Disappointment

Ninety-Eight old hands holding a fifteen-year old wedding bouquet. (click to enlarge)

I have a bone to pick with Adobe.  A gripe for those of you who may not be familiar with that colloquialism.  There are two issues I regularly encounter which need be fully addressed by Adobe—their inability to provide best-in-class raw conversions for Fujifilm X-Trans files and their out-of-date noise reduction and sharpening features.  If you are not interested, I certainly understand and you should click elsewhere as I don't want you to waste your valuable time.

That said, I am truly baffled.  I don't understand why Adobe doesn't improve Lightroom Classic's and Photoshop's features we use almost every day.  I don't understand why Adobe chooses (it has to be a choice as they have the means to lead the industry) not to  keep up with smaller, independent companies which now provide us with artificial intelligence-based software that have superior digital noise reduction, removal of blur, sharpening as well as upsizing files?  It is much better software in those critical areas than Adobe's two premier editing programs, in fact.  Additionally, for us Fujifilm users, several much smaller companies do a superior job in converting X-Trans raw image files than what is provided by either Lightroom or Photoshop.  I find this mystifying and perplexing.

I will readily agree Adobe provides excellent overall image editing software, the defacto industry standard, but they seem to regularly enhance Lightroom and Photoshop with features, I think, only some of the more sophisticated users employ regularly.  They haven't enhanced some basic features that 99% of us use every day.  For example, the new complex masking features in Lightroom.  Excellent, but I don't think the vast majority of users take full advantage of it.  How about improving basic features everyone uses such as noise reduction and sharpening?

Just for the record and according to Adobe's quarterly financial disclosure of December, 2022, the company had revenue of $4.53 billion US.  The company's net income was $1.18 billion US and the net profit margin was 25.99%.  Most companies don't come anywhere close to a 25% profit margin.  Additionally, they had an operating income of $1.5 billion US.  Understand these figures represent only the last 3 months of 2022.  Adobe's net income for all of 2022 was $4.75 billion US.  Not million—billion with a huge "B!"  My point is Adobe is making a lot of money and is very profitable.  So why can't Adobe give us better products?  They have the money and resources to do so.

Topaz Labs, DXO and On1 are providing photographers with outstanding software that can eliminate digital noise without losing detail.  The software can clean up very high ISO image files while retaining texture and detail.  Also, they can sharpen up image files that, in the past, would be considered unusable due to focus being missed.  Additionally, the AI algorithms used to upsize files are amazing.  DXO even provides sophisticated camera/lens specific corrections that eliminate vignetting, distortion, aberrations and provides additional sharpening toward the edges and corners of specific lenses where the image quality might fall off!  Thank goodness for technology!  We are very fortunate, indeed.

One of my primary concerns is Adobe's inability to be best-in-class when it comes to demosaicing Fujifilm X-Trans raw image files.  It is widely known that Lightroom Classic does a good (my opinion) job converting raw files (much, much better than when Fujifilm first introduced the X-Trans sensor array) but it is far from the best software for that purpose.  After all, the X-Trans sensor was introduced in 2012.  Eleven years ago!  One would think they would have perfected the raw conversions by now.  One would think.

If you are a Fujifilm X-Trans sensor camera user and only use Lightroom or Photoshop, you are missing out on more detail, more texture and additional sharpness in your image files.  You are missing out on better raw file conversions.  Just sayin'.

What problems does this actually cause in the real world?  Well, if you are a meticulous photographer who really cares about your images, you want create the best images you can.  You bought that very expensive camera with all those pixels as well as those expensive lenses for a reason and you want to see the detail, texture and sharpness you know your camera and lenses captured.  Also, you don't want to lose sharpness and detail when reducing digital noise.  Why should you 'settle' for less.

In my case, most of my images are now just shared or posted on my website or used to illustrate this blog.  I generally don't need to have extreme detail, etc., because you, my audience, most likely won't be able to see it anyway.  But I still want to see it!  I know it is there.  I know it has been captured by my sensor.  Also, sharing photos that are less than sharp is a problem for me.  If I did, I would leave you with the impression that in 52 years of photographing, I still didn't know what I was doing and/or my standards were very low.  

I would say that, in my case, 75% of my images do fine in Lightroom Classic.  But for the 25% that need more work, I have used a variety of other solutions to achieve what I want in my images.  Those solutions include buying other software and adding many steps to my workflow to achieve a level of quality that anyone would and should expect.

Wouldn't you think that by now we should be able to completely edit our images in our Adobe software and not have to buy or use additional software?  I would think so.

If those are the problems, what are the solutions?  In mine and other Fujifilm owner's cases, we could sell our Fujifilm cameras and buy cameras with Bayer array sensors.  Lightroom does excellently with those.  That doesn't solve the noise reduction, sharpening or upsizing issues, however.  Second, one can buy other software, either as plug-ins or stand alone, to use in conjunction with Lightroom Classic adding to our cost and the length and complexity of one's workflow.  Third, one could migrate to an altogether different image editing software such as Capture1, DXO, On1 or Iridient.  Four, just live with what you get from Adobe., i.e., settle.  Don't demand excellence.  But is that what you really want?

With Fujifilm cameras becoming more and more popular (even achieving 'cult' status) and Fujifilm selling more and more of those cameras, you would think Adobe would possibly dedicate a few engineers to improve the raw file conversions.  To their credit, a few years ago Adobe did add the “Enhance Details” menu item but that seems to only be a partial solution to the continued problems we Fujifilm users have repeatedly experienced over the years in achieving the best quality demosaicing of our raw image files.  Enhance Details does help but doubles the file size.  Quite unnecessary, in my opinion.  Also, again, that doesn't address the noise reduction and sharpening issues.

When I received my new Fujifilm X-H2S last summer, of course, I looked very closely at how Lightroom Classic handled the new X-Trans 5 raw files.  In a nutshell, the same way as it has with other X-Trans sensor cameras in the past—good but could be better.  The more complete answer is not nearly as well as the two other software editing programs that I have used to get the most out of my Fujifilm X-Trans image files.  

Recently, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity, I conducted some tests to ascertain what differences in resolution and fine detail I could see between sets of two identically composed images.  One set was made with my 26mp Fujifilm X-H2S and the other with my 47mp Nikon Z7II.  You can find all of the particulars here.  This was not a comprehensive comparison, but just for my edification.  When converting the same file and then looking at fine details, textures and image sharpness in Lightroom Classic, DXO PhotoLab 5 and Iridient X-Transformer, the two latter editing programs did a much better job in bringing out that fine detail and texture than did Lightroom Classic.  That shouldn’t be.  The Adobe product should be at least as good if not better.

The three differences I saw that seem to cause trouble for Lightroom Classic with X-Trans raw files were resolving green foliage (grasses and leaves), extracting fine details and adequate sharpening.  The other editing functions seem to be just fine.  No complaints.

For that comparison test and after evaluating raw conversions in those three editing programs I chose to use DXO PhotoLab 5 to convert the Fujifilm raw files as it did a better job converting them than did Lightroom Classic.  For the Nikon files, Lightroom Classic worked just fine but for testing purposes and consistency, I used DXO for the Nikon files as well.  I wanted to see the full potential for the different resolution sensors and not be artificially hampered by less than optimum conversions.  Also, from what I’ve seen and read but have no direct personal knowledge, On1 and Capture One Pro make excellent Fujifilm raw conversions as well.

Isn’t it about time Adobe puts some serious effort into a) improving digital noise reduction and image sharpening and b), solving the Fujifilm X-Trans files issues other than adding the “Enhance Details” menu item?  I do thank Adobe for that and I thank them for all of the myriad of other good features that are in Lightroom Classic.  In fact, the new masking features I previously mentioned are extraordinary!  Game changers.

I would think there are enough Fujifilm users around the world that are using Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw that Adobe would put together a team and, once and for all, fix the problems we find with our Fujifilm RAW conversions.  I would also think they would put together another team of engineers to improve the noise reduction and sharpening features in Lightroom Classic to, at least, equal if not surpass what Topaz, DXO and On1 are giving us.

Frankly, I'm not willing to sell my Fujifilm cameras because of the 'less than best' Adobe LR raw conversions.  They affect me but not enough to give up my X-T5 and X-H2S.  Everything is a compromise, I guess.  I get a higher level of user satisfaction photographing with my Fujifilm cameras than with any other camera brand I've used...so....that outweighs the other.  I will just have to deal with it and continue to use the other software to realize the best of which my cameras and lenses are capable.

After all is said and done, don't get me wrong.  I am thankful for Lightroom, Photoshop and the other programs I use.  I cannot begin to describe how fortunate we photographers are today and the technology we can use to produce wonderful images from what was available to us and the restrictions under which we photographed when I started in 1971.

Your thoughts?

DISCLAIMER: This post is my opinion and solely my opinion formed from my personal experience.  I have no affiliations with any of the companies mentioned, am not paid, have no click-through links nor ads and pay for my software and gear at the same prices available to you.  I share my thoughts, my experiences, successes and failures to help others enjoy their photography as much as I have enjoyed mine.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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