Lightroom 6 improvements?

[FabX]

Hello,

is there any sign or news of improvements in LR6 regardnig X-trans treatment? I think the answer is NO, being this a pseudo-upgrade...but never say never....

[Maurice]

It is indeed NO.

[OLNEY]

Absolutely none

[hrk]

nope nada.

[flysurfer]

To be honest, I am quite happy with my LR performance. I even made it part of my workshops, because I started to feel stupid with everybody telling me that LR was so bad.

 

Here's what we do: My delegates bring me difficult RAWs that we process in Iridient Developer (which is supposed to be really good) and Lightroom (which is supposed to be really bad). Then we compare at 100%, 200%, 300%, 400%... and in the end, the delegates always agree that the LR processing shows just as much (or even more) detail than the Iridient 3 version. It just took a little bit more effort.

[x-tc]

Maybe an E-book is in order Rico. Sounds like it would sell as there are no shortage of people looking to make LR look "as" good as most of its competitors.

[flysurfer]

Maybe an E-book is in order Rico. Sounds like it would sell as there are no shortage of people looking to make LR look "as" good as most of its competitors.

 

We can certainly make it part of the workshop in Santa Barbara. The topic has also been covered in forums and blogs, but in the end, folks always want to hand out (or receive) recipes and presets, which I find unsound. I guess some bloggers are even in the business of selling Lightroom presets. Never in my life have I used a LR sharpening preset, and to me, that's the first step towards successful X-trans sharpening. Use those 4 sliders to sharpen the actual image at hand. Heck, even Fuji uses different sharpening parameters in their JPEG engine for Provia and Pro Neg. Hi. It's easy to spot, but I have never seen it mentioned anywhere.

[olli]

To be honest, I am quite happy with my LR performance. I even made it part of my workshops, because I started to feel stupid with everybody telling me that LR was so bad.

 

Here's what we do: My delegates bring me difficult RAWs that we process in Iridient Developer (which supposed to be really good) and Lightroom (which is supposed to be really bad). Then we compare at 100%, 200%, 300%, 400%... and in the end, the delegates always agree that the LR processing shows just as much (or even more) detail than the Iridient 3 version. It just took a little bit more effort.

 

Thank you for some common sense on this most wearisome of topics.

[Ektachrome]

I was only this morning comparing demosaicing differences between LR and Irident, trying all sorts of parameters in LR for the image at hand (a landscape with finely detailed grass, foliage and berries, I don't actually find this to be much of an issue oersonally on portraits or urban cityscapes, etc.). No such fiddling required in Irident as it looked better straight away, and got even sharper with some small tweaks. No matter what I try, including 100% detail method, or any other I've come across, I still can't get over the slight smudging or waxiness in certain types of texture in LR. I now have to try and incorporate Irident, or C1 into my Lightroom workflow somehow (because I prefer LR in practically every other way and my whole catalogue resides there). Now that really is wearisome.

[pluton]

I have tentatively concluded two things:

1.  That Lightroom gives a result that is slightly lower in resolution than the "better" raw converters, in my case Photo Ninja.  At any "normal" inkjet print size, such as 10x15 inches, this resolution difference is not noticeable when viewing the print.   And...

2.  That the X-trans sensor may have a slightly lower resolution in the green area of the spectrum.  This hypothesis will be tested if I can find my old tri-color Kodak glass filters. 

[x-tc]

 

I was only this morning comparing demosaicing differences between LR and Irident, trying all sorts of parameters in LR for the image at hand (a landscape with finely detailed grass, foliage and berries, I don't actually find this to be much of an issue oersonally on portraits or urban cityscapes, etc.). No such fiddling required in Irident as it looked better straight away, and got even sharper with some small tweaks. No matter what I try, including 100% detail method, or any other I've come across, I still can't get over the slight smudging or waxiness in certain types of texture in LR. I now have to try and incorporate Irident, or C1 into my Lightroom workflow somehow (because I prefer LR in practically every other way and my whole catalogue resides there). Now that really is wearisome.

My experience is aligned with yours. This is why I suggested to Rico to work on an e-book to share his X-pretise with the struggling masses.

[stenrasmussen]

Same here. In the post about PN I tried to get LR on par with ID - without success.

[Maurice]

My experience is aligned with yours. This is why I suggested to Rico to work on an e-book to share his X-pretise with the struggling masses.

 

How is that going to help. He doesn't have some kind of all powerful X-pertise. It is only his opinion that Lightroom is perfectly 'fine'. And i agree that for most people it can be, but i'm not looking for something that's 'usable', i want it to be better than usable, i want it to be great. And this is not some kind of unreasonable request, everybody else is already doing it with regular Bayer.

 

With sharpening you cannot get out what isn't there, you're stuck with the processors demosaicing engine. So when it doesn't 'understand' the file correctly then you can push and pull on it to hide that fact as best you can, and that will be fine in most cases. But you cannot fix what is out of your control, the sensor, and software's demosaicing engine. Imagine being a cook that has to make a dish where one of the ingredients is just past its expiration date. I'm sure a good cook can make something of it to hide that fact, but it's never going to be perfect and there's nothing you can do about it but use something else!

 

Personally in my opinion it is xtrans itself that is at fault. It was supposed to make a OLPF redundant to maximize detail and remove moire by its color filter layout. But instead it only creates its own artifacts with either false detail and color or loss of it, and as many tests have proven the true iso values don't match other camera systems. Even compensated there appears to be less noise, but indeed it only appears as such because the actual noise is obscured by the irregular detail retention. While some converters manage to deal with that better than others, it never actually looks better than a equivalent photo in the same converter. Even from the X-A1 that seems to have the same old sensor underneath a standard bayer filter.

 

While some of all this can actually be beneficial for JPGs, for Raw shooters there are only problems and not one single benefit. So if you ask me i wish they would just quit this nonsense already.

[x-tc]

How is that going to help. He doesn't have some kind of all powerful X-pertise. It is only his opinion that Lightroom is perfectly 'fine'. 

Hard to tell, I have not seen what he can do.  I give him the benefit of the doubt until I see something.  If he believes his claim, which I believe he honestly does, then I'd like to see him publish something to prove it using a photo or two as an example. I think it would be quite eye opening to the X-trans community as a whole and educational.  It would certainly give pause to all of the LR naysayers and put the debate to rest.  

[flysurfer]

Been there, done that, as there have been plenty of threads about this in several forums. Not to mention my RAW converter blind test in XPC, where LR suddenly wasn't the worst in the list, but actually scored quite nicely (with a green grass picture!). I'm long over proving anything to anybody (why would I, I'm not the one who's selling presets), but I'll happily convert problematic RAWs from users in our workshops with different converters if they ask me to do so. There, we can see that every converter has issues with different things. For example, Lightroom sometimes has a color issue in the orange department. In the end, every converter is a compromise, and it can be interesting to spend an hour or two comparing different aspects using actual images.

[flysurfer]

Hard to tell, I have not seen what he can do.

 

You know that I'm right here, don't you?

Ooops, I mean: He certainly knows that I'm right here.

[x-tc]

You know that I'm right here, don't you?

Ooops, I mean: He certainly knows that I'm right here.

Just responding in kind with grammar to Maurice's posted who referred to you in third person with "he". Trying to defend you here Rico.

Do you have a link to your analysis you refer to above?

[flysurfer]

Just responding in kind with grammar to Maurice's posted who referred to you in third person with "he". Trying to defend you here Rico.

 

No worries, I have already given up on Maurice and his "Vulcanian" non-manners.

Anyway, no need to defend me, if I don't feel comfortable here, I'll just leave or open X forum number 5 myself.

[x-tc]

I'm seeing a pattern here. It's happened 4 times before? Why do you feel you want to leave?

[flysurfer]

I'm seeing a pattern here. It's happened 4 times before? Why do you feel you want to leave?

 

Haven't left any X forum so far, but a single one (that rules them all) would be more practical than 4 X forums with all the X-posting (pun intended), don't you think?

[Maurice]

Guys really, are we going to be stuck on the word He here. I was replying to x-tc so i said He, big deal. if you want to be called Rico then don't hide behind 'flysurfer'.

Now i try not to use Rico in fact so that other people who are not aware of His greatness don't have to start looking for who the heck i'm referring to.

 

And again. Is it just impossible to have an opinion that is different from yours .. Rico, without you taking offense? Nothing wrong with your view, just isn't mine.

This is what we do in forums, discuss our differences in taste and workflow. There is not ONE right way, though there are facts, but we deal with them in different ways.

 

 

Been there, done that, as there have been plenty of threads about this in several forums. Not to mention my RAW converter blind test in XPC, where LR suddenly wasn't the worst in the list, but actually scored quite nicely (with a green grass picture!).

 

Exactly, hence my earlier comment.

[x-tc]

Haven't left any X forum so far, but a single one (that rules them all) would be more practical than 4 X forums with all the X-posting (pun untended), don't you think?

In an ideal world. Yes.

[flysurfer]

 

And again. Is it just impossible to have an opinion that is different from yours .. Rico, without you taking offense? Nothing wrong with your view, just isn't mine.

 

I'm not taking offense with your opinions, only with the way you voice them.

 

Of course I have no idea why you are even using Fuji cameras if you fundamentally don't like X-Trans and blame it for pretty everything that (in your opinion) seems to go wrong in your workflow.

 

 

 

Personally in my opinion it is xtrans itself that is at fault.

[Maurice]

Yes you are taking offense. They are not personal attacks, it only becomes as such to you because you are taking offense. I am simply stating things as they are, indeed without sugarcoating it, and if that is too harsh for your feelings then probably that is because there is some truth to it.

 

Nothing is going wrong with my workflow, it simply would be better without xtrans - for everybody. And you know as well as anybody that a sensor does not make the system. Now you're just grasping.

 

Nevertheless, the sensor is 'fine' as we have previously established.

[flysurfer]

Now you're just grasping.

 

Nope, just quoting and applying logic:

 

 

 

He doesn't have some kind of all powerful X-pertise. It is only his opinion that Lightroom is perfectly 'fine'. And i agree that for most people it can be, but i'm not looking for something that's 'usable', i want it to be better than usable, i want it to be great. And this is not some kind of unreasonable request, everybody else is already doing it with regular Bayer.

 

To revisit your food comparison, you consider yourself a gourmet above the fastfood crowd. You have higher standards, and X-Trans doesn't meet them. X-Trans is at fault for getting only "usable" results, and you want something better.

 

I think there's nothing wrong with that, but if your IQ standards are indeed higher than mine (or "most people" – basically, you are saying most people can't see or don't care about the difference), and X-Trans is to blame for Fuji not meeting these higher standards, you should look somewhere else (assuming that you aren't inclined to masochism). Plenty of choices out there, because except for Sigma, pretty much everybody is using Bayer.

 

It's contradictory to say that your IQ standards are higher than most others and at the same time saying that IQ isn't that important in the whole picture of things and that the X-Trans sensor is fine. Especially since you also say that X-Trans is at fault.

 

So yep, I'm puzzled.