This is a series of articles looking at the differences between Aperture and Lightroom from the viewpoint of a long time Aperture user.
Here's an example of a feature I'm missing in Lightroom.
I use curves extensively, it's the holy grail of brightness and gamma editing. If you're not using it, start using it!
On a slightly (deliberately) overexposed image from Gotland. See the "Range:" popup? It can be set to "extended", and it looks like this:
It shows a larger spectrum of image data than can be displayed on your monitor, i.e. a higher dynamic range. This is only populated if you're shooting with RAW files of course. You then have more bits of image data than JPG or your display can show. Using this, I can move the white point up
And you can instantly see the result. You suddenly have more image data in the monitor-visible spectrum! Amazing, isn't it? Now, this may have been a poor image to show this with since we don't have all that much useful data in the upper range either way. But it's super useful for a lot of bright images to get more data from the file. fonts
Unfortunately, Lightroom doesn't seem to support this. Default it shows you a poor-mans version of curves:
And at first I wondered what the hell this curve was on about, it had these stupid limits and regions. So you have to click the bottom right icon to get access to a real version of curves:
But, alas, no extended range here (or with the poorer version of curves) so no way - as far as I can make out - to actually access all that glorious image data from within Lightroom.
