Soft evening light.

oldoval

The first two images were processed with PhotoScape and sharpened and noised reduced with Neat Image. Both of these programs are free for downloading off the internet. The last two images were processed with Lightroom 3 using it's sharpening and noise reduction. Oddly enough I seem to prefer the results I get with the free software. With the Lightroom images I went down through the sliders adjusting everything I could to come up with a pleasing image. I didn't really have a specific goal in mind, but wanted to somewhat capture the soft light. With the free PhotoScape software I basically just hit "autotone" and tweeked the contrast a bit, then run the image through Neat Image to take care of noise. These aren't direct comparison images, but you can see how the "free" software seems to handle color better automatically than I can by tweeking the sliders in Lightroom.

Am I expecting too much from Lightroom? Which do you prefer?

1 "free software"



2 "free software"



3 Lightroom



4 Lightroom

schmoo

I gotta say I prefer #2, too.