How to properly deal with lens distortion in Sony NEX RAW files?

Question

I have a Sony NEX6 camera and when using the 16-50 kit lens the photos shot in RAW has a lot of distortions. You either have to let the camera correct it using jpeg or you are expected to use Sony's desktop software (called IDC) to correct it. Lightroom also corrects it, but unfortunately aperture does not which is the program I use. So two separate related problems. 1) If I try to use IDC's correction and then export it back as RAW format. For some odd reason Aperture imports the raw image fine but the image gets a green cast. I can't figure out a way to fix this in Aperture (tried regenerating previews etc)2) If I use Lightroom's correction and export it back as DNG file, Aperture fails to import the DNG file at all. It's reporting file not supported. So I'm left with using IDC/Lightroom to correct the distortion and then exporting it as TIFF. But I'm not sure I want to do this because I want to ensure I'm not losing data (the whole point of shooting RAW). Any help? I'm stuck with images I can't use :(

Answer 1

I would suggest importing raw files directly into Lightroom, and then, in the develop module, under lens corrections, check "remove chromatic aberration" AND "enable profile corrections." Then, make sure the lens profile below those checkboxes is set for your lens; if not, choose Sony for make, and 16-50 for lens.