RAW Developers - Surprise!

[Lust4Life]

I've been shooting Hasselblad H4D-50 for years, and all the iterations of the H before that.
Using only the Phocus software from Hassie as my RAW developer.

I've now moved to the Nikon D800E and the Zeiss 21mm lens as my default.

Shot my first image a couple of days ago and have been comparing RAW developers with the D800E RAW files.
Dang, quite disappointed in what I'm getting from LR5 or CS6's RAW developers!

Find the images when viewed at 100% have "ghosting" attributes and color fringing that do NOT appear when I
tested the files developed with Capture One or DXO Pro!!

But what is annoying is that ignoring the "ghosting" attributes, LR's Highlights and Shadows sliders produce a better image.

The images here are 100% views and then cropped out of the original file.

Shot on the D800E and the Gitzo tripod - rock solid so no issue with shooter error.
To see the full image, just hit my web site shown in my signature.

Thoughts?

[tuthill]

Looks like the Lightroom version is sharper and has more contrast than the other two examples.  If the processing was comparable you might not see the difference.  On my Macbook Pro the LR version looks better overall but that could be a matter of taste.

[Lust4Life]

Looks like the Lightroom version is sharper and has more contrast than the other two examples.  If the processing was comparable you might not see the difference.  On my Macbook Pro the LR version looks better overall but that could be a matter of taste.

If you look where there are sharp edges, roof line meeting sky/chimney meeting sky, in the TIFF file there is a shadow of the tiles/stone.
Sort of like camera shake but only on the LR5 file.

[tuthill]

If you look where there are sharp edges, roof line meeting sky/chimney meeting sky, in the TIFF file there is a shadow of the tiles/stone.
Sort of like camera shake but only on the LR5 file.

Ok, I see that once I really zoom in.  There's also some pretty funky artifacts on the roof adjacent to the chimney in the DXO jpg.

At normal viewing sizes they all look ok.

[Lust4Life]

What you are seeing in the "cuts" are just at 100%.
Printing large and having to up-res and these problems will then just multiply.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I would suggest that what you see along the chimney is coming from the highlight compression using the highlight slider. It uses a new kind of tone mapping developed (or rather implemented?) by Adobe. This tone mapping is one of the great advantages of Lightroom (ACR), but it can have side effects, like the one you demonstrate.

Another area is that my favorite sharpening, using small radius, amount around 45 and detail at 100 gives haloes around contours. Moving the detail slider left kicks in halo suppression. You can try amount 100 and detail at zero, Tim Parkin has used it for some of his tests, and it seems to work well.

One area I find problematic with LR (on my P45+) is that it produces lot of color aliasing artifacts. What I have found is that RawTherapee gives the least aliasing artifacts of the raw developers I have tested.

With LR, I normally use a gradient filter on sky, see parameters below. Boosting clarity tends to improve clouds and bleak skies benefit from saturation. Reducing exposure about a half stop does not affect treetops to badly. I often change exposure and higlights, but this is a decent default. Next step is that I adjust global exposure and often add higlight reduction. Next step is to move "blacks" so I get some pure blacks and add an amount "shadow".

Both highlights and shadows can do tone mapping/tonal compression and both can cause artifacts. But this is parametric editing so you can always go back.

Enclosed:

Sky gradient filter settings, color artifacts on water surface, same color artifacts after "moiré suppression" in LR5.

The last sample shows all possible color artifacts, for this image I would use C1 or rather RawTherapee.

Best regards
Erik

I've been shooting Hasselblad H4D-50 for years, and all the iterations of the H before that.
Using only the Phocus software from Hassie as my RAW developer.

I've now moved to the Nikon D800E and the Zeiss 21mm lens as my default.

Shot my first image a couple of days ago and have been comparing RAW developers with the D800E RAW files.
Dang, quite disappointed in what I'm getting from LR5 or CS6's RAW developers!

Find the images when viewed at 100% have "ghosting" attributes and color fringing that do NOT appear when I
tested the files developed with Capture One or DXO Pro!!

But what is annoying is that ignoring the "ghosting" attributes, LR's Highlights and Shadows sliders produce a better image.

The images here are 100% views and then cropped out of the original file.

Shot on the D800E and the Gitzo tripod - rock solid so no issue with shooter error.
To see the full image, just hit my web site shown in my signature.

Thoughts?

[Lust4Life]

Erik,

I just went back into LR5 and started from scratch with the image.
It seems the control that presents the "ghosting" with the highest degree of artifact is the "Clarity" slider, and that's one I had turned up fairly high.

Of the 3 Developers I've been testing, I like LR5's finished image and tool set more than Capture One or DxO.  It produces a "richer" image to my eye.
Looks like I'll just have to be more aware of how far I push the sliders, particularly the "Clarity" with the Nikon D800E, than I was with the H4D-50.  
Small price to pay for the reduction in weight, and cost/depreciation is absolute dollars.

Also, the restrictions on the use of Clarity, Highlight and Shadow tends to make me think they are more apparent with O/T a 50MP Hassie system, i.e. Nikon D800E.

I'll run more test this week and see if I confirm that.  We are driving down to Wilmington, NC (coastal area) this week to spend a few days.  We've not been to the coast here in NC so I'm excited to see what we find.  Hope to get a few good shots.

If the Nikon is more sensitive to pushing the sliders to their extremes, then it would seem that using HDR becomes more valuable in scenes with high dynamic range.  For example, take 3 images of .7 stop variant and move sliders far less to produce the image you visualized, then composite them (I use Photomatrix Pro).

PS:  Is that an Erikson sailboat in the bottom image?  Back when they were viable I purchased a new Erikson 38 footer and really found it to be a great sailboat!

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Of the 3 Developers I've been testing, I like LR5's finished image and tool set more than Capture One or DxO.

Hi Jack,

Did you use Capture One's Linear response curve? That will give much better highlight detail than their Film curve.

Cheers,
Bart

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I put a crop showing the full boat here: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/MFDJourney/div/20130909-CF044106.jpg

Raw image can be found here: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/MFDJourney/div/

Best regards
Erik

[Lust4Life]

Hi Jack,

Did you use Capture One's Linear response curve? That will give much better highlight detail than their Film curve.

Cheers,
Bart

No, I didn't try Linear. 
Will give it a try.

Thanks!
Jack

[MichaelEzra]

Give a try to RawTherapee with Highlight Reconstruction set to "Color Propagation". This will recover the greatest tonal detail in clipped highlights.
To get the benefit of of Color Propagation method, Set highlight Recovery to a higher value 100+ and use negative Exposure adjustment.

[pluton]

The Clarity effect in the current Lightroom, while way less artifact-generating than the old Clarity was, is still easily overdone.  Your sample shot uses it better than many do, but it remains one of the shortest paths in Lightroom to the 'overworked digital look'.

[Glenn NK]

The Clarity effect in the current Lightroom, while way less artifact-generating than the old Clarity was, is still easily overdone.  Your sample shot uses it better than many do, but it remains one of the shortest paths in Lightroom to the 'overworked digital look'.

According to Martin Evening (in his LR book), the new clarity slider requires less application (smaller number) than the old one.  I believe this appeared in LR4.