Recreating the look of a lightroom preset in another software

Question

I have a number of Lightroom presets that I have developed or downloaded from the web and I am trying to recreate them in Luminar. Despite using the same values for the same/similar filters, my images turn out completely differently.

Lightroom default

luminar default

Lightroom processed - exposure+0.36, contrast+20, highlights-70,shadows+70. whites+20, blacks-80, saturation-30,vibrance-20,split tone highlight hue+45 saturation+5 shadow hue+45 saturation+22,clarity+60, postcrop vignette highlight priority amount-15

luminar processed - exposure+0.36, contrast+20, highlights-70,shadows+70. whites+20, blacks-80, saturation-30,vibrance-20,split tone highlight hue+45 saturation+5 shadow hue+45 saturation+22,clarity+60, postcrop vignette highlight priority amount-15

(Original link: https://i.sstatic.net/NGmCo.jpg)

Is there anyway to recreate a style from one software to another without doing it manually and subjectively?

Answer 1

This is something that I don't expect is possible. I worked 9 years writing image processing software and I can tell you there are so many ways to implement each algorithm that it would be difficult for any two to perfectly match.

The first problem you have is one of units. Most numbers in the user interface are meaningless. Other than exposure which can be measured in EV which is a unit, all other values you changed such as the contrast, highlights, shadows, etc are not in any specified units, so moving sliders to the same value is pointless.

Processing can be done in so many ways even when considering something that sounds simple like saturation or contrast. Most programs convert to some representation, apply the transform, and then convert back. The nature of that representation, being linear, gamma, log, etc can make the resulting change dramatically different.

This is so subtle that you may notice that even Lightroom does not always render like Lightroom! In the options for processing, you will be offered the choice of Lightroom engine because they do not always produce the same results.