The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

Sony A7r / LR VS. C1

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I recently bought LR a couple weeks ago for mainly no support on my A77II and A6000 although about 20 minutes ago I just updated C1 to 7.2.3 and it does support the A6000 but still none for the A77II. Given I have a huge job in two weeks I don't expect to see another update to support it in C1. But besides all that I am curious how color is getting handled between the programs and color settings. I shot this image about two months ago in the studio and I was shooting full length but decided to grab a quick headshot as well. So with a Passport color checker I WB off the second grey patch in both programs . Added my sharpening and all the stuff I normally do to get a final. The only tweaks I did not do is tweak any color as i want to see what the profiles do and the program does. This is basically a default test with color but nothing else as I just want to see what the colors are between them. I find this pretty interesting as i did another test internally here of a similar type of image. Now you can see what you may like or may not like but to me C1 looks a little on the yellow side and even though LR standard looks a touch magenta I kind of like it. Neutral to me maybe color wise perfect who knows but looks very boring and camera standard I just don't like.

Now here is the good news both programs look far better side by side than the last go round I had with LR2 which I threw off my system as fast as i could throw up it was that bad. Today looks like Adobe has made some real progress and has some features that are very nice as well. I don't use catalogs so that feature is worthless to me so I am basing my opinion purely on the raw processing.

Right now C1 is worthless to my A77II so I need to use LR for now and this time around I am not throwing it off my system as I kind of like the program and may just completely switch even though I have been a big C1 fan but like anything else in photography i have zero loyalty to brand, whatever works best is what i will use. Its just that simple, no one pays me a dime for any of this stuff except real clients so i can do whatever my heart wants too.

Anyway something to look at and sure I can tweak anything to look the same , different or improve upon any of the color. This is just whats coming out of the profiles.







 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
What i want to do is actually calibrate my cameras all three of them in LR and than work from there. But until i get that task done I will just use most likely Adobe standard and tweak from there. My C1 file is a touch over sharpened for a human so i would normally cut that back
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Thats what I have been seeing as well Ben did not want to say that initially as wanted folks to see this first but it looks blotchy to me as well and with a yellow greenish look
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
adding a little airbrushing to it to smooth things down further it becomes a very deleiverble image

 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Well hopefully this is useful for some folks but for skin I may have found the answer in LR with my A7r and I am going to assume my A77II and A6000 would be similar as well.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
BTW on the internal test I did before with a model even a darker skin model this seemed to be the case as well.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
I can send you my A7r preset as an XMP file for LR, you will be able to see what I did in both the camera calibration, curve and HSL tab, to calm the reds somewhat and bring the skin to how I like it. Let me know if you're interested.
 

iiiNelson

Well-known member
Guy you should also try out DXO Optics 9.5 as it can integrate directly into your LR5 workflow by operating as a plugin. That's really the beauty of Adobe products is the sheer amount of plugins available to take it over the top of other RAW converters without having to learn a new program.

I'm doing a few tests on the demo version of DXO OP myself as it's discounted until July 15th. I'm still on the fence about the value of it for me but if you want to get that extra last bit of performance out of your lenses it may be worth it I think. They also have a much larger lens database and the convenience of automatically working lens defects out if it's in the database to include CA, moire, and distortion.
 

Annna T

Active member
Guy you should also try out DXO Optics 9.5 as it can integrate directly into your LR5 workflow by operating as a plugin. That's really the beauty of Adobe products is the sheer amount of plugins available to take it over the top of other RAW converters without having to learn a new program.

I'm doing a few tests on the demo version of DXO OP myself as it's discounted until July 15th. I'm still on the fence about the value of it for me but if you want to get that extra last bit of performance out of your lenses it may be worth it I think. They also have a much larger lens database and the convenience of automatically working lens defects out if it's in the database to include CA, moire, and distortion.
Mmm.. DXO is another soft to learn and it is only partly integrated in LR : you can select a picture in LR, but it will be transferred without correction and once you have made your correction in DXO, you have to reexport a TIF; both are rather concurrent converters. It makes sense if you manage your pictures data base in LR, but you prefer DXO as a raw converter.

I have both softwares but I find it difficult to learn another converter. It would be just as much work as going from C1 to LR : you have to understand a new soft and once you understand how it works, you have to work to find your preferred settings. And you have to convert your raws to tifs if you want to output them from LR. The sidecar files are mutually incompatible.

I like the sharpness and colors of DXO usually better than LR. One of the big advantage of DXO are the perspective corrections, which were unique for a long time, but nowadays I tend to prefer LR5. One of the strengths of DXO is the sharpness algorithm adapted to each sensor/lens pairs, provided they have one for what you are using.
 

iiiNelson

Well-known member
Mmm.. DXO is another soft to learn and it is only partly integrated in LR : you can select a picture in LR, but it will be transferred without correction and once you have made your correction in DXO, you have to reexport a TIF; both are rather concurrent converters. It makes sense if you manage your pictures data base in LR, but you prefer DXO as a raw converter.

I have both softwares but I find it difficult to learn another converter. It would be just as much work as going from C1 to LR : you have to understand a new soft and once you understand how it works, you have to work to find your preferred settings. And you have to convert your raws to tifs if you want to output them from LR. The sidecar files are mutually incompatible.

I like the sharpness and colors of DXO usually better than LR. One of the big advantage of DXO are the perspective corrections, which were unique for a long time, but nowadays I tend to prefer LR5. One of the strengths of DXO is the sharpness algorithm adapted to each sensor/lens pairs, provided they have one for what you are using.
You can just apply improved lens correction and noise reduction in DXO then reimport as a DNG to complete edits in LR as well though. Well that's what I've done in some testing of a few images playing around in it.
 

Annna T

Active member
You can just apply improved lens correction and noise reduction in DXO then reimport as a DNG to complete edits in LR as well though. Well that's what I've done in some testing of a few images playing around in it.
That dng should contain the tif (although probably a compressed tif). I don't think it is still a raw format, so whether you are using a tif or a dng to achieve your further adjustments in LR, that shouldn't make any difference. It would be interesting to test.
 

iiiNelson

Well-known member
That dng should contain the tif (although probably a compressed tif). I don't think it is still a raw format, so whether you are using a tif or a dng to achieve your further adjustments in LR, that shouldn't make any difference. It would be interesting to test.
Yeah wheni exported back to Lightroom it provided both options but DXO recommended to export as DNG if you plan on doing editing adjustments in Lightroom and TIF if planning on doing primary editing in DXO.
 
Top