At at least one point in the thread the question was how well (or how poorly) the "one click" WB tool in LR could deal with WB error in an 8 bit file. The concensus was "nailing jello to a tree" - but that was in the context of PS, not LR.
If the issue is that the WB adjustment in 8 bit space causes clipping (or can cause more clipping than adjusting in 12/14bit space) then that's fine, but I'm just wondering when saying that the benefits of RAW are better dynamic range/headroom AND the ability to adjust WB after the fact - if the reference to WB is redundant.
I'll play around this weekend with some shots of a Gretag card, solux light and see what happens. For example, RAW, WB based on the dropper, convert to 8 bit tif. Then compare to the same RAW file that's been WB'd based on, say tungsten, convert to 8 bit tif, bring back into Lightroom and re-white balance with the dropper, export to 8 bit tif and compare to the first file.
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I tried to test JPEG vs RAW in Lightroom a real world example that I've struggled with earlier, without being completely satisfied with either alternative.
The lighting conditions in the scene are pretty bad; tungsten and fluorescent, spotlights bounced out of store windows, and it's night time. The JPEG was shot with auto white balance.
[a href=\"http://folk.uio.no/jani/hobbies/photo/test/high+shadow/_MG_8285.JPG]Original JPEG[/url], 2544x1696, ca. 1.75 MB
DNG from raw file, 3504x2336, ca. 7 MB
Feel free to download the above unprocessed files and experiment a bit for yourself for the sake of this discussion; sorry about the different sizes, but I don't shoot full size JPEGs (not that the quality is such that full size would be defendable, anyway).
The wall of the building in the background is painted concrete, I don't recall which colour exactly. The street sign has an almost perfectly white plastic bag over it. The girls' tops were almost perfectly white, the jeans are of course jeans-blue. The concrete stairs were close to neutral grey, the tiles on the ground are perhaps a shade warmer than neutral.
The results by using the WB tool on the JPEG are abysmal; skin tones are either too pink, or other parts of the image are way too blue, or a combination. No matter how I tweak colour temperature or tint, I can't get close to what I get from the raw conversion.
(
my interpretation)
Is that worth it? Not to me.
FWIW, Lightroom makes the raw adjustments significantly easier than ACR ever did, I feel like I have better control of the light curve. But I'd still like to have even more control over the light curve, similar to that of the curves tool in Photoshop, or perhaps something even better, whatever that would be.