Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: Hans Kruse on March 15, 2012, 02:14:34 pm
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I also suffer from the slowness of Lightroom 4, but the possibilities and flexibility in editing images are simply astounding. I would rather sit around waiting some extra seconds...I could never go back to PV 2010 again.
A couple of examples of pictures I simply could not do in PV 2010.
Attached is both the PV 2010 version and the PV 2012 version.
The shadows in PV 2012 are lifted with the shadows slider and a brush is used to increase the color temperature over the entire are that is in shadow. We also see that PV 2012 has recovered the sky much better.
Another example is a picture I shot high in Dolomites when there was an ambulance helocopter for rescue of a guy with a heart attack (not a good place for that ;) )
The default conversion in PV 2012 is shown and cine it is shot against the sky (I followed the helicopter as it was circling around to find a spot to land) and a crop with just the helicopter to show changfe of color temperature of the helicopter in shade and also lifting the shadows and noise reduction inside the helicopter where the rescue person sits.
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Helicopter location: Tre Cime Di Lavaredo? Aka: Drei Zinnen.
Ciao, Walter
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Yes, I walked all the way over to Dreizinnen Hütte. A nice walk except for passing the guy in pain. There was a group with him and the helicopter came a few minutes later. But I don't know if the survived...
Another example from the Dolomites where I really like the new shadow slider and the change of color temperature.
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Helicopter location: Tre Cime Di Lavaredo? Aka: Drei Zinnen.
Ciao, Walter
Btw. on my way back I got this view just at the foot of the tall Drei Zinnen with this couple looking at the Drei Zinnen Hütte :)
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De gustibus non est disputandum. But for my taste it's over the top, esp. the blue cast in the background and - to a lesser degree - the sharper-than-life effect.
Ciao, Walter
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Thanks for sharing Hans. Nice work.
I'm finding LR4 to be slow only when opening the application the first time in the morning. Once the Thumbnails are rendered, I'm up and running.
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon, 16 GB RAM, Snow Leopard with Single Monitor.
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De gustibus non est disputandum. But for my taste it's over the top, esp. the blue cast in the background and - to a lesser degree - the sharper-than-life effect.
Ciao, Walter
Yes, I agree the white balance is a bit cold. I liked the contrast between the warmer tones in the foreground and the cold tones in the background. I "nicer" and warmer look need a 1000 degrees higher K. The sharper than life effect? It's not really an effect and there not even any clarity dialed in which I normally do. Just capture sharpening and output sharpening. But it was more to show this amazing scene above the world looking like another planet ;)
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Hans, tank you very much for the samples.
I would like (if that is possible) to have a look at your adjustments in LR4 for the first photo (Mountain sunset).
If you can attach a screenshoot of the Basic and Detail panels that would be great.
Thanks again and best regards!
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Attached are screen shots of the adjustment panels with a bit of the picture so that you can how high the graduated filter is going from the bottom. There are so many that two screen shots were needed on my 30" screen.
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Thanks for sharing Hans. Nice work.
I'm finding LR4 to be slow only when opening the application the first time in the morning. Once the Thumbnails are rendered, I'm up and running.
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon, 16 GB RAM, Snow Leopard with Single Monitor.
Thanks William. My machine is "just" a MacBook Pro 2.8Ghz, 8GB from late 2009. The slowness is mainly related to using lots of adjustments, grad filters and brushes and change of white balance (within these).
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Mange tak, Hans!
Much appreciated.
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I find that LR4 is considerably faster than LR3 with 2 exceptions...the startup is slower and the switch from catalog to develop modules the first time in a session (but that is the same as LR3 for me). Otherwise it just blazes along and is a wonderful program.
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I don't have any problems with speed and LR4. I started a new Catalog, maybe that helped.
Mac Pro dual quad core, dual 23" monitors, Lion
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As mentioned the slowness is mainly related to the adjustments I do. When you work on a single image the catalogue will not impact the speed anyway. The speed goes down a lot with brushes and especially doing white balance change on brushes and/or grad. filters from what I see.
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L3 ran like a rocket but L4 is slow for me to. Windows 7 and 12gb ram.
Great results though!
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As mentioned the slowness is mainly related to the adjustments I do. When you work on a single image the catalogue will not impact the speed anyway. The speed goes down a lot with brushes and especially doing white balance change on brushes and/or grad. filters from what I see.
As for you, this is my standard working condition, so it's always quite slow. ::)
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I am noticing LR4 is quite a bit slower than LR3 - in a variety of different areas. Sometimes even switching from Library to Develop can take a second or two - it used to be instant. Its not overtly painful, but its definitely slower than LR3.
MACzilla Pro with 32 Gig of RAM, 4 Striped RAID Drives and a SSD for Applications. Nothing else runs on this machine except PS and LR.
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I've found LR4 slower too, running a 6-core Phenom II, 16GB of RAM and Win 7 x64. I'm hoping it's only temporary. I found the same was true with, I believe, LR2. But then, we had to wait for LR3 for that to be rectified! That said, I find it slower, too, in terms of my use. The new sliders are less intuitive that the old one. For instance, Highlights and Whites, do almost the same thing. Shadows I don't find as intuitive as Fill Light. Perhaps it's just me, but I almost didn't get the new version because I hated the sliders so much compared to the old ones.
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For instance, Highlights and Whites, do almost the same thing.
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.
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I find it slower, too, in terms of my use. The new sliders are less intuitive that the old one.
I think practice and experience will resolve that.
I'm finding it easy enough to understand the new controls, 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. Bizarrely other sessions have been better, although never good. I don't know what's causing the slow downs, but so far it isn't particularly predictable.
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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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... 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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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. :)
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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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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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... 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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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
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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!
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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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... 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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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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...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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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Thank you. But I was really looking for something in the Basic panel.
John
I understand! ;D OK, Jeff.... your turn. Comments?
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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?
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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
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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
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It's slow for me too. I hope they make an update that will solve this problem.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?
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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".)
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Probably it would be fair to say that I find Lightroom 4.1RC responding very well. thanks for that Adobe :)
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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