DPP versus Lightroom - Color Rendition

[bill_fouche]

I find DPP to be considerably better at reproducing rich and accurate colors

than Lightroom, but clunky in most other respects. I MUCH prefer the interface

and asset-management features of Lightroom. I have played around with

Lightroom's "calibration" and "preset" features trying to force it to render

color and tame highlights like DPP. Those efforts have failed. Has anyone else

experienced (and hopefully solved) this?

[pkallos]

Yeah, I'm very interested in this as well... I'm very interested in Lightroom because of all the things you mention, but have also heard exactly what you're talking about.

[DickArnold]

I have CS3 which matches my printer quite well. DPP differs somewhat from them so I use CS3 for final processing. I like the DPP presentation a lot and occasionally do initial conversion with it.

[images_in_light_north_west]

I think the answere lies in creating your own presets, I agree however that DPP handles color and highlights better, where it requires a lot of work in Lightroom. I have found that no one program yet does it all, so I am currently using Lightroom,DPP and DxO for my RAW conversion, depending on the type of light and color that was shot.

[pieris_berreitter]

I have this problem too and took this opportunity to try to find a useful answer. You can calibrate your camera using

the <A HREF="http://fors.net/chromoholics/index.php">Fors scripts</A>, and you'll get results like <A HREF="http://fors.net/chromoholics/index.php">this guy</A> if you're lucky. That's a good before/after comparison that illustrates the color accuracy problem that Lightroom exhibits.

<P>

If you don't want to make your own calibration (although supposedly there is a lot of variation between cameras) you can try these canned calibration files hosted at <A HREF="http://inside-lightroom.com/cal.php">Inside Lightroom</A>.

<P>

Beyond that I don't think there is much you can do; there are lots of complaints about this issue on the internets. Other forums like the Adobe Lightroom forum and Luminous Landscape have more knowledgeable users that might be able to help. I plan to try the calibration sequence (with colorchecker and a high-end illumination station) for my own camera.

[bill_fouche]

Pieris, I have bookmarked the Fors site for later consideration. Thanks to you and everyone for the thoughtful responses.

[danielrtan]

I have experience with DPP & Lightroom, I think DPP better in develop colour, for good combination retouch with DPP convert to CS (don't save using DPP) and save. You can good colour from DPP and for the next fleksibility from CS - best regard

[valo_soul]

"I find DPP to be considerably better at reproducing rich and accurate colors than Lightroom, but clunky in most other respects. I MUCH prefer the interface and asset-management features of Lightroom. I have played around with Lightroom's "calibration" and "preset" features trying to force it to render color and tame highlights like DPP. Those efforts have failed"

 

That is SO crazy that I stumbled across this thread. This is exactly what I have been thinking/experiencing and it's driving me mad. I am absolutely in love with the layout of Lightroom but frankly, it's conversions suck in comparison to RAW Image Task and DPP.

[rtrace]

This is why I still shoot JPEG. Colors are good! DPP is too slow and has a crappy workflow. I shoot JPEG and use ACR/Bridge for minor corrections on the JPEGs. Check out these threads where it's discussed at length, but RAW people refused to understand:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Jq1E

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00LyCn

 

Bogdan

[sebastian free]

Well, I am considering to go back to shoot jpegs again. When I used C1 i was more or less happy but lightroom really spoils your colours. I don't know really what to do about this.

[markko]

I remember reading an article on Rob Galbraith's site where it stated that Sports

Illustrated's photo editors preferred to use proprietary RAW conversion programs like

DPP and Capture NX because the third party programs like ACR were unable to

compete in terms of overall image quality. I see nothing wrong with going back to

JPEGs.

[twalsh]

There is nothing wrong with going back to JPEGs as long as your exposure and color balance are perfect. When you shoot JPEGs, the camera makes all the decisions (according to your settings). If you shoot RAW, then you get to make those decisions after looking at the image. I'm just not good enough to know how to set up the camera for the best image beforehand, so I always shoot RAW. I still don't know which converter to use. For now I'll stick with DPP.

[steve_wagner1]

<p>Re: Bogdan's post This is bad advice. I would caution inexperienced photographers to do much further reading before following this advice. In any case, with the new profiles the color in LR is essentially identical to DPP (using the "Camera Standard" setting) and there's no comparison between the two programs in terms of toolsets, workflow value, and efficiency.</p>