The Future of Lightroom

[Stephen Starkman]

And that's fine. Make the product better for those masses. But don't remove functionality of which 5 versions established workflows for existing customers. If that means a "dummy" and "expert" mode one selects, with "dummy" being the default, I'm OK with that. To break existing workflows is unforgivable. The product managers screwed up big time. I've never seen such an egregious example like this from Adobe so I'm worried a bit.

Andrew (DigitalDog), I agree completely. Well said. Loss of three key options in the new import break (or severely complicate) my workflow. I was in the beta test land in '05 and a user ever since. I've developed an import wf that I've used since the first version shipped. Product improvements? Yes. Appeal to a greater audience? Why not? Remove professional or long standing features... ah, no. Just expose the appropriate UI to the appropriate audience.  What is so surprising to myself (I'm not alone in this) is that the change made to Import (to make it "less daunting") doesn't really match up to the demographic for those using Develop. The new Import is just bolted on, the rest of the application does require "daunting" understanding. Mongrel I say - with a nod to the dog...

[jjj]

Coming from someone who's processed most of my 3000 or so Raws and jpegs in ACR (CS3-CS5) and also finally bought Lightroom 4 just to check out PV2012 (still not sure I'm liking it on all images) LR's overall UI feels like it was designed by someone who tends to either make a lot of mistakes in editing or not sure of what they're seeing or is way too obsessive and not sure they like their results to the point they need a big sign (called a bezel for some strange reason) flashing right in the middle of the image to tell them what each little tweak stored in History state they performed.

Eh? Struggling to recognise the programme you are describing. You seem to be taking things that people find really useful when doing creative work and painting them is really negative way.
Why is getting feedback as to what you just undid, a problem? If you quickly want to have a play with various setting or tweaks and then undo your experiment, you can easily see how far back you are going and get to stage you want, without having history panel open. Not all alterations are obviously visible.

I'm so used to ACR's twiddle, tweak (command Z-Mac) twiddle tweak some more, save to xmp, open directly in Photoshop because the preview doesn't show exactly how it's going to appear downsized for the web (same as LR). And then open the image again and do some more tweaking. I don't need to be told everything I did and wonder if it is saved/embedded in xmp sidecar or in catalog and buried in a long history state list.

I still haven't gotten used to LR's workflow scheme. It's just too complicated.

If you think simpler and easier is more complicated, no wonder you are confused.   

[rebadurchee]

I've forgotten where I saw it, but there is an ad with LRCC priced at $7.99 per month for new subscribers.  Clearly the growth curve is faltering.  Would the selfie crowd go for $7.99 and a simpler learning curve?  I think I'm going to start exploring options.

[adias]

I've forgotten where I saw it, but there is an ad with LRCC priced at $7.99 per month for new subscribers.  Clearly the growth curve is faltering.  Would the selfie crowd go for $7.99 and a simpler learning curve?  I think I'm going to start exploring options.

1Year at $7.99/month +tax - https://creative.adobe.com/promo/CreativeLiveCCPP

These teaser offers will go on for awhile until the subscriber numbers reach criticality. Then subscribers are hooked and have no leverage going forward. If this Import change ruffled some feathers I can imagine what the future may bring. That is why a perpetual license always makes more sense from a consumer perspective.

[gbdz]

What works for your clients...
A combination of Apple's Photos, Alien Skin 7.x, some Camera+, some Lightroom and an intuitive archivin application that would adapt to the connectivity available at the given moment to the camera, the studio and the client. LightRoom is somewhere in its early 30 per cent of its life curve. They need to focus.

[David Budd]

Given the amount of negative coverage both on this forum and many others towards Adobe we have had no comment from the person who like most CEO's pass on the credit of success and take the blame for their company's failures.

Lightroom users are rightly concerned about the future direction of Lightroom given this latest release and are looking for answers, which ultimately is the CEO responsibility, although  I think that is unlikely to happen in this case with Adobe CEO, Shantanu Narayen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yigV0GYGQ

-D.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Eh? Struggling to recognise the programme you are describing.

If you think simpler and easier is more complicated, no wonder you are confused.   

I'm only wondering by what LR UI designers went by to determine how they think a "pro" photographer works from an organizational and functional standpoint, Jeremy.

They appear to be obsessive compulsive with very short term memory considering all the nested options in menus and pop up panel reminders along with requiring a long list of history states they need to back out of that changes the preview if only they could see them over the flashing bezel.

Whoever LR was designed for I wouldn't want them to organize my walk-in closet. It would take them forever. This is my opinion of course, but, Jeremy, if you want to continue to ankle bite my points with no substantive feedback as you've been doing with me and others, that's your time and your problem.

[jjj]

I'm only wondering by what LR UI designers went by to determine how they think a "pro" photographer works from an organizational and functional standpoint, Jeremy.

As it happened, they consulted working pro photographers during Shadowland's development and then during the open beta of LR as it was now called, they rejigged a lot of things from the feedback they received.

They appear to be obsessive compulsive with very short term memory considering all the nested options in menus and pop up panel reminders along with requiring a long list of history states they need to back out of that changes the preview if only they could see them over the flashing bezel.

Whoever LR was designed for I wouldn't want them to organize my walk-in closet. It would take them forever. This is my opinion of course, but, Jeremy, if you want to continue to ankle bite my points with no substantive feedback as you've been doing with me and others, that's your time and your problem.

You really don't seem to like other people having a different opinion to you it would seem.
You also seem to have missed the fact that LR has been so very successful is because of its design and organisation.

So how do you think pros organise their work and why do you think that doesn't LR help with that?
Still really do not know what point you are trying to make with your criticism of LR history and how it works. Your sentence I put in bold may make sense to you, but grammatically it makes very little sense. So I can't understand what your problem with LR's UI is.

[ButchM]

I'm only wondering by what LR UI designers went by to determine how they think a "pro" photographer works from an organizational and functional standpoint ...

What they went by was direct input and feedback from a very lengthy and detailed public beta process that was extremely well represented by professional photography interests ... as the vast majority of those early participants were indeed working pros and took full advantage of making their thoughts, observations and ideas known, directly to the engineers, team members and managers of the project.

In fact the initial marketing theme for Lr v1 was molded around the influence working pros had on the development of the product.

If the Lr UI is less than ideal in your assessment ... the fault is not completely at the hands of Adobe, it was the vast majority of your fellow users that helped guide the direction of the UI ... although, some of the folks at Adobe did hold steadfast to several elements.

[hjulenissen]

When doing an import, I seem to be getting a sluggish "flash" of this "other" gui. It is a bit hard to describe, but it seems that either the gui flashes back and forth rapidly, and/or the change is so slow as to cause me clicking the button once more, causing unexpected visual stuff to happen on my screen.

Just like the HDR/pano modules seems to be borrowed from another team within Adobe, the Import thing does not seem to visually "belong" in Lightroom. While this may not be really important in the grand scheme, perhaps those designers did not talk much to the Lightroom team?

Changing anything in established software is painful. Experienced users will usually protest that they have to change their ways. Figuring out if the the change was _really_ better or worse long-term can only be really known after a large/representative amount of users have spent a considerable amount of time with the new version. Much rather "get it right" the first time. Easy to say, hard to do...

-h

[gbdz]

Well put. Once you have a big system whether a software or an organisation, whatever move you make is likely to make a lot of people scream out loud. Also, you have the 'butterfly effect' where a small change can cause a big foobar down the line as...I don't know what but likely adresses go wrong and the software loses track of what it was trying to compute.

There are very few software makers who are starting from a clean slate any longer. Which makes me look with a lot of anticipation at the 'Photos' SW that Apple has integrated in its OS now. They had Aperture, let's not forget. they know how to achieve big things with limited processing power. They still are strong in video and music...somehow it goes against their nature not to have anything serious to offer in the realm of 'serious' photography (whatever that may mean).

My guess is they will launch the Aperture replacement in the next 18 months or so.
I would just so much like to have somebody big kick Adobe's gluteus...so hard!

[Rory]

Quote related to Apple:

...somehow it goes against their nature not to have anything serious to offer in the realm of 'serious' photography (whatever that may mean).

My feeling is that Apple is moving toward the masses and not supporting the professional, niche markets. 

The big difference between Apple and Adobe is that Apple is primarily a hardware company and their software is a commodity to sell hardware.  Adobe is a software company that does not want their products to become commodities where price is the deciding factor.  They will maintain that position as long as their software supports professionals, is more comprehensive and more reliable than competition.  If any competition shows up then they buy it.

That is my take on the situation.

[Tim Lookingbill]

As it happened, they consulted working pro photographers during Shadowland's development and then during the open beta of LR as it was now called, they rejigged a lot of things from the feedback they received.

What they went by was direct input and feedback from a very lengthy and detailed public beta process that was extremely well represented by professional photography interests ... as the vast majority of those early participants were indeed working pros and took full advantage of making their thoughts, observations and ideas known, directly to the engineers, team members and managers of the project.

In fact the initial marketing theme for Lr v1 was molded around the influence working pros had on the development of the product.

If the Lr UI is less than ideal in your assessment ... the fault is not completely at the hands of Adobe, it was the vast majority of your fellow users that helped guide the direction of the UI ... although, some of the folks at Adobe did hold steadfast to several elements.

I didn't see any evidence to back up what both of you just outlined since I wasn't there. If a software company is going to rely on feedback from a small group of professional photographers using old established proprietary pre-digital workflows, that's still going to be a VERY SMALL market to sell such a complicated app with that much UI clutter as well as sell to those who just want to organize and archive all their family photos.

Besides that the imaging market is so over saturated simplification in the form of less option and dialog box clutter IMO is the only future for LR. The import change and Hogarty apology thread IMO is the writing on the wall for LR on how to sell to future markets and that being primarily hobbyist photographers. And I'm not sure those folks like an app that rearranges their furniture about every year unless they like wasting time learning new and complex workflows with a myriad of nested options that require them to buy books to show them how to make it all work. And I'm not buying the Elements solution to appease that market either. A lot of the imaging meat is taken out of that app.

Why can't LR engineers include instructions for efficiency and time management workflow suggestions for each different pro market that has been proven to work. I realize school photo pros work different from wedding photogs who work different from event and fashion photogs. They most likely use multiple devices like ipads, smartphones, laptops, etc. to do and distribute their work which most likely accounts for all the nested complexity designed into LR. Not sure since I don't need to process, organize, archive 100,000 images for each client. That's still a small market to justify investing all that time making the app more complex because some pro photog decides they want to work differently.

[jjj]

I didn't see any evidence to back up what both of you just outlined since I wasn't there. If a software company is going to rely on feedback from a small group of professional photographers using old established proprietary pre-digital workflows, that's still going to be a VERY SMALL market to sell such a complicated app with that much UI clutter as well as sell to those who just want to organize and archive all their family photos.

Well we were there and so were an awful lot of other photographers giving their feedback.
What do you mean by LR's UI clutter? It's one of the most clutter free programmes I've ever used. See screengrab below.
As for those who just want to organise family photos, there are plenty of free/very cheap apps out there that can do that. LR isn't meant for them, it purpose was to serve the pro/keen photographer.

Why can't LR engineers include instructions for efficiency and time management workflow suggestions for each different pro market that has been proven to work. I realize school photo pros work different from wedding photogs who work different from event and fashion photogs. They most likely use multiple devices like ipads, smartphones, laptops, etc. to do and distribute their work which most likely accounts for all the nested complexity designed into LR. Not sure since I don't need to process, organize, archive 100,000 images for each client. That's still a small market to justify investing all that time making the app more complex because some pro photog decides they want to work differently.

Still really not sure what your complaint is or why you keep going on about nesting, but the main reason for LR's success is how easy it is to use by a wide range of photographers for a very broad range of tasks. You can use LR to organise your work in anyway you see fit, because nothing is forced upon you. How things are done will probably vary as much by individual photographer as type of photographer.
Personally I use a date description folder system, with multiple entries per day if needed and then add keywording to the images as well. BTW the folder description/file name is also the first stage of keywording process and may be all that is needed. That basic system can actually work for just about any kind  photographer, the tweaking will be in how things like collections, smart or dumb are then arranged. Which is a very personal thing.
Though a wedding photographer may simply have a folder for each couple and that will be all the folder organising they ever need.

[chez]

Quote related to Apple:

My feeling is that Apple is moving toward the masses and not supporting the professional, niche markets. 

The big difference between Apple and Adobe is that Apple is primarily a hardware company and their software is a commodity to sell hardware.  Adobe is a software company that does not want their products to become commodities where price is the deciding factor.  They will maintain that position as long as their software supports professionals, is more comprehensive and more reliable than competition.  If any competition shows up then they buy it.

That is my take on the situation.

I agree with you. Apple is after the consumer market which eclipses the professional market in a big way. They want to tap in all those iPhone photos being taken and make the management and more importantly the electronic distribution of those photos seamless. They don't give a rat's azz about being able to cull images while importing.

[Ann JS]

Just what Cloud is any Corporate Executive living on if they imagine that the iPhone/Selfie/Instagram crowd is ever going to use any computer-based image editing program — let alone one which requires the slightest degree of learning-time and effort?

If the Adobe Marketing team really believes that, they need to get out into public spaces, sniff the fresh air and get a dose of reality?!

[Tim Lookingbill]

Well we were there and so were an awful lot of other photographers giving their feedback.

That's not evidence as consensus for designing software UI that will be adopted and understood by a larger market than "pro" photographers. You keep side stepping my points about a broader market LR must appeal to. Unless you have evidence there is a huge population of pro photogs that can carry the cost/profit weight for the amount of energy spent by Adobe engineers to keep adding more complexity on top of the existing complexity, you don't have a convincing leg to stand on.

What do you mean by LR's UI clutter?

I've already described that in this thread several times. You even penned lame comebacks as arguments. I could provide screengrabs of all the obscurely worded warnings and instructions in dialog and preference panels that show up when the user intuitively does something not kosher by LR's way of doing things, but it's not worth it knowing you've already made up YOUR mind.

Tell you what, drag a Raw file from the desktop on top of the Develop or Library module and note the interface transforms into some weird collection of tabbed panels, stacked panels of drop down arrow bars and other stuff I've never seen before nor could understand and navigate out of that I had to just quit out of LR and restart just to get me back to the regular filmstrip interface mode.

For crying out loud if it's so ease of use and simply designed then why is LR4's User Guide pdf 205 pages long. We're just making pictures!

[Rhossydd]

I could provide screengrabs of all the obscurely worded warnings and instructions in dialog and preference panels that show up when the user intuitively does something not kosher by LR's way of doing things,

That might be useful to see what you're attempting that is skewing your perception of the UI.
Having used LR since the first beta I can't recall ever having bumped into a 'you can't do that' error message.

For crying out loud if it's so ease of use and simply designed then why is LR4's User Guide pdf 205 pages long.

Given the need to explain the underlying concepts and functionality of every option available in the program, 205 pages seems pretty concise. My car has a 570 page manual and needs a second 120 page manual just for the radio unit.

[chez]

Just what Cloud is any Corporate Executive living on if they imagine that the iPhone/Selfie/Instagram crowd is ever going to use any computer-based image editing program — let alone one which requires the slightest degree of learning-time and effort?

If the Adobe Marketing team really believes that, they need to get out into public spaces, sniff the fresh air and get a dose of reality?!

I know 3 people that use iPhones for their photos. I went to Prague with one and she used her phone to document the trip. She made a photo boom out of the images...using guess what...LR to crop and adjust the images.

Sure, the majority of phone shooters don't do anything but post onto the net...but with billions of people using phones for photography...I would think that market is much bigger than the professional photographer market...even if only say 5% of the phone shooters would process their images.

[jjj]

That's not evidence as consensus for designing software UI that will be adopted and understood by a larger market than "pro" photographers.

Actually that's what has happened. LR is very popular amongst photographers who are not professional.
It will never be popular with those who are not photographers, but fill up their phones with snapshots because that is a completely separate market.

You keep side stepping my points about a broader market LR must appeal to.

There is no 'must' there. That's just your opinion, based on what exactly?

Unless you have evidence there is a huge population of pro photogs that can carry the cost/profit weight for the amount of energy spent by Adobe engineers to keep adding more complexity on top of the existing complexity, you don't have a convincing leg to stand on.

Really? The fact that LR has managed to do exactly what you claim is impossible for nearly ten years completely undermines your argument.
Also this 'complexity on complexity' seems to be more about your inability to use LR than anything else

I've already described that in this thread several times. You even penned lame comebacks as arguments. I could provide screengrabs of all the obscurely worded warnings and instructions in dialog and preference panels that show up when the user intuitively does something not kosher by LR's way of doing things, but it's not worth it knowing you've already made up YOUR mind.

You've described nothing. You ranted several times very vaguely about LR and wrote long rambling run on sentences. Ones that that made zero sense due to a lack of punctuation and generally random grammar.

Tell you what, drag a Raw file from the desktop on top of the Develop or Library module and note the interface transforms into some weird collection of tabbed panels, stacked panels of drop down arrow bars and other stuff I've never seen before nor could understand and navigate out of that I had to just quit out of LR and restart just to get me back to the regular filmstrip interface mode.

Maybe you need to learn how to use LR properly before you start criticising it. 
Do you even use LR or know how to import images into LR? As it really doesn't sound like it.

For crying out loud if it's so ease of use and simply designed then why is LR4's User Guide pdf 205 pages long. We're just making pictures!

Have you even used LR?
LR organises your photos.
It can help you keyword images and add all sorts of useful info.
LR can process your photos and make infinite of variations of them.
It can make photo books.
LR can show you where you took you photos or you can tell LR where you took them.
You can make websites or online galleries and upload directly to them.
LR can place images online in places like Flickr.
It can make slideshows.
LR can print your photos
Lr can export images for a wide variety of uses...
.. and so on and so on.
So 205 pages isn't very much considering the huge range of abilities on offer. Never read the manual myself. Not needed to as I found LR pretty easy to use.

Maybe you need to use a programme like Apple Photos instead.