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Author Topic: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic  (Read 23133 times)

nemophoto

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #20 on: March 20, 2012, 12:46:10 pm »

Nope...Highlights can not really clip-it rolls off at the extremes, Whites can clip that's what Whites is intended for. Whites has no highlight recovery built in while Highlights does. Yes, things can get complicated because now all the Basic sliders start at zero and allow plus or minus adjustments. That aspect is what is confusing a lot of people. Once you get past it, PV 2012 is much better (although different) than PV 2010.

Thanks for the clarification, Jeff. So essentially, mechanically speaking, White are the rough equivalent of Brightness, whereas Highlights are sort of Recovery, but with the added aspect of brightening the highlights? So, therefore Shadows are roughly equivalent to Fill? Black remains basically the same?
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nemophoto

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #21 on: March 20, 2012, 12:49:03 pm »

... but the lack of responsiveness hugely hinders the learning process. Over the weekend I was able to steadily count to twelve(about 9 seconds) before the screen updated on one adjustment.

I totally agree with you. LR3, while it could bog down somewhat, was generally responsive. Now to see the effect of something, I have to sit and wait to see if I did enough, or perhaps too much of whatever.
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WPalank

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #22 on: March 22, 2012, 12:51:50 am »

Nope...Highlights can not really clip-it rolls off at the extremes, Whites can clip that's what Whites is intended for. Whites has no highlight recovery built in while Highlights does. Yes, things can get complicated because now all the Basic sliders start at zero and allow plus or minus adjustments. That aspect is what is confusing a lot of people. Once you get past it, PV 2012 is much better (although different) than PV 2010.

Jeff,
What would we do without you? Seriously! I can't say enough good things about yours and Michael's C to P. Now I have to download the LR4 tutorials. Not so much the cost as the time to ingest and put into use your perspective on a totally revamped Application. :)

aduke

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #23 on: March 22, 2012, 03:09:57 am »

Jeff,
What would we do without you? Seriously!

+1

Your work in the LR4 tutorial and many, many replies in the last few weeks have been invaluable.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge as well as your position of the Mr. X situation.

Alan
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Schewe

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #24 on: March 22, 2012, 04:27:25 am »

Thank you for sharing your knowledge as well as your position of the Mr. X situation.

You are welcome...thanks for the kind words. Useful to get support....
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CASpyr

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #25 on: March 22, 2012, 05:36:36 am »

... So essentially, mechanically speaking, White are the rough equivalent of Brightness

Definitely no. Brightness in pre-PV 2012 adjusted the midtones and left black and white point / clipping more or less alone. Whites in PV2012 affects a very narrow range at the upper end of the histogram, as you can easily see when you move the slider back and forth.

Personally, I found it more productive not trying to draw analogies between the old and new controls but to clear the plate and learn again. The new stuff works quite differently and thinking in the old categories holds you back in harnessing the full (and fantastic!) potential of PV2012. YMMV, of course...
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John R Smith

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #26 on: March 23, 2012, 07:01:30 am »

Well, I downloaded the trial version of LR4 and I have been working with it for a week, on and off. I have to say that I can see the intended logic of the new PV 2012, but that in practice I am not terribly comfortable with the Basic Panel controls. From the little bit of experimenting I have done, I think that you might be rather more impressed if you were working in colour. However, as I work solely in B/W I am only really concerned with luminance. The thing I really, really miss is the Brightness control. I relied on this mid-tone gamma shift in LR3 enormously, both for global editing and on a grad or brush. Exposure in LR4 is no substitute - I just can't control it so finely, and I can't target it in quite the same way.

However, where LR4 is amazing is in its highlight recovery. With my Hass 3FR files I would reckon it is worth between 1/2 to 1 stop (EV), at least. Which really is food for thought with landscape work, and skies in particular. Now what would have been great would have been LR4 highlights and LR3 controls . . . just kidding, Jeff.

John
« Last Edit: March 23, 2012, 05:09:22 pm by John R Smith »
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Jim Pascoe

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #27 on: March 23, 2012, 03:48:24 pm »

I have just downloaded and installed LR 4, after having spent a couple of evenings watching some of the great new LL tutorials from Michael and Jeff.  While updating my old catalogue my wife bought me in a nice cold beer.  Now it could be the beer, but I could swear that on the images that have already been adjusted I still have the old recovery and fill light tools, where as with an image that has not yet been edited the new tools appear.  Am I hallucinating?

Jim
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Walter Schulz

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #28 on: March 23, 2012, 03:52:04 pm »

Take a look at the process version. I suppose you are using PV 2010 for those images.
You may want to read some of the discussions about transfer issues before stepping up to PV 2012.

Ciao, Walter
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aduke

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #29 on: March 23, 2012, 05:01:44 pm »

I have just downloaded and installed LR 4, after having spent a couple of evenings watching some of the great new LL tutorials from Michael and Jeff.  While updating my old catalogue my wife bought me in a nice cold beer.  Now it could be the beer, but I could swear that on the images that have already been adjusted I still have the old recovery and fill light tools, where as with an image that has not yet been edited the new tools appear.  Am I hallucinating?

Jim

You are not seeing things. Walter has it right, its the process version. The images that had been processed in PV2010 or before, remain processed in that version. The images not previously processed, even those imported by LR3, will come in in PV2012, and you will see the new controls.

Alan
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Jim Pascoe

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #30 on: March 24, 2012, 09:46:58 am »

I imagined it might be something like that, but it is pretty cool that the software has this facility built into it.

Jim
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Petrus

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #31 on: March 30, 2012, 12:47:46 am »

You are not seeing things. Walter has it right, its the process version. The images that had been processed in PV2010 or before, remain processed in that version. The images not previously processed, even those imported by LR3, will come in in PV2012, and you will see the new controls.

Alan

Newbie here... I am just starting to use LR4, which I mostly bought for Fujifilm X-Pro1 (but not supported yet...). I imported a couple of fresh 5DII RAW files into it and to my surprise the sliders were the same as in Bridge (CS5); recovery & fill etc, not the extremely useful white, highlight etc I had seen when adjusting some older JPEGs for practice. Why is this?
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Tony Jay

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #32 on: March 30, 2012, 01:10:59 am »

It is likely these images were manipulated in Lr3. something and hence with process 2010.
Lr4 uses process 2012 but will change sliders in devlop to reflect process 2010 if given a previously manipulated image.

Check to see which process is being used.
One can easily change the process to process 2012 and the new sliders and controls will appear.

Let us know what happens.

Regards

Tony Jay
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aduke

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #33 on: March 30, 2012, 01:13:19 am »

Check your process version, it is not Camera Calibration section at the right side of the develop module screen. If its 2012, I dunnojavascript:void(0);, if its 2010, convert the image to 2012. There is a control at the bottom right of the image when in the develop module.

Alan
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Tony Jay

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #34 on: March 30, 2012, 01:37:50 am »

The LR update promises to fix many of the speed issues currently being experienced.
Lets see what happens.

Regards

Tony Jay
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Peter S

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #35 on: April 02, 2012, 10:30:24 am »

Nope...Highlights can not really clip-it rolls off at the extremes, Whites can clip that's what Whites is intended for. Whites has no highlight recovery built in while Highlights does. Yes, things can get complicated because now all the Basic sliders start at zero and allow plus or minus adjustments. That aspect is what is confusing a lot of people. Once you get past it, PV 2012 is much better (although different) than PV 2010.

I am sorry but I do not understand this.  Can someone put me straight please?  If I have an image that has been over exposed the Highlights slider seems to enable me to recover the blown highlights but the Whites slider does not.  How does this tie up with the statement "Highlights can not really clip"?
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Rand47

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #36 on: April 02, 2012, 10:58:44 am »

What Jeff has said, I think, is that the "highlights slider" cannot cause clipping no matter how much you push it up, but that the "whites slider" can cause highlights to clip if you push it too far.

For a demo shoot something white then use each slider separately w/ the clipping indicator turned on.  It will become self evident.  

My current understanding is that the whites slider is essentially a "white end-point setting tool" and that the highlights slider is essentially a "highlights detail and recovery tool."   If you don't have the LULA new LR4 tutorials, they really help. The basic dev segment alone is worth the price of admission!
« Last Edit: April 02, 2012, 11:08:14 am by Rand47 »
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Peter S

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #37 on: April 02, 2012, 12:47:58 pm »

Oh I see, well I think I do.

I had the LuLa LR3 tutorials and got the LR4 versions as soon as they started coming out.  I have found them excellent but I have still been struggling getting things right in the development module. It's coming - slowly.
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JimAscher

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #38 on: April 04, 2012, 12:46:45 pm »

... The thing I really, really miss is the Brightness control....
John

This alone, I regret, will serve to make the decision for me not to upgrade.  I rely on the Brightness control as a (very) simplified mechanism for preparing black-and-white photos which I have edited (via LR3, PS and SEP2) for printing, so they don't turn out too dark in the actual printing process.  I've labored much in the past to get my monitor image to coincide with the print, to no avail. Use of the Brightness control is by far the easiest and most exact way for me to proceed.  Shame, because Lightroom 4 does appear to be otherwise an improvement over Lightroom 3.   
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Rand47

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Re: Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic
« Reply #39 on: April 04, 2012, 12:55:46 pm »

This alone, I regret, will serve to make the decision for me not to upgrade.  I rely on the Brightness control as a (very) simplified mechanism for preparing black-and-white photos which I have edited (via LR3, PS and SEP2) for printing, so they don't turn out too dark in the actual printing process.  I've labored much in the past to get my monitor image to coincide with the print, to no avail. Use of the Brightness control is by far the easiest and most exact way for me to proceed.  Shame, because Lightroom 4 does appear to be otherwise an improvement over Lightroom 3.   

Have you watched the LULA tutorials?  Until I did, and did some practice w/ the grayscale image provided, I too missed the brightness and fill light sliders.  Now I can see why they did LR4 the way they did.  You have more control than before, and once accustomed to it, it is almost as easy (but with better overall results) as 3.6.  I've done some "blind testing" by taking a few raw files and importing them into 3.6 and 4.1.  I independently did my "best" to optimize the images in each, then exported them to a folder.  I only then compared them and there isn't a single image that wasn't better for having used 4.1.  Even my B&W images.  And soft proofing has aided in getting an even closer screen/print match (which I was already doing fairly well with w/o soft proofing).
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