I’m relatively new to PL 9 and before going there I already had PR 6, what I am finding is I get better results from PR 6 than PL 9 when denoising an image, I have experimented using the same settings on images from 500 iso to 12,500 iso, as I understand it they both use the same engine or am I wrong? Thanks, Russ.
I find it difficult to find the settings in PL/PR that provide equal results on export. Differences we see are simply a matter of which app does what, and possibly what it does more. PL applies a few things that PR doesn’t or doesn’t disclose.
Use whatever app helps you to get the results you want. For noise, you seem to be better served by PR. Wonderful!
Can we get some examples? PL should be pretty exceptional when it comes to denoising but it does depend on your image, your settings, your choice of de-noising model etc.
While you’re figuring this out, remember that PhotoLab will happily read DNG files output by PureRAW, so this is a great stop-gap. (Not ideal because of extra files.)
Image run via PL 9 & PR 6.
setting where same.
Exported to Affinity Photo to resize.
no other PP.
PL 9 (1)
PR (2)
The settings might look the same, but I can tell one has had lens distortion correction applied and the other has not. If you flip between the two images, the shape of the bird changes.
According to size and dimensions given below the screens, the wider image is smaller, which means less details. or noise. This also means that settings aren’t the same (as noted by @zkarj and export settings probably neither.
As long as conditions are different, results should be different, except by accident.
It’s weird, you say the settings are the same but it looks like there’s obvious sharpening and optical corrections being applied in the PR shot that aren’t being applied in the PL shot.
If I had the original RAW, I’m confident you could squeeze all that detail - and more - out of PhotoLab.
I’d be curious to see what your Contrast, Denoising, Sharpening, and Export settings are in PL. There’s more that could be done there for sure.
- The images shown are not identical in terms of size.
- The second image is brighter (as can be seen from the histogram) and exhibits higher contrast.
- While this is not the standard way to evaluate photos, at a magnification of 200% or more, the second image appears over-sharpened (pixelated) compared to the first.
Be that as it may, I don’t use PR and have no idea how to set up the two programs for a comparable result – assuming that is even possible.
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I just did a comparative test between PureRAW 6 and PhotoLab 9.10.
Outputs in JPEG at 95%. Adobe RGB profile.
Settings in PR:
Noise Reduction: DeepPRIME XD3 / Luminance 43 / Detail Strength 0 (default values)
Lens Sharpness Optimization: Standard / Intensity 100 / Detail 0
Vignetting, Chromatic Aberration, and Lens Distortion selected.
Settings in PL:
Preset; Optical corrections only
Then:
Generic render, camera profile
Lens Sharpness Optimization: Standard / Intensity 100 / Detail 0
Vignetting, Chromatic aberration, Lens distortion: default values
Noise reduction: DeepPRIME XD3 / Luminance 43* / Detail strength 0
* By default, it’s 40 in PL; I set it to the same as in PR, but it shouldn’t make much difference…
Conclusion:
Upon examination on an Adobe RGB calibrated monitor:
No difference in colorimetry, tone (brightness), or image definition.
Slight difference in file size (23 MB vs. 25.1 MB). And a few pixels of misalignment between images, probably due to the different advanced lens distortion settings between PL and PR.
It’s clearly the same demosaicing engine!
(Which I was convinced of)
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Tanks, maybe just my old mans Eyesite that is seeing a difference.
Russ.
…micro-contrast and noise (imagine) will make an image look sharper. There is always the question of how to balance noise reduction vs. acuteness.
But in the end, If you prefer PR’s output, why bother with something else.
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Chiming in, but only use PR6 with Capture 1 and not PL latest version. I have had conversations with DXO regarding PR6 and PL…and I have been told that the all PR6 features are incorporated into PL versions 9.6+. Therefore, there is no difference. Any differences one ‘sees’ is based on what else they are doing to the file in PL, whether intended or not.
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