The Styles—Adobe Lightroom Edition
“As a side note, the visit wasn’t just educational: I decided to use my time there wisely and make the most of it. More on this very soon.”
So, here we are: it’s very soon time.
The best way for me to assess Lightroom in 2022, was to first try to replicate my most common “looks”. This is how I’ve always done it: when I moved from Aperture to Lightroom, and from Lightroom to Capture One (you may insert your walking in circles comment here).
The two apps, as I’ve already written, are still very different, but Lightroom’s addition of colour grading wheels has somewhat closed what would’ve previously been an impossible gap to cross. Local adjustments are still limited, but as I experimented, I realized I could get awfully close to all my basic looks. So I thought I’d try to take it further: could I replicate the 1EYE Society style packs?
Turns out I could.
Lightroom editions of COLOUR TRIAD 01, MONO TRIAD 01 and EXP 77 (the extensive experimental pack inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s instant photography) are now available as part of the 1EYE Society membership.
Process
It was an interesting process. For each preset, I started by essentially duplicating the Capture One settings in Lightroom, which gave me a baseline to work with. But while the tools may appear similar, the results were usually very different, even when using identical values. So it came down to tweaking, interpretation, and a lot of side-by-side comparisons.
That said, these are not “perfect twins”. Even with JPEG files, the way both apps interpret colour will introduce variations as soon as you start adding processing. Capture One has a Brightness slider, Lightroom doesn’t. And obviously, raw profiles can alter the look significantly, so I suggest experimenting to see what works best. But overall, I’m pleased with the results—especially EXP 77 which I didn’t think I’d be able to replicate.
Two major differences to note:
One of EXP 77’s cool feature wasn’t achievable: the crops. The Capture One version of EXP 77 includes random crop variations (square, 5:4 and 4:3), which add a fun, chaotic element. This can’t be duplicated in Lightroom because cropping can’t be saved as part of a preset.
The newest micro style pack—LEVEL A—will also remain exclusive to Capture One for now: Lightroom doesn’t include a levels tool.
The presets are zips that contain xml files. This is the format that’s generated when presets are exported from the current version of LR Classic. They can be imported directly into Lightroom desktop apps, but they apparently require more work for mobile versions. I’m not sure why Adobe makes the process so overly complicated.
Still, there’s a lot to play with, I think. And while the membership description was clear about some benefits being exclusive to Capture One, I always felt a little bad about it.
I’m glad to finally be closing that gap—if only a little—for Lightroom users.
