What profile to embed on untagged digital camera file?

[colorblind]

This is what I posted on Adobe's color management forum, can't seem to get any satisfactory answer:

I was wondering what profile to embed to untagged digital camera files. My Kodak point and shoot digital camera does not embed any color profile but the Mac OSX automaticaly assumes it should be sRGB, so that's the profile I get when opening the file in Photoshop with "Preserve embedded profiles" enabled. Would I be better off using ColorSync to embed a Kodak profile (I have a profile named "GENKDCS1.icm" installed on my system to describe the color of Generic Kodak digital cameras) prior to open the file in Photoshop with "Preserve embedded profiles" enabled or leave it as is and assume it's sRGB?

Thanks

[mattbeals]

Almost all consumer grade point and shoot cameras use sRGB. Since you don't know what profile you should be using, just tagging it with something is worse than tagging it with sRGB. Always honor the embedded profile. When in doubt with a digital camera, sRGB is the most likely profile to be used.

[LoganBlade]

If you are taking the pictures. This site may be helpful

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm

It talks about taking a pre pictures of neutral grays in the enviroment you are taking them so you can color correct them. This way you can shoot fro what is correct color under your lighting conditions.

I have never done it but it suggsts the netral gray under a coffe lid (the plastic disk under the lid used to keep things fresh is sometimes a good netral gray). Put it next to your focus of a picture then take your picture. Then use this to create and action you can use on the remaining picture or pictures from the particular session. made a lot a sence to me but hey what do i know

[colorblind]

As I said, the files are not tagged with an embedded profile. I used the supplied ColorSync scripts (Extract profile and Show profile info) and these scripts are telling me there is no profile in the files.

[Green]

Originally Posted by colorblind

As I said, the files are not tagged with an embedded profile. I used the supplied ColorSync scripts (Extract profile and Show profile info) and these scripts are telling me there is no profile in the files.

I would have to agree with Matt. If you don't want to get super techie, stick with sRGB. sRGB is the standard.

To feel safe about it, you can open the image in photoshop. If it does not have a profile, assign it sRGB when opening. Then assign it the Kodak profile, then assign it Adobe 98. For my Olympus SP-500 a camera profile is assigned to each image, but when I assign it to sRGB I see very little difference (only a slight gamma shift). I think you'll find that the Kodak profile is pretty close to sRGB.

If you feel like you do want to get techie and brave at the same time, you can use your own profile. This is a little time consuming, but if you go slowly you can create your own profile that really gets you an awesome, balanced, vibrant picture.

Chris