Known Participant

Question

Lightroom Classic exported image no longer looks the same.

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 27, 2020
7 replies
964 views

Hi,

After the updates (never had this issue before) When I export an image or choose edit in Photoshop, the image does not look as it does in Lightroom. I do alot of digital darkroom editing but this has never been an issue before.

Anyone else having this issue or know of a solution?

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Marianne-Deiters

Participating Frequently

Are you absolutely sure that you also work in Photoshop in ProPhoto RGB and have not accidentally converted to another profile when opening?

D Fosse

Community Expert

There is no particular need to work in ProPhoto in Photoshop, nor is there any particular need to keep the Lightroom default of ProPhoto.

Any incoming profile will be correctly handled in Photoshop. That's what color management is.

In any case that's not the issue here.

Marianne-Deiters

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the clarification, I accidentally replied to the wrong post.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

Others have explained this already. The problem is noisy images and scaling algorithms. In order to display a high resolution image on your screen, it has to be scaled down somehow. In the develop view, in order to retain a reasonable speed, the scaling is doner from a subsampled copy of the raw data. If you would render the entire image every time, the program would be unbearably slow. So there is an optimization happening to keep editing speed reasonable. This inevitably leads to inaccurate representation of the noisiness and is why people tell you to NEVER touch the sharpening and noise reduction when zoomed out. Only do it at 100% view. That is the only view where the noise reduction and sharpening are accurate. This also leads to, when you have noise in the images to different impression of highly detailed or noisy areas, let alone the issue that we haven't even talked about that the Develop data is in a completely different color space. It is all in a linear color space with prophotoRGB primaries. That doesn't matter for individual colors, but when scaling images with lots of color detail, you get different results than when scaling in gamma corrected and narrower spaces.

When you export, the image is rendered at full resolution and then scaled down to the resolution of your screen, either at the export stage, or by the program you use to view the image. Needless to say, that will employ radically different scaling algoithms than the Develop view uses. This can lead to different impressions of sharpness, noise, etc. depending on the scaling algorithm and downscaling level employed. Again you can't really control much of this. It is a basic consequence of imaging science that is unavoidable. Only when we have displays with the exact same resolution as your images would this be avoidable. These don't exist yet.

Lastly note that this is a very common issue in night images. such as milky way shots. Often people are surprised when their image changes noise level wise and sharpness impression wise when shifting from Develop to library or to an exported jpeg. This is again a consequence of the inherent properties of digital images and the need to scale to the display resolution.

Artist GBAuthor

Known Participant

I want to thank you all for the xtraordinary level of community support. I dont think I have ever seen such fast response times in any forum.

Also Jao_Vdl, your detailed explanation is very comprehensive and clarifying, thank you for that.

It makes sence that that this shoot for which I am having this issue was with a new high resolution camera and shot in part at 3200 iso, two new aspects in my workflow that are contributing to and in alignment with the technical limitations you describe.

So thank you for the awakening 🙂

Best,

Greg

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

This has nothing to do with importing, and everything to do with editing and viewing the image at 1:1.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to apply sharpening and noise reduction at 1:1.

If you do this in Fit view, you're working in the blind, because you're not seeing a true representation of the image.

This is especially important with noisy and/or oversharpened images, where there can be quite a big difference between 1:1 and Fit view, also tonally.

Artist GBAuthor

Known Participant

I wondered if the preview image needed to be of higher resolution (created during inporting) so that the fit view image would be able to reflect accurately ALL the adjustments being made. The issue reveals itself after I zoom in and only then does the different look of the image stay that way if I zoom back out to fit view. So Lightroom can show me (render) these issues , its just doing it only after I have zoomed in.

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

There's no need to do anything special when importing, just don't adjust sharpening and noise reduction in Fit view.

It's vital that you do this at 1:1, for the reasons I explained above.

when I zoom in to 100%, Lightroom re renders the image and when I zoom back out to fit, it zeeps the new rendered look.

What you're seeing is a perfect demonstration of what happens to noise and sharpening when the image is scaled.

Ignore what you see in Fit view, just make sure that the image looks right at 1:1, that's all that matters.

As for exported images, you have to view these at 1:1 (100%) as well to get a true rendering of the image.

Artist GBAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for all the support.

I am not in my studio now but I am pretty sure there was also exposure variables noticeable especially in blacks. Hard to imagine that is also tied to the noise and sharpening?

do you have an importing suggestion to minimize these issues?

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

What happens when you view the image at 1:1 in Lightroom and at 100% Photoshop?

This is the only magnification that gives you a true representation of the image, because one image pixel is represented by one screen pixel.

This is especially important when evaluating sharpness and noise, and there seems to be some noise in the image.

(And you can insert images directly in the forum by clicking the insert image icon in the tollbar)

Artist GBAuthor

Known Participant

Hi,

Its strange and I am wondering if this has anything to do with the fact that I am now shooting with the Sony A7R4.

It is partly what you are saying in that when I zoom in to 100%, Lightroom re renders the image and when I zoom back out to fit, it zeeps the new rendered look. And that look is not just noice it is exposure aspects as well which is even influencing the density of color saturation, etc. I realize this series of images is being pushed harder in Lightroom with post processing AND I did shoot this series at 3200 iso, but the fact remains that I did the adjustments while in the fit view to see the full image and it looks good there in all regards.

Perhaps I should utilize a specific import function with these larger file sizes, I am shooting in uncompressed raw 61 megapxel files.

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

What are the exact version numbers for Lightroom and the Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop?