Dan Wells and Adobe.

[robertfields]

Apparently Dan Wells can read the mind of Adobe and can predict the future. To each his own. He might want to read Scott Adams book "Loserthink."

[digitaldog]

The article is kind of silly IMHO. In terms of the new features in LR (features which come about every couple months) Panorama Fill and Multi-Batch Export is incredibly useful. Meanwhile, the article discusses DxO, which I also own. The new version is $50 for about three new features, one at least looks interesting to me but that's a high price (5 months subscribing to LR along with Photoshop) so I'm going to pass on that one. To each his own. One man's three new features are another's not useful and not worth the upgrade but at $9.99 a month, getting LR and Photoshop which is regularly updated is hard to knock for some.

He writes:
This is usually the direction-setting update to Lightroom for the year...

Yeah Dan, but it's NOVEMBER! 

[Peter_Raulerson]

I found Dan Wells' article very helpful on multiple levels. First, I found many of his criticisms of Adobe to be valid -- the latest Lightroom updates are too "light" for me and won't cause me to invest my time in trying them out. In fact, I haven't found Lightroom to be worth my time and effort over the last few years, mainly because I've found other tools do a better job more quickly for me. Over the last 5+ years, I bought and integrated into my workflow Capture One, DxO, and Luminar. I really appreciated reading Dan's observations about using the newest features in Capture One, DxO, and Luminar because I had not tried those features on my own yet, but I will try them out ASAP.

I have a long and complex relationship with Adobe going back to 1999 when Adobe became a client of my management consulting firm. From 1999 through 2009, I worked with several dozen Adobe managers, executives and board members, including Shantanu Narayen, Bruce Chizen, Kyle Mashima and other execs, department heads and staff. Photography has been my hobby for an even longer time -- I shoot over 10,000 photos per year -- and I've been a heavy user of Photoshop since version 1 in 1990. Over the last several years I have bought and used many other photo- and video-editing software products, including all of the ones that Dan Wells mentioned in his article. Thank you, Dan, for identifying product features that I didn't know about, and for pointing out to all of us the "elephant in the room" -- Adobe has been slow to introduce the innovative (and useful) features that other software companies have brought out, and Adobe's pay-us-every-month-or-you-can't-use-our-software business model makes Adobe act like a "robber baron" instead of a "responsible citizen".

[kers]

I agree i do not like the subscription model - But at the moment there is not so much to complain about the price/value.
However that might change overnight and that is the lurking problem ( or the Venezuela-boycot- it is undone by now)
Yes i would like to see more fundamental changes than AI-intelligence that fills up the gaps...or why not the entire photo? based on my other photographs
-
contrast without increased saturation
a way to make a basic development including spot removal ( now i have to copy-paste)
A way NOT to use lenscorrections - that ruin the quality of my photos

and there must be some more... anyone?

[vartkes]

An article to trigger debate and discussion. I have used Ps since 2003 and Lr2 was my first look at Lr.
Adobe is the dominant vendor in this market. All others are small companies with small customer bases, subject to failure or acquisition and retirement in the short notice. They have limited resources to develop wide ranging functionality. Hence Adobe doesn't have to do much to maintain market share, especially that Lr + Ps COMBINATION is unmatched in feature and capability (not ease of use!). All other vendors mentioned have strong points but these are narrow and selective.

I thought that Dan was particularly unfair characterizing On1 as primarily a 'preset' centric application. Yes it has many presets for its long-time customers but it now has a rich enough feature set to surpass Lr by a long way - except printing. But it can't match Ps of course.
I would consider DXO as my darkroom workhorse except that DxO doesn't support .RAF (Fujifilm) RAW files. I am sure they are competent enough to figure out the the RAF RAW files especially that Fujifilm X is the fastest growing platform  in the market. It's a mystery to me why DxO ignores Fuji X.

Will Adobe discontinue Lr Classic? I doubt it. However Adobe will limit the Lr functionality and maintain the relevance of Ps for photographers. From Adobe's perspective, why waste development resources into duplicating functionality within Ps and Lr? Cloud and Mobile versions of Lr can be (have to be) mostly standalone. Why would you choose Cloud version if you are mostly using it at your connected desktop at home most of the time?

I use Lr for the DAM (Library Module and MAP), it is powerful and flexible once you learn how to use the Catalog as it was intended to be used. I use the Develop module for 'Image Preparation' in my workflow. Then if the image is to be printed I move to Ps for the bulk of the 'darkroom' work including artistic expression and then printing. Otherwise I will 'finish' the image in Lr for social media consumption...

If one day Adobe abandons Lr Classic but keep developing Adobe Camera RAW, then I will sustain a lot of pain in the DAM area. It will be fairly easy to recover from the loss of Develop and other parts of Lr. I don't think I will need to move to the Cloud versions since my 'darkroom' stays at home.

Now if only DxO would support RAF files....
........ CaptureOne was not so expensive to buy and then upgrade every year....

One key point I agree with Dan for sure; staying vigilant about developments in the market is critical. When you can do a 'good enough' job editing your images with Snapseed, for social media consumption, the stagnant market segment for 'traditional' darkroom tools becomes a challenge for all vendors in the segment.

[digitaldog]

However Adobe will limit the Lr functionality and maintain the relevance of Ps for photographers.

Very doubtful due to the fact that Adobe has a Photoshop plug-in called Adobe Camera Raw and it has always maintained editing parity with Develop, because Adobe wants users (photographers or otherwise) to have the ability to bounce back and forth between the two.
Then there's the fact that LR was built from Photoshop for photographers by some actual photographers on the team.

[vartkes]

Very doubtful due to the fact that Adobe has a Photoshop plug-in called Adobe Camera Raw and it has always maintained editing parity with Develop, because Adobe wants users (photographers or otherwise) to have the ability to bounce back and forth between the two.
Then there's the fact that LR was built from Photoshop for photographers by some actual photographers on the team.

Yes, of course ACR functionality is excepted from my comments; I should have noted that. However the rest of my PoV stands. One doesn't know what % of Lr Classic users will migrate to the Cloud offering when Classic gets discontinued, however those who prefer the Cloud will mostly migrate to it, as Cloud functionality catches up to Classic, before Classic sees its end (if ever).

[crazycaptioner]

Good article, Dan.

The writing was on the wall for LR the instant it was renamed and shunted aside for the "new" LR. I've been a user since 2 and am still on 6, and will be until I switch to someone else's product. The cumulative changes since 6 barely qualify for a single release, much less the three that would be indicated by the version#.

[David Mantripp]

And once again down the rabbit hole... the author presents a superficially compelling story, but much of it rests upon a vague accusation that Lr has terrible image quality. No specific example is given, no evidence is offered. This undermines the whole argument. It seems easy to forget that Lr and Camera Raw in particular were designed and are still maintained by a number of the absolute best practitioners in the field, who, I am sure, take it as a matter of honour to do the very best they can. It‘s easy to get wound up about Adobe corporate strategy, but that is not relevant to the quality of the software development teams.

As for features, really, what else do you want? Development has stalled almost every where, really. There‘s not much more you can usefully do to Raw file that Lr, C1, DxO etc are not already doing. Upstarts like ON1 and Luminar are just doing the same things wrapped up in bright new packaging, and from the sound of it they‘re not doing them all that well. I can understand why for some types of photography C1 has some advantages.  Also, if you like drastically underexposing I suppose DxO Prime is attractive. But to my eyes the principal thing these two applications do over Lr - aside from draining your wallet - is hugely pumping up the initial preview to get the wow factor.  If I ever use C1, the first thing I do is change the curve to linear... and hey, it looks just like Adobe Standard.

The area which really has potential for improvement is workflow, and Adobe is light years ahead here. Just being able to seamlessly switch from editing a photo in Lr Classic to editing it on my iPad is huge, for me. I have quite a high opinion of Exposure X4, but it has nothing at all to offer in the workflow area, so I‘d be shooting myself in the foot if I switched to it.  Certainly Lr could use some serious improvements in masking and local adjustments, but there are workarounds, usually.  It could also use some improvements in the DAM, but since it has exactly zero competition in that area, I guess there is no commercial reason to do anything.

And if I‘m coming across as an Lr apologist, well, think again. I‘m actually a bitter and twisted Aperture refugee, so by definition Lr to me is the work of Satan.  I‘d love to switch - but I‘ve never seen anything even vaguely approaching a compelling reason to do so.

[Martin Kristiansen]

Reasonable tethering and live view would be a feature that could be developed. Don’t get me wrong I use LR daily and it’s the foundation of my busy commercial output. I also use PS every day often for hours at a time so I have no axe to grind with Adobe. I also think the photographers bundle at the price is laughably cheap for how dependable and useful it is in my business.

However I do think it has stalled. Tethering is my biggest bug bear. It’s always been awful. No live view, no overlays and actually no tethering at all for Sony unless you use the clunky watched folder work around.

[DP]

No specific example is given

Fuji's X-Trans regular demosaick is a shining example... for the record I still use ACR along with C1, just in this case I run Iridient X-Transformer to do it when I want to involve ACR

[nemophoto]

I, personally, thought Dan was pretty spot-on with many things. When Adobe appended "Classic" to the desktop version (versus, say "Cloud" to the web/cloud version), I felt like the death bell had sounded for Lightroom as we know it. It's a matter of time before they kill it off -- a couple years maybe. Remember the protestations about there always being a Lightroom standalone (not subscription based)?

Every one of Dan's alternatives I own, and agree with the opinions of them. I use DxO more and more because it really the tweaks the most out of an image in both resolution/sharpening and noise. Those are two of the biggest weaknesses of LR. The ability to use the DCP camera profiles is also huge (I create them for all my cameras in Lightroom). Where Lightroom is better is smoothness of workflow through the adjustments, as well as having a much better "Highlights" reduction algorithm. DxO gets muddy if you use too much.

I'm very disenchanted with Luminar 4 (starting with version 3). I hated instantly that it chose to find and import into a catalog every image on my computer. (Fortunately, most reside on externals.) Whereas the version 2018 had a much more LR-like workflow, the interface for L4 has been dumbed down and is harder to find what I want.

Capture One is what I use to tether. Nearly 20 years ago, it was go-to for conversions -- one of the few when the EOS 1D came out. I find the curve to do work tougher, but the sharpening better, than Lightroom. I find the color less pleasing than Lightroom and trying to create custom camera profiles has been a disaster, so I stick with their generic canned profiles. I've tried LR for tethering. Horrible. I shoot too fast (except for product) and invariably crash the program.

On1 Photo 2020 is...OK. Some of the masking options are better and quicker than Photoshop, but I don't care for the color, sharpening or noise reduction.

Probably if I had to pick an LR alternative, it would be DxO. That program has come a very long ways and integration with NIK isn't a bad thing.

So, for now, I'll stick it out with LR, but I'm keeping some of my other titles up to date in such time as I'm forced to jump ship.

[digitaldog]

It's a matter of time before they kill it off -- a couple years maybe.

Assumptions, speculations. An interesting opine but nothing more and not provided with any known facts from inside the company that may or may not do as suggested. So the text is (should be) taken in seriousness based on that. 

[nemophoto]

Of course it's an assumption/speculation! :-)

But, I would still be willing to wager a small bet. Adobe wouldn't be the first nor last company to head this way. It was only a couple of years after they first introduced Creative Cloud before they forced everyone to adopt that or lose updates. Sadly, some other companies whose software I use have gone the subscription route. I, however, don't need their services as much, so I didn't bite.

[digitaldog]

Of course it's an assumption/speculation! :-)
But, I would still be willing to wager a small bet

Put your money where your mouth is.