What I feel Adobe needs to fix in Lightroom

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

In my view Lightroom is an excellent implementation of an excellent tool. Also the parametric workflow invented by Apple/Aperture is very well implemented in Lightroom.

But, Lightroom has some weaknesses. Some issues:

- My worst problem is demosaic artefacts on my P45+ back. Now, much of these artefacts depend on the MFDBs having large pixels and not having adequate OLP filtering. Capture one can suppress these artefacts to a significant degree, but they are still there. They can be reduced using the Moiré brush, but that is quite strong medicine. Capture One does a better job in this arena.

- Lateral Chromatic aberration. Lightroom is pretty good at eliminating lateral colour on images from my Sony DSLRs, but it seems that it has issues with lateral chroma on more complex lens designs like Zeiss Distagons I have for my Hasselblad.

- Sharpening. Although capture sharpening in LR is adequate it causes some halos at steep contrast edges. These are OK in small prints but interfere with more advanced sharpening. I get better results with no sharpening in LR and doing all sharpening in FocusMagic, but that breaks parametric workflow.

So what I would like to see in the next processing pipeline:

1) Better demosaic that is equivalent/superior to Capture One regarding colour artefacts
2) Better suppression of lateral chromatic aberration
3) Better suppression of halo effects with detail slider above 0
4) API for integrating advanced sharpening methods in a parametric workflow

Just to say, I am very happy with Lightroom, and it works very well with my Sony equipment. Colour demosaic artefacts is an issue with the P45+ mainly. Hint: it goes away at f/16, but it is very bad at f/11. C1 does a better job in that area.

Best regards
Erik

[Simon Garrett]

...Also the parametric workflow invented by Apple/Aperture is very well implemented in Lightroom...

No disagreement with your comments for improvement in LR.

By "parametric workflow", do you mean parametric editing?  That was developed long before Apple used it in Aperture.  The basic ideas were used in video editing at least as far back as the 1970s.  

However, I don't know who developed the idea of integration of parametric editing into an overall workflow.  The Adobe "Shadowland" project (out of which came Lightroom) started in around 2002, but Aperture was the first to appear as a product in 2005 (followed by Lightroom as a beta in 2006).  I've no idea when the Aperture development started.  

Jeff Schewe might know, as I think he was involved at the time.  

[john beardsworth]

Aperture was novel in combining parametric editing with DAM as a single workflow app and that combination made a big splash (few recognised how much its two halves borrowed from Extensis Portfolio and C1!).

Jeff might know for sure, but I've never seen much to make me think Adobe would have released Shadowland without Apple's example.

John

 

[Schewe]

However, I don't know who developed the idea of integration of parametric editing into an overall workflow.  The Adobe "Shadowland" project (out of which came Lightroom) started in around 2002, but Aperture was the first to appear as a product in 2005 (followed by Lightroom as a beta in 2006).  I've no idea when the Aperture development started.  

Thomas Knoll decided, when first developing Camera Raw, to store the image settings parametrically in .xmp files (.xmp predated ACR). ACR predated Lightroom. ACR was first released in Feb 2003 but was being developed since June/July 2002 (which also predated LR's first development meetings in Dec 2002 which I was a party to).

The reason for storing the settings parametrically was to avoid trying to write any data in proprietary raw files because of the risk of writing data into headers that might corrupt existing data. That's why Thomas treated raw files as "Read Only" files.

As to whether or not Thomas' use of parametric editing was predated by somebody else in raw image processing, I don't know. I do know that Canon and Nikon at the time wrote settings into their proprietary raw file formats.

As far as LR & Aperture, they were developed in the same time frame (late 2002 and early 2003) separately and concurrently...Aperture came to market first (fall of 2005) and the 1st LR Public Beta Jan 2006, but I really don't think of either app as being "first". The only thing Aperture did was to convince Adobe that the market for a data base driven image editor was viable...but that doesn't mean Adobe would NOT have gone ahead with their plans even if Aperture was never developed.

[john beardsworth]

I don't think Adobe were in any hurry, but you certainly can't discount them releasing it. By then it was increasingly obvious that people were really struggling to control and process fast-growing numbers of digitally-captured images. Microsoft and their ex-iView team were working on something similar, SmartFlow, which was quite advanced when I saw it, and PhaseOne had been outbid by Microsoft when they tried to get iView. Would Adobe have released Lightroom without a competitor appearing? I suspect we're talking years later, if at all.

John

[Isaac]

Would Adobe have released Lightroom without a competitor appearing? I suspect we're talking years later, if at all.

Happily we don't need to bother about that hypothetical.

[Schewe]

Would Adobe have released Lightroom without a competitor appearing? I suspect we're talking years later, if at all.

Yep...and the Jan 2003 Public Beta was in the plan about 1 year before it happened. There was a period around the time that Aperture was announced that Adobe had to decide whether to drop LR or go ahead with it. Adobe circled the wagons and went ahead. But neither LR nor Aperture really impacted the other.

In fact, the guy who first developed Aperture, was Randy Ubillos who also developed Final Cut Pro. Randy was the main developer for 3 versions of Adobe Premiere before leaving and going to Macromedia to develop a Premiere killer. Macromedia then sold what would become Final Cut Pro to Apple (to keep MSFT from getting it I "think"). After Final Cut Pro was released and successful, Randy turned to developing Aperture because he had gotten into digital photography.

Back when Randy was at Adobe, Randy and Mark Hamburg (who developed LR) were pretty good friends...I don't know for a fact that that Mark and Randy ever talked about their separate projects, but I would be not be surprised either way...Silicon Valley makes for strange bed fellows :~)

The one advantage LR has always had in the marketplace was Adobe made LR platform agnostic while Apple kept Aperture Mac only. So, parametric editing of raw files on Windows couldn't use Aperture...that played a large role in Adobe's decision to go forward with LR.

Now, that's all very OT for Erik's OP...I have some questions I'll work on to ask so get to the bottom of Erik's requests...

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Thanks for your comments on the parametric workflow.

Best regards
Erik

No disagreement with your comments for improvement in LR.

By "parametric workflow", do you mean parametric editing?  That was developed long before Apple used it in Aperture.  The basic ideas were used in video editing at least as far back as the 1970s.  

However, I don't know who developed the idea of integration of parametric editing into an overall workflow.  The Adobe "Shadowland" project (out of which came Lightroom) started in around 2002, but Aperture was the first to appear as a product in 2005 (followed by Lightroom as a beta in 2006).  I've no idea when the Aperture development started.  

Jeff Schewe might know, as I think he was involved at the time.  

[ErikKaffehr]

I posted two samples with raw files:

http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/LR5_issues/index.html

Screen dumps of problem areas enclosed below.

Update: More images added.
Best regards
Erik

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Jeff,

Some of the issues I posted are issues with my P45+ back used with my Hasselblad 555/ELD. I guess that I belong to a very small minority using that stuff. For instance, I don't see the colour fringing issue with Sony camera I have. What I assume that the Hasselblad Distagons behave a little bit differently regarding chromatic aberrations, i assume they don't change linearly across the field.

It may be possible to create a lens profile taking chromatic aberration into account, I don't know if LR 5 uses that information, remove chromatic aberrations seems separate from lens profiles.

The moiré like fake colours are coming from the sensor, large pixels, possibly combined with a small fill factor. Capture One makes a better job of suppressing these. The Moiré brush helps but it is pretty strong medicine.

Regarding sharpening, I feel that LR5 does a good job. On the other hand, Bart has demonstrated that better sharpening is possible using Focus Magic. Using Focus magic and the Topaz tools that Bart also recommends breaks parametric workflow. So, I feel it would be better if tools like Focus Magic could be in the parametric workflow, without conversion to TIFF.

I am mostly happy with LR, these just ideas about making it an even better product.

Best regards
Erik

Now, that's all very OT for Erik's OP...I have some questions I'll work on to ask so get to the bottom of Erik's requests...