Feedback, please: Adobe raw processing vs. others

[Thawley]

John Nack is looking for feedback to improve ACR in Lightroom and Photoshop – I know there are a lot of Capture One users here, so now's your chance to be heard.

"The Lightroom 3 beta includes an improved demosaicing algorithm, so it's the best basis for comparison." – says Principal Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop (and Adobe Camera RAW).

As a lightroom user in the education realm (who is bound to Adobe products because of budgetary & political reasons) I hope all of you with strong opinions will take this opportunity to tell Adobe what you think and help them improve.

Thanks for listening.

 

[thomas]

Today I played around with LR3beta and some files.
Didn't try LR for quite a while. First impression: yes, apparently demosaicing is improved.
But it depends on the camera and on the quality of the file.
First thing I always try is the default look regarding color and gradation/levels. Furthermore sharpening set to zero, luminance NR set to zero and color NR at a low value.
With these settings Nikon D3x and Canon 5D are almost the same in LR and C1 regarding details. But the captures I had on hand are not perfectly sharp (maybe not the best lenses).
Leica M8 and digital back files (captures without shake and good lenses) clearly show more details processed through C1 5.0.
The differences are even more obvious after soft sharpening (in Photoshop with Focal Blade).
Tonality in C1 is still more film-like; also cleaner blacks and better differentiation of highlights in C1 (of course this applies to the defaults of the softwares).

As to the look I won't comment as it depends on the user's experience with the software.

Things I missed (unless I overlooked something):

- no customization of the keyboard
- limited customization of the interface / limited zooming options
- RGB values - in the histogram there is an indication for RGB… but only in %. Useless.
- Histogram apparently refers to ProPhoto, not to the color space you are exporting to (not even to sRGB or AdobeRGB as in ACR).
So actually you are working blind in LR…
- too many mouse operations required

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Tonality in C1 is still more film-like

You don't need to say any more...

 

[thomas]

You don't need to say any more...

what's the probelm?

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

I'm agreeing with you wholeheartedly!

 

[thomas]

I'm agreeing with you wholeheartedly!

hm, don't know if you are sarcastic or not.
Just to clarify: I didn't meant to say "C1 looks like film". Just more film-like compared to LR - both with the default settings.
C1's gradation/tonality rather reminds me of a photograph whilst LR (ACR) is a bit flat, midtones are accentuated too much (for my taste).
My first impulse in LR is to tweak the curve...

 

[ddk]

hm, don't know if you are sarcastic or not.
Just to clarify: I didn't meant to say "C1 looks like film". Just more film-like compared to LR - both with the default settings.
C1's gradation/tonality rather reminds me of a photograph whilst LR (ACR) is a bit flat, midtones are accentuated too much (for my taste).
My first impulse in LR is to tweak the curve...

You can't generalize this Thomas, results in both C1 and Adobe products are very camera dependent and pretty subjective at the end of the day.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

I'm agreeing with you Thomas. C1 has a far more film like curve and colour for skin tones.

 

[Thawley]

Jack says thanks.

 

[archiM44]

Absolutely essential for me is that Adobe LR and ACR handle all proprietary DNG files as such and use xmp files - don't alter anything in the DNG files from M8 M9 and similar.
I have a separate external hard drive for LR3. My original Leica DNG's go into separate archives and only get developed in C1 5.
The development in LR3 using a custom made profile is much improved and compares in all aspects very favorably with the C1 - my profile made in the DNG profile editor starting from the adobe m8 camera profile renders skin tones, reds etc. extremely close to the Capture One result. Only it doesn't leave the DNG as it came out of the camera.
maurice

 

[douglasf13]

I haven't tried C1 V5, but I've used V4 for the last year, and I think LR3 has narrowed the gap quite a bit.