PhilDWedding wrote:
What people don't realise about LR3 is that the colours are customisable. Or, put another way, the colours in LR AREN'T the colours in LR, but the colours of one of the profiles which LR has for your camera.
Yup. Color checker passport was money WELL spent. All my cameras now have essentially perfect color response in RAW. It's a really nice (and easy) product to use.
There is lots of mention above for LR having batch capabilities, but DPP has ways to do batch processes also. You can easily copy any correction work from one image to as many others as you want, which I use a lot to batch correct groups of shots for color and contrast and exposure and sharpness before I go in to tweak individual shots further. And all editing in DPP is non destructive, allow you to go back to the original at any time if you wish, thus avioding needing to save an original copy before editing. And then for output conversion the batch tool can do a fair amount, including resizing, limited renaming of files, and saving in various file types, all as a batch process that can be let run.
I do not have big needs to catalog my shots, so the 5 levels of tagging images with numbers and the new additional star ratings combine to serve me well. And I am very happy with the RAW converter, so most of my initial work and selecting the best images happens in DPP. I can then do more detailed work in another Adobe application when I want to.
And DPP does indeed run reasonably well on my some what older computers. I am actually considering a new machine with 64 bit OS and large RAM to support CS5 with resonable performance, but DPP works well under XP on my laptop for in the field as well as on my current desk top computer.
kevindar wrote:
Is there a way of having presets in dpp the way you can have in LR?
Sure, all the standard presets--normal, landscape, portrait, etc.--are built in. You can also save your fav tweaks as custom Picture Styles and apply to individual images or batch process. I prefer Aperture over LR, ACR (in PS) and DPP. However, they are all just tools and sometimes DPP will nail a difficult conversion at default I just couldn't get right in ACR or Aperture. Not too often but it happens so I keep the three at ready on my Dock.
I use DPP and like it a lot. agree that luminance NR is pretty lousy...but I dont do NR on the RAW file. I usually do it selectively using layer masks on the final resized jpg images. Hence, the lack of good noise reduction in DPP does not bother me. completely understand why that would be a deal breaker for many.
I have a a modified neutral picture style in the camera. I've set DPP to honor that when the files are imported. You can change the default picture styles in DPP as well I think.
If there is a series of images, then its very easy to process one, copy that recipe and paste on all the others. do that all the time.
The quick-check feature is good to tag images into rejects etc. I find it very useful to first round of deletes.
Batch resized conversions can also be done although I dont like that you cannot set a max-height/ max-width.
Some folks dont like the rotation tool...but after getting used to it, I love it now.
I like the sharpening in DPP a lot...have not seen how the other softwares do that. Since I photograph birds mostly, its important to me.
As others have stated, its just one click to go back to the orig settings. At times, especially on older images, I prefer starting all over.
For a free software, DPP has a lot of good stuff. It might not have as many bells and whistles as the others though....but hey, its free. If they can add layer-masks/ graduated ND filter kinda features, it will be much more powerful.
Agreed that 70 bucks is a pretty good deal on LR 3 :-)
I am myself hesitant to move from DPP to LR3, while I have purchased it I am not entirely sure if I will end up using it. The key evaluation area for me would be:
1) How good and easy is cataloging in LR3
2) How close to DPP colors can I get LR3 to behave
3) How much I end up using some of the LR tools like ND grad
We shall see. I will post a summary a few months from now on this thread on my evaluations. If others have done the same, your contributions will be appreciated.
kaustubh_d wrote:
I use DPP and like it a lot. agree that luminance NR is pretty lousy...but I dont do NR on the RAW file. I usually do it selectively using layer masks on the final resized jpg images. Hence, the lack of good noise reduction in DPP does not bother me. completely understand why that would be a deal breaker for many.
I have a a modified neutral picture style in the camera. I've set DPP to honor that when the files are imported. You can change the default picture styles in DPP as well I think.
If there is a series of images, then its very easy to process one, copy that recipe and paste on all the others. do that all the time.
The quick-check feature is good to tag images into rejects etc. I find it very useful to first round of deletes.
Batch resized conversions can also be done although I dont like that you cannot set a max-height/ max-width.
Some folks dont like the rotation tool...but after getting used to it, I love it now.
I like the sharpening in DPP a lot...have not seen how the other softwares do that. Since I photograph birds mostly, its important to me.
As others have stated, its just one click to go back to the orig settings. At times, especially on older images, I prefer starting all over.
For a free software, DPP has a lot of good stuff. It might not have as many bells and whistles as the others though....but hey, its free. If they can add layer-masks/ graduated ND filter kinda features, it will be much more powerful.
Agreed that 70 bucks is a pretty good deal on LR 3 :-) ...Show more →
retrofocus wrote:
I mostly treat every photo differently. DPP is an excellent choice for me, it is my favorite program so far to convert files and do minor tweaking of the RAW files. I find DPP much more intuitive to use than LR.
Lightroom is not just a batch processor, images can be processed individually without any automation.
Sharpening
The sharpening is superior to Phase One, DPP or View NX. It is based on work by the late Bruce Fraser who developed Pixel genius Sharpener. Lightrooms sharpening works on luminosity with the ability (on the fly) to restrict sharpening to the edges - this used to take a soup mix of several layers and tricks in Photoshop to achieve this! It also offers a mild form of deconvolution sharpening (confirmed by Eric Chan, Lightroom technician at Adobe), by turning up the detail slider.
Noise Reduction
Powerful tool, especially colour component.
Print Module
Astonishingly good, powerful, presets stick (blessing) and breeze to use. Ability to take developed RAW image straight into Lightroom Print Module and resize (if necessary) for output should not be overlooked. All print tools in one shop - select printer output profile and specifically designed output sharpening for gloss or matt surfaces to counter the ink spreading on the page. The print module uses a form of hybrid bicubic algorithms for resizing (auto based on image size) and interpolates between Bicubic and Bicubic Smoother upsampling and Bicubic and Bicubic Sharper for downsampling - algorithms provide slightly superior image quality to Photoshops offerings.
Colours
To get 'accurate' colour out of Lightroom it's 'essential' to generate a camera profile using the likes of a Colorchecker. For slightly less accurate colour there are Adobe generic profiles and profiles created by them to mimick the camera manufacturers offerings, neutral, standard, vivid, etc.
I am barely scratching the surface with the above info.
dennisgibson wrote:
Any LR3 tutorials (videos or articles) people would recommend?
Thanks for any help!
I am waiting for my copy of LR3 from B&H and in the mean time, I have been watching AJ Wood on youtube. Real simple stuff, but a great start, especially quick keys and what not.
leftymgp wrote:
I will add that LR is a bit resource hungry. I was trying to use it on my 6 year old laptop for a long time and it was almost unbearably slow.
I had been looking for an excuse to buy a new machine so LR kind of became my excuse. It's running much much smoother with the new machine, but I can still tell it's a bit of a pig.
