What has the Adobe LR team been doing since LR5 for 2 years?

[Hans Kruse]

The answer was none. However, see this little video by Terry White.

To be fair Lightroom Mobile

[Robert-Peter Westphal]

I know past performance is not a guarantee for the future, but when LR 5 was part of the subscription how many improvements were made to that version that were not implemented in the perpetual license version?

Although Lightroom 5 was installed by the cloud tool of the subscription, it was not fully included in the cloud version and therefor could not be updated apart from the regular version. This feature just came with the real CC version which is now based on a different update mechanism than the perpetual version.

[john beardsworth]

To be fair Lightroom Mobile

Point taken.

[digitaldog]

To be fair Lightroom Mobile

IMHO (which has been noted before), a huge waste of engineering time and effort. LR Mobile is a prefect example of no one leading LR development and instead creating a solution in search of a problem. People inside Adobe seeing the onslaught of mobile devices and deciding there is a new, expanded market for the product, not the needs of it's current user base.
Kind of akin to the huge waste of engineering time spent at X-rite with their silly TrueColor app that is supposed to but doesn't 'calibrate' an iPad. Meanwhile, the core group of users who spent money on their high end package continue to see glacial speed of new features and bug fixes.

[Hans Kruse]

IMHO (which has been noted before), a huge waste of engineering time and effort. LR Mobile is a prefect example of no one leading LR development and instead creating a solution in search of a problem. People inside Adobe seeing the onslaught of mobile devices and deciding there is a new, expanded market for the product, not the needs of it's current user base.
Kind of akin to the huge waste of engineering time spent at X-rite with their silly TrueColor app that is supposed to but doesn't 'calibrate' an iPad. Meanwhile, the core group of users who spent money on their high end package continue to see glacial speed of new features and bug fixes.

In the beginning I was more positive, but since there has been little update to LR Mobile and only global adjustments. It also seems LR needs to synch all photos every time LR is updated which is really annoying. So I more or less have stopped using it.

[Hans Kruse]

To me, the addition of GPU support in LR6, which finally lets me see lag-free real-time changes on my 30" monitor as I move the development sliders, is well worth the upgrade price.  Bummer not to have better X-Trans demosaicing, though.

Yes, however the GPU support came from ACR. No other GPU support was added like e.g. for preview generation which would be a fairly obvious benefit.

[digitaldog]

In the beginning I was more positive, but since there has been little update to LR Mobile and only global adjustments. It also seems LR needs to synch all photos every time LR is updated which is really annoying. So I more or less have stopped using it.

And the entire workflow is nonexistent. Download raws from card to desktop machine, wait to create smart previews, upload them to a cloud, download to your mobile device before you even start working? Give me a break. By the time this is done so you can 'edit' poolside, I've finished the work on the desktop device. Or I'll just take my vastly more powerful MacBook Pro pool side without any of the work needed just to get them into a mobile device. This is an effective use of engineering for the majority of LR users? I think not.

Now look at LR6. GPU is a mess although I'm glad Adobe is moving into that direction. Now they just have to make it work without all the bugs and then add GPU to other areas outside of Develop. Face Detection is a mess, you can't go back and add other faces after initial scanning. I do like how they implement it with keywords and I think at some point when they get it right, it will be very useful for finding images like Keywords. Pano? Done in ACR as discussed. So nothing earth shattering here. LR6 is what Adobe in the old days would call LR 5.5 at best. But I still love LR and while I'd like to see the progress of features improve at a faster pace and wish someone would drive the product forward, I'm sticking with it. As I said earlier, just the current functionality in the Print module is worth the price of admission.

[john beardsworth]

In the beginning I was more positive, but since there has been little update to LR Mobile and only global adjustments. It also seems LR needs to synch all photos every time LR is updated which is really annoying. So I more or less have stopped using it.

I have seen messages in Lr Desktop where it's synching x images when it doesn't need to, but it looked like nothing was actually happening and I concluded that the message was incorrect. As for little update, I guess you've overlooked the change to rating and flagging, the presentation mode (hand your iPad to a smart teenager and know the bastard won't be able to edit your pictures), and all the related stuff in LrWeb?

To give a little example of how it can be useful, two weeks ago I was running a tethered shoot for a client here in London, but a couple of their people were stuck in Paris. In Lr6 the tethered dialog allows you to add new shots to a collection, so I chose one that I was syncing to LrMobile/LrWeb and shared it with them. They were able to see the pictures as we worked, choose ones they liked and review the adjustments I was making in response to the comments they'd entered. It would have been more fun for us to relocate to Paris, of course, but it's easy to dismiss LrMobile without appreciating what it is and how it can be used.

[stevenskl]

Can anyone tell me, what Terry has shown in his video?

[john beardsworth]

That's the whole idea of a periscope, a sneak peek and then it's gone? Seriously, I'm just checking it wasn't a mistake and that I am free to say what I saw.

[ButchM]

Can anyone tell me, what Terry has shown in his video?

Try this ... it was just posted to Terry's YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIJYL_AmqX0

[john beardsworth]

Thanks, Butch. I had actually looked on Terry's site but hadn't thought of YouTube.

[ButchM]

And the entire workflow is nonexistent. Download raws from card to desktop machine, wait to create smart previews, upload them to a cloud, download to your mobile device before you even start working? Give me a break. By the time this is done so you can 'edit' poolside, I've finished the work on the desktop device. Or I'll just take my vastly more powerful MacBook Pro pool side without any of the work needed just to get them into a mobile device. This is an effective use of engineering for the majority of LR users? I think not.

Exactly.

I don't know where the mindset is for planning out these new features ...

Just like they did with the Book module, they painted themselves into a corner with Lightroom Mobile and how they get Smart Previews to your mobile devices ... they MUST reside and be distributed by Adobe servers? Why bounce images thousands of miles to and fro to get images from one device to another when those devices spend the vast portion of their lifespan within relative proximity to each other? Why one of the gifted engineers or savvy product managers had to avoid a direct wifi transfer from one device to another is the most perplexing aspect I have ever pondered where it concerns Adobe decision making. Mind boggling, actually.

Under the circumstances, I find no distinct advantage to utilizing Lightroom Mobile in my daily workflow. It actually creates more work and effort than it saves. Utilizing the options I had in place for using my mobile devices as portable digital portfolios is even much more complete and efficient.

[smahn]

Looks like a weaker implementation of existing plugins. Here's one example:

http://www.kolor.com/neutralhazer/#start

Additional advancements for the landscape crowd, but little/nothing for the studio shooters.

Can we get some Live View tethering? Focus stacking? I'd like to see sharpening at various radii along the lines of this:

http://aescripts.com/fixel-detailizer/

[Manoli]

As I said earlier, just the current functionality in the Print module is worth the price of admission.

Agreed. So good though, that they haven't touched it in two years!
The Library module, too is a 'pretty darn good' DAM application.

[john beardsworth]

Additional advancements for the landscape crowd, but little/nothing for the studio shooters.

See above

[Manoli]

See above

Dilettante stuff. 

[smahn]

See above

That's fine, John. I will investigate, it could prove useful.

None the less, I think you'd have to agree that relative to features for landscape shooters those for studio shooters fall well withing the little-to-none end of the spectrum.

[ButchM]

It would have been more fun for us to relocate to Paris, of course, but it's easy to dismiss LrMobile without appreciating what it is and how it can be used.

That's awesome that Lr is capable of spanning the globe to include parties located elsewhere ... Too badd it can't reach a few feet through the ether when an internet connection is not available.

I had a job earlier this spring where we were on location where there was no internet access whatsoever. No cell signal. The closest telephone landline was over 50 miles away. Yet we had an ad hoc wifi network in use. The art director was very nearby but was not actually on several of the outdoor sets we were using.

In my case, Lightroom was just a bunch of useless ones and zeros occupying valuable storage space on my devices. So we went Old School with with an Eye-fi card and the ShutterSnitch app. The AD received constant feedback on how the shoot was progressing and could even shout out direction when we were in ear shot.

Now you may say my situation was a niche concern for Adobe ... it is a major concern for me as I have 6-8 such shoots per year under these circumstances ... but I would wager your situation of parties sprawled across the globe requiring live feedback is not that great in numbers either.

Anyway you look at it. The absence of a wifi option to dispense Smart Previews to Lightroom Mobile is a huge missing piece of the puzzle. And in intentional oversight IMHO.

[john beardsworth]

None the less, I think you'd have to agree that relative to features for landscape shooters those for studio shooters fall well withing the little-to-none end of the spectrum.

I would agree, though I think it would be too long a haul to make it comparable with Capture One's tethered shooting solution (I love Capture Pilot). I don't see it as a landscape rather than studio tool, though the multi-user capability is another aspect that seems more for the latter group.