Lightroom3 Lens Profile for Nikon 17-55mm
 

Not sure if this is the most appropriate place to post this info but I am sure the mods will move it to a better place if need be,

One of the brilliant new features in Lightroom 3 is the ability to make automatic corrections for lens distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting by using the appropriate lens profile.

Unfortunately, for those of us who use Nikon's brilliant 17-55mm f/2.8 lens, there is currently no profile for this lens distributed with Lightroom.

After searching the Adobe website, I finally found one here:

[url]https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B3E5imgApYZPMDNiMjY1ZTktMzEyZC00NDk1LTg0MDgtYWU4N2Q2ZjM0MDQx&hl=en&authkey=CNrv2soH[/url]

and downloaded it. It works very well indeed.

Nice find. I have been looking for a LR profile for my 18-55mm that came with my D50 but without success. Perhaps it's just too old?????? :(

Although there will no doubt be some debate from LR fanbois about this, the only software that will properly correct for your lens is DXO. I use this as my main RAW editor, and it is superb IMHO.

There are profiles for several versions of the Nikon 18-55 lens for the D50, and for the 17-55 f2.8

The difference between DXO and LR profiles is that DXO's are lab generated and cover all apertures and focal lengths across the whole of the lens.

You can find a trial version of DXO [URL="http://www.dxo.com/intl/photo/free_trial_version"]HERE[/URL]

Or even PTLens [url]http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/[/url]

Extracted from the PTLens site:

[B]Question[/B]. How does PTLens compare with [URL="http://www.dxo.com/en/photo/"]DxO Optics Pro[/URL]?
[B]Answer[/B]. For distortion correction of distant objects (10 feet to infinity) results obtained from PTLens are similar to results from DxO. Both PTLens and DxO can process fisheye images, correct perspective distortion, and complex lens distortion such as moustache distortion. DxO has automatic corrections for vignetting and chromatic aberration (CA). PTLens has manual adjustments for vignetting and CA. DxO offers additional features including raw conversion, adjustments for distance, exposure compensation, noise reduction, and volume anamorphosis.[B] DxO costs $169 for the Standard version and $299 for the Elite version (full frame DSLR). PTLens costs $25.[/B]

You get what you pay for. This is like saying you can get round the Nurburgring on a bicycle, why would you want a Ferrari?

DXO does the vignetting, CA and NR automatically, and applies different sharpness adjustments across the image according to the response map for that particular lens, body and capture settings, making it much faster to use than even LR.

I know it's horses for courses and all that, but I am running a trial of LR 3.2 at the moment and unless I am missing something (quite possible) then DXO and my old favourite Bibble, knock spots off of LR for speed, especially applying the same settings to a whole batch of images - something I will often want to do. I can't see how to apply the same setting to a selection of images in LR, I have to do one at a time. In DXO and Bibble you just select a batch and copy the lot.

This week I took a number of underwater pictures in a pool. Fixing them in DXO took a few moments work on one image and then copy the settings to the remaining 30 or so others.

As an aside, dos anyone know how to access individual colour channel curves in LR? It seems to just have RGB all lumped together.

LR3, as with the other former LR's has a sync setting button in the develop mode. Bottom right corner, is this what you are looking for Howard? Never used it myself as I like to work on each image individually.

It could be Alan - I suspected that Adobe would have some completely illogical and unique way of doing things:rolleyes:

Yep, that's it. So like all the other programmes you copy the settings with ctrl+shift+C, but unlike all the other programmes ctrl+shift+V only copies the settings to one file. Hopelessly idiosyncratic and inconsistent user interface. At least all of their products are similar in that regard.

So what about the curves colour channels then? ;)

No Idea! You don't 'arf seem to make it hard for yourself. I just do what it says on the tin and seem to get a reasonable result.

The curves question is because I've been taking some underwater shots (only in the pool). The suggested way of fixing them in LR is to use HSL or a preset that effectively adds an aqua filter. This doesn't work too well, however, because the problem with underwater shots is that the red wavelengths diminish rapidly with depth and so the reds need selective boosting. The best way to do this is using the red colour channel curves (also an easily accessible feature in Bibble).

DXO took about 2 seconds to restore the reds on the whole batch ;)

I keep on trying LR, but even though each iteration is better than the last, and I find that although it is a very good DAM, as a RAW editor it just doesn't cut the mustard. Too difficult to use (weird UI) and some of the features are just useless - auto masking for example, which always leaves a clearly defined boundary. And 'auto tone' is truly wretched. They should remove that.

Thanks, as always, Alan, for your help and guidance.

Howard, you know I'm always ready to help with anything of a technical nature no matter how intricate. My particular forte is lens cap technology, TIOBE in particular.;)