One of the benefits of using Lightroom is that (provided your lens has been profiled by Adobe) you can use it to correct some common optical aberrations.
Vignetting caused by using wide apertures (although unfortunately not vignetting caused by stacking filters).
Chromatic aberrations and purple fringing. Modern software is so good that these are no longer an issue.
Barrel distortion with wide-angle lenses and pincushion distortion with telephotos. This is where straight lines near the edge of the frame appear to bend inwards or outwards.
In the days of film if any of these lens aberrations were visible in your photo there was very little you could do to correct them. Now, with digital cameras and Lightroom you can squeeze more image quality from your lenses than would otherwise be possible. It won’t make images taken with that inexpensive 18-300mm superzoom look like they were taken with expensive professional lenses, but it will be a huge improvement.
Mirrorless camera makers like Fujifilm take this idea even further and build lens profiles into the lens’s firmware. Lightroom recognises it automatically (as does the camera if you shoot JPEG) and applies the corrections automatically. If you shoot with a Fujifilm camera and process the photos in Lightroom you will never see the barrel distortion that is characteristic of their wide-angle lenses.
Above: This photo was taken with a Fujinon 18mm f2 lens on a Fujifilm X-Pro 1. Processed in Lightroom it shows no sign of barrel distortion.
Above: This is the same photo opened in Accuraw – a Raw processor for the Mac OS X that deliberately doesn’t use the lens profile embedded in Fujifilm’s Raw files. I haven’t processed the file in any way (and yes, as you can see I’m using the trial version), the important thing is that you can see the barrel distortion at the edges of the frame.
While Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw if you prefer to process your Raw files in Photoshop) is very good at lens corrections there are some things that it can’t correct.
The first is the poor edge sharpness typical of most lenses at wide apertures.
The second is softening caused by diffraction when using small apertures like f16 and f22.
However, there is a program that handles both of these very well. It is called DxO Optics Pro and has been recommended to me by several readers. It uses profiles created by DxO (who also provide the DxO Mark website that analyses lens performance) to correct softening caused by diffraction and poor edge sharpness at wide apertures.
The applications are obvious. For example, if you are forced to shoot a scene at f22 because it’s the only way you’ll have enough depth-of-field to get everything sharp, then having a program which is able to compensate for diffraction related softening will help you get the best out of the file in post-processing.
Above: This photo was taken at f22 using a Canon EF 17-40mm f4L lens with an EOS 5D Mark II. It is softer than it would have been had I used an aperture of f8 or f11.
Above: This comparison showing enlargements from the top right of the frame shows how DxO Optics Pro creates a sharper image than Lightroom, thanks to its ability to correct softening caused by diffraction.
DxO Optics Pro works well, but is at a disadvantage to Lightroom in that it is not nearly as good at organising your photos.
Recognising this, DxO has worked hard to make the latest versions integrate with Lightroom. You can now export files from Lightroom to DxO Optics Pro, then export them back to Lightroom to continue working on them.
Unlike other plug-ins, you can export a Raw file (you may have to convert it to DNG first) from Lightroom to DxO Optics Pro where you can carry out the required corrections. When you are done, you can send the photo back to Lightroom, where it is saved and opened as a linear DNG file. This is basically a TIFF file in a DNG wrapper, but the benefit is that you can make further adjustments in Lightroom, including adjusting white balance, that would be very much restricted if you were using the TIFF format.
The only disadvantage to this method is that linear DNG files are very large, so sending photos on the round trip through DxO Optics Pro does end up using more hard drive space. If that doesn’t bother you, and you regularly feel the need to correct edge softness or diffraction, then you could find this workflow useful.
The best way to see if DxO Optics Pro would be useful to you is to download the trial.
There is more information about the program’s features and pricing here.
This DxO tutorial explains the process of integrating Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro in more detail.
Have you used DxO Optics Pro? How does it compare to Lightroom? I’d love to hear your opinion – let me know in the comments.
Further reading
You can learn more about processing photos in Lightroom with these articles.
HDR Merge in Lightroom: First Thoughts
Video Tutorial: Environmental Portrait in Lightroom
Video Tutorial: Black & White in Lightroom
A Short Guide to Using Smart Previews in Lightoom 5
Portrait Processing in Lightroom
How to Uncrop Square Format Images in Lightroom
Mastering Lightroom ebooks
My Mastering Lightroom ebooks show you how to get the most out of Lightroom. They are written for Lightroom 4, Lightroom 5, Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC and cover the entire workflow process, including post-processing in the Develop module. Click the link to learn more.
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