What's still missing from LR4?

[Anthony.Ralph]

Good Lord, I wasn't aware such a utility existed.  Feeling a bit silly about my observation now.

No need to feel silly. Asking questions is all about gaining knowledge - something we can/should do. I have made an art form from asking 'silly' questions over the years - still do- and I now have a store of knowledge I wouldn't otherwise have.

Anthony.

[Ernst Dinkla]

I suppose Adobe feels that as they created the Colour Print Utility for this purpose, there was no longer any need for such an ability in Lightroom (or Photoshop).

Anthony.

History rewritten. At some point in time you could no longer print untagged targets properly through Adobe software on Macs. People had to invent tweaked workflows to get that done on Macs. Then Adobe removed the CM OFF setting completely for all platforms. Months later the Color Print Utility appeared.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst
330+ paper white spectral plots:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

[madmanchan]

Correct, no color management is no longer a supported print workflow on the Mac (there's no public API to do this anymore, from a software perspective). 

[digitaldog]

This is perhaps a little trivial, compared to some posts, but unless I'm missing something I still can't switch off the color management chain if I want to import and print out a standard target for calibration purposes - it's the only reason I keep an old copy of Photoshop.

Which is functionality the folks who build and sell ICC profile creation packages should be supporting.

[Javier S.]

Hi guys, new in the forum.

Having a thought in what I missed in LR (haven´t yet try the LR4 version), what I mostly miss is:

- A complete index catalog with thumbnails of all the catalogs I have in LR, so that clicking in one you´re sent straight to that catalog, and incluiding the names of the collections. This not much Mb consuming and will help from closing LR every time we want to change catalog. Even better would be if you can open in a catalog collectios selected from different catalogs in a, let´s call it, working catalog, wich would be only temporal with the ability to give it a name so that it can be recalled any time.

- Enhanced ability to contain a bigger amount of photographs on every catalog.

- As I´d like it to be my ultimate software for photographers, it still lacks some abilities most of us use with third party appliances: Pano, HDR (although this is being enhanced with the ability to get more detail from shadows and clipping lights), Focus HDR (as the helicon) ...

- An option to burn DVD straight from LR, so we don´t have to export files for customers, friends, etc, in wich there should be the possibility to transform files to JPEG & TIFF, so that they can be seen on any Mac/PC.

I know this is not easy at all, but a while working with top engineers taught me that one should imagine the ultimate thing you´d like to have, so that they start thinking how to achieve it and, if they cannot now, keep it in mind so that when choosing one way or another in the development process they keep doors open for the last required result. Engineers love to have inputs to develop.

[john beardsworth]

How many photographs do you want in one catalogue? I've not seen anyone with a million, but I know of plenty that are 300-500,000 pictures and some bigger than that. Numbers of pictures aren't a reason for losing control of your catalogues.

Also, in LR4 there is burning to DVD on both platforms.

Maybe try LR4 before saying what it can't do?

[Javier S.]

I don´t know if I´ll dare to try that with my own catalogs. On a couple of books about LR3 I read they said it´s far better to keep below 40 to 50.000 images to avoid getting it slow down or (my fear) to start having some failures.

Anyway, if you confirm that point, I´ll try to push it a bit further to see what happens, but really wouldn´t like it if I have to start restoring catalogs.

It would be great for me to have all my pics in one catalog.

[john beardsworth]

Then they're not very well-informed books? In fact one of the goals of Lr3 was to improve performance with very big catalogues. Just make sure you have a decent computer, but you don't need anything exotic.

[Stephane Desnault]

I'd like to see one of the geometry corrections available in DXO:

- Pick 4 points and LR warps the image so they become a straightened rectangle
- Draw two near horizontal or vertical lines and LR warps the perspective so they are straightened and parallel

For both of these tools, in order to provide EASY pixel level precision, provide a 16x magnifying glass when "dropping" the points, like the panorama stitching software does for dropping "control points".

Best,

Stephane

[dreed]

I'd like to see one of the geometry corrections available in DXO:

- Pick 4 points and LR warps the image so they become a straightened rectangle
- Draw two near horizontal or vertical lines and LR warps the perspective so they are straightened and parallel

For both of these tools, in order to provide EASY pixel level precision, provide a 16x magnifying glass when "dropping" the points, like the panorama stitching software does for dropping "control points".

If DxO does that then I need to seriously try it out.

I'd love to see that in LR but for it to allow for more than just two lines or a box.

[jjj]

I don´t know if I´ll dare to try that with my own catalogs. On a couple of books about LR3 I read they said it´s far better to keep below 40 to 50.000 images to avoid getting it slow down or (my fear) to start having some failures.

Anyway, if you confirm that point, I´ll try to push it a bit further to see what happens, but really wouldn´t like it if I have to start restoring catalogs.

It would be great for me to have all my pics in one catalog.

Not doing so basically cripples how LR works. And I'm with John in saying those books were giving poor advice.
Back up catalogue regularly to make sure if anything goes wrong, you have a back up. LR can remind you every session, every day or every week to do just that when closing LR.

[Schewe]

I don´t know if I´ll dare to try that with my own catalogs. On a couple of books about LR3 I read they said it´s far better to keep below 40 to 50.000 images to avoid getting it slow down or (my fear) to start having some failures.

Horseshyte...what books, what authors (I'll send them a personal email correcting them).

I'm just under 300K with my main catalog and it ain't slow and I haven't had any "failures".

The whole purpose of LR is to store your images in a catalog...all of them.

When you get to a million, get back to us (I'll update you when I get to a mil).

[Stephane Desnault]

Hi Dreed,

DXO doesn't have the 16x magnification glass when dropping points sadly - I cant understand why, it's a no-brainer. Stitching software has had it for years.

[Rhossydd]

Improvements to keywording

There's no difference in this key area of LR4b.
When keywording there's a lot of wasted screen space, especially on large screens.
I'd like to see the option to have much larger panels of suggested keywords, and larger keyword sets.
The suggested list could be configurable like the number of recent files list in PS (and other apps).
Changing the size of keyword sets could have difficulties, but maybe the option to one more than one at the same time would be useful.

[Stephane Desnault]

One thing I'd really like to see... Color balance against a variety of skintones? That would make my life so much easier, to give me a starting point when doing portraits! I'm actually surprised I haven't seen utilities that provide that - am I missing something ?

Best,

Stephane

[dreed]

Improvements to keywording

There's no difference in this key area of LR4b.
When keywording there's a lot of wasted screen space, especially on large screens.
I'd like to see the option to have much larger panels of suggested keywords, and larger keyword sets.
The suggested list could be configurable like the number of recent files list in PS (and other apps).
Changing the size of keyword sets could have difficulties, but maybe the option to one more than one at the same time would be useful.

In Windows, it can now only display those programs that you use often, unless you click on something special and then they all appear.

Would something similar for keywording be useful, where it only showed you keywords that have been used in the last 12 months or whatever?

[Rhossydd]

Would something similar for keywording be useful, where it only showed you keywords that have been used in the last 12 months or whatever?

Not for me, but YMMW, so add it to the request list ;-)

Given just how crucial to the overall long term workflow keywording is, I'm surprised that this aspect of LR hasn't received more enhancement and refinement over the versions.

[john beardsworth]

In Windows, it can now only display those programs that you use often, unless you click on something special and then they all appear.
Would something similar for keywording be useful, where it only showed you keywords that have been used in the last 12 months or whatever?

In the keywording panel you have the set Recent Keywords but also Keywording Suggestions which is a bit cleverer than it appears. It suggests keywords by looking at previous images, so for instance if I keyword an image with "Borrowdale" it will find that when that I previously used that keyword I also used "Cumbria", "dry stone walls" etc and suggests those.

But I agree with the last few comments about keywords. Maybe one of the reasons it has received so little attention is that not enough people are really interested in it, and those who are serious about it use Photo Mechanic? That was the conclusion I drew when I demoed a keywording plugin and got so little feedback I've more or less put it on ice.

John

[Rhossydd]

Maybe one of the reasons it has received so little attention is that not enough people are really interested in it, and those who are serious about it use Photo Mechanic?

Or maybe it just isn't easy enough to use ?
From what I've read PM is very much a bit of specialised software for press use and is all about getting metadata onto the files when first ingested from camera.
Maybe my use is atypical, but I add generalised keywords when importing, but still need to go in and add individual keywords to images after import. Often these can be very varied, especially with travel photography, so the suggested keywords are often way off.

That was the conclusion I drew when I demoed a keywording plugin and got so little feedback I've more or less put it on ice.

I just looked at this and it's not very clear what it does or how to use it. It also seem to rely on hierarchical keywording sets and/or controlled vocabularies, neither of which, I think, have much take up outside of the professional market.

The key to improving this aspect of LR is making it more convenient to use. The existing system works well, but could be better by adding more options. For example having a set of buttons that can apply a whole keyword set in one click. Maybe being able to create a keyword set via drag 'n drop. There's room for improvement here.

Maybe as people have greater commitment to LR as their collections grow, we'll see more interest in the DAM aspects of LR.

[jeremyrh]

But I agree with the last few comments about keywords. Maybe one of the reasons it has received so little attention is that not enough people are really interested in it, and those who are serious about it use Photo Mechanic? That was the conclusion I drew when I demoed a keywording plugin and got so little feedback I've more or less put it on ice.

John

People should be obliged to watch the Seth Resnick WAM%P video!