Returned LR6 after one day

[gmckay60]

 Well, I am not here to hammer Lightroom6,but my experience was less than encouraging. I am not saying your experience will be as bad as mine. First, I have no performance issues with LR5 on my rather unimpressive Acer Aspire laptop. It does what I need. I am sure a newer more powerful laptop would help a lot. I downloaded the LR6 upgrade from Adobe on a Monday and couldn't wait to try it out. The pano and HDR features were the most tempting new features for me. I would no longer have to create my panos in Microsoft ICE or HDR in photomatix!! Well i loaded some photos to test the Pano and it stitched them fine, the preview screen showed a very good stitch, but when you did the merge function the laptop froze up and would not recover. I had to go to the task manager ( which took forever to open) and end Lightroom. I tried three more times and had the same problem!! So I completely shut down and started over and decided to use the HDR develop tool. Well it was a bit slow to get to the preview and there are no options to do any changes to the HDR image. The image resembles what a good DSLR in camera HDR would do or what you can do in LR5 by using the highlight, shadow, white, and black sliders. Then when you choose to finish by merging the laptop froze again. Takes forever to get the program to end and being a gluten for punishment I tried this two more times with the same results. It did not take me long to decide to remove LR6 and contact Adobe for a refund. Their live chat was easy to use, but as of a week later my refund has not been credited back to my credit card. I hope LR6 works for the rest of you, but I thought it would be interesting if anyone else had the same issues as I did? Maybe future releases will make LR6 work for me.
Geoff

[Simon Garrett]

Well, I am not here to hammer Lightroom6...

Perhaps, but you're doing a pretty good job!

...being a gluten for punishment...

I really don't think you meant that.  But then again...

Sorry things haven't worked out for you.  I've found LR6 faster on some of the things for which use of the graphics processor helps.  For example, re-rendering the image after moving sliders in development module is more responsive. 

I've also found some things rather sluggish, and probably slower than LR5, though I've not done any scientific tests. 

[jjj]

Panos work pretty well and without issue in my experience. LR6 has fallen over and crashed a lot though. Not some I recall ever happening in prior versions.
Sliders can be quite sluggish too.

[Paul2660]

Just curious, how much ram is on your laptop.  Freezes like you describe many times are from lack of available ram, especially with a HDR or Pano process, and I assume that LR is working these in 16 color, but not sure on the 16 bit as the files would be worked as raw.  I have not tried either feature yet.  LR will work with all the ram and I don't believe you have to assign it as you do in CC Photoshop. 

But I am surprised you had these problems as you have LR5 running fine. 

Hope the credit processes out, but I have a similar issue with Adobe in the past.

Paul

[Alan Klein]

I haven't upgraded to LR6.  But, when I bought LR5, I couldn't use it for a year until I upgraded my computer and Windows.  I had to continue to use LR3 until the computer upgrade.  Maybe you have a similar problem.

[Simon Garrett]

Just curious, how much ram is on your laptop.  Freezes like you describe many times are from lack of available ram, especially with a HDR or Pano process...

I've noticed that LR6 uses a lot more RAM on quite a few operations, including (I think) creating previews in the background.  It multi-tasks more, using more processor cores - but using more RAM to do it, and it bogs down the whole system more because it's using more processor cores.

[Rhossydd]

when I bought LR5, I couldn't use it for a year until I upgraded my computer and Windows.

I found LR5 very demanding and had to upgrade my system to get acceptable performance too, but LR6 has just worked fine on both my desktop and laptop.
My laptop doesn't have a suitable graphics chip to enable the GPU "acceleration", but from what I've seen on trying both settings on my desktop, it makes little difference anyway.

I guess the OP either was running 5 on a marginally capable system or has other system problems that the demands of photo merge are revealing.

no options to do any changes to the HDR image. The image resembles what a good DSLR in camera HDR would do or what you can do in LR5 by using the highlight, shadow, white, and black sliders.

The consensus here seems to be that is a very good thing.
You need to look more carefully at the resultant files. If the original set were well shot the resultant merged file has a lot more to offer than an individual shot.

If you want the eye searing HDR style Photomatrix is infamous for, you're probably looking at the wrong program. LR can't muck files up quite that badly yet.

[jjj]

If you want the eye searing HDR style Photomatrix is infamous for, you're probably looking at the wrong program. LR can't muck files up quite that badly yet.

That's like blaming Photoshop for bad compositing. People 'abusing' a tool is the issue, not the software.

[Rhossydd]

That's like blaming Photoshop for bad compositing. People 'abusing' a tool is the issue, not the software.

Have you seen the way they promote their software ? http://www.hdrsoft.com/gallery/index.php

[jjj]

I haven't upgraded to LR6.  But, when I bought LR5, I couldn't use it for a year until I upgraded my computer and Windows.  I had to continue to use LR3 until the computer upgrade.  Maybe you have a similar problem.

LR hasn't been fast for me since LR3. 22GB of RAM and having OS and scratch disc on SSDs made zero difference. However recently clearing ALL previews did markedly speed LR5 up briefly, but once they started to build up again, slllllloooowwww.

[jjj]

Have you seen the way they promote their software ? http://www.hdrsoft.com/gallery/index.php

A user gallery with a small number of garish shots and many more that are fine.
It's also worth remembering that an awful lot of people like that style, so it would be daft of them not to illustrate how people like to use the programme.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

That's like blaming Photoshop for bad compositing. People 'abusing' a tool is the issue, not the software.

I agree, and the more recent incarnations of Photomatix make it less difficult (not easy) to get more realistic looking tonemapped results.

Have you seen the way they promote their software ? http://www.hdrsoft.com/gallery/index.php

If most of their customers are in the segment of preferring 'over-the-top' postprocessing, I'd do the same (swallow my sense of esthetics, bite my tongue, and promote/sell). I'd probably also show some 'better' looking images, but that's subjective.

Cheers,
Bart

[Simon Garrett]

If most of their customers are in the segment of preferring 'over-the-top' postprocessing, I'd do the same (swallow my sense of esthetics, bite my tongue, and promote/sell). I'd probably also show some 'better' looking images, but that's subjective.

So would I, but that fits with what Rhossydd said: "If you want the eye searing HDR style Photomatrix is infamous for..."

[jnewell]

I've had a variety of problems with 6 and have uninstalled it in favor of 5.7.  If I wasn't pretty sure that Adobe will get it right by .4 or .5 I'd probably return it, too.  My issues are not hardware-related.  I was running it on an i7 4770K with SSD, 32gb of RAM and a GTX 770 video card, which LR6 claims it supports.  Edit: I see Adobe has a 30 day return period.  I will be returning it, even though I'm sure I'll eventually repurchase it.  I think a message to Adobe is not a bad idea in this case.  [edit: correct typo, 760 should have been 770]

[jrsforums]

I've had a variety of problems with 6 and have uninstalled it in favor of 5.7.  If I wasn't pretty sure that Adobe will get it right by .4 or .5 I'd probably return it, too.  My issues are not hardware-related.  I was running it on an i7 4770K with SSD, 32gb of RAM and a GTX 760 video card, which LR6 claims it supports.  Edit: I see Adobe has a 30 day return period.  I will be returning it, even though I'm sure I'll eventually repurchase it.  I think a message to Adobe is not a bad idea in this case.

I am running that config (with gtx 760 SC), and it works great.  With GPU On the sliders move very smooth with immediate response on screen.  Also have OS, catalog, and raw cache on multiple SSDs.

[gmckay60]

A lot of great comments! Yes my computer is not very punchy as I said in my original post. 4gb ram  Intel pentium p6100. However as I posted LR5 works fine. I do not do overly cooked HDR, but sometimes slight tone mapping is useful. Having no options or sliders seems pretty light for Adobe to boast about a HDR feature. Also, as I said the pano stitched well,but the merge crashed. I am more than willing to admit it could be my laptop is Too old and incapable! Microsoft ICE is a free very fast and quite effective pano software. The problem was having to load my photos to ICE and then create the pano followed by importing to Lr for any processing. I was hoping to save some steps. Looking forward to keeping track of users experience with LR 6. May be time to get a new laptop, but until then I feel the features are truly not worth the upgrade. Maybe Lr 6.1!
Thanks! Geoff

[Rhossydd]

Having no options or sliders seems pretty light for Adobe to boast about a HDR feature.

Do you realise that the photo merge delivers a full 16bit DNG file to work further on within LR ? and that LR's develop controls can adjust 32bit HDR TIFFs ?
There's an awful lot you can do with the photo merge DNGs

Just back read through the forum and see how people have found it so far.

[gmckay60]

Yes. If my computer would not freeze and actually merge the file I could do some post processing of the HDR image. However, I can do adjustments before I send the image to Lr in photomatix. I guess I am not doing a good job of getting across that I am not able to actually successfully use this features on my laptop and I am more than willing to accept that the problem could all be on my end. I just started the thread to see if anyone else who had no problems with LR5 were having the same issues LR6. If you are having wonderful results with LR6 than that is very helpful info for me to possibly address my laptop not being up to snuff. I am just not sure the the new features are substantial enough for me to upgrade even if they work. That is where these communities come in handy.

[jjj]

I've tried the pano feature a few times and it spat out a shot that needed no tweaking [pano wise].
Rather impressive.