Exported files are grainy

[hking1323]

I have Lightroom 5.6 but still having issues with exporting, as I apply "Luminance" but images exported do not have the effect I applied! They don't even show skin smoothing effects I added!

[ssprengel]

Every time I see a thread like this I am hoping to see evidence of an actual problem, but so far, the only documented issue with recent versions of LR 5.5+ is that people are using Fit zoom instead of 1:1 or 100% zoom to judge their Detail panel adjustments, which cannot be accurate.

The first part of this thread has no examples, only assertions, and when examples are asked for the replies cease.

The second part of this thread, with the observatory shot, does include screenshots but they all, except maybe the last pair where things are said to be working, appear to be Fit zoom which is not accurate.  To me they appear to be Fit view zoom because there are uneven borders on the top and bottom vs left and right, as well as the 25% along the title bar in PS.

This sort of discussion is usually about raw files where noise-grain is usually much more obvious, so maybe JPGs are handled differently and there could still be a bug, but of course, now things seem to be working and it's unclear why. 

For future reference if you are trying to say that Export isn't doing something you expect at the pixel-level detail, then post a side-by-side of the Develop After view and the OS Preview view of the exported file BOTH AT 1:1 or 100% ZOOM.

One problem may be that people don't even have the Zoom control visible in Develop so don't really have a good sense of when their viewing what.

[Turk12345]

Several of you are falling back on the idea that we are not looking at things at the right zoom level.  Just because it is difficult to post any actual size images here, does not mean that the person posting does not know what he is talking about.  Can't you trust someone when they say it is not exporting the NR information?  Give some of us credit for having a little bit of experience with doing this (I've exported literally tens of thousands of images in all kinds of formats).  I've used Lightroom from the very first version and I've taught many dozens of people to use the program.  I also resolved the issue myself with no help from anyone here.  That said, I think it would be in your best interest to not assume the poster is wrong is his assessment and that the images posted are in fact representations of what he is seeing and what the program is doing.  I don't know if Adobe even views this forum, but I certainly don't think it is very helpful for several of you to not be objective and to help with issues like this.  I've been working with computers and people who work with computers for over 45 years and I would never take a "holier than thou" attitude if someone came to me with a problem.  That's how I felt here.  

I apologize if that rubs a few of you the wrong way, but community forums are here for helping those that need help through people that have the experience and knowledge to be of some help.  We're all in the same boat here, the more you know the more help you can give.  I just stopped by cause I had a problem . . .

[areohbee]

Basically, what ssprengel said.., but also:

If there is a bug, and you're savvy enough to be sure about it, then:

* gather up the "proof" (hint: must be reproducible by Adobe).

* submit a bug report on the feedback site (not here).

Bugs such as this are generally fixed in a timely fashion, if Adobe becomes convinced there is one, but currently Adobe is convinced there isn't (or so it seems to me from the outside - maybe they know dang well that there's a problem, and have already reproduced it, and are just keeping quiet about it - wouldn't be the first time..).

PS - I'm not having the problem, and at this point there is a "boy who cried wolf" syndrome at play - I no longer take the reports seriously (whether there's a real "wolf" threatening now or not), but maybe somebody else will..

Good luck,

Rob

[ssprengel]

I believe you that you saw something happening you didn't expect.  That is a long way from Adobe being able to reproduce something for themselves internally, which is ultimately what makes any reports, here, useful.

[Jao vdL]

There was a bug a few versions ago where NR would not get applied upon export if you scaled to certain sizes. They fixed that one. As the others said, please post screenshots of 1:1 views. Not that we don't trust you but every single time with this sort of thing it turns out to be the issue that the person experiencing a problem simply refuses to look at the image 1:1 and as soon as they do it turns out they are identical. I have no clue whether this is the case or not here without 1:1 zoom screenshots. The problem is that the zoomed out views in Develop (not in Library) are highly inaccurate (read cannot be trusted at all) with respect to noise reduction if the original image is very noisy. You should really only touch the sharpening and noise reduction sliders when you are at 1:1 or higher magnification. Otherwise they simply won't have the effect you think they have. You could actually consider this a bug in Lightroom. It should do a better job previewing or simply disable the sliders at lower magnification. Bottom line is that you need to compare the export to the image in Lightroom at 1:1 to see if the NR gets applied or not.

[Keith Reeder]

Turk,

you're under NO obligation to prove yourself to anyone here - we're all just users - but it's worth pushing this into the bug reporting forum (unfortunately - being an Adobe forum - I've no idea where it is these days, but someone else might be able to provide the link).

As to confirming this problem, I've provided concrete evidence of it here before, but here it is again: first image, a 100% crop of an exported (at full size, 16 bit tiff) 1600 ISO Canon 70D file, with no Lr Luma NR; second file is a similar crop, with Luma NR at 20 (much, much higher than I would ever have used in the past).

There's no difference between them. There is in the Lr preview - a huge difference - but on export, the NR isn't being applied. (Chroma NR is at default, and - perversely - is being applied).

[Jao vdL]

Keith,

I see no difference indeed in your files. I just tried it myself and for me NR clearly gets applied upon export. Not clear what the difference is. Note that luminance at 20 is not high at all. It will usually only have a subtle effect and will spend on the other two sliders whether it will have effect at all. Can you export these images with Lightroom set to export all metadata? There are no settings included in the files at all.

Here is what I get upon export. This is an ISO 25600 file. Everything at default except for the NR luminance setting and the extreme crop.

NR 0:

NR 20:

NR 40:

Clearly luminance noise reduction gets applied upon export on my installation. You can also see that from the file sizes of the jpeg file as the more noisy, the larger the file when using jpeg compression:

NR 0: 419 kB

NR 20: 374 kB

NR 40: 338 kB

[ssprengel]

And we are also under no obligation to believe you or Turk or anyone.  This is not a jury trial where a something is deemed true when 12 or a majority of 12 people agrees with you, nor is this a group of friends or a support group where people decide to agree with you to make you feel good because they like you or care about you, right?  This is about a potential issue with a computer program where a computer program will produce the same output given the same inputs, and we're asking for inputs, not just your view of the output.

The two green JPGs posted have camera settings embedded in them but no camera-raw settings embedded in them so what settings were used cannot be deduced from the attached JPGs other than they were processed with LR 5.5, apparently.  The uncropped exported TIFs might have this information but the JPGs do not.

I have tried camera raw files from various cameras including the 70D and I have never seen NR not applied for my exports, so this is not a wide-spread bug, that affects all files or all files from a particular camera.  Maybe there was something quirky with either the telescope JPGs or the green raw files, but without those there is no evidence of anyone to test.

Because the previous recent discussion with the telescope images seemed to be about possible problems starting with JPGs I decided to try things starting with the NO-NR green jpg.  I imported that into LR, applied Lum NR 50 and this NR setting does appear to be applied to the exported which I reimported into LR and displayed side-by-side at 1:1 zoom so differences in zoom and previewer app didn't enter into what is seen:

For anyone who wants to examine the exported JPG displayed at the right, above, here it is, and you'll be able to examine the metadata and see Luminance Smoothing is 50:

Edited:  Something appears off with the lr_no_nr.jpg included in the message, above, in that LR cannot write metadata to the JPG if I change settings and tell LR to.  Instead LR reports an error.  Just to be sure, I cleared my browser cache, re-downloaded the JPG from the message, removed and reimported the JPG into LR, then adjusted the LR Lum NR to 50 and clicked on the exclamation point and it would not work, reporting an Unknown File Format.

--

There was as problem with a recent version of the DNG Converter ignoring any customized CR defaults or existing XMP metadata and always applying Adobe factory defaults when converting to DNGs, not sure if it is the current DNGC 8.6 or the previous DNGC 8.5 with the problem, but if the DNG Converter was always applying Adobe defaults to things maybe whatever that bug was also affected a bit of the CR engine in LR although I do remember that LR's conversion to DNGs did seem to work properly while the DNGC's didn't.

What is important to getting any possible bug fixed is Adobe having input files that show a problem for Adobe, in house, with the current version of software.