• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Does Lightroom process raw files on upload?

Status
Not open for further replies.

jerry12953

Active Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2010
Messages
128
Location
mid-wales, UK
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
6.14
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the best forum to post this question but I'll fire away anyway.

I've been a LR user since v3 (I think) so I know my way around it reasonably well. I'm still on v6.14 as I'm unhappy about the subscription model. I always knew I would have to move from Adobe in time and last autumn took a punt on DXO Photolab. Browsing round the web I came across a guy called who has a Youtube channel and website mainly related to photo-editing. "Lenscraft".

Anyway in a couple of his videos and posts he explains how you can use Photolab as a plug-in to Lightroom to take advantage of PL's better (he reckons) raw conversions, sharpening, and noise reduction. The route is as follows. You upload the raw file to LR, export to PL immediately, take advantage of the latter's "better" pre-processing capabilities, then return the file to LR as a dng to continue processing. This would suit me very well for the time being until I get to grips with a complete changeover from LR to PL.

And here at last is my point. Doesn't LR process the RAW file in some way as soon as it is uploaded? For example it is immediately visible with a sharpening value of +25 applied.

Would appreciate some thoughts on this. Thanks.
 
Yes, LrC (and formerly LR6) performs RAW conversions using (I think) Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). I am not sure if it is the full ACR that you access from Photoshop.

The question you raise is one I see every so often. Who has the best RAW converter and there a lot out there. Your can find articles on one versus the other. Personally, for what I do, the RAW conversion LrC does what I need.

If you are seeing any benefit in a different RAW converter that what you see in LR6 it is likely because the RAW converter LR6 uses is so old. So before expending money on a different converter, you may want to trial LrC. Yes, I know, the dreaded subscription model. I fought it for the longest time but have not been sorry in making the jump and the new features I have access to over LR6.
 
Yes, LrC (and formerly LR6) performs RAW conversions using (I think) Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). I am not sure if it is the full ACR that you access from Photoshop.
It's not. Lightroom has a built-in version of ACR. It does not need ACR to be installed at all and does not use it.
 
And here at last is my point. Doesn't LR process the RAW file in some way as soon as it is uploaded? For example it is immediately visible with a sharpening value of +25 applied.
RAW files aren't processed at all. What you see is a preview of the (indeed processed) data, but the original raw file remains untouched.
 
RAW files aren't processed at all. What you see is a preview of the (indeed processed) data, but the original raw file remains untouched.


I think that's the answer I was hoping for. Thanks.

But just to go a little further - on upload you immediately see a preview of the raw file with +25 sharpening applied. Does LR apply any other changes at the point of upload? And when does the raw file actually get processed? Is it at the point where you export the file?

Sorry about all the questions but I guess I've never really understood how this aspect of LR works.
 
I think that's the answer I was hoping for. Thanks.

But just to go a little further - on upload you immediately see a preview of the raw file with +25 sharpening applied. Does LR apply any other changes at the point of upload? And when does the raw file actually get processed? Is it at the point where you export the file?

Sorry about all the questions but I guess I've never really understood how this aspect of LR works.
The RAW file itself remains untouched. What Lightroom does is create a copy with the edits applied to that copy when you export it. A RAW file isn't an image file yet, the raw data need to be 'demosaiced' before you see an image. That is what Lightroom does too when it creates the preview, because otherwise it couldn't create a preview. If you want to read the science behind raw files: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format
 
It would depend on what you mean by "processed". Johan is correct in that the RAW file is simply photo site data and needs to be converted to an RGB file (Like a JPEG, TIFF, etc.) . Since the Photosite values need to be demosaic'd and converted to RGB pixels before there is an image, What you see when you first view an image in Lightroom is a processed image file. It is derived from the RAW photo site values on the original file and stored as a preview image by Lightroom. The original RAW file also contains a fully processed JPEG thumbnail image that was processed by the camera and was viewable on the camera reviews screen and as the initial thumbnail in Lightroom. If you view the RAW file in any other viewer, the OS uses a CODEC to grab and show the camera processed JPEG thumbnail stored in the RAW file header. So once imported into Lightroom what you see is either the camera "processed" JPEG thumbnail or the ACR processed image with default settings (e.g. the +25 sharpening) applied.
 
Thanks.

Well I have followed the instructions on the Lenscraft website about how to use Photolab as a preset in Lightroom, and processed my first file using LR > PL > LR and it certainly seems to work: a very nice clean image despite it being on m43 at 1000 ISO. I'll really have to go out and take some more photos at higher ISO's to really test it.

And it works with LR6.14 despite DXO customer support telling me it wouldn't........

Just wondering if anyone else is using the same method?
 
PhotoLab is a separate standalone app. It works fine on your Windows OS. The “Plugin” is a Lightroom Script that runs inside the Lightroom Environment to prepare an image and pass ie to your called program (PhotoLab). The Scripting language used by Lightroom has not changes that much since the earliest version of Lightroom. That is what it works to call your PhotoLab program and pass to it the file that PhotoLab can use.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
The reason why you were told it wouldn’t work might be because you can setup PhotoLab in two ways, but in Lightroom 6.14 maybe only one way works. If you setup PhotoLab so you get a menu item under ‘Edit in’, then Lightroom will sent a processed tiff file to PhotoLab. This is what will definitely work in Lightroom 6.14 too.

It’s also possible to setup PhotoLab in such a way that it opens the raw file directly, rather than a processed tiff. That allows you to save the result back to Lightroom as linear DNG. That DNG will technically not be a raw file, but it will behave like one in the same way that panorama or HDR DNG files do. I don’t know for sure, but I could imagine that this second method does not work in Lightroom 6.14.
 
The reason why you were told it wouldn’t work might be because you can setup PhotoLab in two ways, but in Lightroom 6.14 maybe only one way works. If you setup PhotoLab so you get a menu item under ‘Edit in’, then Lightroom will sent a processed tiff file to PhotoLab. This is what will definitely work in Lightroom 6.14 too.

It’s also possible to setup PhotoLab in such a way that it opens the raw file directly, rather than a processed tiff. That allows you to save the result back to Lightroom as linear DNG. That DNG will technically not be a raw file, but it will behave like one in the same way that panorama or HDR DNG files do. I don’t know for sure, but I could imagine that this second method does not work in Lightroom 6.14.
Mr Lenscraft (Robin Whalley) specifically recommends doing it the second way so that Photolab is working on a raw file rather than a tif processed by LR. And I'm pleased to say that it does work in LR6.14, despite what DXO support says.:)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top