AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

[bakubo]

LR has split toning and I can't find anything in ASP that is the same.

It turns out that there is a free plugin that adds split toning to ASP:

http://aftershotpro.com/plugins/index.html?plug=fattoni

[bakubo]

I want to keep this thread mostly about comparing LR and ASP, but I just wanted to mention that yesterday I downloaded RawTherapee 4 beta. It is a raw converter/non-destructive editor that saves changes in a sidecar. It has a file browser with thumbnails, but not a photo db. I am very impressed with what I have seen so far. I tried RT a few years ago, maybe version 2.4 or before, but I found it almost unusable then. The results seemed good, but it was so slow it was hopeless. Not just slow during the conversion, but the UI would constantly freeze for several seconds and sometimes tens of seconds or over a minute. It would also just hang or crash sometimes. I gave up on it pretty quickly. RT 4 is nothing like that. I have yet to have it hang or crash and the speed is much, much better. The level of control and the options are just amazing. For anyone who wants to tweak away you will probably love this. You can even select among 7 demosaic algorithms and many other options. It has defaults for most stuff so anything you don't want to fool with you don't have to. The layout is very much like ASP and LR so easy to get the hang of. Of course, I read the documentation for all 3 to see how to use them and discover stuff that might not be obvious from just running the program. I always recommend RTFM. RT doesn't do any local editing, but its global editing seems to be more comprehensive than either LR or ASP. In my use playing around with several raw files it seemed quite stable too and it is just a beta.

Okay, I just wanted to make a short comment about this without it turning into a tangent in this thread.

[bakubo]

I have spent a little time looking at the local editing that LR and ASP allow. Both of these are non-destructive editing. Both LR and ASP have clone and heal functions to fix spots, etc. If you are accustomed to using similar functions in PS, PSE, or PSP though you will find that the ones in LR and ASP are clunkier. I tried it first with ASP and it makes a clone/heal layer that shows up in the layer palette so it became sort of clear why it was clunkier than a traditional destructive editor. With LR it seems to be doing the same thing, but there is no layer palette so you can't see the layer that was created behind the scenes and you can't just turn it off and on like in ASP.

For other local editing things are similar. ASP creates a layer, really more like a mask layer, that you use to select areas for change by using various tools to select the region (circle, polygon, curve, or brush) for change. You can select multiple regions in a single mask layer. Then you can use just about any of the many global editing functions to change the selected region or regions. You can create multiple mask layers to make different changes. You can turn layers on and off to see what the change looks like separated from all other changes.

LR again seems to under the covers be doing something very similar with mask layers, but those layers aren't shown to you and you have much less control. Also, the editing functions that you can use in this mode are pretty restricted. Good enough most of the time though.

It really is interesting to see how these 2 programs accomplish much the same thing and do it in much the same way, but ASP shows it and LR hides it. If I only looked at LR I would probably be scratching my head trying to understand why things are done the way they are and why it seems so clunky compared to a regular photo editor. Using ASP though they show you what is going on and let you control it more. Otherwise it is much like LR and helps you to see what LR is doing under the covers.

[bakubo]

A few minutes ago I discovered the first really, really annoying thing about one of these programs. I inserted an SD card into my computer's slot as I have done countless times before and usually a window pops up announcing that and it allows me to tell it to open the Windows file explorer where I can then copy things off the card. Well, this time instead a LR window pops up and asks me if I want to license LR with a serial number or continue my 30 day trial? When I installed the LR trial a couple of days ago it, without asking me and without me giving it permission, changed things so that when I want to download from a memory card it will start LR instead of the way I had it before and want it -- the normal Windows way. Now I must figure out how to get it back like it was. I hate with a passion when arrogant software companies choose to do things such as this without asking and without permission and without even announcing that it is doing it.

[bakubo]

I got curious to see if LR 4 has lots of changes. This is the list Adobe has on their site:

1. Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
2. Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.
3. Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
4. White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
5. Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
6. Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
7. Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr®.
8. Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
9. Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

Of these, 1 and 5 are pretty interesting. If 1 is much better than what ACR 6.5, LR 3.2, and ASP 1 can do then that is interesting. And 3, 4, and 8 are of some interest. The others I don't really care about. ASP already has 5 and 8.

It looks like using LR 3.2 to compare to ASP 1 is fine since the changes in LR 4 are rather minimal.

[[SiC]]

I want to keep this thread mostly about comparing LR and ASP, but I just wanted to mention that yesterday I downloaded RawTherapee 4 beta. I am very impressed with what I have seen so far.

Yes! Being a cheap poor bastard I use this nice piece of SW as my main RAW converter Except when I convert a whole folder to HDTV jpegs to view on my TV via PS3/NAS, then I use IrfanView.
I have tried to advocate it in a few threads before

/Zeb!

[pakodominguez]

ASP has lens profiles for 6/6 of my Canon mount lenses, but 0/4 of my Sony mount lenses that I use. LR has profiles for 4/6 of my Canon mount lenses, but 0/4 of my Sony mount lenses....

You can install the Lens Profile Downloader (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/lenspro ... eator.html) and install custom profiles (like the ones DK did for the Minolta 24-85 or SEL 16f2.

[bakubo]

You can install the Lens Profile Downloader (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/lenspro ... eator.html) and install custom profiles (like the ones DK did for the Minolta 24-85 or SEL 16f2.

Thanks, Pako! That is very useful that Adobe gives you the ability to profile your own lenses. I read through the detailed instructions on how to do it and it is quite a bit of work, but at least they give you a way to make a profile rather than just waiting and hoping they will profile your lens someday. After reading all that you have to do though I had to chuckle about the part about it being easy:

Welcome to the prerelease of Adobe® Lens Profile Creator. Lens Profile Creator is a free utility that enables the easy creation of lens profiles for use in the Adobe Photoshop® family of products, such as Adobe Photoshop CS5, the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom®

Of course, easy is all relative. The provided program that analyzes the photos and constructs the profile is a whole lot easier than having to analyze the photos yourself and try to figure out how to make a good profile.

[UrsaMajor]

You can install the Lens Profile Downloader (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/lenspro ... eator.html) and install custom profiles (like the ones DK did for the Minolta 24-85 or SEL 16f2.

Thanks, Pako! That is very useful that Adobe gives you the ability to profile your own lenses. I read through the detailed instructions on how to do it and it is quite a bit of work, but at least they give you a way to make a profile rather than just waiting and hoping they will profile your lens someday.

That program does not limit you to creating your own profiles. It also provides access to profiles generated by other individuals (not Adobe itself) and uploaded, which makes it much more likely that there will be an existing profile for the lens in which you might be interested. Of course, the quality of the profiles generated by various individuals may be variable, so there is a potential gamble involved.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[bakubo]

That program does not limit you to creating your own profiles. It also provides access to profiles generated by other individuals (not Adobe itself) and uploaded, which makes it much more likely that there will be an existing profile for the lens in which you might be interested. Of course, the quality of the profiles generated by various individuals may be variable, so there is a potential gamble involved.

Thanks, Tom. Maybe all of my lenses already have been profiled by someone. A few of my lenses that LR doesn't have (not on the list on the Adobe website) are lenses that I have already sold so I can't make profiles for them, but I have lots of photos taken with those lenses. PTLens has profiles for all the lenses I use and care about.

[bakubo]

I am not spending full-time on looking at these two programs, but I am still at it. The stuff I have been spending quite a bit of time on lately is the catalog/db aspects of the programs. This is in some ways the area that one needs to think about the most because it is the only one that requires a commitment. The other 2 functions (raw converter, non-destructive editor) don't require much commitment so you can easily just stop using one program and switch to the other. The catalog/db function though, if you make full use of it, means you will assign ratings (stars) to your photos and add keywords to your photos. If you do that then that makes the db very useful to find and organize your photos. It also takes a lot of time going through old photos to do this and then all new photos need to have it done too. The payback is pretty good though if you have lots of photos.

[twm47099]

I had mentioned in a earlier post that LR3 had a blocky sub texture when converting a-mount raws (at least KM7D and A700).

I took one raw shot from my KM7D and processed it in both LR3 and ASP. I noticed a couple of things when looking at the "developed" image in each program.

At 1:1, I could see the blocky sub texture in LR (it is very noticeable at 2:1). I did not see the subtexture in ASP.

The LR sub texture gives an appearance of more detail in rough surface features such as brick walls, old wood, and old metal. But in smooth areas (such as the shiny green boiler of the steam engine in the links below) it looks like the metal has a hammertone finish (which it didn't). The lack of sub texture in the ASP version results in a softer appearance.

LR has a "clarity" slider, which I use to give a "pop" to my shots. ASP doesn't have this. In the ASP shot, it appears that there is a slight haze over everything. I was able to get the pop back by using "local contrast enhancement" in PSP -- Unsharp mask with large radius (60), low strength (20). But I am happier using the clarity slider in LR.

I also found that although I had adjusted the image in both programs to get the same appearance, when I exported the JPEGs, the ASP version was much more saturated. I had to apply -30 saturation in the PSP HSL tool to the ASP version to get similar appearance.

You can see the images in my dpreview gallery at the following links:
Note, click on the shots to enlarge them.

LR processed full image:
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/59377 ... 12/lr-0601

ASP processed full image - no PSP adjustments on saturation or unsharp mask (clarity):
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/59377 ... 3/asp-0601

The next links are to 1:1 crops showing the difference in sub texture (note that the ASP shot has PSP saturation and unsharp mask adjustments applied to get almost the same appearance. This had no effect on the lack of texture in the ASP version.

LR 1:1 crop:
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/59377 ... 01-1x-crop

ASP 1:1 crop:
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/59377 ... 01-1x-crop

After using both LR and ASP, I have mixed feelings. I've used LR for a few years so its UI, way of doing things, and tools is easy and straightforward to use. ASP is a bit more cumbersome to use and lacks some of the tools I use, making it necessary to also have to use PSP for all my shots. With LR I only need to use PSP for limited types of shots.

The sub texture in the LR shots has bothered me for a long time (actually going back to when I used 'rawshooter essentials' , but the lack of sub texture in ASP seems to come with some softness.

I have to read the ASP user manual in more detail and practice with it some more.

tom

[bakubo]

LR has a "clarity" slider, which I use to give a "pop" to my shots. ASP doesn't have this. In the ASP shot, it appears that there is a slight haze over everything. I was able to get the pop back by using "local contrast enhancement" in PSP -- Unsharp mask with large radius (60), low strength (20). But I am happier using the clarity slider in LR.

See my earlier post in this thread:

- LR has the Clarity function. I think it is similar to using usm with a high radius and low strength/amount for local area contrast enhancement, but Clarity may do something different. I can't find this in ASP, but the free Wavelet Sharpen 3 plugin has a similar function you can use.

After using both LR and ASP, I have mixed feelings. I've used LR for a few years so its UI, way of doing things, and tools is easy and straightforward to use. ASP is a bit more cumbersome to use and lacks some of the tools I use, making it necessary to also have to use PSP for all my shots. With LR I only need to use PSP for limited types of shots.

Which tools are in LR that you use, but are not in ASP?

[twm47099]

LR has a "clarity" slider, which I use to give a "pop" to my shots. ASP doesn't have this. In the ASP shot, it appears that there is a slight haze over everything. I was able to get the pop back by using "local contrast enhancement" in PSP -- Unsharp mask with large radius (60), low strength (20). But I am happier using the clarity slider in LR.

See my earlier post in this thread:

- LR has the Clarity function. I think it is similar to using usm with a high radius and low strength/amount for local area contrast enhancement, but Clarity may do something different. I can't find this in ASP, but the free Wavelet Sharpen 3 plugin has a similar function you can use.

After using both LR and ASP, I have mixed feelings. I've used LR for a few years so its UI, way of doing things, and tools is easy and straightforward to use. ASP is a bit more cumbersome to use and lacks some of the tools I use, making it necessary to also have to use PSP for all my shots. With LR I only need to use PSP for limited types of shots.

Which tools are in LR that you use, but are not in ASP?

Thanks for the reminder about wavelet sharpen. I'll have to try it.
Missing tools - maybe besides 'clarity' it's more a case of figuring out the UI and how ASP does things. For example, on the train shot, I had to straighten. With LR I used their straighten tool. with ASP I did it b eye with the straighten slider, then I found their straighten tool, which seemed more complex (but maybe more powerful).

I couldn't find "brightness" which acts as a gamma slider. But on the tone tab there is a midtone slider on the histogram. I have to play with it to see how it works. I don't know if LR "recovery" is the same as ASP 'highlights'. And I like the way capture sharpening works in LR with adjustments for 'detail', 'radius', 'amount' and 'threshold' along with the ability to see the independent effect of that control by holding the 'alt' key while adjusting. I'm not sure if there is a plugin that does the same.

I found importing selected files into the ASP catalog to be more cumbersome, but maybe that's lack of experience and not knowing the tricks.

As I said I will have to RTFM in more detail. One other aspect of LR is that there are a good number of different books on it where I don't believe that Bibble has that many, if any. Probably have to find a user site that discusses tips and tricks. (I could never use adobe's forums since they were unbearably slow on my computer.)

I have a lot of incentive for learning ASP since, I don't intend to get windows 7 for a long while, and I'm not too enthused about some of the changes that adobe has made in LR4. I would like to know if they did get rid of the blocky sub texture that I've seen in the earlier versions. I bought ASP for the $20 upgrade price, and I'm starting to import my raws. This time I'm being more selective about the ones I import, and I'm adding keywords at import.

tom


tom

[jcoffin]

It looks to me like the difference you're seeing between LR and ASP (the "blocky subtexture" in LR) is really a result of some sort of adaptive noise reduction in ASP. In the 1:1 crop from ASP, I see a "smooth" appearance where there's a uniform area, but where there's a "seam" of any sort, there seems to be a distinctly "rougher" appearance for a few pixels on each side.