Mavic 2 Pro DNG files not Raw in Lightroom

John Lammey · Oct 6, 2018

When I import Mavic 2 Pro DNG files to lightroom I cannot use custom color profiles as with other raw formats. It acts like a jpeg.
I use Xrite colorchecker to create custom color profiles for all of my other cameras. This only works nor raw images, not jpegs.

Is there a way to fix this problem?

Thanks,

John

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?ur...=Mavic+2+Pro+DNG+not+Raw+in+Lightroom&via=DJI

4wd · Oct 6, 2018

Is it a recent version of Lightroom?
In Quick Develop the inbuilt presets work OK here on Classic 7.5
Generally .DNG is a very standardised form of RAW unlike the constant changes you get from brand specific RAW such as Sony's ARW.
I dare say there are still minor things different or missing, depending on the source.
Do you have Photoshop and Camera RAW to test with.

dtp · Oct 6, 2018

Trt updating Adobe Camera Raw, it's a free download. I have not tried .dng in lightroom but works in Photoshop. Both applications use the camera raw software, dng is Adobe raw format.

dtp · Oct 6, 2018

Download via Camera Raw plug-in installer

Paul2660 · Oct 6, 2018

The latest version of Lightroom classic CC , 7.5, and 7.4 both open the dng files raw for me. If your camera raw plug in is old, they would not open at all. You would just get blanks for the thumbnails.

What happens if you open them in Photoshop CC 2018 or 2017?.

Paul C

jwischka · Oct 6, 2018

They are RAW files, but I agree that they are not being fully treated as such in Lightroom. None of the new profile functions work for DJI files, though they do work for other camera's raw files.

My suspicion is that Lightroom reads the files because they are DNG-compliant, but that it doesn't fully support the files (yet, hopefully) because they are relatively new. See also this thread.

Leo1005 · Oct 6, 2018

watch this:

John Lammey · Oct 8, 2018

Update: I was able to create a color profile that I can access in Lightroom and Photoshop useing Colorchecker Passport photo and the Colorchecker Passport app. It took a couple passes to get this right. The app did not drop the resulting profile in the adobe camera raw folder like it used to. I suspect adobe moved the location. After manually copying the file and restaring Lightroom and Photoshop it was available.

I am going to buy a larger color reference card for use with the Mavic 2 Pro. the small one is tricky to get a good shot. You need one profile for each different lighting condition. For me this would be 1. Clear sunny day 2. Overcast and possible early morning and later afternoon sun. You can also create a dual-luminant profile that handles all variants.

It still behaves somewhat like a jpeg in lightroom in that the adobe color profiles are not available as choices. If you have a good color profile this is moot.

.

This process gives reasonably correct colors but does not modify contract, saturation, etc.

Here are some related threads I found while researching this issue:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/c ... s-a-raw-file.34879/

https://phantompilots.com/thread ... ow-w-script.120302/

pauschpage · Dec 11, 2018

Hey guys! I'm having the same issues with wrong colors from the Mavic 2 in Lightroom.
Could anybody share a custom Camera Raw Profile for it?

Paul2660 · Dec 11, 2018

You can still work with the Light room or ACR color profiles with the MP2 dng files. You have to click on the profile drop drop box, 4 square boxes towards top of development panel. This opens the color profile drop down box. You don't have a camera specific profile, like one for Nikon or Canon etc. but you can work with many different profiles. Modern 7 or 5 is where I tend to start and then work up from there. I fully agree a dedicated color profile for the file would be nice but don't hold your breath that Adobe will ever do this, They are a one and done for this type of camera.

You can also work in Capture One, which has no support either for the base DNG, you will need to use the crop tool to expand the image to full size, then work with any of the hundreds of Capture One profiles for any other type of camera. Just get off the default "dng color" profile that the file loads with as it's terrible. I for now use the P1 trichromatic 100 profile. It's hard on certain colors, but does well on blues and greens. IMO the C1 conversion (raw) is better than Adobe, less noise and more control over the distortion correction which in LR is huge and tends to soften the image to the edges due to the amount of correction applied (worse if you are looking up or down off of center with camera).

Here is a shot of LR showing the drop down color profiles that are available. I agree a specific one to the camera is always best, but it's still better than nothing. And do note that the there is a profile being loaded to the dng, it's the Adobe default color.

Paul C

parkgt · Dec 11, 2018

Why is a color profile needed in LR for the images taken by the M2P?

Paul2660 · Dec 11, 2018

For any raw file, a color profile of some type is needed, this is true for any digital camera. With a in camera jpg, you are dropping to sRGB and a canned profile, which is very limited IMO. Raw by default has nothing baked in, so picking a base color profile is a important starting point. You will notice that any camera raw file loaded into Lightroom will usually default to Adobe color, which is not the best profile. By opening the the profile selections box, you will get all the existing Adobe profiles based on the camera, (landscape, portrait, standard) etc. For the DJI products Adobe has not created anything so you need to either use the default Adobe color selection or open the box I showed in my previous post and experiment with the available profiles. You can set one of those as your preference in Lightroom for opening all the Mavic files in the future if you wish. By far the best solution is the creation of a profile, which some folks are working on, but this takes special software and quite a bit of time, so I just use one of the profiles available, then tweak the colors with the Lightroom tools.

Paul C

parkgt · Dec 11, 2018

Paul2660 said:
For any raw file, a color profile of some type is needed, this is true for any digital camera. With a in camera jpg, you are dropping to sRGB and a canned profile, which is very limited IMO. Raw by default has nothing baked in, so picking a base color profile is a important starting point. You will notice that any camera raw file loaded into Lightroom will usually default to Adobe color, which is not the best profile.

Paul C

Paul,

Thanks for the reply. I have taken many MP2 files into LR6 and never used a Profile or felt I needed one. Maybe I don't know what I was missing; I will check it out to see what it does for me.

Paul2660 · Dec 11, 2018

I am sure that LR 6, this is several versions back from current, 8.1, is loading the Adobe color profile. The ability to change the color profile was greatly improved with 7.x versions of Lightroom as that is where the drop down box was added.

With LR6, and a camera like Nikon or Canon, again Lightroom picks a default profile, but you can click on the profile selection and it should open a drop down box and show all the available profiles for that particular camera. However for DJI products I think that version 6 will only have the profile that is loading when you import the raws.

Paul C

Raico · May 8, 2019

Colour profiles make a heck of a difference. In my workflow saves a lot of time and in my opinion with my Nikon D810 files Adobe really got the colours right as a great starting point with Adobe colour and Adobe Landscape profiles..

Antero52 · May 10, 2019

I have a feeling that the distinction between Lightroom "Profiles" and "Presets" is not quite clear. Lightroom (or ACR) does not provide arbitrary profiles for different cameras. Many cameras offer selectable "profiles" (Nikon's term is Picture Control), which are used to create a JPG photo in-camera from a raw capture. When you import, say, a Nikon raw (NEF) file, the file's metadata tells which profile/picture control was selected but otherwise the raw data isn't affected by the selection. Nikon's software (Capture NX...) can use the selection to process the raw photo as it was (or would have been) processed in-camera, but Adobe doesn't know the details of that processing and can only emulate the profiles. That's why Lightroom offers matching names for the profiles (eg Camera Landscape and Adobe Landscape). Apparently DJI does not offer any profiles other than color or b/w, which is why Lightroom only has two profiles for DJI: Color and B/W. Color calibration can be performed in Lightroom's Calibration panel, independently from the chosen profile.

Color grading is yet another topic. One popular technique is to use look-up tables, or LUTs. On my favorite Photoshop-related site, "PixImperfect", my favorite Photoshop guru Unmesh Dinda, has a video called "Use Advanced Photoshop Presets in Lightroom!" (at