Suggested Settings

These settings are intended as a guide to get you started with Lightroom 3 Photoshop CS5 or Canon DPP.  All are based on tests shot with a very sharp Canon 50mm f1.4 lens, and are aimed at balancing maximum detail / minimum noise, so zoom lenses may need a little more sharpening, portraits a little less. As every image is unique, these settings are a starting point only. Feel free to experiment - that’s all part of the fun.

Adobe Lightroom 3 / Photoshop CS5

Note: Noise reduction and sharpening are found in the Detail drop down menu which you’ll find by scrolling down the very long toolbar on the right. Noise Reduction (NR) is turned off by default so you must make adjustments manually. Although the settings in the table are the ones that matter most, try raising both the luminance and colour Detail settings to 70 or 80 for even more fine detail at the expense of a tiny bit more noise.  Settings in Photoshop CS5 should be identical.

Canon Digital Photo Professional

Note: With DPP I always start by selecting Neural or Faithfull - This turns off all sharpening, which make your images look very soft. Don’t panic, just manually input sharpening levels as below. Although DPP has optical corrections built in - they are turned off by default. I leave them that way unless they’re really needed. Using them loses some image quality and sharpness. Unlike Lightroom, DPP does set suggested levels for noise reduction, although they are usually just a little high for my taste. DPP is superb with 20D & 30D files at 100 and 200 ISO, but above that results are a long way behind what Lightroom can do.

Please print out this page for your own use and Links to this review are welcomed
but these tables and test results are copyright David Gold, 2010 and are
not to be copied or reproduced anywhere else.

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