How do we get Leica/Adobe to fix lens corrections?

[Adam Bonn]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I suspect that Leica did in some way help adobe already. After all adobe had a profile for the M11 quite a while before launch date.

Sadly Leica has quite a small overall market share, and the M11 is a small share of that.. there’s just not enough noise being raised.

Might be worth someone reaching out to DPR.. if adobe you have a problem is broadcast there then conceivably there’s a lot more pressure on adobe to resolve it.

 

[hdmesa]

1 minute ago, SrMi said:

I am pretty sure Adobe had access to M11 in late ‘21 when early M11 support was added to Lightroom. 
I did not notice the bug until others mentioned it here as I rarely use lenses that require distortion correction. I assume that the beta testers did not notice it either.

If you're the chief software engineer for Lightroom, there's a difference between your test units and a free personal M11 provided to you

[Adam Bonn]

4 minutes ago, SrMi said:

I am pretty sure Adobe had access to M11 in late ‘21 when early M11 support was added to Lightroom. 
I did not notice the bug until others mentioned it here as I rarely use lenses that require distortion correction. I assume that the beta testers did not notice it either.

Ha! Was typing the same thing as you but you got there first!

To be fair to the beta tester folks, they were beta testing the camera not adobe… (although the pages of bugs about the M11 does make me wonder how some of those issues weren’t flagged up sooner… although maybe they were raised then ignored by Leica. Who knows… it’ll all come good in the end. Just takes time)

[Adam Bonn]

7 hours ago, tashley said:

Crikey... thanks Adam.... I really appreciate that, though it does raise the question as to why we have to bugger about like this to get something that for most cameras is taken for granted once LR has supported them, which should not take this long. I really feel quite strongly that it is up to Leica, given that some of their lenses need corrections quite badly, to lobby Adobe to get this fixed. Because with the best will in the world I'd lose the will to live if I had to do the above at all often... or in fact I'd just buy back into a system where it isn't needed!

Well you only have to make the profile files once.. but adobe has a dropped a bollock here, and hopefully it’ll be a quick and easy fix for them

[tashley]

1 hour ago, Adam Bonn said:

Ha! Was typing the same thing as you but you got there first!

To be fair to the beta tester folks, they were beta testing the camera not adobe… (although the pages of bugs about the M11 does make me wonder how some of those issues weren’t flagged up sooner… although maybe they were raised then ignored by Leica. Who knows… it’ll all come good in the end. Just takes time)

One could choose to be a little cynical here (Leica and M11 are small subsets of the market so not worth being quickly reactive to) or one could be a great deal more cynical….

[scott kirkpatrick]

I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if I am stating the obvious.  There seem to be two topics --

(1)   why can't Leica, C1, and Adobe all come out on announcement day with all novel features and long-standing problems covered?  

(2)    Correcting distortion on dastardly "moustached" lenses differs between software packages or doesn't even happen.

On #1, conversations between three distinct companies, from German, Danish, and California cultures, each very cost-conscious and tightly managed, can be hard.  It's not just a matter of loaning the "chief software guy" a camera a month before the announcement.  For the M11, Leica+C1 seems to have been a happier relationship than Leica+Adobe, and we'll never know why.   In the past, when C1 and Leica were barely speaking,  I had to send one of my new Leicas to Denmark for a week to get the sensor corrections worked out.  It then took another month for those to be tested and to appear in a product release from C1.  This time C1 was ready in January 2022, and Adobe was not.

On #2, Leica provides an estimate of lens distortion  in every DNG, following the guidelines in Adobe's TIFF specifications.  This only describes geometry, not spatially varying color vignetting, such as green edges or the Italian Flag effects which are sensor-dependent and are corrected in the image data before it leaves the camera.  The guidelines say, in effect, "keep it simple, as you don't know what errors fast algorithms will make using your curve for  corrections."  Moustache distortion is seen in aggressive designs from an earlier era, like Summiluxes and Noctiluxes.  And, to my surprise, on the new M 35 APO Summicron, distortion as a function of radius has the same classic form:

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 M lenses can be used on film, so a mild tendency to barrel distortion in the center the image is pulled back in at the corners, giving a pincushion effect. there.  This could be accurately described in the DNG as a WarpRectilinear opcode correction, but I suspect Leica chose not to risk it, and describes the central distortion only..  C1 uses the WarpRectilinear opcode in their distortion corrections, Adobe appears to do something different, and it probably took them longer.  I could dig into this a bit further, but I don't have time right now.

Edited May 3, 2022 by scott kirkpatrick

[erudolph]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Scott, the issue in Lightroom is that, for the majority of lenses, the Lens Profile Corrections are not being applied to image files.

So, if you go to the top of the profile list, in the lens corrections panel, and enable/disable the APO 35mm profile, a correction will be applied to the image.  For almost all of the other profiles, no correction is applied when enabled.  But if you change the camera's metadata to say that the camera is an M other than the M11, the entire list of corrections becomes usable.  This is just weirdness that needs to be fixed.

[scott kirkpatrick]

14 minutes ago, erudolph said:

Scott, the issue in Lightroom is that, for the majority of lenses, the Lens Profile Corrections are not being applied to image files.

So, if you go to the top of the profile list, in the lens corrections panel, and enable/disable the APO 35mm profile, a correction will be applied to the image.  For almost all of the other profiles, no correction is applied when enabled.  But if you change the camera's metadata to say that the camera is an M other than the M11, the entire list of corrections becomes usable.  This is just weirdness that needs to be fixed.

Does LR now correct the moustache distortion that TAshley pointed out in the WATE when you use your new M APO SC 35?  My impression is that C1 does not, but I haven't shot any nice square buildings to make a careful check.

[erudolph]

3 minutes ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

Does LR now correct the moustache distortion that TAshley pointed out in the WATE when you use your new M APO SC 35?  My impression is that C1 does not, but I haven't shot any nice square buildings to make a careful check.

I haven’t either, yet.

[Adam Bonn]

M glass LR lens profiles work fine, unless the M happens to be the M11 then they do nothing. (except the 35apo iirc) 

Adobe makes profiles per lens not per camera+lens (so the m8/9/240/262/10/10R/11 will all use the same lens profile file) but for whatever reason these files don't work with the 11

If however you change the unique camera tag of an m11 dng to a different M, the profiles work fine with m11 dng files 

Ergo, nothing in the m11 dng itself is preventing the Adobe lens profile files from working but something inside of LR/ACR is. 

(excuse crappy typing I'm on my phone) 

[scott kirkpatrick]

I realized that the clapboard house next door would save me from a longer walk.  Here's the answer with C1 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

and yes, the edges of the boards , as rendered by C1, curve a bit.

[Adam Bonn]

51 minutes ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

I realized that the clapboard house next door would save me from a longer walk.  Here's the answer with C1 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

and yes, the edges of the boards , as rendered by C1, curve a bit.

Is this with an m11? 

If so are you able to test with a different model M? 

And if yes is it the same? 

Fwiw.. The 35rit has distortion, LR corrects it with all three M bodies I have/had (I don't have the m11) but c1 corrects it with none of them 

So imo the c1/m11 distortion test is only valid if c1 fixes distortion on non m11 bodies but not with an m11 

My hunch is that c1 will always show that distortion.. No matter which M the lens is on 

[anickpick]

Am 2.5.2022 um 14:20 schrieb tashley:

Honestly, this is why Leica should get on this: they’ll have more influence than we can and the lack of support is IMHO very harmful to their product. 

I am not going to buy another Leica product until this issue is resolved.

[hdmesa]

3 hours ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if I am stating the obvious.  There seem to be two topics --

(1)   why can't Leica, C1, and Adobe all come out on announcement day with all novel features and long-standing problems covered?  

(2)    Correcting distortion on dastardly "moustached" lenses differs between software packages or doesn't even happen.

On #1, conversations between three distinct companies, from German, Danish, and California cultures, each very cost-conscious and tightly managed, can be hard.  It's not just a matter of loaning the "chief software guy" a camera a month before the announcement.  For the M11, Leica+C1 seems to have been a happier relationship than Leica+Adobe, and we'll never know why.   In the past, when C1 and Leica were barely speaking,  I had to send one of my new Leicas to Denmark for a week to get the sensor corrections worked out.  It then took another month for those to be tested and to appear in a product release from C1.  This time C1 was ready in January 2022, and Adobe was not.

On #2, Leica provides an estimate of lens distortion  in every DNG, following the guidelines in Adobe's TIFF specifications.  This only describes geometry, not spatially varying color vignetting, such as green edges or the Italian Flag effects which are sensor-dependent and are corrected in the image data before it leaves the camera.  The guidelines say, in effect, "keep it simple, as you don't know what errors fast algorithms will make using your curve for  corrections."  Moustache distortion is seen in aggressive designs from an earlier era, like Summiluxes and Noctiluxes.  And, to my surprise, on the new M 35 APO Summicron, distortion as a function of radius has the same classic form:

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

 M lenses can be used on film, so a mild tendency to barrel distortion in the center the image is pulled back in at the corners, giving a pincushion effect. there.  This could be accurately described in the DNG as a WarpRectilinear opcode correction, but I suspect Leica chose not to risk it, and describes the central distortion only..  C1 uses the WarpRectilinear opcode in their distortion corrections, Adobe appears to do something different, and it probably took them longer.  I could dig into this a bit further, but I don't have time right now.

First: I didn’t say lend them the camera, I said gift them a camera. 
Second: It was an obvious joke.

There are other more important reasons you want to read an entire thread for context if you’re going to make the effort of such a lengthy response. It helps keep everyone from having to come back and catch you up to speed.

[SrMi]

1 hour ago, anickpick said:

I am not going to buy another Leica product until this issue is resolved.

Has anyone contacted Leica about the issue? What was their reaction?

[anickpick]

vor einer Stunde schrieb SrMi:

Has anyone contacted Leica about the issue? What was their reaction?

I find it hard to believe that Leica is not monitoring this forum after product launches.

[SrMi]

12 minutes ago, anickpick said:

I find it hard to believe that Leica is not monitoring this forum after product launches.

No, they do not, AFAIK. Nobody sane has time to read everything posted on Leica Camera Forum. I limit myself to a very few sub forums and it already takes way too much of my time.

If you want something fixed, you have to contact Leica. They are very responsive, IMO.

I did contact them a couple of times, also because of M11, an they do not seem to monitor this forum.

Edited May 3, 2022 by SrMi

[scott kirkpatrick]

2 hours ago, hdmesa said:

First: I didn’t say lend them the camera, I said gift them a camera. 
Second: It was an obvious joke.

There are other more important reasons you want to read an entire thread for context if you’re going to make the effort of such a lengthy response. It helps keep everyone from having to come back and catch you up to speed.

I think I read enough.  LR and Adobe seem to handle distortion correction as part of a larger set of corrections, and until recently they made most of the corrections mandatory.  So when they were late in supporting the M11, the distortion correction didn't happen until other stuff got done.  When new cameras go out on loan to Adobe or to C1 or to whomever, they come back with a few thousand exposures taken.  They are no longer new, so it is a gift.

[hdmesa]

3 minutes ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

I think I read enough.  LR and Adobe seem to handle distortion correction as part of a larger set of corrections, and until recently they made most of the corrections mandatory.  So when they were late in supporting the M11, the distortion correction didn't happen until other stuff got done.

Maybe so, but I personally don't care why it happened as much as I just want them to fix it.

3 minutes ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

...When new cameras go out on loan to Adobe or to C1 or to whomever, they come back with a few thousand exposures taken.  They are no longer new, so it is a gift.

I think you're being intentionally difficult for no real reason here. But I'm moving on since the original joke was obviously lost on ya... 

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[erudolph]

I've written to support at Leica USA.  A first step.