X-Trans and Lightroom -- Code definitely cracked!! Sharp results :)

Some of you may remember my earlier thread detailing (haha, a pun) how I was attempting to get close to Iridient quality (arguably the highest image quality Xtrans converter) using Lightroom.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57276760

Forget that thread.

I believe I've definitely "cracked the code" when it comes to LR and Xtrans files, at least the 16MP files. I no longer believe I need Iridient at all.

Now, conventional wisdom says to use a low sharpening value, a low radius, and a high detail value. I say screw conventional wisdom because I could never really get awesome results with that approach.

Instead, I thought about what Lightroom seems to do. It seems to "bleed" highlight and/or sometimes color information into adjacent pixels, and I wondered what a high sharpening radius would do.

So, I did what I normally never do - I used a moderate sharpening amount, a large radius, and a moderate-to-high detail amount and wow.....the results are very close.

What follows is the overall test scene (downscaled) followed by 4 samples.

The left 1/3 of the sample is Lightroom using sharpening defaults. It unequivocally looks like crap.

The middle of the image is LR using Sharpening 50, Radius 2.0, Detail 75, Masking 0 and color NR 5 (though I could probably lower to detail 50)

The right side of the image is Iridient, sharpened to taste (before I did the LR version) and exported as a TIFF before working on it with LR and PS for the crops.

These settings work with a variety of files and look great. Of course, you'll have to modify the values slightly depending on the exact nature of the scene, but keep your radius high to basically counteract Lightroom's tendency to bleed highlight and color.

Look at the files at 100% to see the differences!

Test scene, just for reference.

LR default - LR Awesome - Iridient

LR default - LR Awesome - Iridient

LR default - LR Awesome - Iridient

LR default - LR Awesome - Iridient