Lightroom noise & sharpening

[Abitconfused]

This module in Lightroom has Sharpening on top, then Luminance noise reduction, lastly Color noise reduction. However, reducing color noise better reveals luminance noise and we, generally, sharpen after noise reduction. So, shouldn’t the order be reversed with Color noise reduction on top? In fact, since about 10 worth of Luminance may well aid any image, why not set Sharpening to zero default until noise reduction has been done?

[pnodrog]

I start my develop by applying a suitable preset. Subsequently I only adjust settings if they require tweaking and I am not concerned about the order but the most obvious corrections will probably be done first. However the final sharpen tweak is one of the last things to be done and will vary according to use of image. When using the adjustment brush etc. I work on the whole of the photograph so I can change my mind about cropping or apply a different crop for some other use.

[Manfred M]

I'll go a step further and say that we know the order of the menu layout, but do not know the order that the various operations are actually applied. which are not necessarily the same.

[DanK]

In Lightroom, the order in which edits are entered does not control the order in which the software applies the stacked editing commands.


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[Shadowman]

One editing guru (S. Kelby) suggested that the LR workflow could be easily followed top of panel to bottom, another editing guru (V. Versace) says that usually sharpening should be applied before noise reduction because NR reduces contrast and then you end up trying to add contrast back with sharpening. I've tried both methods and each works depending on the type of image being processed.

[Manfred M]

One editing guru (S. Kelby) suggested that the LR workflow could be easily followed top of panel to bottom, another editing guru (V. Versace) says that usually sharpening should be applied before noise reduction because NR reduces contrast and then you end up trying to add contrast back with sharpening. I've tried both methods and each works depending on the type of image being processed.

Both authorities may be saying exactly the same thing, as we have no idea as to what order Lightroom processes and image. Unless you have some inside knowledge of how the code was written, there is no way to know.

Kelby and others have been giving that advice for years and I find the advice to be wrong-headed. In my work flow, the first thing I apply are the lens profile correction and chromatic aberration correction. The profile correction generally brightens up the image by reducing vignetting, so why would anyone make the other adjustments that affect brightness before that has been done are just going to go back and change their settings (if they know what they are doing). Frankly, I rarely, if ever, touch the contrast, exposure, vibrance and saturation sliders in ACR / Lightroom.

The noise reduction first and sharpening second is definitely where a lot of people are pointing to and there is an underlying logic that does make sense. There are some mavericks out there that suggest sharpening first and then doing noise reduction. I suspect that there are cases where this method might give superior results under some circumstances, but in the long run, I suspect the main stream approach is more likely to work. Frankly, with reasonably modern cameras, properly exposed images, even at high ISO settings are remarkably noise free,

[george013]

Both authorities may be saying exactly the same thing, as we have no idea as to what order Lightroom processes and image. Unless you have some inside knowledge of how the code was written, there is no way to know.

Kelby and others have been giving that advice for years and I find the advice to be wrong-headed. In my work flow, the first thing I apply are the lens profile correction and chromatic aberration correction. The profile correction generally brightens up the image by reducing vignetting, so why would anyone make the other adjustments that affect brightness before that has been done are just going to go back and change their settings (if they know what they are doing). Frankly, I rarely, if ever, touch the contrast, exposure, vibrance and saturation sliders in ACR / Lightroom.

The noise reduction first and sharpening second is definitely where a lot of people are pointing to and there is an underlying logic that does make sense. There are some mavericks out there that suggest sharpening first and then doing noise reduction. I suspect that there are cases where this method might give superior results under some circumstances, but in the long run, I suspect the main stream approach is more likely to work. Frankly, with reasonably modern cameras, properly exposed images, even at high ISO settings are remarkably noise free,

I do remember posts from you where you stated that the sequence in a parametric editor is of no influence. Lightroom would determine the sequence of the edits. A strange idea and contradictionary with what is stated now.
Editing is done on the rgb rasterimage you're looking at. Yes, there we're again with that rgb raster image.

Edit 2 images from scratch with 2 or 3 edits. Compare the xmp file, it's a text file, and look how the edits are written away.

George

[davidedric]

I do remember posts from you where you stated that the sequence in a parametric editor is of no influence. Lightroom would determine the sequence of the edits. A strange idea and contradictionary with what is stated now.
Editing is done on the rgb rasterimage you're looking at. Yes, there we're again with that rgb raster image.

Edit 2 images from scratch with 2 or 3 edits. Compare the xmp file, it's a text file, and look how the edits are written away.

George

I think it is well established that Lightroom "decides" the order of implementation of edits. The order in which an xmp is written (which in Lightroom is actually irrelevant anyway, since the Catalogue is the driver) tells you nothing about how they will be interpreted.

I don't understand your point about the raster image. AFAIK when an edit is made, the RAW is reinterpreted applying all the edits so far made, and the result displayed using Lightroom's usual rendering (this also explains the performance issues when a large number of edits have been made).

Dave

[george013]

I think it is well established that Lightroom "decides" the order of implementation of edits. The order in which an xmp is written (which in Lightroom is actually irrelevant anyway, since the Catalogue is the driver) tells you nothing about how they will be interpreted.

I don't understand your point about the raster image. AFAIK when an edit is made, the RAW is reinterpreted applying all the edits so far made, and the result displayed using Lightroom's usual rendering (this also explains the performance issues when a large number of edits have been made).

Dave

And that's something I don't believe. In the converters I've seen only the exposure correction and the white balance are done on the raw file, the others are done on the rgb raster image, the image you see.
I think that's the underlying thought of the posts here, in what sequence do you do your editing. If that doesn't matter, than the answer could be something like 'just doe something, it doesn't matter'.

I think when you edit a jpg in the converter you will see what tools are not available for rgb images, they are only available for raw images.

Could you tell me where that's based on

I think it is well established that Lightroom "decides" the order of implementation of edits.

George

[george013]

Not having lightroom I had to search for examples.
From https://digital-photography-school.c...-history-tips/

You can wind back the history of changes that you’ve made to the image by clicking any of the entries in the History panel. Until you make further changes to the image you won’t lose the later history states if you click on an earlier one. So you can click from one history state to the next to view the image at that point in the editing process.

If you click to view an image at an earlier stage of its editing and then start making changes to the image you will lose all the later history states – they’ll be replaced by your new edits.

Raw Therapee has an history tool too where it works exactly the same. I don't know about DxO, can't find it.
When I remember well, the old capturenx had a preference when going back in history one had a choice to either get lost of the later edits or do a recalculation on all the edits. Sequence matters.

George

[Manfred M]

In the converters I've seen only the exposure correction and the white balance are done on the raw file

George - there is hope for your understanding on how raw converters work yet.

While I wouldn't word it quite the way you do, but the way you describe both exposure correction and white balance occurring on the raw data is correct and is how a raw convertor performs that functionality. If you extend this same logic to all of the other functions performed by the raw convertor / parametric editor, you would have a very good basic description as to how this type of software works. There is no raster image anywhere other than when you see the image on the screen.

Every time a new adjustment is made in the parametric editor, all the raw data is run through each previous step and the output is sent to the video output software / hardware. The person making the edits has no control over the order that Lightroom (or any other parametric editor for that matter) performs those instructions.

I think when you edit a jpg in the converter you will see what tools are not available for rgb images, they are only available for raw images.

The reason those functions are disabled is that they are meaningless when they are performed on an image file, like a JPEG. Functions that are disabled include selecting the colour space (done at the time an image file is created) and assigning a colour temperature / white balance (also done at the time the image file is created.

I do remember posts from you where you stated that the sequence in a parametric editor is of no influence. Lightroom would determine the sequence of the edits. A strange idea and contradictionary with what is stated now.
Editing is done on the rgb rasterimage you're looking at. Yes, there we're again with that rgb raster image.

The two concepts are completely consistent George if you look at the first point I wrote as to how parametric editors work on the data.

[DanK]

And that's something I don't believe. In the converters I've seen only the exposure correction and the white balance are done on the raw file, the others are done on the rgb raster image, the image you see.
I think that's the underlying thought of the posts here, in what sequence do you do your editing. If that doesn't matter, than the answer could be something like 'just doe something, it doesn't matter

George,

You have posted before that you have not used Lightroom, and from what you post, I assume you haven't read much by the developers. Until you have, you are just speculating, and when you speculate incorrectly, as in this case, you can mislead people who read this forum to learn how software works.

I haven't taken the time to find the earlier threads--I find the search function in the forum hard to use effectively--but the issue of the order of edits in Lightroom has been discussed in detail in the past. Manfred is correct: the order the user adds edits is NOT the order in which the software applies them. If I recall correctly, one of the earlier threads included a quote from one of the developers explaining this. I illustrated it concretely by applying a series of severe edits to create one JPEG and then reversing the entire series of commands to create another. The two JPEGs, which I posted on this forum, were not distinguishable.

So the answer is in fact "do something, the order doesn't matter." The order of edits in the develop panel reflects the developers' notion of the sequence most people would follow, but you needn't do that. For example, the lens profile adjustment is near the bottom (I believe in part because of the complexity of the math involved and hence the possibility of slowing down older computers), but it makes no sense to me to apply that AFTER doing local and global tonality adjustments, given that the profile adjustment corrects for vignetting. In fact, I have the lens profile correction added to my default import settings.

Dan

[george013]

George,

You have posted before that you have not used Lightroom, and from what you post, I assume you haven't read much by the developers. Until you have, you are just speculating, and when you speculate incorrectly, as in this case, you can mislead people who read this forum to learn how software works.

I haven't taken the time to find the earlier threads--I find the search function in the forum hard to use effectively--but the issue of the order of edits in Lightroom has been discussed in detail in the past. Manfred is correct: the order the user adds edits is NOT the order in which the software applies them. If I recall correctly, one of the earlier threads included a quote from one of the developers explaining this. I illustrated it concretely by applying a series of severe edits to create one JPEG and then reversing the entire series of commands to create another. The two JPEGs, which I posted on this forum, were not distinguishable.

So the answer is in fact "do something, the order doesn't matter." The order of edits in the develop panel reflects the developers' notion of the sequence most people would follow, but you needn't do that. For example, the lens profile adjustment is near the bottom (I believe in part because of the complexity of the math involved and hence the possibility of slowing down older computers), but it makes no sense to me to apply that AFTER doing local and global tonality adjustments, given that the profile adjustment corrects for vignetting. In fact, I have the lens profile correction added to my default import settings.

Dan

See post 10.
There's a sequence. In matter of fact the old Capture Nx you could chooise when re-editing an earlier edit to deactivate the later steps or keep them active. When keeping them active nx would do a quick recalculation, otherwise you had to activate them manual. Keep them active was advised only when one had a fast processor.
So there's a sequence in a raw converter, 100%.
Will it be visible turning the sequence around, that's another question.

George

[DanK]

There's a sequence. In matter of fact the old Capture Nx you could chooise when re-editing an earlier edit to deactivate the later steps or keep them active. When keeping them active nx would do a quick recalculation, otherwise you had to activate them manual. Keep them active was advised only when one had a fast processor.
So there's a sequence in a raw converter, 100%.
Will it be visible turning the sequence around, that's another question.

I honestly don't know what you mean. The way CaptureNX worked is not relevant. The fact is that the order of edits in Lightroom does not determine the order in which the software applies them. Search online, and you will see this discussed in many places.

[george013]

Dan, in case you don't want to read, again post 10.
To be sure the link again. It's about Lightroom. https://digital-photography-school.c...-history-tips/.
And again RT works equal.

George

[DanK]

I read both post 10 and the link. There is nothing in the linked posting that contradicts what I have written. In fact, that post is about manipulation of the user's edit sequence, not about the mapping between the edit sequence and the sequence with which the software applies the edits. The only way in which the post bears on this mapping is that it explains how you can create virtual steps in the sequence, in which case you are applying all of the edits up to that point -- in the order the software determines-- to the cumulative effect of later edits, also applied in the order determined by the software.

If you search, you will find that many other people have written comments similar to mine. A few examples:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photo...the_actual_acr

https://lightroomkillertips.com/why-...doesnt-matter/

https://photo.stackexchange.com/ques...lligently-reor

I'm going to bow out now before Donald slaps my wrist for trying to get the last word in.

[Manfred M]

Dan, in case you don't want to read, again post 10.
To be sure the link again. It's about Lightroom. https://digital-photography-school.c...-history-tips/.
And again RT works equal.

George

George - once again you demonstrate that you do not understand how the software works. The order that the user does things has no relationship with how Lightroom applies the edits.

Let me try an analogy. A cookbook lists the ingredients that go into a recipe. The chef determines the order in how he or she uses these ingredients to make the dish. The user lists the edits he or she wants (and the order they do so does not matter). Lightroom determines the order to apply the edits, irrespective of the order they are listed in.

[george013]

George - once again you demonstrate that you do not understand how the software works. The order that the user does things has no relationship with how Lightroom applies the edits.

Let me try an analogy. A cookbook lists the ingredients that go into a recipe. The chef determines the order in how he or she uses these ingredients to make the dish. The user lists the edits he or she wants (and the order they do so does not matter). Lightroom determines the order to apply the edits, irrespective of the order they are listed in.

Post 10 again.

If you click to view an image at an earlier stage of its editing and then start making changes to the image you will lose all the later history states – they’ll be replaced by your new edits.

THIS STATEMENT INCLUDES A SEQUENCE!!!!!!!


George

[Manfred M]

Post 10 again.


THIS STATEMENT INCLUDES A SEQUENCE!!!!!!!


George

George - it is the sequence that the user has done the operations. It has nothing to do with the order in how Lightroom applies the edits. Think of the History as a shortcut to run <Ctrl> <z> quickly. I use this functionality daily when I am editing (this is found in Photoshop as well as in Lightroom).

I will ask you one more time to please not make stuff up about things that you do not understand. Your answers are confusing and will mislead people who don't know these topics well.

I will be closing off this thread now.