The new Adobe Lightroom update is said to have better noise reduction and sharpening tools than the previous version. From what I can tell, substantial luminance noise reduction (NR) is being applied to RAW conversions, even when luminance NR is set to zero. The result is a significant loss of fine detail and a "watercolor" appearance, even at low ISOs. If you want your Ricoh GX100 RAW conversions to look like in-camera Panaleica JPEGs, then Lightoom 1.1 may be the one for you. I'm really disappointed in this release. Hopefully I'm missing something here and someone will let me know how to disable this nasty noise reduction.

Addendum: It has been suggested to me that one can disable this noise reduction by switching 'off' the Detail section. I'll try this later and report back.

Addendum #2: That didn't work. I have been trying to adjust settings to overcome this problem, but I have been unable to do so. The best I can do seems to be turning down 'Luminance' noise reduction to '0' and holding back on the 'Detail' slider.

In following two screenshots, Lightroom 1.1 is shown on the right, with sharpening settings at default other than 'Detail' being increased to '100.' Luminance NR is set to '0'. On the left is a conversion using the older Adobe RAW engine with identical sharpening and NR settings. Click on the screenshot to view at full size. Some browsers may require a second click to get to 100% size.

Here is the Digilux 2 ISO 200 screenshot. Note how the character of the noise has been altered (ruined).



Here is the GX100 screenshot. The changes here are more subtle, but there is a definite loss of detail in the Lightroom 1.1 conversion. What concerns me though is not so much detail lost by LR 1.1, but the unnatural way in which the fine detail is rendered. The "unnatural" quality is no doubt worse by cranking up the 'Detail' setting, but the goal in this experiment was to approximate a similar level of detail between the two images.



Any oher thoughts or tips about how to overcome this issue? I can live with mandatory NR in a RAW converter. C1 has this as well. However from my standpoint, Lightroom 1.1 is too heavy-handed in its approach to NR at the minimum setting thereof.

Addendum #3: I've been wondering how this issue seemed to be getting so little attention. Thanks to rstockm for point out this thread in the Adobe forums, which contains posts from a number of photographers regarding this issue.

Below are two full-size GX100 files (about 5MB each) demonstrating the issue. They were both preocessed from RAW using the same default sharpening settings, except the 'Detail' setting was increased to '100' in LR 1.1 to try to match the detail of the other file. If you have a fast internet connection and would like to know more about the issue, try downloading them and comparing them in various regions.

Click here to download the image processed using LR 1.1.
Click here to download the same image processed using the previous ACR engine.

I recommend trying to process the two images linked above to see how they respond to further noise reduction, sharpening, levels/curves, etc. The "problems" (as I view them) become more obvious with any further manipulation.

Featured Comment by anonymous:

I'm seeing exactly what you're seeing, Amin. I saw it the second the first images opened in the new version of Lightroom. I hadn't noticed the problem in ACR 4.1., because I was processing everying in Lightroom 1.0. Yesterday, I ran files through ACR 4.1. and was shocked by the results.

I thought, at first, that only my small sensor work was reflecting the problem, but if I go through the imported Lightroom database there isn't a file that hasn't suffered as a result of the new algorythm - from 6 mp captures, through 10 mp, 12 mp and 16 mp.

Fortunately, I kept version 4 of ACR and version 1 of Lightroom, so with these back online I am able to work on. What shocks me is that the Adobe big guns, Thomas Knoll et al, sound as though they are satisfied with the new look. To me, it's the end of any pretence of photographic veracity for the digital image.

As for the new controls, if someone tells me that "Detail" is to put back in what was taken out, again, I'll lose it. And don't get me started on the "Clarity" slider. Have you seen some of the disasters being produced by cranking that Muvver to 100!? Good grief...

If the results of digital photography had always looked as they do after Lightroom 1.1. processing, I would have walked away from the photography business a decade ago. I am very worried that this 'new look' could become an accepted standard in our work. It's just damn wrong.