"We don't need Adobe's idea of what our photographs should look like opening in LR. Or, at the very least, there should be choice."
You represent one end of a wide span of users' desires and expectations - from those who want minimal Adobe input and the possibility of a maxim of carefully crafted user-side content to those who want a one-click to finalized, museum-quality fast food, AI processed product. I think Adobe has done an acceptable job of making the app flexible and customizable by defaults and presets. I don't think an endless menu of user design requests would be desirable.
Totally disagree.
This is a simple addition which is available as part of other software applications.
When you take a photograph on your phone, you see a software engineer's (luminance/contrast/saturation curve) impression of what your photograph should look like.
When you open an image in LR, C1 or Phocus, you get a glorified version of same. It should be possible to remove it.
It's the difference between pro and pro/am.
That said, if LR satisfies the needs of pros here, then great.
I'd like to be able to use it for certain things. Lens correction is better than C1, for example.
But, the absence of a linear curve starting point is a deal breaker for me. Any creation by me of a preset can only be an educated guess as to how much I should extract from the image, I would have thought.
D.