Lightroom to PL8 Export

DxO PhotoLab
1

Should sharpening settings be set to zero when exporting from Lightroom Classic to PL8? Or, does it make any difference?

2

I am not sure what you hope to accomplish by exporting a file from Lightroom to PhotoLab? Which specific tools in PhotoLab do you plan to use after the export? If you intend to use one of PhotoLab’s DeepPRIME NR variants, an exported image sent to PhotoLab from Lightroom will no longer be a raw file and DeepPRIME can’t be applied to it.

Mark

3

I guess the term ‘export to pl8 is incorrect’. According to LR, the raw file is being ‘transferred to DXO PL8’ . The raw file contains sharpening information, applied by the camera that is transferred to LR upon import.

4

If LR is simply “transferring” your RAW file to PL (without applying any pre-processing along the way) then that will be fine … PL will be able to apply all of its RAW-processing technology to your RAW file (for a result exceeding the capabilities of ACR/LR).

PL ignores any such information. Instead, PL uses lens correction data from a down-loaded “optics module” that’s specific to the [body+lens] combo used to capture the image … which is just one of the reasons it’s best to allow PL to process your RAW files.

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5

There are two ways to engage PhotoLab in Lightroom.

  1. Use module options available under Lightroom’s file menu
  2. Use process in… options from Lightroom’s photo or context menu

Way 1 opens PhotoLab so that we can customise the unaltered (RAW) file. This means that all changes from Lr are ignored by PL. Depending on how things are set for sidecars in Lightroom, the files exported from DPL can or will be treated with all modifications stored in Lightroom’s .xmp file.

Way 2 exports the photo and sends it to PhotoLab for further treatment. PhotoLab can then work on a modified file, be it a TIFF or a JPEG. Way 2 needs to be prepared by choosing PhotoLab as an external editor inLightroom’s settings.

I usually choose way 1 to profit from PhotoLab’s module based features like optical corrections and from denoising. I don’t see much use in way 2.

6

So, does resetting Lightroom’s sharpening setting to 0 also change the information in the sidecar file? Additionally, when the sharpening tool in PL8 is turned off does that have any effect on the module combination that DXO has created for that lens camera combination?

7

Lightroom’s .xmp sidecar files contain most of Lr’s settings of an image. This includes sharpening, set to 150 in this example

   crs:Sharpness="150"
   crs:SharpenRadius="+0.7"
   crs:SharpenDetail="25"
   crs:SharpenEdgeMasking="0"

DxO optical modules are proprietary and read by PhotoLab. The module tells PhotoLab how and how much distortion correction, lens sharpness correction etc. must be applied depending on e.g. aperture, focal length and distance settings of the photo in question.

Sharpening in Lightroom works as USM (unsharp masking) equally spread over the whole image while PhotoLab’s module sharpening varies in order to make images look equally sharp everywhere. This can mean that outer regions of an image are sharpened more aggressively than the center. Turning off lens sharpness (or whatever its called inDPL8) will leave an image as is, e.g. with a sharper center and softer outer regions. Compensating for this can be emulated in Lightroom with a radial mask, but without the precision that comes with a correction based on a DxO module. Unless one uses really lousy lenses, differences might be hard to spot though.

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