Hi, DavidB
Yes, in the meantime I saw you started another thread about embeding profiles. I'm aware it takes more programming work to make a code that would read profile from external file and write it to dng than if data are hardcoded. But anyway, some people will like your profile, some will prefer Canon colors, some don't want bigger dngs etc ... so it would be fine to have them external. But if they are external, on some card folder, for CHDK user it's totaly the same if they are on the computer instead on the card, so I'm not sure it's worth the effort, because benefit is only if you give your dngs to a person who doesn't know how to copy several files (profiles) to certain folder, but in that case, it's quiestionable will he be able to copy other files (dngs) to other folder ...
About accurately representing the real word with photos ... well, I have a feeling that me and you wouldn't agree about meaning of that sentence, because making a profile from scratch using a chart with only 24 patches (I think DNG editor works with that one) can actually produce only a result that is more or less accurate representation of that 24 color patches. If you want all (or most) colors to be accurate, you'll have to use more expensive software/hardware to make a profile, that would be bigger then several kb, or you can simply use faithfull color style in Canon DSLRs, which is said to be colorimetrically accurate (under certain conditions), but I think there are not many photographers who are using it ...
Anyway, most people don't need and don't want accurate colors and prefer some sort of color rendition which is not colorimetrically accurate but is perceptually ok, like in jpegs from the camera, or Adobe standard profile from ACR for supported cameras, which is far from being colorimetrically accurate (except in some last profiles, where they radically changed a lookup table). Color rendition in Canon compacts has some drawbacks (like desaturation of shadows to make color noise leee visible, and oversaturation of some colors like sky, which is btw present in your profile also, especially blue shadows), but standard color style in Canon DSLRs is quite acceptable for me ...
fudgey, at the moment I can't promise a tool I was talking about, and I'm not sure that it would be easy to use when/if ever made, but I'll see what can be done ... when I get enough time for that ...
