Lightroom 3: Noise Control & Lens Tool

Art Suwansang discusses the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Lightroom 3 represents a great leap forward for photographers in the area of image processing. We can now enhance our digital images creatively in ways that couldn’t be done before. There are a few new and refined tools that come to mind when we think of these improvement changes. Starting with the new Process Version (PV) 2010, which is an entirely new RAW demosaic algorithm, or RAW decoder, that works to enhance the images from the building blog of your digital image files, to the muchneeded refinement made to the noise-reduction algorithm, with the biggest advance made in the area of Luminance noise reduction. Also consider the new Lens Correction tool built right into the RAW adjustment fundamental. These are the tools that we’ll spend time building up a familiarity with so that we can harness the great power of Lightroom 3 image-processing capabilities.

PV 201 Processing
sample image 1
Some might ask, why is PV 2010 such a big game changer? If we look at the history of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) the last time that this RAW decoder or demosaic algorithm got an update was in 2003, which predates even the release of Lightroom 1 by about three years and is currently known as Process Version 2003 (PV2003). PV 2003 was a good RAW decoder and it still is; however, in the recent years digital camera sensors have gotten so much better especially in the area of high ISO. Suddenly, what was good in PV 2003 is no longer good enough to handle RAW images that were photographed with high ISO. For a while we were using a really old and antiquated algorithm to process our newer files, the result is a decoder that can no longer get the most out of our new digital files. Hence the release of the new PV 2010 algorithm that was designed with the current DSLR in mind. The result is a decoder that can now process new and older digital files more efficiently. PV 2010 is also deployed in Adobe Photoshop CS 5 as ACR version 6.
Lightroom dialogue box
Now that we know some background about PV 2010, we should also know how and when it would affect us in Lightroom. At this point we need to separate our digital image files into two categories: first, brand new images that have not previously been processed with any former versions of Lightroom or ACR. While the second are images that have been previously processed in an older version of Lightroom and/or ACR. If your images fall within the first category then you can simply harness the new processing power with ease, when you bring them into Lightroom they are automatically processed using the new PV 2010 algorithm.
Develop
However, if your files fall into the second category, i.e. they have been processed with an older version of ACR and have XMPs sidecar files, or your Lightroom catalogue was upgraded from a previous version, then you would have to enable PV 2010 manually. Keep in mind that PV 2010 is an entirely new algorithm and it has a tendency to minimally change the look of your previously processed images. One way you can tell if your images were processed with PV 2003 is through the exclamation point notification that shows up on the lower right corner of the loupe view area, in the development module (fig. 01). If there’s no notification then you are using the latest process version. To update the processing algorithm to PV 2010, simply click on the exclamation point notification, and then a dialogue will appear asking if you would like to update only the selected image or all of the images in the filmstrip (fig. 02). In this dialogue you will also have the option for Lightroom to show you a before and after updated image in a side-by-side comparison as well. Another way to do this is in the library module, where you would simply select all of the previously processed images that you would like to update to PV 2010, go to the menu Photo, click on Develop Settings, and select “Update to Current Process (2010)”; now you are done (fig. 03).

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