Lightroom exports bad quality Nikon D500 images

Steve, another thing you should be aware of is that the D500 in your list of cameras is the noisiest system you have. This is expected as it is a crop sensor and all your other cameras are full-frame sensors. The result of this can be seen in the test numbers here: Nikon D500 vs Nikon D800E vs Nikon D3s.​

Click on measurements, select SNR 18% and then make sure "print" is selected to compare the images scaled to the same resolution. You'll see that the D500 is about a stop (3 dB) lower signal-to-noise ratio exactly as you expect for a sensor that is about half the size. You see the same result in tonal range and in the color sensitivity measurement. Cameras unfortunately cannot break the rules of physics yet and the noise in these cameras is mostly determined by the amount of light hitting them (i.e. shot noise statistics) and there area trumps everything else.

To further illustrate. I took one of your NEF files higher up and downloaded including the xmp file and opened in Lightroom and without doing any changes to your settings exported from Lightroom to a high quality sRGB jpeg without scaling. Then I took the same file and opened in Photoshop and exported to an sRGB jpeg without any editing. They are identical in noise and color. In the image below I zoomed 100% to show this. Guess which one is Lightroom and which is Photoshop?

stevek4 wrote: Using Lightroom 5 or Lightroom CC I am getting poor quality exported pictures from the Nikon D500, when other cameras, D800E, D3S, D3, export with good quality. I am using the same export settings for any camera, JPEG, 300dpi, quality 90%, long edge 3216, sRGB. The images from D800E, D3S, D3, appear as expected, while those with D500 (Lightroom 5 or CC and ACR 9.7) have a degraded quality that looks compressed with additional noise. This appears to be a LR issue, not with the camera, because processing with Photoshop 6 or Photoshop CC works just fine.

I downloaded your D500 NEF files and get the exact same image quality rendering using LR CC 2015.7 and ACR 9.7. The only way you can be seeing a difference using PS is if one or more of the ACR settings is not the same as LR's settings. I think you have a couple of issues going on here, but let's talk about what you are actually seeing as "degraded quality:" Lower Color Saturation, Lower Black Point Contrast

I made a discovery recently concerning changes Adobe has made to the Adobe Standard profile starting with all new camera models introduced around 2104 Q3. The cameras you are using (D800E, D3S, D3) were all introduced before 2104 Q3 except for the D500 model (2016 Q1).  Please read the replies starting at the below link and onward to the last reply for more details. It discusses Canon EOS cameras, but applies to ALL camera models:

Re: Canon 1dx II Color Issues with LR 6.7 HELP

THE ISSUE

The new version Adobe Standard camera profiles have lower color saturation and lower contrast around the Black Point (Shadow) Tone Curve area. Here's a test image shot with the Nikon D800e and D500 using the Adobe Standard camera profile. These differences make it difficult to achieve the same rendering as older model cameras from the same manufacturer. Using a different camera profile such as Camera Standard or Neutral will work, but it's not going to look like the "original" Adobe Standard profile rendering.

So what do you do? The first thought that comes to mind is scream "bloody murder" to Adobe about this "unannounced" change. What has surprised is how few people have complained about this here in the LR and PS forums. Pros like wedding and commercial photographers that need ALL cameras to produce very similar rendering should be screaming "bloody murder," but very few are.....so far. I've held-off posting a Problem Report in the Photoshop Family forum fearing it will simply fall on deaf ears.

SUGGESTED SOLUTION

So what can you do for now? I've found that adding Basic panel Saturation = +15 and Tone Curve Shadows = -10 will make the new Adobe Standard profile (i.e. 500D) look near identical to the older models. No, it's not the best solution, but give it a try.

(click on image to see full-size)

These have different noise reduction algorithms applied to them.

Can you show us a screen capture of before vs after export?