P: Noise artifacts produced by enhance details
The enhance details feature appears to produce some rectangular and square noise artifacts in the processed image. My baseline is a daylight RAW landscape (call it X1) photograph taken at ISO 100. The artifacts appear in the upper half of the photo (a partly cloudy region above a mountain range).
Lightroom Version: 11.2
OS Version: Windows 10 Pro, Build 19044.1526
The steps outlined below are intended to illustrate the difference in images produced by Lightroom's baseline demosaicing algorithm with the "enhance details" demosaicing algorithm. Of course, the artifacts could be due to issues with the baseline algorithm ... but I doubt this is the case as it has been fielded for quite some time.
The TIFF comparison process (steps 11-19) has been successfully used to evaluate Lightroom sharpening and noise reduction combinations. Other than the "enhance details" DNG, I have not seen similar artifacts produced by Lightroom.
Steps to reproduce the are as follows:
1) Import X1 (RAW) into Lightroom
2) Reset all settings (note, the baseline profile is Adobe Color and WB is "as shot")
3) Disable "Detail" sharpening and noise reduction by moving all sliders to 0 (i.e., Amount, Luminance, Color; note, lens corrections are not selected - the goal is export an image processed by only the baseline demosaicing algorithm)
4) Export this file as "X1_Norm_NoSharpNoNR.tif" (300 ppi, sRGB, 16 bits/component)
5) Enhance details (Raw Details only)
6) Open the DNG produced by enhanced details
7) Reset all settings
😎 Disable "Detail" sharpening and noise reduction by moving all sliders to 0 (i.e., Amount, Luminance, Color)
9) Export this file as "X1_Enha_NoSharpNoNR.tif" (300 ppi, sRGB, 16 bits/component)
10) Exit Lightroom
11) Start Photoshop
12) Open files produced by steps 4 and 9 in Photoshop
13) Convert both images to grayscale using Image/Mode
14) Convert both images to Smart Objects
15) Duplicate one of the layers and place in other other image as Layer 1
16) Select both layers with the "Difference" option
17) Select Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Threshold
18) Set threshold to 1
19) Adjust view to actual size and 100% to see artifacts
I converted the TIFF file produced by steps 1-18 to a low-resolution JPEG and attached to this post.
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