Ahh, that LR watercolour effect. Can you do better?

[Ian387]

So I'm going through some shots taken in Hokkaido last week and I'm coming up against the infamous 'watercolour' effect in Lightroom for the first time. I'm guessing this is what that effect is referring to:


Zoom in especially around the flowers behind the lady.


Zoom in especially in the second two rows of flowers.

They aren't the best shots and I'm sure there some other factors at play such as the focus and depth of field, but I'm curious. With a processor other than Lightroom (or even with Lightroom itself), can anyone make it look better? It just goes to show that zooming into 100% is a dangerous idea!

RAFs here and here. XMP sidecars here and here. Have fun!

 

[TClair]

I have gone to using Iridient X-Transformer and converting the RAF files to DNG before processing in LR. That has solved several issued including the watercolor effect for me.

 

[Peter Foiles]

At first I said, Oh no, not another one, but these are some of the worst examples I have seen so here are versions using Iridient Transformer before processing in the current LR CC. Much better to my eye though not perfect.

 

[Pepyn]

Oh dear, they are impressive examples indeed! Look forward to the responses on this, usually it starts with what were your settings, post a RAW file etc, let me run it through IXT but that's all taken care of already...

 

[JacquesC]

So I'm going through some shots taken in Hokkaido last week and I'm coming up against the infamous 'watercolour' effect in Lightroom for the first time. I'm guessing this is what that effect is referring to:

Okay, I did a quick test:

1. RAF's imported into LR - Provia / zero noise reduction / default LR sharpening (25)
2. RAF's converted to DNG with X-Transformer, imported into LR, same settings as above applied.

You images are extreme crops, and I tried to mimic the same crops, except for the one image that I left uncropped.

With little or no cropping the images are actually looking good if one does not pixel peep at 200%.

The watermarked ones are obviously converted with X-Transformer, the rest in LR.























--
Jacques
apple-and-eve.com

 

[remasbg]

Got slightly better results with C1 Pro:

 

[JacquesC]

Got slightly better results with C1 Pro:

To me it looks like you got MUCH better results.

 

[georgehudetz]

--

George Hudetz Photography

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My Flikr stream: http://flic.kr/ps/Ay8ka

 

[Ian387]

Nice work Jacques, remasbg, Peter!

I do admit that they're extreme crops, but I was just so surprised how much the result truly looked like a painting. The effect is sort of beautiful in itself, but of course it wasn't what I had intended. There are a lot of pictures from this shoot which look pretty weird.

In Jacques' example the Iridient versions do look less like brush strokes. Perhaps I like remasbg's CaptureOne result even more though, especially the purple photo where the lavender looks fluffier and less streaky.

To be honest though, none of them exactly make the petals look sharp. Is this a limitation of the X-trans sensor, or am I simply expecting far too much? I wonder whether Adobe will ever catch up with CaptureOne, since I'd rather avoid learning a whole new workflow if I can help it.

Thanks for stepping up – let's see what people think

 

[JacquesC]

Nice work Jacques, remasbg, Peter!

You're most welcome.

I do admit that they're extreme crops, but I was just so surprised how much the result truly looked like a painting. The effect is sort of beautiful in itself, but of course it wasn't what I had intended. There are a lot of pictures from this shoot which look pretty weird.

To be honest though, none of them exactly make the petals look sharp. Is this a limitation of the X-trans sensor, or am I simply expecting far too much? I wonder whether Adobe will ever catch up with CaptureOne, since I'd rather avoid learning a whole new workflow if I can help it.

I don't think so - Fuji images are generally pretty sharp, often looking better than images from my D750, but that may have something to do with the particular lenses I'm using, and/or the absence of an anti-alias filter.

Thanks for stepping up – let's see what people think

I have to confess that I don't know X-transformer well at all, I have only been tinkering with the demo version, so I'm sure someone with experience can do much better.

However, the C1 versions posted here impresses me and is probably why C1 is so popular among Fuji shooters.

My problem is that I'm now so heavily 'invested' in LR & PS that I have no appetite or desire for upsetting that apple cart. Apart from Fuji I also shoot Nikon and Oly m43, and therefore LR works well for me in most cases - I'm not sure whether C1 offers enough benefit for me to get it in addition to what I'm already paying for.

 

[JayPhizzt]

So I'm going through some shots taken in Hokkaido last week and I'm coming up against the infamous 'watercolour' effect in Lightroom for the first time. I'm guessing this is what that effect is referring to:


Zoom in especially around the flowers behind the lady.


Zoom in especially in the second two rows of flowers.

They aren't the best shots and I'm sure there some other factors at play such as the focus and depth of field, but I'm curious. With a processor other than Lightroom (or even with Lightroom itself), can anyone make it look better? It just goes to show that zooming into 100% is a dangerous idea!

RAFs here and here. XMP sidecars here and here. Have fun!

That's LR for you, unfortunately

I use X-Transformer which does a much better job, although even with X-Transformer I can still in some photos see small tendencies of the "watercolor" effect. X-Transformer also does a slightly better job at retaining sharpness and details. I do however experience LR to render colors a bit better.

It's quite sad that it has to be this way.. With the lack of an AA-filter on the X-T2 in combination with Fuji's very sharp lenses you can definitely create some VERY sharp images, probably even more so than with most other camera/lens-combinations. It feels like this issue holds it back from reaching that potential Don't get me wrong, I also for example have the 16/1.4 which is a VERY sharp lens and I have shot some really sharp photos with it, but then I've also shot other photos which I feel could be a bit more sharp and detailed. It depends a lot on what you're shooting.

I really hope Adobe will keep improving and eventually completely fix the issue so that one doesn't need to use X-Transformer anymore.

 

[Exit10]

 

[fenjen]

Nice work Jacques, remasbg, Peter!

I do admit that they're extreme crops, but I was just so surprised how much the result truly looked like a painting. The effect is sort of beautiful in itself, but of course it wasn't what I had intended. There are a lot of pictures from this shoot which look pretty weird.

In Jacques' example the Iridient versions do look less like brush strokes. Perhaps I like remasbg's CaptureOne result even more though, especially the purple photo where the lavender looks fluffier and less streaky.

To be honest though, none of them exactly make the petals look sharp. Is this a limitation of the X-trans sensor, or am I simply expecting far too much? I wonder whether Adobe will ever catch up with CaptureOne, since I'd rather avoid learning a whole new workflow if I can help it.

Thanks for stepping up – let's see what people think

I think you're expecting too much and I don't mean that in an offensieve way. I came from the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II. When I started shooting Fuji I was noticing all kind of defects. My 18-55 didn't seem as sharp as my 12-40 2.8. I was noticing this water color effect in a lot of my photos and they just seemed unsharp at 100%. I felt this way until I took a good look at the photos I remembered being very happy with from my Olympus.. Often they were much worse. They were softer and often seemed like a painting at 100% as well. I still don't really like the look images at a 100% (although it really depends on the content of the photo) but I now feel like that's just the way it should be. We are not working with foveon sensors (which have their own array of problems) so we shouldn't expect pixel perfect detail since all color filter array sensors have to interpolate.

 

[Ian387]

Exit10, could I ask how you obtained an 'SOOC' JPG from the RAF files that I provided?

It just so happens that I did shoot RAW+JPEG, and your 'SOOC from RAF' versions do look identical to the 'real' SOOC JPGs to me (the ones from the camera are here and here if anybody is interested).

The right side of your comparison lacks the watercolour painting effect that Lightroom introduces. I don't use the JPGs from the camera, since I usually decide which film simulation to use afterwards in post processing and often underexpose so that I can bring up the shadows in post, saving the highlights, and enjoying other editing abilities that raw brings. But if there's a way to obtain the same SOOC JPG look from the RAF file, without the watercolour effect... well, I'm interested!

 

[Ian387]

Indeed, I'm mostly blown away by that fantastic 16mm f1.4, but Lightroom's rendering of it in the purple example is just comical really... Here's hoping that Adobe are actually making efforts to improve with the next version, because as you say, Lightroom's colours and other manipulation is hard to beat! As things stand, it seems we have to compromise one thing or another.

 

[Exit10]

Exit10, could I ask how you obtained an 'SOOC' JPG from the RAF files that I provided?

Sorry - no magic - I just processed your RAF files in my camera

 

[Ian387]

Ah, what a shame – I hoped it had been done in software, allowing the raw file to continue to be edited in other ways too from that SOOC base! Clever trick though

 

[Ian387]

Absolutely – it's so important to keep a sense of perspective with these things. I was genuinely curious to hear the responses here and what the realistic expectations are, but when viewed at normal viewing distances it's still a big improvement on my previous photo gear too. I just hope I don't end up with watercolour paintings instead of photographs when I choose some to print for the wall later on!

 

[TORN]

One thing to note is that you used aperture 4 with the rows of flowers. Thus best focus is reached in the middle of the image which means the farest away row of flowers. The rows in the foreground are simply not 100% in the DOF. The image quality would have been better if you had used 8.0 for example.

In my experience the watercolor effect is worst if you try to maximise sharpness in these kind of details and when they are not perfectly in focus to begin with. On the other hand this may be exactly how you shoot pictures and in that case you have to make the best you can out of it.

On another note (quite some) Fuji lenses tend to not have the best bokeh IN FRONT OF the DOF. For that reason it is sometimes a better idea to focus on an element more in the foreground and accept not quite sharp things in the background.

The xtransformer is a simple and cheap way to get improved results for some images while still using Lightroom to do the main load of your images. C1 is a total shift to a different approach. Not saying it is a bad thing but some are so invested into Lightroom that it does not seem worthwhile.

And finally: do not believe the people who tell you there is no issue. ;-)

On a side note: my 12 year old Canon 5D I usually produces images equally as good as my X-T1 when using lightroom.

 

[Jackalized]

Just Lightroom, nothing else. Keep your sharpening-radius around 1,5 to 1,8 if there are problems with too much "watercolour". Don't go overboard with the amount. If you're experiencing "worms" because your amount-slider is set too high, lower the detail-slider.