How to setup your camera?

If you are planing to create ICC profiles for images of your digital camera you have to take care, that the camera is under your control!

This sounds funny for a moment, but if anything else but you controls the process, you will never get reliable results - neither without nor with colormanagement.

How to setup the Whitebalance?

Whenever possible do not use the automatic whitebalance! Try to find a default setting, that matches the conditions of your environment at best.

If you are using the automatic whitebalance for capturing the ColorChart nevertheless, you then have to transmit this specific whitebalance of the Reference Shot to all the coherent images of your shooting.

Refer to the manual of your camera to find out how to do so.

How to setup the Exposure?

The «correct» exposure setting depends on the task, you want to use the ICC profile for.

• Reproduction
  To get an almost 1:1 reproduction, you have to take care that both, the ColorChart and the coherent objects you want to reproduce, are captured with the same exposure and neither the highlights nor the shadows clip.
• Real World Images
  The ColorChart should be exposed correctly, ignoring the surroundings. A correctly exposed ColorChart has average values between RGB 235 and RGB 245 on the white patches. This avoids highlight clipping within the images of your shooting.