P: Disable built-in lens profile

[Tokumeino]

I own Micro43 and compact cameras, where lens profiles are integrated in RAW files. With software like Capture One Pro, I can easily enable or disable theses built-in profiles. Actually, there is even a slider allowing to enable 0% or 100% of the built-in profile, and whatever percentage in between.

In LR (CC, Classic or LR6), the checkox for enabling or disabling profiles does not work with built-in profiles, which always stay enabled. This seriously limits the possibilities of several cameras which possibilities get unleashed by actual RAW developpers like Capture One Pro.

I'm actually a COP user (after switching from LR) but DAM sucks with COP and this built-in lens profile thing is the only deal breaker for me to come back. So please let users disable built-in lens profiles, or at least offer workarounds.

As a workaround, a dumb "zero" profile that would replace the built-in one (not coming on top of it) could do the job.

[Todd Shaner]

Great idea! Allow the "built-in lens profile" to use the same controls as the Adobe provided lens profiles. I usually change the Lens Profile Default Settings to Distortion = 0 and Vignetting = 50 to 100 dependent on the lens. With shorter focal length lenses this reduces the stretching, noise, and aberrations in the image corners and sides.

Also many of the "compact" camera lenses have a high amount of barrel distortion (almost fisheye) at the extreme wide end. I discovered it was possible to recover a considerable amount of raw image data area  being cropped by the built-in lens profile using PS Adaptive Wide Angle Filter in 'Fisheye' mode. I use RawDigger export to TIFF to recover the full image data and then process in PS, but the results would be better using LR's raw converter. This works especially well with images that need transform corrections.

[Tokumeino]

You exactly get the point. For people who are not obsessed by straight lines but rather prefer unstreched (thus more natural looking) objects on the borders, it is necessary to be able to control distortion correction for built-in profiles the same way as it works with external profiles. Besides, it should be VERY easy to perform : just let the existing checkbox play its role. It shouldn't require more than a very few lines of code.

With Capture One Pro, my Canon G7XII is completely transformed. For instance, the wide angle is actually more like 21mm or 22mm when you use the full sensor, and not 24mm as croped by Canon+LR. I'd like to switch to LR but as it, I just can't since it would dramatically restraint my gear.

I understand that for such cams, SW correction is somehow "part of the system". So I can get that by default, the built-in profile is enabled. But a sowftare which claims beeing a RAW converter should let the user choose to actually using all the RAW data.

[Todd Shaner]

I made the same discovery after opening a similar Canon G9XII camera raw file in RawDigger to check for highlight clipping. On the widest 10.2mm lens setting the lens has a 28mm equivalent 35mm focal length, but the raw image has considerably more angle of view approximating about 24mm focal length. There is a high amount of rectilinear distortion (think fisheye), but a landscape image with no defined horizontal or vertical elements (trees, sky, etc.) probably could be used without correction. I process the RawDigger Export TIFF file using PS Adaptive Wide Angle Filter set for fisheye correction and horizontal and vertical constraint lines to remove all rectilinear distortion with good results.

I tried another experiment today with a Canon G9XII RawDigger TIFF Export file using only LR's Transform panel and Lens Profile manual Distortion control. The results are virtually identical in rectilinear correction and over-all sharpness. So if Adobe adds the requested capability to dial-back the 'Built-In Lens Profile' Distortion correction you could get the same results without having to go outside of LR. Sweet!

Below LR Survey view shows:
Original Raw File w/o any transforms (Top-Left)
RawDigger TIFF Export File with no 'Built-In Filter' applied (Bottom-Left)
RawDigger TIFF Export File with PS Adaptive Wide Angle Filter applied (Bottom-Right)
RawDigger TIFF Export File with LR manual Transform and Distortion controls applied (Top-Right)

It's probably only helpful for raw files shot at the widest lens settings when you need a slightly wider angle of view. It works very well for that purpose as shown below.

(click on image to see full-size)

[Tokumeino]

With december's new autotone (it was unuseable before), it is more and more tempting for me to switch back from Capture One (DAM is so poor...) to LR again.

But this built-in lens profiles thing is just a complete dealbreaker given my gear.

Could an Adobe insider tell me if this change is on a ToDo list ? 

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

I haven't heard the slightest hint along those lines. If you could post a bunch of examples that are a lot better without the built in lens profiles applied, it might gain a little more traction.

[Tokumeino]

Samples

Let me consider a Canon G7X. I could have done the same with other compacts or mirrorless cameras with heavilly distorted lenses, and buil-in profiles.

This is what it looks like OOC or developed by LR

[Tokumeino]

Samples

Let me consider a Canon G7X. I could have done the same with other compacts or mirrorless cameras with heavilly distorted lenses, and built-in profiles. I'll take a G7XII sample from dpreview.

This is what you get OOC or developed by LR (soft corners due to heavy stretching)


This is the actual full sensor data (as you can get with C1P, DXO or any RAW convertor I could test, except LR) : there is vignetting but the angle of view is actually (much) wider than 24mm (FFeqvt), and 
 

This is what you get with a manual crop : by comparison with the Lightroom version, the angle of view is actually larger but LR prevents you to take advantage of your gear and hides large areas of your sensor.


What's wrong ?

In LR interface, we have this dialog :


But when the profile is built-in (as usual with compacts and mirrorless), the "Enable Profile Corrections" has no effect. Checked or unchecked, the profile is always enabled.

So, LR prevents to disable built-in profiles, and prevent users to take full advantage of their gear.

How to solve ?

Let the checkbox work as it should.

Other use cases (mostly wide angle with compact lenses)

Some people love shooting with fisheyes when they prefer to preserve natural and unstreched shapes rather than straight lines. It is often not the case for architecture but in situations such as

• wide angle portraits
• wide angle group shots with streched people on the border
• wide angle landscapes where straight lines are not mandatory
• wide angle with a priority to sharp corners above straight lines

rectilinerar projection are not always suitable, and people (like me) prefer keeping "distortion"μ.

Only LR forces users to perform rectilinear projections. I have no problem with enbling this by default, but the checkbox should work and the built-in profiles should be possibly disabled.

Note that sometimes, people complain about tiny details. This problem is visible even at very low resolutions. It affects the global geometry of an image. Adobe should let the users some creative possibilies.

[Tokumeino]

In capture one, you can see how the profile crops the sensor area. Even by keeping things rectilinear, a lot is lost by LR, and unrecoverable.



Other use case :

• even rectilinear, recover small framing mistakes

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Maybe Olympus/Panasonic didn't want us to see how much we're losing due to lens distortion! 😉 Gets my vote anyway.

[Tokumeino]

Thanks.

But again : only LR behaves like this. C1P has even a slider from 0% to 100% to adjust CA correction, distortion correction and light falloff, 100% beeing the selected profile.



DXO is even more advanced with a dedicated module in Viewpoint. It is really not an issue with manufacturers.

LR really lags behind and all that has to be done is just to let the checkbox work as with an "external" profile : "enable checkbox -> enable profile" and "disable checkbox -> disable profile" while here, we have "disable checkbox -> enable profile"

And again, it is not a small detail for pixel peepers. Pros with bulky and perfect lenses won't care, but with the mobile stuff and everything, I throught that Adobe would take care of hobbyists as well.

[Todd Shaner]

IMHO applying 100% Distortion and 100% Vignetting correction is rarely necessary and can cause image degradation (cropping, elongation, softening, and amplification of lens aberrations such as astigmatism). These "defects" are even more pronounced in images that use a built-in lens profile due to the larger amount of distortion and vignetting correction required at wide-angle focal lengths.

For most of my DSLR lenses I set the Lens Profile "default settings" to 0 Distortion and 50 Vignetting correction. These settings are only adjusted when an image exhibits "visible" rectilinear distortion or vignetting. The ability to selectively change built-in lens profile corrections (0-100) can improve over-all image quality in many cases.

[Tokumeino]

Another example (not a landscape)

This is what you get with the standard profile : people on the side look fat because of the strong streching induced by a rectilinear projection.


This is what you can get when you disable the lens profile : people look much more natural and the image is wider than 24mm (like having a better lens). I cannot see an obvious drawback not having lines totally straight in situations like this one.


A software should permit the user to have more control. LR forces the user to use a profile, while using a profile should be a possibility offered by the program. Profiles can be enabled by default, but we would like to disable them at will.

[Tokumeino]

I would add that :

• It is not a huge work : no new algorithm, no new dialog
• It really ruins compact gear when used with LR
• It does not change anything to the existent : nobody will complain because it doesn't change anything for existing pictures and default behaviour of LR

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hi there
I too have been miffed about Auto lens profiles being applied in both Lightrooom and Photoshop; with absolutely no way of disabling it.
I shoot extensively with an Olympus 8mm lens so very often I am wanting distortion.
At last I discovered Olympus Viewer 3, you can TURN OFF lens information on Olympus raw files.
In RAW2 edit section / Distortion Correction / Manual -uncheck the "Use Lens Information" and adjust manually the distortion on a plus or minus scale.
What a brilliant way to dial in your preference as you intended, I rather think it may only be for Olympus users?

[Louie Sherwin]

I recently purchased a Sony A7R2 and rented several Sony FE lenses to evaluate which ones I want to make part of my kit. While comparing some shots in Lightroom 6.7 I noticed a little notice in the "Lens Correction" tab of the Develop Module.

This is a little surprising as I had already turned off all three "Lens Comp." options in the A7R2 menu even though I only shoot raw. Additionally because I am shooting raw I was fully expecting that no lens compensation corrections would be made unless I enabled them in the Lens Correction tab.

Now I find that sometimes Adobe apparently is using lens correction profiles imbedded in the raw files by some camera companies, Sony, Fuji and Olympus to automatically apply some. corrections. 

In the case of the three FE lenses I have tried so far they always seem to be corrected for chromatic aberrations. This is always applied even though I turned this off in camera and have not checked it in the Lens Correction tab.  For some other camera/lens combinations distortion and/or vignette corrections are unilaterally applied by Adobe.

It has been pointed out to me that some of these corrections are an integral part of the camera system, that some lenses were in fact designed to rely on such software corrections. While this makes a good case to make these corrections the default action I don't think that they should be mandatory. 

-louie

[ccastleb]

Hi Louie,

Per request from Sony, Lightroom will enable the external lens profile automatically for raw files if the lens comp settings are enabled in the camera and an external profile is available in the version of the application you are running. The external profile corrects for geometric distortion and vignetting only. The chromatic aberration correction is baked into the raw file using opcodes that cannot be disabled in Lightroom.

If you wish to disable the external profile by default, you can set a new lens profile default (with it disabled) for each lens/camera combination.

Regards,

- Chris

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hi there
I too have been miffed about Auto lens profiles being applied in both Lightrooom and Photoshop; with absolutely no way of disabling it.
I shoot extensively with an Olympus 8mm lens so very often I am wanting distortion.
At last I discovered Olympus Viewer 3, you can TURN OFF lens information on Olympus raw files.
In RAW2 edit section / Distortion Correction / Manual -uncheck the "Use Lens Information" and adjust manually the distortion on a plus or minus scale.
What a brilliant way to dial in your preference as you intended, I rather think it may only be for Olympus users?

[Louie Sherwin]

It is a little annoying that when this topic got merged my original response was dropped. 

So here it is again:

Thank you Chris for the explanation.

The interesting thing is that I could see the CAs in the in-camera preview while taking my test shots the other day, However, as you noted the CAs in the raw file gets corrected regardless. It seems that Sony will allow you create in-camera JPG images without the CAs being corrected yet always correcting them for raw files. This appears to have been confirmed by testing shown here https://joerghaag.com/2015/03/29/in-camera-lens-compensation/

I think that this is bug in Sony's firmware. I am using the latest ver 3.30. Maybe you can also bring this to Sony's attention. 

-louie

[Louie Sherwin]

Here is an update:

I have since updated to 4.00 firmware and no change in behavior.

It is inconsistent that my camera offers the option to disable chromatic aberration , distortion and vignetting  and that the resulting "opcodes" in the raw file cannot be overridden in Lightroom. 

When you say "baked in" do you mean that raw file is already modified? How can that be if the in-camera setting is turned off. I would like to hear a better explanation of what is going on here. 

-louie

[ccastleb]

Updating the lens or camera firmware will have no effect on whether a lens aberration opcode is applied. Lightroom and ACR always apply them if they are present. There is no way currently to disable this in either application.

[Tokumeino]

I don't understand these merge things. But before I write this topic, I used to read the mentioned ones, but the answers didn't seem (as far as I understand) adress my problem. My problem is

1. beyond Olympus only, and requires a reneral solution
2. has nothing to do with Sony external profiles

What I'm talking about is simply about built-in profiles, whatever the brand. If LR knows how to apply them, it should be able not to aply them.

Now I'm quite confused with all these messages. Nobody has a single chance to understand anyhing, and the bug will never be solved. Anyway, I've already switched to DXO Photo Labs just because this issue. At least, DXO let people use their raw files.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Don't worry Pierre, the request's quite clear. Other people's threads requesting the same feature are being merged in so that all the votes are combined - the more votes, the better chance it has of being implemented. So it's a good thing, honestly.

[martinfueloep]

Hi there, I'm having some trouble processing DJI X5R DNGs with Adobe Camera Raw. All DNGs I take with the Olympus Zuiko 25/1.8 show heavy apochromatic refraction AFTER Adobe Camera Raw applies the integrated lens profile.

The proxy-files produced by the X5R do not show any problems, it's the same when I process the files with DJI Cinelight, even when I place the DNG-files in Premiere Pro CC and do the color correction with the Lumetri engine, there is no apchromatic refraction.
So the lens itself should not be the problem

As a test I have used DNG Cleaner for Apple to erase the integrated profile and when doing that, Adobe Camera Raw imports the DNGs without integrated profile and without any apchromatic refraction.

The downside of DNG Cleaner is that it is one more step in processing the RAWs, and Premiere Pro will not accept the files as a sequence.

So it would be great to have the possibility to deactivate the integrated lens profile directly in Adobe Camera Raw!

Here are links to the DNGs:
Original file (will be accepted by premiere pro cc's media browser, actual version)
File with erased integrated lens profile (will not be accepted by premiere pro)

[Todd Shaner]

I believe you are referring to chromatic aberration. It appears LR is incorrectly applying the chromatic aberration correction data embedded in the file. Disabling the built-in lens profile prevents applying the correction data, but that doesn't address the actual problem. I suggest posting this as a separate Problem Report here:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/new

[jwaltman]

New Nikon Z7 user here...I'm seeing the "Built-in Lens Profile applied" notification in LR for the first time.  I'm assuming that the Z7 RAW NEF files must include lens profile information that my previous Nikon DSLRs did not.

I can't believe that there's no way to disable the built-in profile in LR.  The whole point of shooting RAW is to be able to make these sorts editing decisions after pressing the shutter.

The Z7 has in-camera options for "Vignette control" and "Auto distortion control" separately.  If both options are turned ON in-camera, Lightroom displays a message that distortion and vignetting have both been automatically corrected.  I'd hoped that by turning these options OFF in-camera that the profile data would not be applied automatically in Lightroom.  The interesting thing is that if I turn both off, the vignetting correction goes away but the distortion correction does not.  Is this a bug?

I confirmed that when creating a Z7 NEF where both distortion and vignetting control were OFF in-camera and opening that RAW file in Nikon's Capture NX-D converter with Lens Corrections set to "Recorded Settings" that neither distortion nor vignetting were corrected.  It seems that the RAW file is being written correctly by the camera.  Why is Lightroom not respecting the camera settings and applying an automatic distortion correction?