Choose a profile

A profile is the starting point your edits sit on. It runs before everything else, so white balance, tone and color all work on top of it. It has no Amount: it is either on or off. For a treatment you can dial back, use a look.

Pick a profile

1. Open Profile in the left column. The top row names the current profile, or shows “None”.
2. Click the row to unfold the list. Type in the filter to narrow it, or click a profile to apply it. The list stays open so you can try several.
3. To remove the profile, click the clear button on the top row.

The list has three groups:

Group	Contains
Camera	Profiles made for this photo’s camera. It reads “none for” and the camera when there are none.
Shipped	Vivid, Landscape and Portrait.
Yours	Profiles you imported or saved.

Drag the grip at the bottom of the list to show more or fewer rows.

The Monochrome switch under the list turns the whole photo black and white. It has its own page under effects.

Start every photo from one camera’s profile

1. Open the Profile list on a RAW from that camera.
2. Right-click a profile in the Camera group and choose Set as default for your camera.

From then on, a RAW from that camera with no saved edits starts with the profile. Photos you already edited keep what they have. Reset Edits returns to the default. A photo you open and leave untouched still counts as unedited. Clear default (same menu) stops it.

Note

Only a profile in the Camera group can be a default. JPEG and other non-RAW photos never start with one.

Import a profile

1. Click the import button beside the filter.
2. Choose a .json matrix profile, or a .cube file.
3. For a .cube, say which encoding it was made for. Only scene-referred encodings are offered: Linear Rec.709, Linear ProPhoto, ACEScct and DarkRay Log. A table made for a display (sRGB or Rec.709 gamma) is a look, not a profile. Import it in Look.

If a profile with that name exists, DarkRay asks before replacing it.

Save your Color Primaries as a profile

When you have tuned Color Primaries for a camera, you can keep the result.

1. Select the Base layer.
2. Click the save button beside the filter, name the profile and click Save.
3. Optional: turn on Apply the profile and reset the sliders. The new profile is set on the photo and the six primary sliders return to 0, in one undo step. This is not offered while the photo already has a profile.

Shadow Tint is not part of a profile and stays a slider.

Technical details: the two kinds of profile

A profile file is one of two kinds. A matrix profile holds a 3×3 matrix in linear ProPhoto and is applied as a direct matrix multiplication. It is never baked into a lookup table, because the result can leave the 0 to 1 range and a table would clip it. A .cube profile is a 3D lookup table in DarkRay’s log encoding, applied the way a look is, at full strength.

The profile runs first in the color order, before Color Primaries, and only once for the whole photo, so layers sit on top of it. If a profile file goes missing, the photo renders without it, the row says “file missing”, and Export lists a note.