoshop, on Mac and Windows. It does not work in Lightroom on phones or tablets. The presets are made for RAW photos, with versions of Riviera and B&W for JPEG files. The price is on Riviera’s page.

NIPIK’s answers at a glance