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Lightroom Rendering M11 Images Soft


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I took my M11 out for a spin yesterday and processed a batch of landscapes in Lightroom Classic. The very sharp focus that I can see, from both looking at the image in-camera via the Visoflex, or via stretching the LCD image to focus on a particular mountain peak, is, in Lightroom, quite soft.

A 100% view in Lightroom made me question whether I had a rangefinder problem, as the 50 APO was simply not capturing the image with its customary sharpness. But looking at the image via the LCD or EVF, I can breath a sigh of relief. It's not the camera, it's how the file is being rendered by Lightroom. Moreover, when exported as a JPEG, it is significantly sharper than the DNG my screen shows me from Lightroom.

One other piece of data: when I import an image from my M10-R or SL2, Lightroom usually struggles momentarily to render the image with proper sharpness. When importing the M11 files, however, it adjusts itself in the blink of an eye. Which is weird, given the file is larger.

Can someone educate me on what I need to do in LR to get the image to show up accurately? In Preferences < Presets I have selected alternatively Default and then Camera Settings, and there's no real difference to how the image renders.  It does seem to recognize it as an M11 file. But I need to make some adjustment. I have waited, with previous cameras, for Adobe to publish a color profile, but this isn't that -- this is the image itself showing up on my iMac screen looking softer  than it should.

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It's a common misconception that a larger file size will automatically appear sharper right out of the camera. When you have a small image you have natural edge sharpening because of the abrupt jump between pixels displaying tones and colour, when you have a large file you have a greater number of pixels and these cause a softer transition between tones and colour because they are recording more information. So you just need to sharpen the image a bit more than you did with 24mp or 36mp. I imagine your LCD and EVF are applying some default sharpening.

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33 minutes ago, johnbuckley said:

Can someone educate me on what I need to do in LR to get the image to show up accurately? In Preferences < Presets I have selected alternatively Default and then Camera Settings, and there's no real difference to how the image renders.  It does seem to recognize it as an M11 file. But I need to make some adjustment. I have waited, with previous cameras, for Adobe to publish a color profile, but this isn't that -- this is the image itself showing up on my iMac screen looking softer  than it should.

try switching off the gpu in preferences.and restart LR

also a good idea to check in raw therapee or C1

 

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Thank you all.  There’s definitely something off in the way the Develop module is rendering the M11 images. I’m quite certain it’s not the camera. Will keep trying things and appreciate the suggestions. 

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1 hour ago, johnbuckley said:

Develop module is rendering the M11 images

John, I don't quite know what you mean by rendering.  LR takes the .dng raw data along with the metadata and applies a profile to make an image.  Sharpening and Noise Reduction ("Detail" in "Develop") is part of the raw conversion.  The profile used is your option.  Which profile are you using in the LR Develop module?  I would expect that LR is applying Adobe Color for the conversion of the .dng raw data to display an image.  You should be able to apply the Embedded profile, which is the M11 profile from the camera.  (That said when I got my M9 I had to make my own profile to get a correct color representation because both the Adobe profile and Leica M9 profile gave terrible reds.)

One other question.  What version of LR are you using?

Remember Develop is Adobe Camera Raw.  When Develop is used for a .jpg file, no profile is applied because .jpg is already an image.

One thing you can try is to use the Bridge/Camera Raw/Photoshop to see if the results are consistent in both tools.  I idea to use another company's tools, such as Capture One, is a good idea too.  Demo versions of all these programs can be downloaded for free.

I wish I had an M11.

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I have the latest LrC installed on my computer.  When I look at the list of profiles stored on my hard drive in Libraries for Lightroom & Camera Raw/Adobe Color, I do not see an M11 profile.  Perhaps the M11 is not really supported yet, and LR is applying a generic profile not suited for the resolution of the M11 sensor.

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Hi Zeitz - by rendering I mean how the image you’ve download comes to life when you click on it. With SL2 images, and with M10-R images, on my iMac, there’s a brief lag in the detail materializing when I call up an image, but then the detail comes to life - and 1005 magnification shows fine detail; on my iMac, the M11 images come to life without delay - but also without fine detail.

So I tried again on my MacBook Pro - and the images are perfect. I have something going on in my LR Classic app on my iMac..

So, the camera works fine. (Phew!) The images on my MacBook are gorgeous. I need to figure out why my LR Develop module is not behaving on my iMac. 

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Hi John, for what it's worth...

when I import an M11 DNG into LR 11.1, it appears in the develop module with a profile called "Profile M11."  I've been switching to the Adobe Color profile, which doesn't change thwe color rendering much, adds a bit of contrast.  As you've said, the preview seems to render quickly.  However, I'm not seeing any lack of sharpness.  When flipping quickly back and forth between the Library Loupe view (shortcut key E) and the Develop module (shortcut key D), there is usually a moment of blur but immediately the image at 100% looks identically sharp in the two modules.

Preferences are Use GPU on Auto, generate jpeg previews Medium, this on an iMac Pro with OS 10.15.7

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23 minutes ago, johnbuckley said:

there’s a brief lag in the detail materializing when I call up an image

LR will create a low res preview while the high res image is being processed.

What is the comparative RAM in you two Macs?  What are the processors?  I use 64 MB of RAM on a 3.2 GHz 6 core Intel i7 Mac.  I also keep the number of images in a folder to less than 72 so Bridge does not have too many images to process and display from one folder.

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Thank you, Erudolph - I too have the Profile M11 in LR on both machines. And I don’t know how to explain this, but after turning the iMac on and off a few times, and firing up LR anew, it is suddenly working just as well as the MacBook Pro. Phew…

And thank you, Zeitz. My iMac is underpowered - just 16 GB of RAM with a 3.7 GHZ 6-core Intel processor. I don’t have the MacBook handy but it has more memory. Maybe that explains it all.

Thank you both. 

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14 minutes ago, SrMi said:

:)

Actually, even without official support, Adobe Standard and Adobe Color work quite well. Leica suggests using Adobe Standard at high ISO.

adobe standard is the official support

The adobe color / landscape / portrait / etc are just one size fits all 3D LUT/colour tables (AFAIK they start life as .cube files, at least that's what the adobe SDK gives you to play with as an example), they each have a line of text in them that basically says use this colour table in-conjunction with adobe standard* now all the adobe standard profiles have the display name adobe standard, but the file name is camera specific (and also more importantly each 'adobe standard' file contains a tag 'unique camera name')

So the adobe workflow is:

import camera RAW - adobe identifies the model - applies camera specific 'adobe standard' - then applies generic 'adobe color'

*Cobalt do the same thing with their modular packs (film stock, CCD fever etc) you buy the pack which is one size fits all, but you must also buy your specific camera pack for it to work for the exact same reasons. (they usually reference cobalt modular here, which again has a same for all display name, but you need the correct cobalt modular dcp file for your specific camera), if you had (say) the CCD pack for your old camera you don't have to buy it again for your new camera, just the base profiles pack (that has the modular profile for your new camera)

edit:

The guy that shot the official Leica website download examples (Oliver Vogler IIRC) mainly seemed to use adobe landscape

Edited by Adam Bonn
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