Lightroom 5.3 released

[MikeEvangelist]

Downloading now - https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_lightroom

I'm anxious to see if they have improved A7 processing.

 

[tashley]

First look it seems to me as if the orange peel issue remains unchanged (I can't say it bothers me too much) but that the 'jaggies' may be better. I am going to do a proper side by side test.

 

[MikeEvangelist]

So far, the results (for A7R files) seem identical to me. OTOH, I didn't have any particular complaints with the RC version.

 

[tashley]

I did some extensive testing with files of different sorts and I see no difference. My early optimism was based on Retina display, where the jags are hard to see. On a 100dpi monitor, they are there and they are unchanged, as is the look of the Orange peel. Neither is a biggie for me, but I can see that some people might find them bothersome.

 

[Ron Pfister]

Tim, after reading about Sony's cRAW compression, I believe both types of artifacts are due to that, and only a truly lossless compression would alleviate them.

 

[tashley]

You're probably right. My reading didn't lead me to that conclusion but there is clearly something different with the a7R versus D800E and the pipeline is the main suspect. My understanding was that the compression process would not affect normal scenes at all but...

 

[hcubell]

FWIW, the image processing pipeline for a new camera is always a work in process. There are firmware modifications and improvements in the way the raw converters handle the files. I vaguely remember a while back that one of the Phase One backs had some really weird stuff going on in the shadows when it was first released, and it was later corrected. The P45, I think.