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acapela2017
Participating Frequently
November 2, 2017
Question

Install LCF files (ALPA Lens Corrector) Photoshop CC?

  • November 2, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1524 views

Running the current version of Photoshop CC under Windows 10 x64.

Interested in installing/importing the "ALPA Lens Corrector" for use with the Adobe suite. I run the the whole "Creative Cloud" suite, including Photoshop, Lightroom, and whatever remains of Camera Raw.

In its current form, the "ALPA Lens Corrector" consists of a large collection of LCF files (i.e. files ending in the suffix .lcf) for a wide variety of current and historical lens (medium- and large-format) and digital capture (Phase One, Leaf, Hasselblad, Sinar, etc) combinations. This appears to be supplied as-is, without any current documentation.

I can't find any current/relevant documentation/forum posts on how to import third-party lens correction profiles into Photoshop/etc, except via the "Adobe Lens Profile Downloader"... everything I have been able to find is for an older version of Photoshop/etc, and no longer appears to be relevant. However, I tried installing the "Adobe Lens Profile Downloader", which requires Adobe Air for installation, but Adobe Air reports the download, as currently available from Adobe, as "damaged", so that mechanism appears to be moribund. Nor can I find any files ending in the .lcf suffix anywhere in my Adobe installation or AppData that might serve as a clue where to place new LCF files.

Has the Adobe suite moved on to some other mechanism for doing this, rendering the whole ALPA Lens Corrector obsolete?

As an alternative, could I still construct/import my own lens profiles, even if I wanted to? Or, should I be looking at something like DxO ViewPoint for this?

Any pointers to *current* documentation (i.e. for Photoshop CC 2017/2018), if it exists, would be appreciated.

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    1 reply

    Jeff Arola
    Community Expert
    Jeff ArolaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 2, 2017

    You use those ALPA Lens Corrector files with the ALPA Lens Corrector plugin from here:

    (you have to create an account and login in order to download the plugin)

    https://www.alpa.ch/en/article/alpa-lens-corrector

    Unfortunately, the plugin on the windows side is 32 bit, so you need a 32 bit version of photoshop to use it.

    A
    acapela2017Author
    Participating Frequently
    November 2, 2017

    I don't know what to say.

    I have an ALPA website account, I am logged in, and all I can find at https://www.alpa.ch/en/article/alpa-lens-corrector is an out-of-date (and apparently now incorrect) manual in PDF, some PDF lens distortion overlays/etc, and a zip archive containing a large number of LCF files. I can find no plugin in that zip archive.

    If ALPA's intent is to distribute a Photoshop "plugin", then there must be another download somewhere. I certainly don't see it at https://www.alpa.ch/en/article/alpa-lens-corrector.

    So, based on this response, I am going to assume there is no way to use these LCF files in the current version of Photoshop; they are for the ALPA plugin *only*... and beyond that, the plugin does not appear to be available any longer from ALPA?

    The only zip archive I can find anywhere on the web containing any version of the actual plugin is from 2009.  Looks like I may be able to finagle a 32-bit version of Photoshop out of Adobe, for "legacy" purposes. I will contact their support and see what I can do (the most recent knowledge-base articles I can find on this are from 2015). Assuming I can arrange that, I will try to install the c. 2009 plugin again.

    A
    acapela2017Author
    Participating Frequently
    November 3, 2017

    Update: Adobe Support (contacted them via online chat) informs me that 32-bit Photoshop is no longer supported, there is no 32-bit version available, Photoshop is available for 64-bit operating systems only.

    Consequence: ZERO further support for legacy plugins like the ALPA Lens Corrector.

    (If anyone from Adobe reads this and believes me to have been informed in error, I saved a copy of the entire exchange with Adobe support... and I would be happy to be more correctly informed.)

    So, it seems I must look elsewhere to address extreme wide-angle pincusion/barrel/etc distortion (DxO ViewPoint seems like the most attractive alternative tool for this). My Phase One back has not arrived yet, but Perhaps Capture One also has some tools for this, that either already incorporate profiles for my distortion-prone lenses or that will enable me to build my own profiles.

    I will tackle all of that in a couple of weeks when everything arrives and I can get hands-on.

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