Customized Color Profiles with Christophe Métairie

Interview with Christophe Métairie, an expert in color and calibration for digital photography.

Christophe Métairie – what exactly do you do?

My work revolves around color management in digital photography: printer and digital camera calibration using ICC profiles. To do this, I have developed some very high quality test charts with 1728 colored patches for printer calibration, and an affordable test chart that gives very good results for digital cameras: the DigitaL TargeT test chart. In addition, I’ve produced the RefCards range of reference cards, which are aids to shooting and processing raw files.

How did you get started? How did you first get interested in this area?

At the outset, it was my work as a photographer that sparked my interest in color management: I started taking an interest in it when I got my first inkjet printer in 1997. At that time, the tools for producing ICC profiles were still at the embryonic stage, and so I’ve been able to follow the whole evolution of the software. When I got my first Canon EOS-1DS digital camera, it seemed clear to me that there was a great deal of room for improvement in the colorimetry, and that was why I developed the DigitaL TargeT test chart, which gives very good results at a very reasonable price.

How did you come to discover DxO Optics Pro?

I discovered DxO Optics Pro with version 4.1, after having read some very positive articles about the earlier versions. After trying out the demo versions downloadable from the DxO website, it seemed obvious to me that this software is truly ahead of its time, in terms of both its geometric processing and the quality of the images obtained.

What are your impressions about DxO Optics Pro's functions for creating ICC rendition profiles?

DxO Optics Pro is the only application that incorporates a function for ‘developing’ Raw files from shots of test charts for the purposes of camera calibration. This guarantees optimal quality for the profiles created, and the quality of the resulting images is excellent, since the ICC profiles are applied at the very heart of the Raw file processing chain.

To sum up the calibration procedure:

• test chart shot in Raw mode,
• this file is "developed" using the DxO Optics Pro’s special "Export image for ICC profiles" function,
• ICC profiles are created (using special tools external to DxO Optics Pro)
• these profiles are incorporated into DxO Optics Pro in Expert mode via the "Import ICC profile..." function in the DxO Color panel under the "Enhance" tab

(Naturally, this procedure only works and is only of any interest if the shots are taken in Raw)

How would you compare these possibilities to those in Adobe Camera Raw, for example?

Adobe Camera Raw is fast and practical to use, but there is no possibility for calibration within the software: an ICC profile can only be inserted into the processing chain after development, in Photoshop. Under these conditions, the profile arrives downstream of the development of the file and its action is not really optimized, even though the results are perfectly correct.

Do you have a website where you go into more detail?

Yes, you’ll find all the additional information here:
in French: www.christophe-metairie-photographie.com
See the "English pages" menu for the information in English


 

How can people contact you for the creation of customized profiles for DxO Optics Pro?

The simplest way is to visit my website in the first instance, and after that, the quickest way to contact me is by e-mail: