“Lightroom 2.2 Camera Profiles” by Kerry Garrison of Camera Dojo addresses a problem that confuses many photographers who are getting started with post processing software: bland, flat, off-color RAW images.
The RAW image shown to you by Lightroom often does not come close to matching what you saw through the viewfinder or on your camera’s LCD. Granted the image on your LCD has been run through the camera’s processor and the point of RAW is to leave the decision making up to you, but often Lightroom does not display certain colors they way they truly appear. Kerry notes that the difference in reds between his Canon 30D and Lightroom is often the most noticeable example of this problem and I agree — the reds I see when I begin editing in Lightroom are definitely not what I saw through the viewfinder of my Canon 5D.
Lightroom 2.2 addresses this issue by providing a set of pre-packaged camera profiles that help the software see the RAW image in the way your camera intended. The results of using these camera profiles are clear as day in the example picture below. The version on the left was exported with Adobe’s ACR 3.3 profile, and the one on the right had the “Camera Standard” profile applied. As you can see, the “Camera Standard” profile did a great job of correcting the colors, most noticeably in the woman’s bright red shirt.
Kerry has also posted a video “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Camera Profiles” which further explains the purpose of camera profiles and shows you how to apply them to your pictures.