I have Lightroom 5.7; if I get a Leica SL3, would it work in my version of Lightroom?

[Anbaric]

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On 6/27/2024 at 6:02 PM, jaapv said:

I think that is related to esthetic of the images that we are used to. Our eyes are not trained to appreciate the cleaner look. Anyway, if the results are to clinical for the taste of the photographer, the addition of a bit of  grain will solve the problem. It takes some skill to apply the program...🙄. Fortunately it is fully controllable.

I think if the answer is to add fake grain because we've made the image too clinical by adding fake detail, we may be asking the wrong question. 🙂

On 6/27/2024 at 6:07 PM, jaapv said:

That is a bit ambiguous, as Photo AI is not an enlarging tool as such, it has an enlarging option - which most users only apply rarely.  The same will apply to LR Enhance. I guess they mean Topaz Gigapixel.
I wonder what WPP will do when Photoshop is mainly AI driven - which will happen in a not too far  future. Are they going to ban the industry-leading postprocessing program?

A post from an employee on the Topaz forums suggest that Photo AI is intended to be their main product for serious use, including for resizing. It sounds like they want to reposition Gigapixel as a brand for phone images, etc. But Photo AI is just an example. World Press Photo mean anything that adds fake (what Topaz calls 'reimagined') detail using generative AI, during sharpening, resizing or anything else. They don't seem to mind using AI for other purposes - e.g., analysing an image to suggest an appropriate tone curve or brightness and contrast settings, etc. 

On 6/28/2024 at 1:19 AM, jaapv said:

I seriously doubt that Adobe will let itself being pushed around by a photo competition. And the other program makers neither

Photography has changed beyond recognition in the last two decades and this is only the beginning. Press photography is moving to smartphones too. Are WPP going to refuse images from a full-AI iPhone 20 as well? . 
The weakest will go to the wall. And it won’t be technology…

Technology will crush the puny luddites with their silly regulations - very Ayn Rand! But I think that's a false dichotomy - Adobe isn't the enemy, and this isn't really about the rules of a photo competition. WPP are just spelling out standards that are common in photojournalism, though they go into more detail than most sets of industry guidelines. The key thing is a prohibition on adding anything extraneous to a press image, and 'reimagining' details by generative AI can't help but fall into this category. Photoshop has had plenty of other tools that could be used to add things that aren't there (or, just as bad, removing things that are) for decades, and some journalists have been caught out abusing them. It isn't compulsory to use these tools, and it seems unlikely it will be compulsory to use generative AI either, at least in the cameras and editing packages that photojournalists are most likely to use. Adobe recognises the dangers of misusing this technology, which is obviously becoming more powerful and easier to use every year, in fields where authenticity is crucial. They are one of the major players behind the 'Content Credentials' scheme that recently featured in the M11 and will probably turn up in other cameras before long. In the case of PS/LR, all significant edits could be recorded in metadata in a tamper-evident way and be made available for inspection by (say) editorial staff at news media.  Whether this will become an industry standard remains to be seen. But today there is also, of course, the simple expedient of requiring access to the in-camera image for comparison with the edited version.

Edited July 3, 2024 by Anbaric

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[jaapv]

Well, I am talking about Gaussian noise. Which does not really look like grain. The point here is not adding detail but exploiting a property of human vision which makes a less smooth image more natural. The other side of the technique is to add a bit of Gaussian blur to images that feel too harsh.  Both should be added in a near-invisible amount. 
The enhance in Lightroom and Topaz Photo AI does not invent detail, the AI bit controls the doubling of resolution by rather complicated algorithms. It does not add apples to a pear tree. 
As for Photoshop, it is hard to imagine it functioning without using more and more generative AI. For instance dust removal is done by content aware technology which uses the adjacent bits of the image to replace the offending ones. I am sure that it will incorporate generative AI in the near future. We won’t be able to remove dust anymore?  

[hansvons]

7 hours ago, Anbaric said:

Adobe recognises the dangers of misusing this technology, which is obviously becoming more powerful and easier to use every year, in fields where authenticity is crucial. They are one of the major players behind the 'Content Credentials' scheme that recently featured in the M11 and will probably turn up in other cameras before long.

Adobe owns media creation in many levels and recognises primarily large corporates as their future clients opposed to the little creative subscriber which is their today’s angry base (AI scandal) fearing annihilation (rightly). These corporations are not only large advertising agencies but the whole market of media creation, including mainstream press like the NYT, which sells facts and authenticity and need a product like the Content Credential Scheme.

Adobe caters to everyone who buys their products. It’s a tech behemoth that’s as evil as Meta, Google, you name it. And if factuality, creativity and arts will be the casualties, so be it. Or not, if the market pays enough. 

 

[jaapv]

On 6/29/2024 at 4:04 AM, thebarnman said:

Thanks truly for the insight.  All that is good to know.  Improvements on how much easier it is to edit and achieving results in a different way because of updated software...that I get. 

I'm wondering more about better image quality with the newer software.  I'm asking about improvements with the image quality. 

Does the color red look better with the newer software?  How about contrast, is somehow contrast better looking with the newer software?  Is there more shadow detail because of the newer software?  That's really more about what I'm wondering.

I know there are some updated sliders for example (dehaze as an example) but I guess I'll just have to live without that and possibly a few extra sliders that may also have been added.

The answer to your questions is yes, yes and yes. The reason for not finding much with bloggers and influencers is that incremental improvements are not sexy and don’t generate clicks. But over the years they do add up. 

[rogxwhit]

On 6/30/2024 at 3:06 AM, thebarnman said:

Thank you.  From everything I know about photography, it is what I want it to be.  The moment I learned Lightroom can handle files from the SL3 was the moment I decided I didn't need to upgrade either the software or the computer.  I do however have a brand new monitor...the EIZO ColorEdge CG2700X which replaced my old workhorse the NEC MultiSync PA27AW.

After all, though, being not the devil's advocate but an advocate of sweetness, I would recommend Capture One as a RAW processor, though it's not in the cheapest slot.  And if you had to upgrade your pc accordingly, so what - these things come to us, periodically ...

[thebarnman]

On 7/13/2024 at 2:45 PM, rogxwhit said:

After all, though, being not the devil's advocate but an advocate of sweetness, I would recommend Capture One as a RAW processor, though it's not in the cheapest slot.  And if you had to upgrade your pc accordingly, so what - these things come to us, periodically ...

Thanks for the advise.  I'd rather just pay one price even if it's higher then say other programs.  After processing the RAW files, then I can simply place them anywhere else I'd rather work with them.  Good idea!  For $300 for what they call a version I can keep forever sounds like a bargain to me.  Looks like version 20 (13.1.4) is still available which is compatible with Windows 7.  I'm guessing I could update the lens profiles onto that which might the SL series of lenses.    

[rogxwhit]

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12 hours ago, thebarnman said:

Thanks for the advise.  I'd rather just pay one price even if it's higher then say other programs.  After processing the RAW files, then I can simply place them anywhere else I'd rather work with them.  Good idea!  For $300 for what they call a version I can keep forever sounds like a bargain to me.  Looks like version 20 (13.1.4) is still available which is compatible with Windows 7.  I'm guessing I could update the lens profiles onto that which might the SL series of lenses.    

Windows 7?  I wouldn't know about that ... 

[Anbaric]

13 hours ago, thebarnman said:

Thanks for the advise.  I'd rather just pay one price even if it's higher then say other programs.  After processing the RAW files, then I can simply place them anywhere else I'd rather work with them.  Good idea!  For $300 for what they call a version I can keep forever sounds like a bargain to me.  Looks like version 20 (13.1.4) is still available which is compatible with Windows 7.  I'm guessing I could update the lens profiles onto that which might the SL series of lenses.    

When you buy a C1 licence you get the current version, but it should also be valid for earlier versions like 13.1.4. But I don't know if you can use profiles from the current version in earlier versions - maybe time to upgrade Windows! (if a W7 machine is online it won't be at all secure at this point).

C1 have periodic sales (e.g. Black Friday) and the package has been discounted by ~40% in the past. Note that the support period for C1 'perpetual' licences is very short - as soon as a new version comes out, you are cut off with no bug fixes or raw file updates. Some people have been caught out when OS updates have broken C1.

Like the rest of the sofware industry, they may have a flexible definition of 'perpetual'. You can no longer install older versions of Adobe CS because the activation servers have been taken down. And C1 also phones home periodically, so even an installed version can be killed. This happened recently with Capture One Express, the now discontinued free version for Nikon, Sony and Fuji. A lot of users were very upset by this, as they were about earlier reductions in the support period for the paid version, and it makes C1 as a company rather hard to trust (they were bought out a few years ago by a private equity fund that wants to squeeze as much cash as possible out of their acquisition). They haven't yet killed off a paid product, but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point (it was just over a decade for Adobe) they decide that installation and perhaps even use of old versions is no longer supported. Lightroom 5.x, incidentally, can never be killed off in this way because it doesn't require online activation, but these days nearly every other major raw processor does (Open Source packages and some of the camera maufacturers' own products excepted).

Edited July 19, 2024 by Anbaric