Flexcolor 4.8.5 creates bad DNGs?

[Chris Crumley]

I'm having a rash of Lightroom errors when I try to Export a .psd from a .dng in Lightroom. Has anyone seen this before?

[robertpoll]

Hi Chris,

I'm not a big user of the dng export but have just tried it on 4.8.5 (pc and mac, 10.5.2/intel) and it's working just fine for me.

On another note though, I'm interested to hear your experience with the DNG export. I tried it initially as I wanted to archive my images as dng so I could keep everything in lightroom but was very disappointed with the results; mostly noise in the shadows. This would have been v4.8.1 (I think). I've just had another very quick look - the noise does seem better but still not quite as good as with flexcolor (I have all noise reduction off in FC and LR).

Interestingly the FC image is also sharper. I have sharpening set to 0 in FC and LR, although with FC you can set sharpening to -ve values. I assume this means the 0 setting does sharpen!

Colour looks pretty good in both - not an exact match but the difference is small enough to make it difficult to say which is more accurate so it's a question of preference.

Anyway, my question is: are you getting images from a dng workflow that you believe are as good as via FC, or are you going that route more because fo the workflow advantages? If it's the former, how are you processing the images?

Oh, and sorry to hijack this thread!

thanks,

...rob

[rsmphoto]

Colour looks pretty good in both - not an exact match but the difference is small enough to make it difficult to say which is more accurate so it's a question of preference.

You might want to look at the reds in particular, if you haven't. For me the change was too much. I like the FC 4.8.5 .tifs.

[Alan Housel]

FC4.8.5 looks better to me than a processed DNG. The contrast and reds look like they are pumped up slightly with PS CS3 when compared to a processed tiff from FC. That extra red makes people look sunburned. I also have thumbnails that are turned counter clockwise by 90 degrees.

Alan Housel

[C Radlund]

Alan,
I never save to DNG except..... for one client who loves to use Capture One. They get images from a variety of different photographers so that is how they control the bad potato shoppers. So I messed around one day. If your color space is Adobe 1998 try sliding the vibrance slider  to subtract a few points. It seems to desaturate the reds in flesh tones.
Corey