Participant

Question

Noisy images even at low ISO from Lightroom and ACR from my Sony A7Riv...

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
April 29, 2023
4 replies
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My primary camera body is a Sony A7Riv. I shoot exclusively in uncompressed RAW. The other day, I began looking at and working with some ARW files shot with that camera in the latest Lightroom Classic (12.3) and Adobe Camera RAW (15.3) versions. I normally work in Capture One Pro. When working on the images with Lightroom and ACR I very quickly noticed that the images seemed to have strange noise and artifacts in them. In addition, the photos were generally just generally noisier/grainier in Lightroom than in Capture One Pro. I would have written that off to different default noise reduction defaults in the two programs except for the strange textured noise artifacts that I mentioned above, which seems to point to something else going on. And under any kind of sharpening, it gets much more pronounced. I've noticed it most in skin in the mid-tone transitional areas, but it is present in all areas, including as noise in solid colour areas. I've run lightrooms new AI noise reduction on it to see if that makes a difference, and it does - at least a bit - however, given the length of time that takes, that is not a practical solution for anything more than the occasional image.

Anyway, the results are so obviously inferior to Capture One Pro, I will be returning to that unless this is something that can be resolved. I work at high resolutions and getting clean RAW processing is an essential part of my workflow.

Anyone with any thoughts?

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M

Magnus32304494am8q

Participant

peter@peter.io: Just came here to say that I totally know what you mean. It seems it's a matter of taste, but personally I never liked the way Lightroom renders luminance noise, nore do I think it deals with it in noise reduction particularly well. DXO, Capture One and ON1 are each a good bit better in this regard. The real deal is the DXO Prime noise reduction, compared to that new Lightroom AI noise reduction is a joke and I keep laughing when people prais it. Well, I guess compared to what Lightroom users had it's a real improvement, but only compared to that. Compared to ON1 it's on a similar level, so ON1 is overhyped in this regard too. Capture One never tried to implement it, which was for me the final straw to stop using it, since I find myself in a lot of high iso situations and I need a solution that can handle that if needed.

Just to highlight my understanding of the situation. Lightroom creates a very blocky noise pattern. Probably it's supposed to keep a feeling of texture, however it's to regular and the difference between light and dark parts of the noise is way to harsh. As you describe, particularly well observable in the midtones to darker whites. It's thus particularly noticable on skin. Applying noise reduction in Lightroom then just creates a waxy smooth skin, where there is no way to sharpen some texture back into it. Same with the AI implementation they have.

The problem is as old as Lightroom. I noticed that already back in the days with my Canon 5D, then with the Sony A7II and now with the Sony A6700. But like I said, many people don't seem to be bothered by it. Or maybe we are just to much of a pixel peeper.

A

arlen36912328ewrc

Participant

I've been reading the comments. I use C1 Pro for my Nikon files. When opening RAW Nikon C1Pro does an amazing job of managing noise. I use LRC for both Sony A6700. I have been amazed at how noisy RAW images are opnened in LRC. I've looked and looked and asked, but this seems to be par for the course. LRC is so inferior to C1 in noise management in RAW. Unless I'm missing something. But no one has been able to show me that.

D Fosse

Community Expert

I've downloaded the examples, and the first thing I notice is that the two exports don't line up geometrically - although they are the same crop from the same original. What's happening there? It's almost as if a very aggressive lens profile was applied to one of them.

Second, honestly! the C1 example looks artificially plasticky over-smoothed to me. It doesn't look credible at all, and I don't buy it. I could duplicate that look by cranking up the noise reduction in Lightroom - but I would never do that. I vastly prefer the Lightroom version! It looks real, the C1 version looks like plastic.

FWIW, I use an a7r V, I also have an a7r IV (although that's modified for IR/UV), and an a7r III. I'm very familiar with these cameras. I've always been very happy with how Lr/ACR treat these files - as I was previously with Nikon D800/D810 before I switched to Sony.

I also used C1 for a while, I had an active subscription for two years. But I never could bring myself to like it, so I cancelled the subscription and don't have it installed now.

I think this boils down to what you like and prefer. If you prefer C1, use it.

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

So you can file a bug report on this (see below) but it would really be helpful to have the documents and data to do so or it will get lost in the mix.

I'd suggest shooting a controlled scene. If possible, meter with an incident meter. Pick ISO 100 if you wish (again, that's not really the issue here). Bracket at 'normal' exposure, then plus 1/2, plus 1, and maybe plus 1 1/2+.

Bring all into Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom Classic and apply any edits you wish (defaults or otherwise).

Zoom in at 1:1 (100%) and make a screen capture of the issue (you say noise but you say artifacts and that's more important to the bug report).

Save all all as a DNG so all your edits are embedded and upload. Or you could save and zip the sidecar files with each but DNG is a bit cleaner.

You can make a screen capture of the same area at 1:1 in C1 for comparison but what's really important here isn't that product.

Bug reporting:

Photoshop/ACR:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/how-do-i-write-a-bug-report/idi-p/12373403

Lightroom:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/how-do-i-write-a-bug-report/idi-p/12386373

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

Can you upload such a problematic raw to something like Dropbox. Ideally a DNG with your edits or the ARW and sidecar so we can see all the Adobe edits.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

peter@peter.ioAuthor

Participant

Hi;

I have uploaded three files for review. One is the original ARW file with no edits at all. The noise/weird artifact issue is visible without any edits. For example, if you look at the young lady in the top right of the image and zoom in, you can see a strange noise effect, particularly in the skin close to the hairline where it is a bit in shadow. Noise is also clearly visible in the dark surface of the glasses. Keep in mind too that this is a relatively low ISO RAW image - it was shot at ISO 320. It should be almost without visible noise, never mind the storage "dirty looking" noise that appears in the image here. It looks more like an image that was shot at 3200 or 6400 ISO when I open it in Lightroom but even that is not the case where the noise seems to be uneven and has that weird and ugly structure in some spots such as at the hareline here. To give you a frame of reference, I am also including two JPG crop exports of that area of the image. One was exported from Lightroom (the latest version) and the other from Capture One - to give you an idea of the difference I see when looking at this RAW file in these two programs. Again, no processing has been done to the image in either application (no sharpening or noise reduction) and both were exported to JPG at the highest quality. The end result is a good representation of what I see on my screen when looking at this RAW in the two different applications. The Capture One image is clearly much better and free from the problems that show up in the same RAW in Lightroom. It's not even close, really. And, when any kind of editing is applied or sharpening done, because Lightroom seems unable to bring the RAW in clean, it only makes the issues it has worse. In Lightroom the image is very fragile and any amount of sharpening, for instance, sharpens up that obvious noise which makes what was bad even worse. None of this is an issue in Capture One. I can take this image and sharpen it aggressively without any real issue.

Hope that's clear. Let me know what you think.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WmEvvo2inAzmJFAZE14Qqf-F3ZIcSZAf?usp=sharing

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

I got the downloads.

First, the ARW in any Adobe converter has some edits.

Yes, the image is a relatively low ISO which doesn't matter, but the capture is massively under-exposed, so there is noise. A product that does show us the raw without edits in RawDigger and the noise and underexposure is reported:

The blue overlay shows black clipping of the raw data, no edits. Something you can't gauge in LR/ACR.

The 63% of just the red channel is underexposed/clipped to black.

The topic heading Noisy images even at low ISO from Lightroom and ACR, isn't accurate. The noise is due to your exposure, and Adobe Camera Raw has no role here.

So now the issue becomes, Noise Reduction in two differing products. We can go there if you want; look at the NR options in Adobe Camera Raw that might help get it closer or better than C1. But the noise isn't due to Adobe Camera Raw or low ISO. ISO has no (direct) effect on exposure. Exposure is only two attributes that control how much light strikes the sensor: Aperture and Shutter. Auto exposure can cause underexposure which is what we see here, and that's why the image is noisy.

A lower ISO can produce far more noise than a higher ISO:

So again: now the issue becomes, Noise Reduction in two different products, and maybe you want to try the new Denoise features in Adobe Camera Raw.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

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