Will Lightroom ever be able to match the color/contrast of DPP?

Question

Disclaimer, I'm a current 3.4 user and I've been using LR since version 2, it's my goto program for 98% of my work.  What i've noticed is that it never quite renders the raw files as well as DPP and in certain high contrast scenes, DPP does a better job overall.  I know or assume, Adobe reverse engineers the Canon raw file format and they do a great job at it, but I wonder if there's a reason Adobe doesn't attempt to license Canon's raw file specs for a perfect match with Canon's raw conversion software.  I spend quite a bit of time making LR conversions look as good as my Canon jpgs opened and simply exported from DPP.  Make no mistake, I have no intention of giving up the flexibility I have using LR, just wondering if they will ever nail it perfectly or is there some technique I might have overlooked that get's me much closer to DPP's output.

Answer 1

I used to feel the same way when I compared the results from LR to those from CaptureNX for Nikon raw files.  I used to shoot raw+JPEG which meant I could effectively compre the default output of CaptureNX (which was exacty the same as the JPEG image out of the camera) to what ACR was doing in LR.  Note that I'm not saying the CaptureNX/JPEG images were "correct" but just that they were different from what LR propduced.  There was quite a lot of difference and I found the CaptureNX/JPEG images more pleasing.
Then along came Camera Profiles in LR.  Once I used the Camera Profile which matched the settings I had in the camera (Neutral), I could not tell the difference between CaptureNX and LR in almost all cases.  The few where I could tell ther difference, it was so subtle that I couldn't even say which I prefered.
I don't know how good the Camera Profiles are for Canon gear, but they work a treat for Nikon.