Adobe's Tom Hogarty Apology for LR CC 6.2 release

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Adobe should make two versions.
Literoom for the hard of thinking and Lightroom for those who can take a lens cap off without needing instructions.

Careful what you wish for, it will be the moment that prices will go up for the not dumbed down 'Lightroom' version...

Cheers,
Bart

[jjj]

Careful what you wish for, it will be the moment that prices will go up for the not dumbed down 'Lightroom' version...

Not wishing for it.
However given the choice between paying for a cheaper crippled version or a non-crippled version, which would be the bigger waste of money?

[digitaldog]

An "expert" checkbox, revealing the old interface (or something like it) would do the trick.
Jeremy

Exactly! Adobe can't (shouldn't) break existing workflows. I've never seen them do such a poor job in this respect, and I've been a customer since 1990. A new low.
It's fine to move to a new UI but there's no excuse for removing legacy functionality.

[ButchM]

It's fine to move to a new UI but there's no excuse for removing legacy functionality.

Yep ... ever notice the that there is a Use legacy check box in several areas of Ps like the Brightness Contrast Adjustment dialog?

Talk about little used features ... yet the don't slice and dice that dead weight.

That's what make me think there is much more to this mindset with the decision making at Adobe. It really seems completely out of touch at time.

[jrp]

Destination is clearly Lightroom Elements with in-App Purchases for the extra functions by those producing pictures other than to share on social networks.

Those trying to share their Lightroom Elements-generated pics on social networks will hit the brick wall that is the Publish command, or is it Export?  There is a reason that Facebook bought Instagram.

[Rand47]

OK, where's Schewe when we need him?  Jeff, what be's the gig with this?  It can't be a surprise to you.  What do you think?

Rand

[Doug Peterson]

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. The most recent updates added features that qualify as borderline-obscure, unless they are needed for your workflow. For instance you can now build your output/destination folder based on tokens like "Image Folder" and "Session name" and "Star Rating" - a huge time saver for digital techs processing large jobs. The only complaint I consistently hear from users about Capture One is that it takes a while to learn or they had to take classes before they really got it.

Frankly, if I were Adobe I would do the same thing. For every one pro/advanced user that wants control and quality there are ten entry-level users that want simplicity. That's where the money is for a software developer.

Fortunately, as long as Adobe focuses on this, Phase One will have a nice underserved niche. They don't need or even want to be the solution that 90% of the market uses. Being a small company they are more than fine with having the sliver at the top of the pyramid.

[john beardsworth]

From my hugely biased point of view...

Capture One Pro on the other hand has been pushing even further in the direction of professional and advanced users. The most recent updates added features that qualify as borderline-obscure, unless they are needed for your workflow. For instance you can now build your output/destination folder based on tokens like "Image Folder" and "Session name" and "Star Rating" - a huge time saver for digital techs processing large jobs.

I can't remember how long you've been able to do that in Lightroom. I think Publish Services arrived in version 3.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

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.

Hi Doug,

From my, having no particular stakes into either, point of view, I fully agree. The focus on generating revenue (almost at any expense) by Adobe, is obvious. Good for their short term investors, not all that good for loyal customers, especially in the long run.

Frankly, if I were Adobe I would do the same thing. For every one pro/advanced user that wants control and quality there are ten entry-level users that want simplicity. That's where the money is for a software developer.

Indeed, a no brainer, if one wants to make money instead of serving loyal customers,  and their stock prices reflect the appreciation of the (short term) investors. But there are other stakeholders at play, the users, and they are increasingly getting confronted with the shadow side of things.

Perpetual license users (the ones who pay the full amount upfront) are left worse off, while the ones that can be financially drained for eternity (unsubscribing seems to be very difficult) are relativity pampered.

Fortunately, as long as Adobe focuses on this, Phase One will have a nice underserved niche. They don't need or even want to be the solution that 90% of the market uses. Being a small company they are more than fine with having the sliver at the top of the pyramid.

Indeed, although Phase One could do better if DNG file support were implemented (more) properly (I know it's not a real open standard). Consider the number of disgruntled Lightroom users who were sucked into the DNG workflow, that could be served. Also the non-support of other Medium format camera platforms seems rather shortsighted. In addition, there are several other aspects that could be improved significantly, e.g. better than bicubic resampling, and deconvolution sharpening, but that is also not handled very well by some of the competitors (but not all !).

Cheers,
Bart

[pluton]

Exactly! Adobe can't (shouldn't) break existing workflows. I've never seen them do such a poor job in this respect, and I've been a customer since 1990. A new low.
It's fine to move to a new UI but there's no excuse for removing legacy functionality.

I agree, except that I refuse to use the term "legacy" in this context...they just removed functionality, period.
"Legacy" gives too much ammunition to the hacks who....this is my fantasy, here.... have apparently conned the misguided Adobe management into some kind of 'growth agenda' whose main feature is dumbing it down in order to bring in the masses.

[ButchM]

Frankly, if I were Adobe I would do the same thing. For every one pro/advanced user that wants control and quality there are ten entry-level users that want simplicity. That's where the money is for a software developer.

That sounds logical on the surface, however, can Adobe offer a consumer level product that can compete with free? There seems to be an endless list of photo management and image manipulation options that already offer extremely streamlined and simplified options for the beginner and fledgling photographer.

Heck, any novice who has a Macbook Air and an iPhone can already accomplish much of what Lr is capable of considering this segment of the market is very unlikely to be taking the time and effort to shoot RAW ... with Apple's free Photos app and a handful of free and/or low cost extensions, a novice can already accomplish what most jpeg shooters can do with Lr.  Plus, they don't have to go through the hassle to create Smart Previews in order to share their images across devices.

Once again, I ponder, even if expanding the customer list is a priority, is this the segment of the market that is going to hang around for the long haul and ultimately prove worthy of the time and effort to 'simplify' Lightroom so they 'get it?'

[pluton]

That sounds logical on the surface, however, can Adobe offer a consumer level product that can compete with free? There seems to be an endless list of photo management and image manipulation options that already offer extremely streamlined and simplified options for the beginner and fledgling photographer.

Exactly....Lightroom is already basically a pared-down selection of features from Photoshop/ACR/Bridge. What would they peddle a subscription to "Lightroom Elements" for? 99 cents per month?

[TomFrerichs]

Exactly....Lightroom is already basically a pared-down selection of features from Photoshop/ACR/Bridge. What would they peddle a subscription to "Lightroom Elements" for? 99 cents per month?

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."

As an example, it is far, far easier to print out of LR than Photoshop, at least if you want a quick and simple workflow using presets.  I love just clicking on "Exhibition Fibre - 17x22 - B&W" to make all the necessary settings instead of having to drill down though multiple dialog boxes.

Another function LR provides that your triumvirate doesn't is DAM functionality.  I need to provide 20-30 photographs to the folks who are running a workshop I'm attending in November. They want the photographs to get an idea of what and how I photograph, which is rather difficult because the workshop is a landscape workshop--and I don't normally photograph landscapes. I think I have a three or four landscape photographs in my catelog. They also want a selection of "missed shots," i.e. photographs that didn't work out for some reason (not technical mistakes). For some reason, every landscape photograph that I have has ended up in the missed shots selection. (grin)

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.

At least I'm down to 48 selects, all in one collection, and I get to enjoy pruning eighteen of those in the next couple of days. However, that's simple.  All I need to do is remove the rejects from the collection, and when I hit the magic number it's simple to export the files in the format they require, renaming them as I export.

I do dip into Photoshop, mainly to use the better "healing tools" and occasionally to do selection layers when I need to make very localized adjustments. But I do about 98% of everything in LR, and that's why I am unhappy with what Adobe thinks are the highest priorities in the evolution of the program.

[Paul Wright]

While Tom Hogarty's apology does come across as a bit lame, the fact that there is a public apology at all speaks volumes. As an Adobe customer since Photoshop V2 and a current daily user of half a dozen or so CC apps, I have never seen such an immediate, planet-wide howl of pure anger in response to a software update.

Other than the odd mumble about the rather good local de-haze function the response across forums, lists, blogs and social media worldwide has been an emphatic thumbs down. The details and tales of personal misery have been comprehensive and broadly addressed so I won't detail my own rant.

The Adobe Lightroom team's code jockeys must be in round-the-clock damage control right now...the 6.2.1 release was unusually speedy. Roll-on a properly implemented 6.3 though I suspect it will be months away. In the meantime like so many others I've shuffled back to 6.1 until this debacle is dealt with.

-pw 

[Damon Lynch]

It's fine to move to a new UI but there's no excuse for removing legacy functionality.

Why not? This happens all the time in software. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Change is constant. A tiny example: try resizing the taskbar in a recent version of Windows to zero height. You can't, because Microsoft realized that feature confused the heck out of inexperienced users in older version of Windows. So that legacy feature is gone. I suspect the vast majority of users do not miss it at all, to the extent it's now all but totally forgotten.

[Schewe]

OK, where's Schewe when we need him?  Jeff, what be's the gig with this?  It can't be a surprise to you.  What do you think?

I think the LR 2015.2/6.2 update sucks...I'm on a fall colors trip to the NE (ending in Acadia) and while I've updated to ACR 9.2, I left LR at 2015.1 for the express purpose that I can't easily make multi-camera import presets for the 3 cameras I'm shooting with. Yes, I knew what was coming and yes the beta testers warned Adobe that the new Import dlog sucks. But due to timing with Adobe MAX and other factors, the release was realized prematurely - which Hogarty admitted to. I view Tom's apology as a heart felt falling on his sword. How they fix Import is anybody's guess but I would vote for a Simple/Quick Import and an Advanced Import set of dlogs that returns ALL functionality to the advanced import. They already have the old and new code...the difficulty will be providing a UI for choosing and the code that allows both to work and that won't be easy but is something that needs to be done if they want me to use future versions.

[Schewe]

Exactly....Lightroom is already basically a pared-down selection of features from Photoshop/ACR/Bridge. What would they peddle a subscription to "Lightroom Elements" for? 99 cents per month?

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.

[Nick Walker]

Adobe might lean something from Camerabits 'Photo Photomechanic', ingest and captioning software which has no piers in professional sports and media circles.

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!

[Thomas Achermann]

everywhere I read "we listen to customer feedback"...is this so?
Then why are the two Adobe forums filled up with costumer feedback (bugs, feature suggestions/requests/ideas etc.) and yet barely anything gets fixed or impemented?
Do the people at Adobe really have so much spare time that they can come up with such a "brilliant improvement" to LR as the new import dialog? Wow! There is an almost endless list of bugs and new features they could work on and make this application better...that's what would be called progress.

And back to my first sentence: when Jeff writes

the beta testers warned Adobe that the new Import dlog sucks

but they still chose to deploy it...so they obviously don't listen to their customers or their beta testers...

Hopefully Hogerty and many others at Adobe read this message by their good old mate Jeff Schewe:

...but is something that needs to be done if they want me to use future versions.

I think the LR 2015.2/6.2 update sucks...

that pretty much sums it up, really.

[Denis de Gannes]

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.

This is usually the first hurdle new Lightroom users do not grasp before they plunge into using the application.
Then they get into a tangle and become frustrated. Adobe need to clearly stress the fact that Lightroom is not "Photoshop".