Adobe Camera RAW Calibration

While technically not true profiling, the calibration adjustments of ACR allow the color calibration of the RAW converter to be customized to the characteristics of a specific camera. This can significantly reduce the amount of color correction needed when processing RAW images. The procedure is fairly simple. Get a Gretag-Macbeth Color Checker, then go to http://fors.net/scripts/ACR-Calibrator/ and download the ACR calibrator script. Make sure you read the usage instructions.

Put the Color Checker on an easel or stand and do not have any non-neutral objects near it, or you will get a color cast that will ruin the results. Green grass is a common offender here. The best thing to do is get a tripod and an easel and a white or black tarp maybe 8 feet square or larger. On a sunny day, set up the easel in the middle of one edge the tarp with the Color Checker facing directly into the sun, and the tarp covering the ground between the easel and the camera. Position the camera so that you are as perpendicular to the Color Checker as possible and the Color Checker fills up the frame without any of the colored patches being cropped. Find an exposure level that makes the camera histogram just barely touch the right edge. Then start one stop below that and shoot 6 or 7 frames, increasing exposure in 1/3 stop increments. Open the RAWs in ACR and select the one with the greatest exposure that is not clipped when the exposure slider is set to 0. Once you've selected the candidate RAW file, open and process it according to the script instructions. The script may take as long as two hours to run.

When saving your camera defaults, DO NOT use any of the script results except the ones from the Calibration tab. Use these instead:

White Balance: As Shot (and always use AWB on camera when shooting RAW, this will get your WB close to what you want 90+% of the time)
Exposure: 0
Shadows: 0
Brightness: 75 (50 if you're still using ACR 2.x)
Contrast: +25
Saturation: 0

Sharpness: 25 (but set so that only the preview is sharpened, not the final conversion, there are far better ways to sharpen than ACR)
Luminance Smoothing: 0
Color Noise Reduction: 5

All Lens Tab settings: 0

Curve: Linear (It's better to increase contrast locally rather than globally; see Local Vs Global Contrast for a more detailed explanation)

All Calibrate Tab settings from script results.

Save these settings as your camera default, and they will be applied to each RAW file opened from that model of camera.