Why should I use a DNG Profile?

A DNG profile describes the colorimetric interpretation of digital raw image data that the camera supplies of the ColorChecker image. That said, creating custom camera profiles, just like the built in camera profiles within Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw that may be specific to your camera, serve to make post-processing much faster and more accurate. All cameras will use some type of profile known as a canned or generic profile. When creating a custom profile it allows us to use that file across multiple images specific to these lighting conditions. Working in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw you may notice that you have some standard profiles that are specific to your camera in the calibration drop down. For example Canon uses Standard, Portrait, Landscape etc. These would be the canned files that come with the Canon and are selectable during post processing. Nikon also has canned profiles to choose from in the dropdown as well. While many of these options can get us close results using the ColorChecker Passport and creating a custom profile now allows us to do this for the lighting condition of that particular shoot not for all Canons or Nikons but specific just to yours!