Lightroom is great. But...

[barryfitzgerald]

I have always liked the program, it's a powerful tool for photographers.
However, there are 3 issues that stop this good program, from being great.

1: Zero distortion and perspective correction tools: In this day and age, to not even have a basic slider for barrel distortion correction is a gross oversight, and near unacceptable for WA/Scenic shooters, who need it most. Just about every other raw program out there has this, even budget rip off's such as Arcsoft's Photostudio Darkroom have tools for this (and having tried that one, fairly effective ones), the free Raw Therapee can correct barrel distortion. Silkypix has it too, and the list goes on. Someone needs to "wake up and smell the coffee" at Adobe HQ.

2: Speed. LR has got faster, but even on a decent pc, it's far from a speed demon. It's simply not coded well enough to run as fast as it should do. It's ok speed wise for me, but working on high res film scans, can be a bit of a pain at times. Efficient optimisation is required for software to work at it's best. Adobe have never had a reputation for speed on all their software products. This could be improved..

3: Base Level NR processing on RAW: I raised this one before, and it is still here. Simply put, for high ISO work, or pulling shadows, Adobe gives us an inferior IQ compared to rivals. Raw Therapee can apply 0 NR to images, LR cannot do this. Exactly what goes on is known to adobe, but sliders at 0 for luminance do not give 0 NR. The visual effect of this is that other programs can do this, giving a tight grain pattern, where as LR has a mottled effect in areas of noise.

Other issues have been raised too, soft proofing is one, and does anyone really use web or sideshow much??

Not to moan too much, but a bit of effort here, and we will have something near dead on..

[madmanchan]

Barry, you have valid points. You can rest assured that Adobe is taking all 3 points very seriously (perhaps even currently). I do not mind the "moaning" as long as the criticism is constructive, as yours has been. Thanks for your patience.

[dwood]

Barry, you have valid points. You can rest assured that Adobe is taking all 3 points very seriously (perhaps even currently). I do not mind the "moaning" as long as the criticism is constructive, as yours has been. Thanks for your patience.

Thanks for your response on these items Eric. I'm hopeful that you folks are also actively working item #4 here, (soft-proofing) which is an important one for me. Keep up the great work.

[vandevanterSH]

"Other issues have been raised too, ............. , and does anyone really use web or sideshow much??
*************
Good question and if not would resources be better used elsewhere?

Steve

[Schewe]

Good question and if not would resources be better used elsewhere?

Want a job being product manager of Lightroom?

If not, you might want to let the guy who does it do the job...he's done pretty good so far considering Lightroom's market share vs. Aperture.

You should also note that since Lightroom and Camera Raw have the same raw processing pipeline, maybe you should be telling Thomas Knoll a thing or two about raw image processing cause he's the one that decides what gets in that pipeline. He's pretty good at that considering his background and experience (coauthor of Photoshop and primary engineer and founder of Camera Raw). But Thomas is always open to useful feedback (as is Eric and the rest of the Camera Raw team). So, if you have something useful to contribute, go right ahead!

[vandevanterSH]

Want a job being product manager of Lightroom?

If not, you might want to let the guy who does it do the job...he's done pretty good so far considering Lightroom's market share vs. Aperture.

You should also note that since Lightroom and Camera Raw have the same raw processing pipeline, maybe you should be telling Thomas Knoll a thing or two about raw image processing cause he's the one that decides what gets in that pipeline. He's pretty good at that considering his background and experience (coauthor of Photoshop and primary engineer and founder of Camera Raw). But Thomas is always open to useful feedback (as is Eric and the rest of the Camera Raw team). So, if you have something useful to contribute, go right ahead!

No thanks..after working ~100 hours/week for 35 years, I am happily retired.

Steve

[Bill Caulfeild-Browne]

Other issues have been raised too, soft proofing is one, and does anyone really use web or sideshow much??
[/quote]


Well, I use Web for my own site and two others - and slideshow is worth the price of admission alone....! I use it for all my classes and talks.
Bill

[rdonson]

1: Zero distortion and perspective correction tools: In this day and age, to not even have a basic slider for barrel distortion correction is a gross oversight, and near unacceptable for WA/Scenic shooters, who need it most. Just about every other raw program out there has this, even budget rip off's such as Arcsoft's Photostudio Darkroom have tools for this (and having tried that one, fairly effective ones), the free Raw Therapee can correct barrel distortion. Silkypix has it too, and the list goes on. Someone needs to "wake up and smell the coffee" at Adobe HQ.

Take a look at PTLens.  Hard to beat the price and the built-in corrections.

[barryfitzgerald]

PTlens is good, but the thing here is that you have to go outside LR to use it. Not good for work flow. I think you should be able to do this, in LR. My intention is not to bash adobe here, what we have so far is very good, LR is my ideal program. I have no desires or need for photoshop, it's just more than I need. LR satisfies my lighter PP needs, if only this were in it too, I would never need to go outside it again, in all but rare cases.

[Jon Meddings]

PTlens is good, but the thing here is that you have to go outside LR to use it. Not good for work flow. I think you should be able to do this, in LR. My intention is not to bash adobe here, what we have so far is very good, LR is my ideal program. I have no desires or need for photoshop, it's just more than I need. LR satisfies my lighter PP needs, if only this were in it too, I would never need to go outside it again, in all but rare cases.

Barry I agree with you on this. I personally don't use Web much but I can imagine others do. The only thing I'd add to your list is the deficiencies in the print module. Again I'm not saying it is useless - heck I use LR as my tool of choice but I do have to leave LR for 2 specific reasons that do frustrate me:

1. Softproofing as has been mentioned already.
2. Larger printing - I use an Epson 7800 and with all versions of LR over 3 separate computers I cannot reliably print images larger than 13 x 19. Up to this size I use LR but bigger I now simply export to Qimage and use this. The issue is simply that the image renders properly on screen in LR, appears to be sent to the printer but then all that prints is a large, grey, rectangle with red, backwards printing saying out of memory..... not sure where this problem arises but it has been incredibly frustrating to me.  I can also see the same problem on smaller images if I have not restarted LR recently making it seem that a memory leak in LR might be the culprit. I've asked about this issue frequently on these forums, to adobe and elsewhere and there does not appear to be a fix. I keep hoping with every release!

[mas55101]

"Other issues have been raised too, ............. , and does anyone really use web or sideshow much??
*************
Good question and if not would resources be better used elsewhere?

Steve

I would use good web gallery tools, if I started using Lightroom again.

Michael

[rdonson]

PTlens is good, but the thing here is that you have to go outside LR to use it. Not good for work flow. I think you should be able to do this, in LR. My intention is not to bash adobe here, what we have so far is very good, LR is my ideal program. I have no desires or need for photoshop, it's just more than I need. LR satisfies my lighter PP needs, if only this were in it too, I would never need to go outside it again, in all but rare cases.

It would be nice if Adobe offers what PTLens can do "inside" Lightroom.  In this particular case "going outside" of LR isn't any bigger a deal than using a plug-in so the hit to the workflow is minimal, if any.  

In reality Adobe probably won't replicate all the functionality of PTLens and instead give us something in LR that more closely resembles what they have in Photoshop CSx.

[RogerW]

and does anyone really use web or sideshow much??

If they don't then they're missing a great tool - it's made my life a lot easier!

[madmanchan]

My suggestion is not to spend time thinking about whether existing features in LR are widely used or not.

Every major module is used extensively (but perhaps not by you). The LR dev team is small and does not waste time implementing features that haven't been highly requested.

[Snook]

Other issues have been raised too, soft proofing is one, and does anyone really use web or sideshow much??



Well, I use Web for my own site and two others - and slideshow is worth the price of admission alone....! I use it for all my classes and talks.
Bill

Use it all the time also.. I hope they do not take it out ever...:+}
Snook

[john beardsworth]

I know is has been mentioned since LR 1.0, but when will  third party plug-ins as modules become a reality. If the Adobe LR team is working on the most requested items, then many more small developers could fill in the gaps with the boutique module desires. Isn't that what Aperture has done. I have never used it to know how it works for Aperture.

Not really - they've got the appearance of it rather than the reality. They've called them plug-ins but these are standalone tif editing utilities which launch in modal windows, not really part of the raw workflow. In LR2, just add other programs as external editors and you've got the same thing.

John

[henk]

Use it all the time also.. I hope they do not take it out ever...:+}
Snook

Hi Snook,
Have you sorted the problem with -Web or mail- link in the site info box?
Instead off my mail address I want to use my web address to go back to my main site URL? I can't get it working. Keeps using the mail function.
Henk