Category Archives: Denoise

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | May 2024

The latest updates to Adobe Camera Raw (16.3), Lightroom Classic (13.3) and Lightroom Desktop (7.3) have been released to customers. There are new features and new camera and lens support along with bug fixes in each of the applications.

Enhancements to Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop

Unlike previous dot release updates, the May 2024 updates contain many more feature enhancements than is usual outside of a full version release. Lets’ have a look at what they are.

Generative Remove

Adobe’s ‘Firefly’ AI technology has been present in applications such as Photoshop for some time. However, with these latest updates it is now also available in Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop, albeit as an ‘Early Access’ feature. It can be found within what was formerly known as the ‘Healing’  panel, and is now called ‘Remove’.

The ‘Remove’ panel includes the original healing tools plus two new AI based tools – ‘Generative AI’ and ‘Object Aware’. The original ‘Heal’ tool has been renamed as ‘Remove’, and it’s very important to note that it remains the primary tool for dust spot removal.

New Look Remove Panel

The ‘Generative AI’ checkbox is used to enable a brush, which is then applied as a mask to the area that you want to replace. Pressing the ‘Apply’ button triggers the remove process, which is carried out remotely on Adobe’s Firefly server.  There is also a ‘Variations’ button that can be used to cycle through the three options generated, and a ‘Refresh’ button can be used to generate a new set of variations. In below example, the original image is shown on the right.

If necessary, the remove mask can be refined using the ‘Add’ and ‘Subtract’ brush.

The ‘Object Aware’ checkbox can be used to select an object to removed. The ‘Mask refinement’ (which will be enabled once the object is selected) can be used for better selections. However, unless the object is clearly defined, I’ve found that that ‘Object Aware’ works better when combined with ‘Generative AI’ as shown in below screenshot and example.

With both ‘Object Aware’ and ‘Generative AI’ enabled, notice that in the top image there are still peoples heads that haven’t been masked. So, I refined the mask using ‘Add’ (second image), then clicked on ‘Apply’. One thing to note though. That is, when ‘Object Aware’ only is enabled, it does not include an option for cycling through variations.

Feedback in the form of ‘tips’ is provided during the period that the application is working to generate the remove/fill area.

Generative Remove is credit based, which should explain  the recommendation to use the original Heal tool for dust spots. Unfortunately, Adobe hasn’t yet shared any other information on how credits will be allocated or measured in ACR, Lightroom Classic and Desktop. I suspect we’ll be told nothing until the feature comes out of ‘Early Access’.

Note that Adobe has published a useful FAQ for Generative Remove.

Lastly, the ‘Tool Overlay’ and ‘Visualise Spots’ options have been moved from the lower toolbar to the ‘Remove’ panel.

Lens Blur

‘Lens Blur’ was introduced an Early Access feature back in October 2023. Since then there has been lots of feedback from users as to how well/poorly it works along with some suggested improvements in the Adobe Community Feedback.  Adobe has taken this feedback onboard and included the following improvements with these latest updates to Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop:

  • Lens Blur AI models have been updated to address reported quality issues.
  • Support for batch operations (presets, copy/paste settings, sync/auto-sync settings) for Lens Blur have been added.
  • The UI has been updated to show Near/Far labels in focus range. When the focus range is moved around, it will show values in numbers.
  • New adaptive presets have been added for Lens Blur.

AI Denoise

The ‘Apple Neural Engine‘ is now enabled for AI Denoise on Mac with Apple Silicon with macOS 14.0 or later. There quality of noise reduction hasn’t changed from the previous versions, but the time taken to denoise has been greatly reduced. This is particularly noticeable on lower end Apple Silicon computers.  The following the results that I’ve obtained for the Mac computers that I use.

Denoising an Canon EOS R5 6400 ISO file

  • LrC 13.2 – MacBook Air M3 16GB memory = 71 seconds
  • LrC 13.3 – MacBook Air M3 16GB memory = 35 seconds
  • LrC 13.2 – Mac mini M1 16GB memory = 95 seconds
  • LrC 13.3 – Mac mini M1 16GB memory = 38 seconds
  • LrC 13.2 – Mac Studio M1 Ultra 64GB memory = 16 seconds
  • LrC 13.3 – Mac Studio M1 Ultra 64GB memory = 13 seconds
  • LrC 13.2 – MacBook Pro M3 Max 64GB memory = 18 seconds
  • LrC 13.3 – MacBook Pro M3 Max 64GB memory = 14 seconds

The timings for Camera Raw and Lightroom Desktop are slightly faster than for Lightroom Classic. There’s been no explanation given for the difference though.

Enhancements to Lightroom Classic

Tethered Capture

Support for Tethered Capture for Sony cameras is now included Cameras supported include (but not limited to):

  • Sony Alpha 1
  • Sony Alpha 7R IV
  • Sony Alpha 9 II
  • Sony Alpha 7R V
  • Sony Alpha 7S III*
  • Sony Alpha 7 IV
  • Sony Alpha 7C
  • Sony Alpha 6700*

Note:

1 * Indicates that these cameras have not been tested by Adobe.

2  Sony Cameras need to be in PC remote mode for USB tethering.

New tether support for Canon cameras includes:

  • EOS R10
  • EOS R100
  • EOS R50
  • EOS R6 Mark II
  • EOS R7
  • EOS R8
  • PowerShot V10

Develop Module Performance

  • Improvements to caching behaviour in the Develop module. These include:
  • Enhanced responsiveness and improved navigation experience.
  • Improved caching to deliver a smoother experience & crispier image when navigating through smaller sets of images, especially useful for workflows like image comparison, or image set involving VCs.

Above will have a direct impact on image navigation in the Develop module. That being said, I’ve noticed that some images don’t appear if arrow key is pressed too quickly. Adobe are aware of the issue and hope to address in later version.

Sync to the Adobe Cloud

Adobe has implemented a significant infrastructure change to enhance sync workflow reliability. You should see improved reliability when syncing your images to the Adobe Cloud.

Library Previews

Adobe has rearchitected the way Library previews are generated and stored.

Exported Image Status

Support to indicate whether an image has been exported or published. This is achieved using:

  • Exported and Not-exported Attribute filter in Library – Grid and Filmstrip.

  • An option to ‘Reset Export Status’ is now provided. It can be changed via Photo menu or Context menu of Folder/Collections/Image.
  • A new field for  ‘Last exported date’ in the metadata panel has been added.

Library Metadata Fields

Support has been added for following metadata fields in ‘AnySearchable Field’, ‘Searchable Metadata’, and ‘Searchable IPTC’ text-based Filters and

Smart Collections criteria.

  • Alt text (Accessibility)
  • Extended description (Accessibility)

‘Has Point Color’ in Smart Collections and Metadata Filters is now included.

Enhancements to Lightroom Desktop

Archive Locally

We can now manage our cloud storage by moving albums, photos and videos from the Adobe cloud to the local drive for archiving. In below example, I chose to archive the entire album.

If I’d wanted to archive only one photo, then I would right-mouse click on that photo to open the context menu, then choose ‘Archive 1 Photo locally…’

Filename in Grid

Filenames are now shown in the Square Grid view, and the File Type has been moved from the thumbnail to the frame area.

Slideshow

Slideshow now supports videos in full-screen with a new ‘Start Slideshow’ option in the View menu. That being said, slideshow in LrD is very basic. Options include whether to loop the show and choose the speed at which photos change.

Curves in Video

Video editing now supports ‘Curves’.

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop

New Camera Support

Details of new camera support added since the last release can be found here

Tether Support

Details of camera support for tethering can be found here

New Lens Correction Support

Details of new lens support added since the last release can be found here

Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop | April 2023

The latest updates to Camera Raw (15.3), Lightroom Classic (12.3) and Lightroom Desktop (6.3) have been released to customers. These updates include new camera and lens support along with bug fixes. There is one major new feature along with other minor features and enhancements that I’ll discuss below.

AI-powered Denoise [Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic & Desktop]

With these latest updates, Adobe is introducing AI-powered Denoise!

Using artificial intelligence, Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop can now remove noise from your photos. Better still, the noise is removed whilst preserving fine detail, far more effectively than the legacy noise reduction controls.

At present, Denoise will only work with Bayer and X-trans raw files. It won’t work on files such as JPEG, HEIC, ProRAW, sRaw, etc. However, Adobe plan to expand support for other file types in future versions.

Lightroom Classic Denoise

Denoise Workflow and File Management

The process of denoising your photos is very simple.

First, Adobe recommend that photos are denoised before editing, especially healing and masking as they can be affected by noise. Edits such as Highlights, Shadows, Dehaze and Clarity can also look different in denoised photos.

Denoise can be accessed via Photo > Enhance menu, or via the ‘Denoise…’ button in the Detail panel (see above screenshot).

Adobe Denoise analyses each photo dynamically to find the optimum range, but the default ‘Amount’ value (50) is always halfway between least and full denoising. In other words, the meaning of ‘full denoising’ varies with the photo, based on the analysis.

In the Enhance dialog, you can press-and-hold anywhere within the preview image to see the photo without Denoise applied. This provides a simple way to make before/after comparisons, especially when fine-tuning the Amount setting.

As with previous Enhance features, any adjustments you may already have made to the original photo will automatically be carried over to the enhanced DNG, although denoising first is recommended for the reasons mentioned above. Any legacy luminance or colour noise adjustments are ignored, and set to zero in the new DNG file. You can edit the new DNG file just like any other raw photo, apply your favourite presets, etc.

The zoom level used in the Enhance Preview panel is 200%, which is a tad high for normal resolution displays but is fine for 4K and higher.

The Denoise process produces a new derivative DNG file with ‘Enhanced-NR’ appended to the filename. Making the result of Denoise into a DNG has all the advantages that normal raw files do, and is similar to other features that produce a DNG. These include, Merge to Panorama and Merge to HDR. However, in the case of Denoise, like the other Enhance features, the resulting DNG also contains a copy of the original mosaic data, so nothing is lost. That being said, Denoise can’t yet be applied on an already enhanced image (Super Resolution or Denoised).

To make the task of finding files that have had ‘Denoise’ applied, the engineering team have provided an option to automatically add keywords to ‘Enhanced’ images. This option can be found under File Handling tab in Preferences dialog as shown in screenshot below.

The new keyword is added to each file based on the enhance workflow you have selected.

  • Raw Details
  • Super Resolution
  • Denoise

A new badge    has also be added to Grid thumbnail and filmstrip. Apparently, the keywords and badges are to make Denoised file easier to find. Personally, I think the engineering time would have been more usefully spent in providing a ‘filter’.

No doubt, there will be numerous comparisons between Adobe Denoise and third party offerings such as those from DxO and Topaz. Each will have areas where they perform well and others where they perform less well. By way of example, some of the third party products may excel at removing all traces of noise without human intervention whereas Adobe’s Denoise at it’s default setting of 50 tends to leave a little residual noise. However, this should not be seen a shortcoming, especially since a small movement of the Amount slider is all that’s needed to remove the noise. Another example, Some 3rd party applications apply global sharpening whilst Adobe Denoise does not. Personally, I prefer to have some control over the amount of noise reduction and sharpening applied to photos, but other users prefer that the process be a single click.

A comprehensive explanation of Denoise written by Eric Chan from the Camera Raw team can be found here.

Masking

Masking continues to be improved with new tools and UI tweaks. I’ve highlighted some of the new features and UI tweaks below.

Curves [Lightroom Classic and Desktop]

A ‘Curves’ panel has been added to to Masks in Lightroom Classic and Desktop. This brings both versions of Lightroom into line with Camera Raw.

Other Curve enhancements include:

  • Indicators (dots) have also added to Tone Curve and Masking Curves panel to indicate if that Curve has active settings. See above screenshot.
  • Support has also been added for Renaming and Deleting Curve Presets through the UI. The option is only available for User Created Presets.
  • The Histogram shown in local curve will be displayed for the selected mask, and not of the entire image. See above screenshot.

Select People [Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop]

Two new attributes for the People mask.

  • Facial Hair
  • Clothes

Also, the People mask attribute ‘Face Skin is now renamed to ‘Facial Skin’.

History Step [Lightroom Classic]

The Mask Name would now be added to History step when its settings, like Exposure, Contrast, etc., are changed.

Adaptive Presets [Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Desktop]

The Portrait Group of ‘Adaptive’ Presets has been expanded to include

  • Polished Portrait
  • Darken Beard

Library Enhancements [Lightroom Classic]

The Lightroom Classic engineering team have spent some time working to improve Scrolling and Walk Performance. However, at this time these improvements are limited to macOS systems.

For example, many Library module views now leverage native macOS capabilities for drawing/rendering of Images. This should help in optimising overall scrolling performance.

With these changes, you should experience better performance in the following views in macOS.

  • Improved / smoother Publish Grid scrolling and People View Scrolling.
  • Improved/ smoother scrolling experience in Import Grid , Import Loupe.
  • Faster walking in Full Screen.

Other Performance tweaks have been implemented as follows:

  • Keywords – optimised ‘Purge Unused Keywords’ workflow.
  • Map – the embedded browser framework that is used to render web content Classic in Map and Web modules has been updated.

UI Enhancements [Lightroom Classic]

Eyeball icons & Edit indicators

  • Eyeball icons replace the ‘switches’ and are now visible by default for all Edit panels and Healing, Redeye, and Masking tools. They can be clicked and held to temporarily hide settings of that panel. However, should you wish to switch a panel off, then press and hold Option/Alt key to convert Eyeball icons to  a Panel Switch.
  • Edit Indicators are also available in the toolbar. For the Global Panels, Eyeball icons also act as edit indicators.

Edit in Photoshop > Select Photoshop Version

Lightroom Classic now includes an option to select Photoshop version from all the different Photoshop versions installed on your system for your ‘Edit in Photoshop’ workflows. You can select the preferred Photoshop version from ‘Photoshop version’ dropdown in Preference > External Editing tab > Edit in Adobe Photoshop section. By default, latest version of Photoshop installed is selected. Once the Photoshop version is selected, it can be used for all the Edit-In Photoshop workflows.

Open as Smart Object Layers in Photoshop

A new option  has been added to open selected images as Smart Object Layers in Photoshop.

Feature Enhancements [Lightroom Desktop]

In addition to the headline feature mentioned above, Lightroom Desktop receives the following enhancements.

  • Video Improvements (Auto – B&W – Extract frame – Export frame – Trimming improvements (Timeline, Numeric in Crop))
  • Batch Editing -Already have it, just more discoverable -Copy -Paste -X to clear current settings -Gear to specify what gets copied
  • Resize Filmstrip
  • Preference to turn off Tool Tips
  • Performance Improvements: Crop, Scrolling, Pan and Zoom
  • [Beta] Content Authenticity feature via Export (opt in) -File or Cloud – Credentials to include -Verification site – https://verify.contentauthenticity.or -See list of creators, tools, what was done -See original (See original and edit side).

New Camera Support

Details of new camera support added since the last release can be found here

New Lens Correction Support

Details of new lens support added since the last release can be found here