Poor High-gamut colour transitions

[devils-advocate]

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A very quick preliminary test shows that LR is not doing a stellar job of differentiating tones in very highly saturated colours, leading to blotchy tonal transitions.

 

This is something a group of friends I shoot with noticed with LR on Phase files last spring. A comparison to conversions in C1 v.4 was striking, as C1 created smooth colour transitions from the same files. Hopefully proper profiles will address this, but I have heard whispers that LR does not use colour information as effectively as C1.

 

Anyone have this same experience thus far with the M9?

 

Attached is a sample. Shot at 400 ISO with minimal adjustment is LR.

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[robertwright]

I think you are seeing how ACR handles highly saturated reds, which is to say, "poorly."

[devils-advocate]

I've seen it in purples, yellows and greens as well. This is LR's chief shortcoming. Be nice if they'd actually try to fix it. LR is a way more user-friendly processing tool, and a C1-->LR would be a real pain in the ass.

[thrice]

I see the same in Lightroom with my 5D-II and .dng's imported from my minolta slide scanner. It is not good with saturated colours. The recovery slider I typically slide across to 35 for every image to recover colour tonal gradation at the expense of saturation, and then change saturation in photoshop.

 

I have also noticed that capture 1 gives much better colour, tones and sharpness. Lightroom however can do more with the brushes/gradient/web tools than C1... tradeoffs. It would be great if Adobe could come up with a very different profile for the M9 that gets us tone and sharpness at the expense of what so many amateurs want to see (contrast, no noise and saturation)...