Lightroom 2.7 NR Issues

[John R Smith]

This is a bit of a tech topic, but so far I can’t find an authoritative answer to it. It would seem, from my experience of recently upgrading from Lr 2.6 to Lr 2.7, and also from testing the 30-day trial of the Lr 3.0 release, that there is some confusion (at least in my mind) over the new raw pipeline shared with ACR and exactly what it does or does not do.

I think this may be partly due to the fact that 2.7 kind of slipped by pretty much under the radar without much comment here, because everyone had their attention on the imminent release of Lr 3. Anyhow, it would seem that 2.7 has exactly the same new demosaicing algorithm as Lr 3, but without the remainder of the the PV 2010 raw pipeline. There is no mention of this in the release notes pdf for 2.7, in fact I discovered it quite by chance when browsing Victoria Bampton’s site. So 2.7 is actually rather more than just a dot upgrade with support for a few new cameras. But there seems to be even more to it than this.

Last night I thought I would compare TIFFs which I had exported in Lr 2.6 with the same image RAW files in 2.7, which have exactly the same develop settings as when they were exported. I wanted to see if the demosaicing was really much different, and what exact effect that might have. I did this by printing an enlarged crop from each file of the same image area, to the same degree of enlargement.

There was a noticeable and quite unexpected difference. The RAW image in 2.7 has a lot more noise in the shadow areas than the file I produced in 2.6. The correctly exposed areas also have a very slightly better rendering of fine detail. But it looks as if 2.7 applies considerably less noise reduction by default than 2.6, which means that all the images I previously edited before upgrading will need re-visiting with new NR edits (if I want to print from the RAW rather than the TIFF). Again, I see no mention of this in the 2.7 release notes.

Would anyone care to comment, or would other 2.7 users like to check their files?

John

[madmanchan]

Correct. LR 2.7 has a different demosaic method compared to LR 2.6, which results in the differences you're seeing. The reason is that LR 2.7 uses the same demosaic method as Camera Raw 5.7 (so that the two will produce the same results), and CR 5.7 uses the same new method as LR 3.0 (so that LR 3 users can use Edit-In-PS with CS4 and get the same results).

[John R Smith]

OK. Thank you, Eric.

That is, it seems to me, a little bit of a bombshell for us Lr 2 users. We had all known for some time that there would be specific issues migrating legacy RAW edits to Lr 3, and everyone has been able to weigh up the pros and cons of making that particular upgrade. But I would rather have expected the upgrades through the various versions of Lr 2x to be seamless and without any legacy snagettinos. Especially when there is no mention of this in the Adobe Release Notes.

The problem seems to be, that in Lr 2.7 you have the increased noise in the shadows of the PV 2010 pipeline, but without the more sophisticated NR tools of Lr 3 to deal with it.

John

[John R Smith]

Er, I kind of hesitate to ask this, as I am sure that people will think me strange, but anyhow -

If I want to go backwards from Lr 2.7 to 2.6, what is the best way to do it? I don't want to get in a real mess where nothing works properly anymore. Should I try re-installing 2.6 over the top of 2.7 (and would it let me?), or should I completely uninstall Lr and re-install 2.6 from scratch?

Running Win 7 64 bit.

John

[Schewe]

The problem seems to be, that in Lr 2.7 you have the increased noise in the shadows of the PV 2010 pipeline, but without the more sophisticated NR tools of Lr 3 to deal with it.

The noise reduction in the demosiacing has been removed in 2.7 so you need to add an amount similar to what was removed. If you add 15-20 + luminance noise reduction (that's adding 15-20 to whatever you've already got there) you'll end up with essentially the same image rendering in 2.7 as you would have gotten in 2.6.

[John R Smith]

The noise reduction in the demosiacing has been removed in 2.7 so you need to add an amount similar to what was removed. If you add 15-20 + luminance noise reduction (that's adding 15-20 to whatever you've already got there) you'll end up with essentially the same image rendering in 2.7 as you would have gotten in 2.6.

Thanks, Jeff. I don't normally use any luminance NR at all. So I shall try 15 or so luminance NR as a default and see what happens. I could add that to my presets, I suppose?

John

[John R Smith]

Right. I am not quite sure why it always seems to be me that encounters these snags, I suppose I should just alter my attitude and use stuff without being so picky. But anyhow -

After another session of test prints over the weekend, Jeff's advice turns out to be spot-on. In the specific areas of my test images where I can see this problem, adding +20 of luminance NR does the trick perfectly. The prints then match as near as dammit between Lr 2.6 and 2.7. Not quite exactly, but near enough.

So that is rather interesting. It means that all versions of Lr 2x up to and including 2.6 applied some luminance noise reduction by default, and you could not alter that. Which is probably why I could never seem to see any luminance noise in my Hasselblad 3FR files, except in very specific circumstances (the shadowed side of a white boat, for example). Now then, if I stick with 2.7 (or upgrade to 3.0) that does mean that at least I have the choice. For files which don't actually need any luminance NR I don't have to have it applied by default and thereby lose at least a bit of image quality. And I have plenty of landscape shots where luminance noise is just not an issue, but fine detail is highly desirable.

Swings and roundabouts . . .

John

[madmanchan]

Hi John, if you wish to go back to 2.6, you can just download and run the 2.6 installer. The only case where this wouldn't work is if you happen to have a new camera that was newly supported in LR 2.7. But otherwise you could just use 2.6 if you wanted.

But yes in general there is now some more control with regards to detail preservation & noise removal. The LR 3 changes in demosaic, sharpening, and NR were designed to work together (i.e., the processing is now better integrated than previously).