Lightroom/ACR CS3 raw conversion & sharpening

[Martin_Doudoroff]

I thought it might be interesting to graphically illustrate the image sharpening/RAW conversion situation in Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom, which share the same RAW engine.

This 100% crop represents one kind of worst-case scenario, mainly due to the high contrast fine lines at an oblique angle. The image was shot with a Canon 5D.

This first image was converted in Canon's Digital Photo Professional utility without any sharpening during or after the RAW conversion:



Here's the same image converted in Adobe Camera Raw (same as Lightroom), again without any sharpening:



It's clearly inferior, although not drastically so.

Now we look at sharpening in the context of the respective raw converters. (No manual unsharp masking, no Photokit sharpener, nothing but default sharpening levels in both products.)

Here's DPP:



Not too bad, although I could probably do better by with careful unsharp masking or using Photokit Sharpener.

And here's ACR, again with default sharpening:



Doh!

The conclusion I draw from this experiment (which was inspired by a series of frustrating real-life experiences) is that if you do a RAW conversion with an Adobe RAW converter and you're disappointed with how it looks, try again with the manufacturer's RAW converter. And make sure that sharpening features aren't exacerbating the situation.

I've created a Lightroom preset that does nothing but turn off Lightroom's sharpening parameter. I am using that preset by default for the time being.

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Note: the above post pertains to Lightroom 1.0.

The sharpening features of Lightroom were significantly overhauled for Lightroom 1.1

[AndrewRodney]

Kind of an Apples to Oranges comparison using two converters. Turn off sharpening on both, you get different rendering characteristics (and OFF isn't always off in some products). I'd rather see both done in CR or LR with and without their sharpening controls or the same in DPP or C1. Even a slight difference in tone/contrast between two converter's renderings will provide different apparent sharpening views even when set to off.

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Originally Posted by AndrewRodney

Kind of an Apples to Oranges comparison using two converters. Turn off sharpening on both, you get different rendering characteristics (and OFF isn't always off in some products). I'd rather see both done in CR or LR with and without their sharpening controls or the same in DPP or C1. Even a slight difference in tone/contrast between two converter's renderings will provide different apparent sharpening views even when set to off.

I don't understand your comment.

All I was trying to do was illustrate one situation where going back to the manufacturer's raw converter could be advantageous. In this case, Lightroom 1.1's sharpening feature was roasting a particular kind of detail in my image—the corrugated metal paneling—whereas DPP handled it better. My original post provides the same image detail—both with sharpening and without—in both DPP and Lightroom 1.0. (I don't have C1.) Besides needing to redo the test in Lightroom 1.1, what is missing?

[AndrewRodney]

Point is, you can't really evaluate the sharpening off settings between two converters because off isn't always off for one, the rendering controls greatly affect apparent sharpness and at the end of the day, we're not always sure if this is capture sharpening (as LR 1.1 provides) or something else. And 1.1 is vastly different in terms of the sharpening than 1.0.

There's a pretty obvious difference just in contrast/tone between the two renderings above with no sharpening. At the very least, if possible, try to make the contrast and tone as close as possible (due to differences in rendering controls, this may not be possible). Since the DPP image has more apparent contrast, it looks sharper on screen. This could be due to some additional sharpening happening when demosaicing (again, we don't really know).