Lightroom Classic last update

[PhilT]

Long time I wasn't here...
I would like to know if there is some problems with the last LRC update with new features like AI remove tool (imported from PS?). It looks like LR is getting progressively closer to PS for photography postprocessing...
It needs to upgrade the catalog version, that may cause bugs according to the newsletter of Victoria Bampton (LR Queen).
What are your experience and recommendations?
Thanks a lot for your help
PhilT

[Manfred M]

There are often small bugs when the catalog version is changed, but nothing particularly serious, in my limited experience.

No, Lightroom is not getting closer to Photoshop; the two pieces of software are quite different and any changes in Lightroom tend to be echoed in Adobe Camera Raw, which is the tool I prefer to Lightroom because it does not use the catalog. Photoshop continues to be a much more powerful tool than Lightroom, especially when it comes to selecting parts of the image.

I automatically upgrade all of my Adobe software, as the various upgrades come out.

The Content Aware remove is a fantastic tool, but my concern is that it will continue to require the user to switch to Photoshop to clean up the artifacts it produces. It that is the case, doing all this work in Photoshop, with the stronger set of selection tools continues to be the way to proceed. That seems to be the case in the limited testing I have done.

That being said, it gives Lightroom users a simplified version of the tool that Photoshop users have had access to for quite some time.

[DanK]

Lightroom updates are from time to time substantial enough that the catalog requires updating. I've never had problem with these updates, including the most recent.

I strongly disagree with Manfred. Lightroom is vastly more powerful than it was a few years ago, and one can do many things in LR now that required Photoshop in the past. (I'm not drawing a distinction here between Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw; those two are the same processing engine with different user interfaces, so the difference isn't really relevant to your question.) This isn't to say that Lightroom is a substitute for Photoshop. Their underlying engines are completely different, and some things are better done in one than in the other.

I'll give you one example, although I could come up with many. I do a lot of candids of kids, and one of the problems with that genre is lack of control over backgrounds. As a result, I usually process the background separately from the subject. This became enormously easier when Adobe released subject selection. That's now in Lightroom, and that makes it quick and easy for me to do some additional complex edits in LR. Another example: not that long ago, the main ways to make tonality adjustments without altering colorfulness was to do it in photoshop, with L*a*b mode or a luminosity blend. Lightroom had only a simple curve tool that worked in RGB space and therefore affected color. Now LR has a saturation slider under the curve tool that not only allows you to avoid those changes but also allows you do moderate them, just as you would with an opacity blend in Photoshop. Are they exact substitutes? No, but to make a pure change in tonality, you no longer need to go to photoshop. You can do it in Lightroom.

Another example: the intersection, add, and subtract masking features, which can accomplish some of what I used to do with layers in Photoshop.

I've only done three quick tests of the new AI removal tool in LR. Two worked well, and one didn't. I haven't had a chance to compare the results with Photoshop.

So, my conclusion is this: yes, Lightroom can now do a lot of things that previously required Photoshop, and that set is growing. For some images, LR is entirely fine, in my opinion. However, the two programs are not substitutes for each other. To pick only two examples, you are better off doing white balance adjustments in LR (or ACR, or in a smart object, which is much the same thing), but most complex touch-ups are better done in Photoshop. And some things simply can't be done in LR/ACR. I use the multiply blend mode for retouching old photos and for burning in extreme cases, and there is no way to do that in Lightroom.

[Manfred M]

Dan - I think we are actually saying the same thing.

The difference between your workflow and my workflow has more to do with the tools we tend to prefer using. As 90% - 95% of my workflow tends to be "traditional" dodging and burning type operations, I find that the selection tools in Photoshop are superior to those found in LR.

[DanK]

Manfred,

I agree. For that purpose, I greatly prefer Photoshop. In fact, when I have finicky burning and dodging to do, I use a technique I learned on this site from you, although I think you mentioned that you no longer use it: I create a curve layer making the change needed in the most extreme area, add a black mask, and paint with a brush set to a very low flow but 100% opacity. In theory, LR allows something similar, but I find it much less precise for that purpose.

I was just responding to Phillipe's question:

It looks like LR is getting progressively closer to PS for photography postprocessing...

It is, and rapidly. I find that the percentage of my editing I do in Lightroom has increased substantially as a result. However, given the fundamentally different way the programs work, I can't imagine that they will ever be fully interchangeable.

Dan

[PhilT]

Dan and Manfred thanks a lot for your opinions.
"Lightroom can now do a lot of things that previously required Photoshop, and that set is growing", that the point I meant in my post. Photoshop is obviously more powerful than Lightroom, but it requires more skills and a longer learning curve, while Lightroom is more intuitive and easy to handle for people like me who are not working at the high level

[DanK]

Phillipe,

I agree: Photoshop has a very steep learning curve, which is partly because it is so powerful and does so many things. I'vew gradually become proficient in a small part of what it does, and it's worth it for me because of the kinds of postprocessing I do, but it isn't worth it for everyone. Also, I dove into photoshop when LR was still relatively limited. So if LR does what you need, that's great.

Dan

[Manfred M]

Dan and Manfred thanks a lot for your opinions.
"Lightroom can now do a lot of things that previously required Photoshop, and that set is growing", that the point I meant in my post. Photoshop is obviously more powerful than Lightroom, but it requires more skills and a longer learning curve, while Lightroom is more intuitive and easy to handle for people like me who are not working at the high level

My view on post processing and associated software is that "whatever works for you" and of course gets you the results you are looking for.

I know people that never touch the images that their camera produces. They like shooting and hate sitting in front of the computer doing any work on their captured images.

I know another group that will do a little bit of straightening or exposure adjustment in post, but not a lot more. A third group will do more "radical surgery" and make some fairly significant adjustments in post. Time spent on an image can generally be measured in seconds to minutes.

The final group while spend a lot of time in post, getting their images to look the way their vision says they should. This is much in the tradition of the great photographers of the past; Ansel Adams, Karsh, etc. Their final images took hours, if not days of work in the traditional darkroom. Modern tools can speed this up, but many minutes and hours over a number of days is still the time they will spend on an individual image.


Looking at it in a slightly different direction; there are three types of adjustments that we do in post-processsing:

1. Global adjustments - these impact the whole image and this has traditionally been the work done in tools like Lightroom.

2. Area adjustments - these impact significant areas of the image; sky, water, background, etc. This is an area where both Lightroom and Photoshop work well and the choice of which tool is used depends very much on the user's preferences. This is the one area where Lightroom's expanding capabilities made it the product of choice for many photographers. Because of my personal workflow, I find I tend to use a fairly limited toolset from Photoshop in my own work. Because I have used it for so long, I can do things a lot more quickly than I can in Lightroom.

3. Local adjustments - this is the one area where Photoshop still shines, although Lightroom does have some tools, especially the AI ones where it is bridging this part of the work here. I personally find that the tools in Photoshop tend to be stronger here and this is certainly where I use them.

[DanK]

I think it's a continuum, and some people (I'm one) calibrate the amount of postprocessing to the purpose of the image. For example, I do a lot of candids of kids, and I found that in most cases, there are diminishing returns because after a certain point, none of the viewers care about fine adjustments. So, I do fairly basic processing of those, and the majority never see Photoshop, and while I generally do local adjustments, e.g., to faces, I often do them in Lightroom. That's more true now than in the past because LR has improvced so much. In contrast, images that I intend to display and images that are in bad shape for one reason or another can fall into Manfred's last category: lots of time, often over multiple days, a lot of it in Photoshop.

So my bottom line is like Manfred's: whatever works for your purposes.

[Rufus]

On the same subject but moving on slightly, Lightroom Classic automatically updated when I returned from holiday and of course on this occasion it updated the Catalog files.

There were some syncing issues and I found that the solution I previously used was no longer available. I used to click on the cloud icon and then the cog wheel, the press the Alt key to bring up some hidden options within the preferences, including one to rebuild the sync data. That is no longer recommended and the user is advised instead to contact customer support for assistance. As I sync few images in order to save space in my mobile devices and the Adobe cloud, I overcame the issue by other means - basicaly clearing out the synchronisation. Unfortunately I cannot be certain of the exact steps taken.

I have been using the AI assisted tools in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but some take a long time to complete. In addition, Windows 10 will be retired next autumn/fall and the drives are filling up so I may well need to scope a specification for a new PC before long!

[Chataignier]

I update as soon as the new versions are available. I've updated to the latest LR and the new format catalogue - all went smoothly, no problems at all.

[lunaticitizen]

The new Generative Remove looks promising; however, in my testing it also introduces some artifacts which doesn't look good when inspected carefully...



There were a few people taking selfie around the entrance.


Maybe it was too much work even for the mighty Adobe