Short answer
A camera profile tells raw software how to turn one camera's sensor values into standard colour. At minimum it is a matrix, often two — one measured under warm tungsten-like light and one under daylight — blended by the scene's white balance; many profiles add lookup tables that adjust hue and saturation region by region and a default tone curve. Swap the profile and you swap those decisions, which is why the same raw file can look markedly different in two programs.
Because each sensor's filters have their own spectral sensitivities, the same raw values mean different colours on different camera models. A profile is the translation. The simplest is a 3×3 matrix that maps camera RGB to a device-independent space such as CIE XYZ, found by photographing patches whose colours are known and choosing the matrix that best maps the camera's readings onto them. Since the camera does not satisfy the Luther condition, no matrix is perfect; the fitting chooses which colours to get closest and accepts error elsewhere.
The best-fitting matrix depends on the light, because camera metamerism changes with the illuminant's spectrum. Raw-processing profiles therefore often carry two calibrations, typically one near standard illuminant A (incandescent) and one near D65 (daylight), and interpolate between them according to the white balance of each photograph. On top of the matrix, many profiles add a lookup table that nudges specific hues and saturations — pulling skin tones towards a preferred hue, deepening skies — plus a default tone curve. These are aesthetic choices by the profile maker as much as colorimetric ones.
'Camera matching' profiles in raw software try to imitate each manufacturer's own JPEG look, which is why they often differ more from each other than from a neutral profile.
Two formats dominate. ICC profiles, the framework used throughout colour management for displays and printers, can also describe input devices such as cameras and scanners and are widely supported. DNG camera profiles (DCP), from Adobe's Digital Negative specification, are used by Adobe's raw converters and a few others; they encode the dual-illuminant matrices, lookup tables and tone curve that raw work needs. Both describe the same idea — how this device's numbers map to standard colour — for different software.
A custom profile is made by photographing a colour target, such as a ColorChecker, in the light you will work in, exposing correctly and evenly, and letting profiling software compare the captured values with the target's reference data. It is worth doing for reproduction work — artwork, products, museum objects — where the default profile's aesthetic tweaks get in the way. A custom profile corrects the camera and light together; move to a very different light source and it may need remaking.
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
FactStrong evidence
ICC colour management describes each device, including input devices, with a profile that converts its values through a device-independent profile connection space.
Source: International Color Consortium: specifications and information
FactStrong evidence
Because camera sensitivities are not a linear transform of the colour-matching functions, any matrix from camera RGB to CIE colour is an approximation with residual colour errors.
FactModerate evidence
Profiling software for DNG camera profiles and ICC profiles is commonly driven from a photograph of a ColorChecker target, whose 24 patches include greys and natural colours such as skin, sky and foliage.
Source: The ColorChecker Pages
Colourwise interpretationModerate evidence
Default camera profiles in raw software include deliberate hue and tone adjustments, so the difference between two programs' renderings of one raw file is partly a difference of taste, not of accuracy.
Based on: Follows from the aesthetic hue adjustments documented in published camera pipelines and from the existence of manufacturer-look profiles; not a measured comparison of software.
Reviewed 29 September 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.