Today’s Question: When opening files in Camera Raw, they’ve always opened with a profile of ColorMatch RGB (8 bit). These days they’re opening with as Display P3 (16 bit). I’m not aware of having changed any settings. Any idea what’s going on here?
Tim’s Quick Answer: I suspect this change may have been caused by a software update, and you can change the default profile setting in Camera Raw Preferences. I also suggest keeping the bit depth at 16-bits per channel.
More Detail: I also experienced this change in the default profile in Camera Raw, so I suspect this is a widespread issue. My guess is that it resulted from either a software update from Adobe or an update in the macOS operating system, though I’m not sure which since I had updated both prior to seeing the change in Camera Raw.
The current profile setting is shown in the workflow settings summary at the bottom-center of the Camera Raw interface. That summary is actually a link, which you can click to bring up the Camera Raw Preferences dialog with the Workflow tab selected. You can also get to the Preferences dialog by clicking the gear icon at the top-right of the Camera Raw window.
On the Workflow tab of the Camera Raw settings dialog you can choose the profile you want to use from the Space popup in the Color Space section. I generally recommend the ProPhoto RGB color space because it is among the largest color space profile options. Adobe RGB is also a good general-purpose option, and the sRGB color space is good for images that will only be displayed digitally and not printed.
I also recommend using the 16 bits per channel option for the Depth setting, which provides significantly more color values than 8 bits per channel. This is especially important when using the ProPhoto RGB color space, or when working with black and white images.
Once you’ve updated these settings, you can click the OK button to save the changes. Those settings will become the new default settings for images that have not yet been processed in Camera Raw. Note, however, that if you open an image that had previously been processed with camera raw, the settings active at that time—including the color profile—will remain as the settings for the image when opened again.
