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

[john2]

What I am saying is that if you wanted to buy a permanent licence for a new version of Lightroom, all you had to do was click Help, Updates. In the days when there was no CC version, this would allow you to buy a permanent licence for the new version. Now you are not shown that option - all you see is an invitation to join CC. That is what I mean by railroading. On Adobe.com, if you go to the Lightroom pages and click on the Buy button, you are taken to a page which tries to sign you up for CC. More disingenuous railroading.

 What I am complaining about is that although it is still possible to buy a permanent licence, it is only by going through a non-intuitive series of menus that it is possible to do so. The permanent licence should be offered on an equal playing field with the CC version.

[digitaldog]

What I am saying is that if you wanted to buy a permanent licence for a new version of Lightroom, all you had to do was click Help, Updates.

Thanks for clarifying that. I think railroad is too strong a term but I do agree that Adobe did a very, very poor job of making the upgrades or perpetual license discoverable. They did a pretty poor job beta testing the product too. This seems to be the buggiest version since it's introduction.

[jjj]

Why should the respond, what would they gain? I'd like my HBO subscription to be half of what it is, I'd like my Verizion bill to be lower. Heck, I'd like the cost of gas to be 50 cents like when I was just learning to drive. I should write to each company along with each gas company and complain and have them explain to me, justify the cost?

You are not comparing like with like. Those are services with ongoing consumption of the product. LR, PS etc, once bought will continue to work on your computer as long as it works. And most probably a couple after that.  Most items bought via monthly payments end up being yours after a while and if that was the case with Adobe products, I doubt there would have been so much fuss. Long term however, paying for CC costs more than buying CS and upgrading each cycle. Also I would like to be able to subscribe to a few CC products as opposed to just one or all of them. PS+ LR are I think good value, adding say just Premiere on it's own costs twice as much again, not such good value. May as well buy FCPX outright.

Railroad? Who at Adobe is holding a gun to your head to subscribe.
If you don't like the subscription model, don't subscribe.

Plenty of people would happily buy the products, but cannot as subscription is the only option. CC in UK costs $850 a year.
Out of curiosity I tried purchasing the full CC as it's still on offer to CS owners. Really difficult to do so as I have the photography plan and that confuses website.

[digitaldog]

Long term however, paying for CC costs more than buying CS and upgrading each cycle.

It does? I've seen the math presented where it's just the opposite. Of course we can argue about the length of the cycles.
Seems this is all water under the bridge. Maybe not yet with LR but certainly with Photoshop.

[jjj]

It does? I've seen the math presented where it's just the opposite. Of course we can argue about the length of the cycles.
Seems this is all water under the bridge. Maybe not yet with LR but certainly with Photoshop.

Someone did the maths on here for his business buying CC. Made a big and considerably negative impact on his bottom line for his design studio.
Don't forget that the photography bundle is much cheaper than all other options and only came out after a lot of negative press towards Adobe.
If Premiere + Prelude or Speedgrade for example was the same price, I'd add it. But at twice the price the PS+LR bundle is for just Premiere, I'll keep using my CS version. Don't use the rest of the suite very much anymore, so paying full whack for 14 or so programmes I won't use is a waste of money.

[Rhossydd]

This seems to be the buggiest version since it's introduction.

A bit harsh ?
From what I've read most of the new features don't work as well as they should (no surprise really). When they work, great, when they don't, just carry on and don't worry.
There's no major bugs that cause crashes and/or destroy work and that's really important.

[jjj]

A bit harsh ?
From what I've read most of the new features don't work as well as they should (no surprise really). When they work, great, when they don't, just carry on and don't worry.
There's no major bugs that cause crashes and/or destroy work and that's really important.

Unlike Apple Photos and the Leica MM.

[digitaldog]

A bit harsh ?
From what I've read most of the new features don't work as well as they should (no surprise really).

Not on this end. GPU support was slower, previews in Develop inaccurate and I'm seeing RGB values reported differently between LR5 and LR6. The later bug is really kind of a show stopper.
Face detection didn't do a great job, finding stuff that wasn't close to human, I can't rescan a folder. Very messy.

[digitaldog]

There's no major bugs that cause crashes and/or destroy work and that's really important.

Hasn't happened to me, but crashing has been reported often on the UtoU forum.

[allengambrell]

Regrettably the answer to the question is Lightroom Moblie.
Which is a complete waste of time and is a very long way from being used by "professional" photographers.  (Professional = 100% of income from Photography)

I Photoshop world last year I went to a round table meeting that was supposed to be about Lightroom, During the talks all the people at the table wanted to talk about things they could use in Lightroom. The Adobe people kept turning the talking back to Lightroom Moblie, which had just been annouced. We gave them some feedback, but none of the ideas and case uses we talked about have yet to be implemented.

Because of the lack of advancement in Lightroom 5 and 6/CC, I have started looking back into the other converters light Capture One. I am heavily invested in Lightroom in time and money. I develop my own plugins from Lightroom and it would take a lot of work to switch. It has been a long time since I though Lr was heading in the right direction, version 3.

The only new feature useful to me is the ablity to paint back out the gradiant and radial filters, but ACR has had that feature for months!
I have been waiting years for Adobe to expand the database functionallty of Lightroom. I would pay thousands for a network server version!
When I go to a job I shoot multi gigabytes of images, I need a way to manage them. I don't need more consumer features to edit iphone images, like Lightroom mobile!

[fdisilvestro]

IMHO, Adobe is trying to make LR good for everything but as a result it is not the best for anything.

[chez]

Regrettably the answer to the question is Lightroom Moblie.
Which is a complete waste of time and is a very long way from being used by "professional" photographers.  (Professional = 100% of income from Photography)

I Photoshop world last year I went to a round table meeting that was supposed to be about Lightroom, During the talks all the people at the table wanted to talk about things they could use in Lightroom. The Adobe people kept turning the talking back to Lightroom Moblie, which had just been annouced. We gave them some feedback, but none of the ideas and case uses we talked about have yet to be implemented.

Because of the lack of advancement in Lightroom 5 and 6/CC, I have started looking back into the other converters light Capture One. I am heavily invested in Lightroom in time and money. I develop my own plugins from Lightroom and it would take a lot of work to switch. It has been a long time since I though Lr was heading in the right direction, version 3.

The only new feature useful to me is the ablity to paint back out the gradiant and radial filters, but ACR has had that feature for months!
I have been waiting years for Adobe to expand the database functionallty of Lightroom. I would pay thousands for a network server version!
When I go to a job I shoot multi gigabytes of images, I need a way to manage them. I don't need more consumer features to edit iphone images, like Lightroom mobile!

If I was Adobe, I would look at my customer market. How big do you think the market is for your type of application versus the consumer base that is going mobile everything? If I was running LR...I'd go towards where the money is.

I personally don't need the functionality you described...I'd call it a waste of Adobe resource, very much like you are calling LR mobile. Everyone has different perspectives and needs. If a product does not meet your needs, look at other products.

[ButchM]

If a product does not meet your needs, look at other products.

Typical answer from you. You always seem long on advice, but extremely short on viable solutions.

I can't speak for any other user except myself. After nearly a quarter century of investing in Adobe software solutions ... my choces are to either accept the status quo without question ... or ... move on to other options?

Is that how a product grows or evolves to become a better solution for the userbase as a whole?

Whiile I am reluctant to make a move to another solution, I would do so in a heatbeat if another viable option would become available... but how does playing musical chairs with my workflow benefit Adobe?

It always seems your phisophy and advice to your fellow users is to accept whatever is offered  without question, or shut up and move on. Do you not see the the fatal flaw in that perspective?

I would rather think Adobe actually values my opinion on certain matters ... and if they want to "go where the money is" they should pay a little closer attention to exactly where I am willing to invest that cash as I may be in what you consider a minority on some issues, I am not part of an insignificant group that Adobe can afford to shun our concerns out of hand ... as you would think they should do. That would result in a considerable sum of cash left on the table that could be part of their bottom line.

Too bad you don't think that sum is worthy of their consideration.

[jjj]

I can't speak for any other user except myself. After nearly a quarter century of investing in Adobe software solutions ... my choces are to either accept the status quo without question ... or ... move on to other options?

A major reason Adobe has been able to go down the subscription route, is the lack of viable professional alternatives to some key products. Or products that are anywhere near as good.
The video editing area has some good alternatives, but even then After Effects often tends to get used with them.

[Alistair]

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.

+1 to that. LR mobile would so much more useful if it could be useful offline. As it is  LR mobile needs a fast internet connection as it sends and receives a lot of data for each image viewed and edited. Kind of defeats the purpose. A phone editing app which works offline together with a WD Passport Wireless with inbuilt card reader makes a feasible alternative to a laptop when one must travel light.

[Alistair]

I really don't want to be negative towards the Adobe teams working on the photography related products Lightroom and Photoshop, but given the comment in another thread that the HDR and Pano functions were developed by the Adobe Camera Raw team and given that I see only small enhancements besides this in Lightroom 6, I'm asking: What has the Adobe Lightroom team been doing for the last 2 years? I do know that use of GPU's were implemented but I assume that this is also the case in ACR and likely the ACR team has done the work.

This leads me to the thought that Lightroom as a licensed product should be discontinued in order to allow Adobe to do the logical merge of Lightroom and ACR into a single module that is used from both Lightroom and Photoshop and to get rid of the arcane UI of ACR and therefore allow a tighter integration between Lightroom and Photoshop.

The basic message is that I'm disappointed that there were not more new features in Lightroom 6. Lightroom 5 was even rather light on new features.

One "small" thing about both HDR and Pano in LR6 is that there is not even information about which pictures went into a merge, so basically both HDR and Pano were slammed onto LR6 without considering integrity features like the above.

I have added the compare list of features between LR5 and LR6 and LRCC. Not much in LR6 and most of the list for LRCC compared to LR5 was in LR5 with CC subscription.

Sorry Adobe, I'm not impressed 

I agree Hans. LR, after a very promising start stalled around LR4 IMO. Your point that LR CC, LR6 and ARC all overlap and merging these 3 code bases would be far more efficient is of course correct. Provided there is strong competition in the market from C1 et al, at least some of these efficiencies should come back to us as customers rather than to the management and shareholders. It should come back to us as lower prices or better product.
But this is where things break down. Adobe convinced us that subscription would be a better model as it would allow them to stop piracy and we could all share the benefits. Like many I bought into this as the pricing was set at around the same level as I was spending in the long run on license upgrades of LR and PS. The promise was we would benefit through a better product. It is clear this promise has not been kept. For me LR CC current release is unusable due to it crashing every time I open a video file. LR Mobile which I rather like conceptually has very limited use in practice. The rate of progress is slower than it was on the perpetual license model. I will probably stop my subscription and revert to my old licenses until Adobe can get LR CC stable.
I know you like me and many others on this board have had long careers in business, engineering and software. In Adobe we recognize a company that is approaching a point so many successful technology companies arrive at. Where they become a more relevant or exciting to investors than customers.  I for one hope they can get their mojo back as they have given us some great products over the years.

[john beardsworth]

+1 to that. LR mobile would so much more useful if it could be useful offline. As it is LR mobile needs a fast internet connection as it sends and receives a lot of data for each image viewed and edited. Kind of defeats the purpose. A phone editing app which works offline together with a WD Passport Wireless with inbuilt card reader makes a feasible alternative to a laptop when one must travel light.

If that were its purpose. Though one day I expect it will take that role, it's just not intended to be a laptop alternative but more for other workflows that are already viable because of fast connections and hardware that's already up to the job. It's also pretty lame to dismiss it above as "consumer features to edit iphone images, like Lightroom mobile!" - working photographers do capture valuable photos on iPhones, and you can use LrMobile to show and tweak panoramas stitched from 16 38 megapixel originals too.

When LR was first launched, I also expected it would have a multi-user and networked capability after 2-3 versions, with a 4 figure price tag for the server version. Would they sell enough? Questionable, unless they did things like opening up the catalogue to other file types and competed with the bottom end of enterprise DAM, and only if enough small studios had the skills to run something like SQL Server or Oracle as the back end. But the world has moved on from that kind of solution, and it's gone online. The other day I gave an example of using LrMobile and LrWeb for one professional workflow involving multi-user capability (tethered studio work where some viewers were in another location), and nowadays a network server version isn't the only way to meet these teams' needs. It's worth thinking more imaginatively about the architecture behind LrMobile and LrWeb, what kind of data is passed to Adobe's servers, and where Adobe might go with their API. As in my tethering example, you've currently got multi-user ability to review, rate and flag, while Adobe's Creative SDK already allows app developers to access LrMobile data (if you can see past the consumer-oriented branding, look at Storehouse and particularly at Snapwire which can make adjustments). So the foundations for multi-user capability are now in place, just not the old networked way. Is there a viable market for it though?

[fdisilvestro]

When LR was first launched, I also expected it would have a multi-user and networked capability after 2-3 versions, with a 4 figure price tag for the server version. Would they sell enough? Questionable, unless they did things like opening up the catalogue to other file types and competed with the bottom end of enterprise DAM, and only if enough small studios had the skills to run something like SQL Server or Oracle as the back end. But the world has moved on from that kind of solution, and it's gone online. The other day I gave an example of using LrMobile and LrWeb for one professional workflow involving multi-user capability (tethered studio work where some viewers were in another location), and nowadays a network server version isn't the only way to meet these teams' needs. It's worth thinking more imaginatively about the architecture behind LrMobile and LrWeb, what kind of data is passed to Adobe's servers, and where Adobe might go with their API. As in my tethering example, you've currently got multi-user ability to review, rate and flag, while Adobe's Creative SDK already allows app developers to access LrMobile data (if you can see past the consumer-oriented branding, look at Storehouse and particularly at Snapwire which can make adjustments). So the foundations for multi-user capability are now in place, just not the old networked way. Is there a viable market for it though?

Implementing a multiuser environment should not be that complex and doesn't have to cost 4 figure price. You have free databases such as mysql and postgreSQL (an outstanding database) which can be setup even on a laptop. One thing is to have remote viewers or limited edition capability on a mobile device and another is to have a team concurrently editing different images (e.g a collaborative team where one user is importing images, another is selecting and creating collections, another user is editing and so on). I still don't see online as a viable option for handling large files unless you have gigabyte speed acces to the Internet (possible but expensive).

[john beardsworth]

Implementing a multiuser environment should not be that complex and doesn't have to cost 4 figure price. You have free databases such as mysql and postgreSQL (an outstanding database) which can be setup even on a laptop. One thing is to have remote viewers or limited edition capability on a mobile device and another is to have a team concurrently editing different images (e.g a collaborative team where one user is importing images, another is selecting and creating collections, another user is editing and so on). I still don't see online as a viable option for handling large files unless you have gigabyte speed acces to the Internet (possible but expensive).

Pricing isn't simply driven by whether the database is free. Go into multi-user DAM, even at the small studio end, and you're competing with products with 4 figure prices because that's what the market bears. Also, once you're in that area, you very quickly get into complex multi-user workflows (eg work allocation, review processes) and you're not going to get much volume unless you address issues such as enterprise customers' existing use of databases like SQLServer and Oracle, and also the move towards off-site working.

[chez]

Typical answer from you. You always seem long on advice, but extremely short on viable solutions.

I can't speak for any other user except myself. After nearly a quarter century of investing in Adobe software solutions ... my choces are to either accept the status quo without question ... or ... move on to other options?

Is that how a product grows or evolves to become a better solution for the userbase as a whole?

Whiile I am reluctant to make a move to another solution, I would do so in a heatbeat if another viable option would become available... but how does playing musical chairs with my workflow benefit Adobe?

It always seems your phisophy and advice to your fellow users is to accept whatever is offered  without question, or shut up and move on. Do you not see the the fatal flaw in that perspective?

I would rather think Adobe actually values my opinion on certain matters ... and if they want to "go where the money is" they should pay a little closer attention to exactly where I am willing to invest that cash as I may be in what you consider a minority on some issues, I am not part of an insignificant group that Adobe can afford to shun our concerns out of hand ... as you would think they should do. That would result in a considerable sum of cash left on the table that could be part of their bottom line.

Too bad you don't think that sum is worthy of their consideration.

Butch, rather than quoting a snippet, I'd appreciate it if you would provide the full context. I was describing a niche usage of LR and in reality the vast majority of it's users don't need that functionality so I suggested if your workflow relies on this missing functionality, maybe they should look at other products that might provide it.

I'm also making the point that LR is NOT just targeted at professionals, but rather at the hugely much larger amateur market that is expanding. If you were managing LR, where would you aim your sites, at a small niche market or the vastly huge consumer market. I know exactly why resources are being used to focus onto the mobile platform...that is where the future revenue will come from. I manage products for a living. This would be a no brainer decision.