Lightroom 4 is slow but fantastic

[Rhossydd]

...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.... 

Ignoring whether this is a good practice or not; Adobe have put a brightness and contrast control in the print module for just this situation.
Try it, you might find it a better solution than having to over brighten images in develop with all the other problems that workflow might give.

[John R Smith]

Well, OK. Where in LR4 is the mechanism for doing what the Brightness control in LR3 does so well?

In other words, how in LR4 do you shift the mid-tone gamma up and down without affecting the black and white end points? And not just shift it, but shift it in very tiny and subtle increments?

This is a genuine question, by the way, not rhetorical. Enquiring minds want to know.

PS The way I have always interpreted LR Basic panel controls is (all B/W work)-

EV is the development of my negative in the tank or dish. Contrast is my paper grade. And Brightness is my exposure on the enlarger easel. I know this is simplistic and retrograde, but it worked for me 

John

[JimAscher]

Ignoring whether this is a good practice or not; Adobe have put a brightness and contrast control in the print module for just this situation.
Try it, you might find it a better solution than having to over brighten images in develop with all the other problems that workflow might give.

Much to think about further regarding upgrading to LR4, but as I print with QTR (not Lightroom) a Brightness control in the Print module I shouldn't think would be of all that much use to me. 

[Rand47]

Well, OK. Where in LR4 is the mechanism for doing what the Brightness control in LR3 does so well?

In other words, how in LR4 do you shift the mid-tone gamma up and down without affecting the black and white end points? And not just shift it, but shift it in very tiny and subtle increments?

This is a genuine question, by the way, not rhetorical. Enquiring minds want to know.

PS The way I have always interpreted LR Basic panel controls is (all B/W work)-

EV is the development of my negative in the tank or dish. Contrast is my paper grade. And Brightness is my exposure on the enlarger easel. I know this is simplistic and retrograde, but it worked for me 

John

How about a point in the point curve adjustment dead-bang in the middle of the curve, then adjust it straight up, or straight down?  Seems to work for me.

[John R Smith]

How about a point in the point curve adjustment dead-bang in the middle of the curve, then adjust it straight up, or straight down?  Seems to work for me.

Thank you. But I was really looking for something in the Basic panel.

John

[Rand47]

Thank you. But I was really looking for something in the Basic panel.

John

I understand!    OK, Jeff.... your turn.  Comments?

[ComputerDork]

If I install the LR4 trial, can I keep using LR3 on the same computer as long as I don't convert my libraries? Also, will LR4 Import From Library for LR3 libraries without having to convert or otherwise mangle the LR3 library?

[Tony Jay]

Gentlemen, I can see that some are struggling with the new basic panel adjustments.

The LR4 videos are helpful but honestly all I can suggest is to play with your favourite images in Lr4.
I am still getting to grips with the controls but experimenting has allowed some pretty amazing results.
I cannot wait to see what is possible once I have fully figured out what it can do.

Persevere, Lr4 may be different but I really do think it is better.

My $0.02 worth.

Tony Jay

[Tony Jay]

If I install the LR4 trial, can I keep using LR3 on the same computer as long as I don't convert my libraries? Also, will LR4 Import From Library for LR3 libraries without having to convert or otherwise mangle the LR3 library?

Yes to the first question.
Check other previous posts on LuLa for the most up to date info on this one. My undestanding is that the trial version may cause issues but the release version with the latest upgrade (Lr4.1 R.C.) not.

Regards

Tony Jay

[maniek]

It's slow for me too. I hope they make an update that will solve this problem.

[mcbroomf]

Thank you. But I was really looking for something in the Basic panel.

John

This doesn't help you get back to a single control, but it seems as though you can find out what is happening by moving between 2010 to 2012.

For eg. I set a raw file to 2010 defaults, then also changed the curve to linear and blacks to 0, then pulled brightness from +50 to 0.
When I switched to 2012 exposure had moved to -1, and blacks to +25.  There was also a custom curve that had lifted shadows.  I found later that is is a sort of oppoosite medium contrast curve (which reduces shadows). 

Not necessarily much help to you, but you can see a little more of what's going on under the hood.

[John R Smith]

Mike

Thanks for that. I have been doing a lot more experimenting with LR 4.1, and the two process versions are certainly very different. Which makes it difficult to make direct comparisons, as you say. Some thoughts -

* PV 2012 will retrieve a touch more highlight detail in my 3FR files. At first you think it is retrieving massive amounts more, but that is because the top end of the file is already very compressed when imported into PV 2012. In fact, you can get pretty much the same result in 2010 with recovery and grads, etc. Not quite, though, and LR4 wins here.

* The fact that the highlights are already so compressed is not necessarily that helpful in B/W work. I prefer the more linear rendition of PV 2010. Some of the "pop" has been taken out of the image and I find myself putting it back in using the White slider.

* There seems to be no real equivalent for the Brightness control in LR 4. Exposure does sort of the same thing, but it does not peg the ends of the histogram down like Brightness does. I use Brightness a lot (for reasons which I will explain if you like and won't get bored).

* If you are working in colour where you really need shadow detail, no blown highlights and no hue shift when editing then PV 2012 is brilliant. I tried a few colour images and there was a clear improvement. But for my B/W work I am not so sure.

John

[Rand47]

It's slow for me too. I hope they make an update that will solve this problem.

I'm finding 4.1 "better," but it still lags enough to make smooth fine tune adjustments difficult and very time consuming.
I hope further improvements in slider responsiveness in the basic module are possible for the next commercial version.

[Box Brownie]

Just for the record?

I added another 8GB RAM to this W7 Pro 64bit PC and compared to the 8GB running of LR4.0 it has speeded up.  In that as noted Develop having opened the first image switches quite briskly between Library & Develop.  But most noticable was the slider response to changes on the image, with 8GB I saw the lag others had reported but with the 16GB the changes are seen almost instantly by this I mean the lag is barely discernable.

Hope that helps any others, oh I am working on Canon 40D RAW files which are of the 11MB size so not as massive as some folks file sizes.

[stamper]

I was wondering how many are using the the - and + on the keyboard to move the sliders? Some functions such as exposure moves in increments of 10 and most in increments of 5. If you manually move it to3 then then it is 13 and 8. Most users will know this but I assume some won't because it isn't well documented. It moves swiftly for me and I am still using LR4 and not the up-date. I am waiting for the "final" release.

[Tony Jay]

I assume some won't because it isn't well documented...

Actually I think a lot of people will be unaware of this.
I have used LR for some years and never encountered this information.

Thanks for bringing it to attention.

Kind Regards

Tony Jay

[Ben Rubinstein]

Not the same thing but I'm finding that in ACR of CS6 everything is working just as fast except for the WB where moving the numbers using the arrow keys is rather hesitant.

I understand the difference between whites and highlights tools. Somewhat more confused about the difference between the shadows and blacks tools.

I used to use the blacks tool to cut through haze or flare. Shooting a bride infront of an open window I would often have to punch up the blacks to +15 due to the flare from shooting into the light. I don't seem to be able to do this any more with the blacks tool?

[madmanchan]

Ben, the Blacks slider in PV 2012 in LR 4 goes in the opposite direction from what you're used to.  So, if you want to make the blacks punchy, move Blacks slider to the left, not to the right.

(This was part of the reorganization effort, and we ultimately decided on a design where all Basic tone controls share the behavior that "left" means "darker" and "right" means "brighter".)

[Hans Kruse]

Probably it would be fair to say that I find Lightroom 4.1RC responding very well. thanks for that Adobe

[budjames]

I have the LR 4.1RC installed on my MacPro 8-core, 32GB RAM, Lion OS, SSD boot drive and RAID0 for images and, sadly, the program is still very sluggish. I get the spinning beach ball a lot even when doing basic functions like cropping. Bummer!

I hope that a real fix is forthcoming.

Other than this, I love the new feature set. LR4 took me off the fence from considering switching to Aperture, although I do love the way Aperture integrates with the Mac OS. The tools in LR are just so much better IMHO, particularly, gradient, profiles and lens corrections to name a few.

Cheers.
Bud