Adobe Camera Raw woke up with no standard Camera Profiles.

 Yesterday, ACR and Photoshop were behaving weird. This morning the Camera Profiles were empty with only colour and monochrome as choices. I asked Google Gemini, not a worthwhile reply. Then tried Microsoft Co-Pilot, slightly better, but didn't solve the issue.

Looked at 

• C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\
• C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

Both empty folders.

and that worked

Photoshop was 25.9.1, reverted to an earlier version, no improvement.

I shut down Photoshop, went to 

    C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom CC\Resources\CameraProfiles

then I copied the whole folder to

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles\

and re-launched Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw and that worked.

Don't confuse yourself by testing on an edited psd, test by opening a fresh raw file.

See also:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/camera-raw-discussions/adobe-camera-raw-missing-camera-profiles/td-p/10087240

But first you have to do what?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ever more powerful features for "fixing in post" have been persistent and omnipresent topics in photography these days. I was watching two recently beta released features in their photo editing suite. Give these videos a watch, they are to the point and not lengthy.

The videos show how easy it will be in manipulate depth blur and specific colour after the act of capturing the image with your computer. On reflection, a skilled artist directly working with physical media might produce a similar work of art,

So where do you go with your own photos? Abhor editing and stick to SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera) output? Embrace editing and change anything and everything?

Your decision to edit and which elements you edit are the real essence of you. Your artistic center Your artistic identity. Whatever photo gear or software you use, that's not the essence, Your artistic choices are the essence.

You don't have to accept that the default raw looks yucky

 Too often, people exclaim that when they display their raw image on the computer, the image looks yucky compared to the SOOC JPEG displayed on the back of their camera. You can customise that for all new images instead of re-working each image individually.

Here's how Adobe describes it:

https://blog.adobe.com/en/2020/06/16/streamline-edits-with-the-improved-raw-defaults

Quick Notes on Olympus RAW and Lens Profiles in Lightroom

Here's a verbatim copy of a post to a FB group when we were discussing Olympus Lens Profiles and Lightroom. I'll update this when I get feedback, corrections and so on.

The Adobe Lens Profile issue is potentially confusing. Let me note the points and hopefully people can add / discuss.

1. ORF - the Olympus RAW or any camera model raw needs to be understood by the raw processing program. New camera models are released every few months, the third party companies like Adobe have to scramble to get their programs updated. Sometimes, the sensor is the same but the EXIF signature is different e.g. my E-PM2 file is similar to the OMD E-M5 but some old programs refuse to load the E-PM2 raw. If I use an EXIF editor and change the camera name, presto, the old program reads the file.

2. Adobe has a habit of deciding that a certain version of LR or ACR will no longer be supported by them - they make money by selling new versions - they don't get income by supporting their old programs for new cameras. Adobe is not the only company that does this. The Adobe blog will have announcements on which version of LR or PS a certain new model starts getting supported.

3. The Lens profile is not related to the sensor data of raw - it describes vignetting, fringing, curvilinear distortion. Since last year, there have been additional lens info being stored - e.g. the lens bokeh / out of focus info - Panasonic uses this for super fast focussing in the GH4. Olympus uses it for when rendering the JPEG in the camera or Olympus viewer. If the program can read the raw, it can produce an image on screen and for JPEG, it just doesn't automatically correct for the lens behaviour.

4. Olympus from Four Thirds lenses era (1990s) stores this data in lens firmware. Panasonic does similar. That PhotoHelpdesk article claims that Adobe LR reads that and uses MFT lens data from the raw file. I don't know the truth of that claim.

5. For other brands of camera and lenses, or for manual focus lenses, Adobe or users can run the Adobe Lens Profile Creator program and produce separate lens profile files - many of the other brands lenses are automatically installed with LR - hence you can see them in the screenshot of the menu above. If you download the Lens Profile Creator software, you can also run a menu item that grabs Olympus Four Thirds DSLR lens profile files from Adobe and installs them into the LR subfolder.

6. In LR 5.6, I have tried "Enable default lens correction" on a raw but I don't see the image wriggle if the lens name is not identified. If the lens name is identified, I see the image wriggle once - I think this means the lens correction has taken action.

7. This lens correction data is typically in raw metadata because we assume that the file is clean from the camera. It is not stored in JPEG because the JPEG is normally "baked" or "cooked" already. Certainly software can correct the JPEG but the industry hasn't catered for that aspect.

8. If you shoot SOOC JPEG in an Olympus body, it is corrected for vignetting and curvilinear distortion. The Olympus RAW is not corrected but it contains the data. If you shoot SOOC JPEG of a Panasonic lens on a Panasonic body, you also get correction for fringing (CA).