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Panorama

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« Reply #40 on: June 13, 2006, 12:23:21 pm »

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Launching LR as a Beta was incredibly smart.

A lot of pros are on Macs, and would seriously consider Aperture - once they move, they rarely come back. This way, not only are they aware of Adobe's product, but with it being a Beta they are involved, and through the forums there is a sense of community. So the app has momentum and loyalty long before release. Good marketing.

This will have hit Aperture very hard.
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Hmmmm. are you sure you want to say that? Are you a mac user?

Launching LR on the mac is as basic as marketing 101; there's simply no way it should be called "incredibly smart". IMO it's actually a borderline decision unless you think that the pro/amateur photography market is a huge part of apple's 5% of the total. I guess Adobe didn't think they could get the market back and if their offering isn't that good in the end, they'd be right.

There are also a lot of pro photographers using PC's but with no competion on the PC, Adobe has no incentive to ramp up that program. they're doing a fine job of snubbing pc users everywhere.

Hit aperture very hard? Assuming you're a mac owner, have you used or seen aperture in operation? Though it's not a replacement for PS, it's extremely fast and flexible at what it does. Since I really don't care about putting frogs in a desert image a lot of PS's capabilities are left unused and the PS/Bridge solution is getting intolerable. Getting something like aperture is almost enough to make me go out and buy an extremely overpriced mac just to get away from PS.  

What I find most annoying about the lack of a windows beta is that there's no input oportunites. I actually don't think that the mac interface is all that great. As a matter of fact, I find some mac things really, really dumb and I sure don't want mac users solely designing an application I may/may not want to use.
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jdyke

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« Reply #41 on: June 14, 2006, 07:03:04 am »

Oh Dear I think I may have knocked the can...

It now appears to be on its side with worms everywhere.      


JD
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #42 on: June 14, 2006, 07:14:10 am »

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Oh Dear I think I may have knocked the can...

It now appears to be on its side with worms everywhere.     
JD
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No no, of course you haven't. We Windows users would all like a Lightroom beta ASAP - just some of us are more patient than yourself, and don't think we're being insulted by the delay. It'll come. But we're all free to differ. Just highly amused you thought I was a Mac user. I wonder what you'd imply if I said nice things about Claudia Schiffer....
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AdrianW

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« Reply #43 on: July 09, 2006, 07:28:58 pm »

Taps foot impatiently... Come on Adobe, release the beta for PC!

Incidentally I concur with JD on the subject of Mac prevalence in the rest of the world - outside the US they're nowhere near as common in my experience. Most photo/repro places locally (UK) use PCs, not Macs.
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katemann

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« Reply #44 on: July 10, 2006, 02:40:31 pm »

*sigh*

Now Rawshooter is being subsumed into Lightroom, and I am giving up on iMatch, as I expect LR will be adequate as a cataloguing application, and I'm waiting.

And waiting.

I know, it takes time.

*sigh*

*sigher*
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Nick Rains

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« Reply #45 on: July 10, 2006, 06:43:58 pm »

Reality Check.

To all those PC users who are breathless with expectation - go to a Mac shop and have a play with LR - you can probably take in the LR beta3 on a CD and install it, if you ask nicely. No doubt the salespersons will leap at  the prospect of showing someone 'The True Way'.

You can ask all sorts of tricky questions about Macs and then leave saying 'you'll think about it'.

This may satisfy your curiosity.

OTOH, it's just another app, not the second coming. I have used LR on a Powerbook that I had on loan from Apple and frankly it's just not that great - certainly not the huge leap forward that people seem to be expecting.

It seems fine, a bit fiddly but generally OK.  There are some clever bits, like the built in B+W channel mixer, but none of it is exclusive to LR.  What Adobe seem to be aiming for is a Swiss Army Knife of imaging ie a tool that does everything and this is a worthy goal in many respects.

The problem is that such an app is often fully competant at many things but does not actually shine in any one aspect. Personally I prefer to choose the best app for a specific task and I don't mind using 2 or 3 instead of one.

It's a bit like choosing a stereo system that all comes in one box and you just plug it in. It will sound just fine, but for that extra quality it is better to choose the components separately, even it they are from different manufacturers.

LR can never be the best tool for the job - it might be the most convenient, but not the best. Adobe are trying to please too many people and it is true that you cannot please all the people all of the time.

So, FWIW:

Best Browser: Photo Mechanic
Best RAW Converter: Any of the main players will do fine.
Best DAM: IView Media Pro (Portfolio is OK too)

IMHO LR, by it's very nature, can never be as 'good' as any of the above at that specific task.
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Nick Rains
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David Mantripp

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« Reply #46 on: July 11, 2006, 07:02:50 am »

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LR can never be the best tool for the job - it might be the most convenient, but not the best. Adobe are trying to please too many people and it is true that you cannot please all the people all of the time.

The consensus from the latest LR Podcast seems to indicate that their is a growing realisation that they've bitten off more than they can chew, and that the DAM part should be, er, rescheduled.

It is also quite remarkable to hear some polite but genuine in-fighting between the ACR camp and the LR camp on the same podcast, with Thomas Knoll clearly disparaging the current implementation of the ACR conversion engine, on performance grounds.

Too many cooks...
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andythom68

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« Reply #47 on: July 11, 2006, 07:29:11 am »

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Reality Check.

To all those PC users who are breathless with expectation - go to a Mac shop and have a play with LR - you can probably take in the LR beta3 on a CD and install it, if you ask nicely. No doubt the salespersons will leap at  the prospect of showing someone 'The True Way'.

You can ask all sorts of tricky questions about Macs and then leave saying 'you'll think about it'.

This may satisfy your curiosity.

OTOH, it's just another app, not the second coming. I have used LR on a Powerbook that I had on loan from Apple and frankly it's just not that great - certainly not the huge leap forward that people seem to be expecting.

It seems fine, a bit fiddly but generally OK.  There are some clever bits, like the built in B+W channel mixer, but none of it is exclusive to LR.  What Adobe seem to be aiming for is a Swiss Army Knife of imaging ie a tool that does everything and this is a worthy goal in many respects.

The problem is that such an app is often fully competant at many things but does not actually shine in any one aspect. Personally I prefer to choose the best app for a specific task and I don't mind using 2 or 3 instead of one.

It's a bit like choosing a stereo system that all comes in one box and you just plug it in. It will sound just fine, but for that extra quality it is better to choose the components separately, even it they are from different manufacturers.

LR can never be the best tool for the job - it might be the most convenient, but not the best. Adobe are trying to please too many people and it is true that you cannot please all the people all of the time.

So, FWIW:

Best Browser: Photo Mechanic
Best RAW Converter: Any of the main players will do fine.
Best DAM: IView Media Pro (Portfolio is OK too)

IMHO LR, by it's very nature, can never be as 'good' as any of the above at that specific task.
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1) Not everyone has access to a Mac store / reseller

2) The store would have to be mad to allow people to walk in and install unknown software from a home burnt CD onto their equipment. That is just asking for trouble even if 99.999% of the time the request is geniune.

3) Why would a Mac shop let you try LR when they would rather have you buy Aperture?

4) How can a person decide if such a program is for them with the limited "screen time" one would get if points 1 - 3 did not apply?

5) How long did it take you Nick to come up with your opinion? I am sure it was not after spending 10 minutes in a Mac store. I assume you spent many hours learning about LR.


Nick, I am not questioning your opinion of LR you have decided LR is not the best tool for you and you already have a established set of tools which does the job for you, thats alright. Just remember it is a Beta and not a finished product for  sale. However, I as a PC only user I would like to spend some time to get to know the program and its functions properly before I decide whether it will be the tool for me. I would also like to participate in the actual Beta Program and give my feedback to Adobe about my experiences with LR so that I get a better tool when it goes into the shops.


Your analogy of the Hi-Fi equipment is flawed. LR is made up of seperate components (modules) held together by a common interface and 3rd parties will be able to develop their own modules. The frontend is like the amplifier and the modules are like the seperate hi-fi components which plug into the amplifer.


Both Aperture and Lightroom are tools just in their infancy. As time goes by I am sure they will mature into tools which many people (maybe even you Nick) will find useful. There is no reason to think why either of these could not become the dominant tool used by photographers in the not too distant future.


I have no opinion whether Aperture or Lightroom will be the better product. As a Windoze user I have no firsthand experience of either. But it is probably like comparing Canon to Nikon, Mac to PC, Capture One to Camera Raw. It all comes down to personal preferences.


In my opinion one reason Windoze users feel frustrated is Mac users (and the world in general) got no advanced warning of this tool (that I am aware of) and it simply "popped out of the blue" - which was a nice post christmas surprise for most Macs users  But, Windoze users have been told for 7 months now that it will be available to them: "soon - in the summer". We (PC users) have known of it's existance long before it's release and that is why some PC users are frustrated. We know it is exists, we have seen the screen shots, heard people (alpha testers) have used it and we are still waiting to try it. I am sure if the roles were reversed Mac users would be just as frustrated as Windoze users by now.


Do I think Adobe was right in delaying the WIN-LR beta until after Mac-LR-B3? Yes, I do. From what I have seen from the features available in B3 it is now a useful product able to satisfy a lot of what a photographer demands (but still lacking all the features required for a commercial product). Adobe needed to keep the existing testers happy (note I do use the word: "users" - this is a beta after all). Mac-LR-B3 gave Adobe the goalposts for them to aim at for the WIN-LR-B3. Is it frustrating as a Windoze user to continue to wait? Hell yes!   Can we do anything about it? Hell no!


Should Adobe have waited until they had a version for both platforms? No, Adobe (IMO) would have lost too much market share to Aperture it they had waited. Even if the "market share" was not affected it did take some of the momentum away from Aperture. The decision to release the Lightroom Beta was a commercial decision (IMO). I am sure Adobe would have liked to have waited for the feature set to have been expanded before starting the Beta program, but Apple got to market first and they had to do something.


It is frustrating that it is very nearly 1 month since B3 was released for Mac and we are still waiting for the PC version. I was really expecting the WIN-LR-B3 very soon after the Mac release.



Andy (frustrated but never "breathless")
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #48 on: July 11, 2006, 08:54:09 am »

We PC users have known of its existence long before its release and are indeed frustrated....

Summertime
and the shutters are clickin'
Pixel by pixel,
The gigs multiply

Lightroom's on Mac,
and the beta's good lookin'
So what about Windows
I hear you cry

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Sometime in summer
Is what they said

But till that morning
There's a'nothing can stop you
From Capture NX and Lightzone standing by

Summertime
And Adobe said just wait
We won't forget you
Wait till it's ready

Adobe's rich
But Aperture's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don't you cry
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andythom68

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« Reply #49 on: July 11, 2006, 09:01:28 am »

John, I recognise your post from the Adobe labs forum        
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #50 on: July 11, 2006, 11:17:14 am »

Yeah, not yet got round to "Stairway to Lightroom" yet....

I'm frustrated, as a PC user, but frankly I regard Mac testers of the program as photographers first, and people who bore you with their computer brand second. So let them clap with joy or choke on bugs, and let us PC users have a beta when it's ready.

And the more I hear and read about Lightroom, the less impatient I become. I feel Adobe are lowering their sights and making Lightroom just a raw processor, replacing Bridge and to some extent Photoshop, but being little "better" than Bridge at helping you find or manage images across multiple drives and folders.

If anything, podcast 8 made me think they're now more interested in rudimentary selection-based edits, such as in Lightzone or Capture NX. High volume raw processing might be more immediately painful or sexier, but for a big chunk of LR's target market the other side of that same coin is DAM and this group needs a DAMP (DAM+processing) program like Lightroom originally seemed to be. I'd like to think I'm wrong on this.

So while I might not don my black polo neck, gird my loins and take Nick's suggestion of going into an Apple store, I do tend to agree with him that a "best of breed" solution is going to suit me better, most of the time, than a "one ring to rule them all". But it'd be nice to decide on the basis of trying it myself, sometime this summer....

John
« Last Edit: July 11, 2006, 11:31:02 am by johnbeardy »
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Nick Rains

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« Reply #51 on: July 11, 2006, 06:46:27 pm »

Quote
Your analogy of the Hi-Fi equipment is flawed. LR is made up of seperate components (modules) held together by a common interface and 3rd parties will be able to develop their own modules. The frontend is like the amplifier and the modules are like the seperate hi-fi components which plug into the amplifer.
Both Aperture and Lightroom are tools just in their infancy.
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Not so flawed really, an integrated HiFi system is made up of modules too - just all in one box - like LR. The fact that they have to be integrated does limit the design somewhat and furthermore, just because the designers in one single company are good at, say, the amp, it does not follow that they are equally good at speakers.

It's interesting that Adobe have absorbed Pixmantec...3rd party modules may well be the saving grace of this app.

I take your points about the visit to the Mac shop - I was not terribly serious about that, it was just that so many people seem to be desperate to get their paws on LR that they might go to any lengths to have a play ;-).

John Beardy - great poem, seems to have a familiar 'ring' about it  
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Nick Rains
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andythom68

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« Reply #52 on: July 12, 2006, 04:59:12 am »

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Not so flawed really, an integrated HiFi system is made up of modules too - just all in one box - like LR. The fact that they have to be integrated does limit the design somewhat and furthermore, just because the designers in one single company are good at, say, the amp, it does not follow that they are equally good at speakers.

It's interesting that Adobe have absorbed Pixmantec...3rd party modules may well be the saving grace of this app.

I take your points about the visit to the Mac shop - I was not terribly serious about that, it was just that so many people seem to be desperate to get their paws on LR that they might go to any lengths to have a play ;-).

John Beardy - great poem, seems to have a familiar 'ring' about it 
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If Adobe is able to put the SDK/API together (for Mac and PC) shortly after V1.0 is released I think we will have some interesting developments in LR.

I don't think the Pixmantec buy will have any immediate affect on LR. If any of the Pixmantec Dev. team are brought into the LR team it will take them some time to get up-to-speed with the project. But long term it should be a good thing.

We will just have to wait(!) and see  
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jdyke

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« Reply #53 on: July 14, 2006, 04:57:16 am »

Does anybody know if the release date of the Windows beta is going to slip as a result of the Pixmantec aquisition?  

It seems obvious to me that they may want to intergrate some of the features of RSP into Lightroom but Adobe have not really updated thier timeframe for the release since they announced  the origial 'Summer' date.  

My question to anyone on this forum with any knowledge is are we still likley to see a beta this summer (June,July & August in my country) or do we think this may now slip into the Autumn months as a result of further development?

'August' seems the likley time if Summer is still on the cards (please note that this is my assumption - do not start quoting this as fact   )



JD
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andythom68

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« Reply #54 on: July 14, 2006, 05:42:38 am »

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Does anybody know if the release date of the Windows beta is going to slip as a result of the Pixmantec aquisition? 

It seems obvious to me that they may want to intergrate some of the features of RSP into Lightroom but Adobe have not really updated thier timeframe for the release since they announced  the origial 'Summer' date. 

My question to anyone on this forum with any knowledge is are we still likley to see a beta this summer (June,July & August in my country) or do we think this may now slip into the Autumn months as a result of further development?

'August' seems the likley time if Summer is still on the cards (please note that this is my assumption - do not start quoting this as fact   )
JD
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Hi jdyke,

I have no "insider knowledge" but I think we can be confident the WIN beta release won't slip because of trying to add RSP features. It might slip for other reasons though! It has been stated (but I don't have the exact link at hand) that WIN B3 will have the same functionality as the Mac B3 so I can't see any RSP features being added for B3 because then there would be a divergance between the platforms.

Having the RSP people onboard now might actually speedup the WIN beta release as they may be able to help with the bug hunting.

Also, if I remember correctly there should (or will) be a Beta 4. If this is the case we could see RSP features there in the autum/winter.

I hope your prediction of a August release turns out to be wrong  ;-)
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alfin

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« Reply #55 on: July 14, 2006, 06:19:32 am »

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[...] It has been stated (but I don't have the exact link at hand) that WIN B3 will have the same functionality as the Mac B3 so I can't see any RSP features being added for B3 because then there would be a divergance between the platforms. [...]

Kevin Connor, Sr. Dir. of Product Management, Adobe wrote in a post at Pixmantec's forum:

"[...] I should let you know, however, that this first beta of Windows won't have every feature that's in the current Mac beta, but the feature sets will catch up to each other before the final versions ship. Nevertheless, the first beta will have more than enough features for you to work with your own photos and get a feel for the application. Most importantly, it will be enough so that you'll be able to give us some meaningful feedback of where it needs to improve. [...]"

So it seems win users will have to wait even after B3...
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Lars Mollerstrom

andythom68

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« Reply #56 on: July 14, 2006, 07:40:41 am »

Yikes!  

So what we are really going to get in the summer/autumn of 2007 (  ) is Beta 2.5  

Well, lets hope they synchronize the two versions before another Mac Beta gets released, otherwise there is not much point in releasing a WIN Beta with reduced functionality and only making all the functionality available in the v1.0 release to PC users. This strategy would deny us (PC people) the ability to give our feedback back into the development program.

Maybe if the Pixamantec developers are brought onboard the feature set on the PC version will match the Mac one sooner than it would if the Pixamentec takeover had not gone ahead

Ofcourse this is all pure speculation and the PC Beta we are "soon" to get may have all the current Mac B3 features ... you never know, stranger things have happened at sea  
« Last Edit: July 14, 2006, 07:41:34 am by andythom68 »
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jdyke

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« Reply #57 on: July 14, 2006, 10:56:37 am »

Depends what's missing too....  

If there is too much missing then its likely people just aren't going to use it.  It needs to be usable (and reasonably stable) with albeit a few bugs and some missing features.

Not much point speculating though - we will see when it gets here.


I think its generally felt (by PC and Mac users alike) that PC users have has a bit of a raw deal up to now (as some of my earlier rants will show   ) with the delay in the beta release so it would be a bit dumb of Adobe to release a 'moth eaten' half-ass of a product to the PC community as they would probably end up losing many cutomers as a result.

I shall continue to wait with patience.....my expectations are hig.....(I am now expecting it to cook me a steak dinner and get me a beer   )

JD
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