Adobe's Tom Hogarty Apology for LR CC 6.2 release

[Jglaser757]

Maybe it's time to switch to capture pro?

[dreed]

New Import Dialogue - Inappropriate focus group?

Poor upgrade/update procedure.

Clearly, for experts and long time users of Lightroom, the behaviour prior to 6.2 should have been preserved - BY DEFAULT - and the new behaviour only presented for *NEW* installs.

[jjj]

From my hugely biased point of view...

Most of what Adobe has done with LightRoom in the last two years shows they are primarily concerned with expanding their user base toward entry level photographers. Development of the kinds of advanced features, controls, and conversion quality that professionals and demanding enthusiasts want are eschewed in favor of features that appeal to the user that gets overwhelmed easily.

Capture One Pro on the other hand has been pushing even further in the direction of professional and advanced users......

But seeing as Capture One is not prepared to support all cameras, why would anyone bother to commit time and effort to such crippled software?
I'd love a strong alternative to LR, but as C1 does not support all the cameras I currently have or may not support others ones I might purchase or need for work in the future, why would I even consider such a hobbled solution. If Canon or Nikon make a MFDSLR will C1 also ignore those bodies as they directly compete with Phase cameras?
Particularly annoying is that DNG is not supported. Only specific camera models.

[jjj]

Making those selections out of about 25,000 photographs is a misery, but it is much easier using the selection criteria, filters, and collections features in LR.  Trying to do that with Bridge is something I don't even want to think about. What I'm sending has been drawn from several years of work.  Digging through folder after folder is not very efficient.

Actually smart collections are in Bridge, as are various filtering options just like LR.
But Bridge can't find or show things on your HDs that are not connected, unlike LR's database way of working.  A database is also much faster at looking through large numbers of files.

But yes, LR is not a merely pared down version of Bridge/PS/ACR. I moved from that paradigm of working at LR2 as LR had matured enough to be faster overall. And if PS is needed you can still open files into PS as before.

[jjj]

For me the main thing that sucked with the old import dialogue box was the hidden folder names (left panel) - if I remember correctly you had to hover the curser over the folder to see the full name (poor inexcusable design), other than that it worked fine!

That's also an issue within Lightroom. I use Jeffrey Friedl's configuration manager so I can read names of my folders. The standard max panel width truncates them in an unusable way, so I make the max panel width a lot larger. Also useful for getting longer sliders in develop module.

[Hans Kruse]

As already mentioned this update was really not a great one. For my use I can live with the new import dialog, but I can't see the progress compared to the old one. Only a poorly designed new one.
What I'm really annoyed about is how many times I need to force-quite Lightroom as it is non responding.

As I have said before, I think the Lightroom team is lacking leadership about where to take the product. Little progress has been made in the last couple of major releases. Lots of progress in the develop module which essentially comes from Camera Raw. If there is a strategy behind all this, at least I don't see it.

Update: Yesterday the update with the 2015.2.1 came and I have not experience any unresponsive situations since, but haven't used Lightroom much since the update.

Update 2: I just had to again force quit Lightroom as non responsive and using lots of cpu time.

[jjj]

Maybe it's time to switch to capture pro?

Except it also seems to have a disastrous bug   

[Rick Popham]

As I have said before, I think the Lightroom team is lacking leadership about where to take the product. Little progress has been made in the last couple of major releases. Lots of progress in the develop module which essentially comes from Camera Raw. If there is a strategy behind all this, at least I don't see it.

Or maybe they're taking it too many places?  Since the tie-in to CC they're spending a lot of their resources on the mobile stuff, probably at the expense of development to the core desktop application.  While I guess there's a market for the mobile capabilities, it does seem like they're spreading themselves too thin. 

[digitaldog]

But seeing as Capture One is not prepared to support all cameras, why would anyone bother to commit time and effort to such crippled software?

Along with their half baked support of DNG, I'm not going there. Now if these folks will consider support for all cameras and DNG, some of us might pay attention.
I'm super unhappy with how the LR team handled this release! But I'm not about to jump ship just yet. Still, super disappointed, the captain of this LR ship is lost at sea.

[Jim MSP]

Along with their half baked support of DNG, I'm not going there. Now if these folks will consider support for all cameras and DNG, some of us might pay attention.
I'm super unhappy with how the LR team handled this release! But I'm not about to jump ship just yet. Still, super disappointed, the captain of this LR ship is lost at sea.

I very much disagree with the Adobe decision to support LR mobile at the expense of the current LR for advanced hobbyists and pros.
I know a lot of folks who take a lot of photos with their phones. They have little or no interest in doing any post processing of their photos, nevermind using something as complicated as LR.
Chasing that market is a losing proposition, imo.

[pluton]

I don't think your statement is accurate.  LR offers a number of features that are not duplicated in Photoshop/ACR/Bridge.  And I'm not talking about face recognition, the Map module, the Book module, or, God help us, the Web module. I don't use any of those "features."

Yes, you are correct...my statement is inaccurate due to omission---a decision I made in the cause of brevity.  Sorry about that.
And, yes...the Print module is the one thing that makes Lightroom tower above it's competitors, in my view.
I'm not a power user or clever exploiter of Lightroom's DAM assets...it's basically Develop and Print for me.
 

[hjulenissen]

Secondly, if any new user who does find the Import dialog that troubling ... and after watching one of the fine video tutorials by Julianne Kost still doesn't get it ... No amount of UI redesign, simplification or feature removal is going to result in offering a feasible solution.

I have been using Lightroom since the original Beta. It has serviced me well and I have been able to produce some (in my humble view) fine images with (argueably) less effort and pain than using some other applications.

That is not so say that I find Lightroom to always be "consistent", "sensible", "well-thought out". Or that I particularly like spending time in front of a training video instead of making images. If they can make "80% of users" more efficient (better images, less time spent, less frustration), I think that it is worth a slight annoyance for "20% of users" (such as having to change ways of working, having to do an extra "advanced" mouse click).

Would I be able to write a better application that Lightroom? Sure not. Are my opinions representative for any large subset of Lightroom users? I have no idea.

-h

[adias]

I very much disagree with the Adobe decision to support LR mobile at the expense of the current LR for advanced hobbyists and pros.
I know a lot of folks who take a lot of photos with their phones. They have little or no interest in doing any post processing of their photos, nevermind using something as complicated as LR.
Chasing that market is a losing proposition, imo.

No question... 99% of phone users do not edit their photos. BTW.. the iPhone photo editor is quite good already. No need for external photo editors.

[jrp]

Since everyone here seems to be so very attached to the lost features, if I was a suit in Adobe, I'd get us to pay for them through in-App purchases.

(This seems to be a more likely way forward than getting back to the bread and butter of fixing long-standing bugs and JDIs and getting someone who knows what they are doing to address the now lamentable performance of the product.)

Anyway Adobe, like VW, the banks, and others now say that they realise that they have to work to regain our trust.  Words that come easy ...

[pluton]

Hum, I guess you don't really understand Lightroom and why it was developed...sorry, LR is nothing like PS and Bridge. Completely different tool set.

Actually the problem is that I don't really understand(or have much need for) Photoshop.  Sorry for any inaccuracy.

[pluton]

Actually the problem is that I don't know enough about the Photoshop universe, and have relied mostly on heresay and anecdotes. Sorry for any inaccuracy.
Thank you, Mr. Schewe, for giving your opinion on the Lightroom Import bruhaha.

[john beardsworth]

I very much disagree with the Adobe decision to support LR mobile at the expense of the current LR for advanced hobbyists and pros.
I know a lot of folks who take a lot of photos with their phones. They have little or no interest in doing any post processing of their photos, nevermind using something as complicated as LR.
Chasing that market is a losing proposition, imo.

So what decision is that then? It's not initially pitched at "folks who take a lot of photos with their phones" but as an extension of LrDesktop. Some of us have experimented and found ways it is useful in that role. Not being present in that market is the losing propostion....

[pluton]

Yes, you are correct...my statement is inaccurate because I was thinking of the Develop module more than the overall program or it's DAM assets.  Sorry for the inaccuracy.
And, yes...the Print module is the one thing that makes Lightroom tower above it's competitors, in my view.
I'm not a power user or clever exploiter of Lightroom's DAM assets...it's basically Develop and Print for me.

[pegelli]

Some of us have experimented and found ways it is useful in that role. Not being present in that market is the losing propostion....

Agree with this, I also think it's more helpful to complain about what we don't like then about what we don't need.
I just hope Adobe realizes that not fixing the import dialog is a losing proposition for many folks as well.

[john beardsworth]

Agree with this, I also think it's more helpful to complain about what we don't like then about what we don't need.
I just hope Adobe realizes that not fixing the import dialog is a losing proposition for many folks as well.

I think they do, but simply reversing the changes or providing alternative dialog boxes is only the knee jerk reaction. Do people remember which features have been removed in the past? Each removed feature needs considering for its own merits, and the right fix may be to leave the dialog box as now, and add corresponding features in a better place, Library (Move and the handling of duplicates, for instance).