Opinions on Lightroom

[Mike Buckley]

Simon,

What is your response to the report by Adrian that the Book module has a reputation for crashing, especially when editing an image that is stored in a book?

[Simon Garrett]

It has been mentioned several times in this thread that a preference setting will write image edits to a DNG file. I have looked twice and have never found that setting. I don't need it now but may need it in the future and others may also be interested in using it now. So, it would be helpful if someone would please explain exactly how to locate that setting.

"Edit" menu, "Catalog settings", "Metadata" tab, and check "Automatically write changes into XMP". That causes future edits to be saved not just in the catalogue, but in the xmp file if the image file is raw, or in the xmp data in the image file if the image file is jpeg, tif or dng.

[Simon Garrett]

Simon,

What is your response to the report by Adrian that the Book module has a reputation for crashing, especially when editing an image that is stored in a book?

I'm not very knowledgeable about the book module. I generally use Lightroom's "publish to Blurb Booksmart" function, and use Booksmart separately. I would certainly say the Book module is not very functional, and if others are saying it crashes, I wouldn't contradict that. Personally I'd say it's a rather weak Lightroom function.

[GrahamS]

I have seen this written here many many times but I don't know why so many folk just don't seem to grasp the fact that Lightroom is designed as a primary asset cataloging and image management system for commercial use in high volume production environments. To use it to the full extent of it's capability, it has to be used exclusively and from the start, as the only cataloging tool preferably in conjunction with Photoshop CS. Every image you download to your PC should be downloaded via Lightroom, with no exceptions, and thus be entered in Lightroom's catalogue, tagged and allocated to a specific collection. Lightroom's greatest power lies in it's cataloguing, tagging and batch processing functions. It is designed to be used primarily with RAW files, as it's image editing is non-destructive. This means that all of your editing actions are not applied to the actual image file, but are appended to the file as a seperate "recipe" or log file. If the RAW file is a proprietary file (NEF, CR2 etc) the edits take the form of a seperate "sidecar"file with the attribute XMP, which is stored alongside the original RAW file. If you shoot in or convert your RAW files to DNG format,the edit info is stored within the DNG file, not as a seperate file. In this case, the edit info can never be seperated from the RAW file and be lost. In both cases the original RAW file is never altered. If the RAW file is opened and edited in Photoshop CS, from within Lightroom, the result can be saved as a new Tiff or Jpg file and it will be automatically stored alongside the original RAW file and entered into the Lightroom catalogue. If you use Lightroom as a management system for your entire workflow you will benefit from it's power and elegance.



All of the professional photographers who use it, that I have spoken to,have no, or few issues with Lightroom and most have a dedicated member of staff who has received training in it's use. When used correctly, it saves a lot of time and effort which means more profit and better customer service.



Ifit is used as a stand-alone application, as no more than an image editor, with little or no regard to it's workflow management features, there will be times when it will seem problematical or clunky. Most people who complain about it's user interface, menus or methodology should not be using it, but would probably be better served by using Photoshop Elements and Adobe Bridge or some other image editor. Lightroom's image editing features are designed to provide a quick and simple way of correcting minor anomalies prior to the RAW file being exported downstream, singly or in batches. This is why the editing module is so similar to Adobe Camera Raw and why there are no features such as layers or masks. To purchase Lightroom only to do image editing is like purchasing a stretch limo to take the kids to school. It'll get you there but parking will be tough....



This is how I see it. Your perspective may differ.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for the info, Simon, about the DNG file. I had seen the setting you mentioned but didn't realize that that was what you, Colin and others were referring to. That's because I had misinterpreted earlier posts about the expected functionality.

When I initially spent time reviewing Blurb's Booksmart and LR5's Book module, I felt that they were about the same in functionality and that LR5 had the edge for intuitive ease of use and overall elegance. It's possible that I might have come to different conclusions if I had spent more time with both applications.

[Adrian]

To be clear, I have not suggested that I have had any instability with LR itself: all issues that I am aware of and have encountered (including the crashes) relate to the book production module which is a Blurb module bundled with LR5 and integrated with it.

If someone has found a way of backing up the Blurb book whilst production is in progress (i.e. before sending it down the line to Blurb) I would very much like to hear it since as far as we can discover there is no method for producing a recovery backup. We have direct experience of LR5 crashing and deleting book data - on two different MacBook Pros (2013 current models). It is by no means unheard of as direct correspondence with Adobe has shown. Running Mavericks may well contribute to the issue or crashes.

It is easy enough to back up the LR 5 catalogue (for example by exporting it): that is not the issue. It does not back up the book WIP at all as far as I can see.

Adrian

[Mike Buckley]

the book production module which is a Blurb module bundled with LR5 and integrated with it.

Was the Book module developed by Blurb or Adobe? Your post gives me the impression that you believe it was developed by Blurb.

[Glenn NK]

Very good post Graham. I think everyone expected LR to do what PS/CS does.

I use only LR. Tried PSE six or seven years ago, but haven't used it since about the time LR came out.

To purchase Lightroom only to do image editing is like purchasing a stretch limo to take the kids to school. It'll get you there but parking will be tough....

My take is quite the opposite (I don't have to park, they jump out ).

Using LR I'm able to do all the editing I require/need. It's deadly fast, and more than suffices for my images. Having said that, major surgery isn't required - I just dump the image that can't be fixed.

[davidedric]

I had decided to stay away from the main thrust of this thread, if only becasue of the number of comments from people who haven't taken the time to get to grips with the product. However, I'm afraid that Graham's post is, for me, so full of inaccuracies that in the interest of any casual users I feel I want to address some points. It really isn't about perspective, and has already been said, you may or may not like the product.

I have seen this written here many many times but I don't know why so many folk just don't seem to grasp the fact that Lightroom is designed as a primary asset cataloging and image..............etc

First off usage. Yes, I do understand from other posts that many professional photographers user Lightroom as a way of quickly processing many images. There is a separate large body of non-professional users who find Lightroom satisfies all or most of their pp needs. Have a look at Joe's (jprzbyla) which are largely pp'd in Lightroom

Lightroom's editing is non-destructive, full stop. Whether processing RAW or jpeg. There a number of options for storing the edits (see earlier in this thread), as well as a sidecar or embedded in a DNG. In fact, the default is to store the edits in a Lightroom Catalogue.

It may be that Lightroom's origins were as a image management tool, I didn't start until Lightroom v.4 and I don't know. However, I do know that is no longer accurate. If you want to get a view of what is going on under the hood, then have a read of Jeff Schewe's "The Digital Negative". Lightroom is an extraordinarily sophisticated and capable tool.

I am of course aware that there are many things that Lightroom cannot do. (In fact, last week I was at a competition organised by our local camera club. The terms of that competition required the use of layers - it would not even have been possible to enter using Lightroom to pp.) So for many, CS or even PSE will offer something that they need.

Dave

[Adrian]

Mike - I think it is fairly clear that Blurb was not developed by Adobe. The product is available separately - not tied to Lightroom. I have no idea who developed the integration with Lightroom, but it is now also promoted as being part of Lightroom. I am not negative about Blurb, it is quite a good model (not dissimilar in many ways to the Apple version you can use via iPhoto etc), but the absence of backup integrated with LR's ability to backup the catalogue and processing etc, is an odd and somewhat annoying oversight.

I suspect it stems from an assumption that users will quite quickly produce a book and perhaps transfer it to Burn in one session. However, for large books a good deal of template and text work is needed, along with some reprocessing and re-cropping to fit the layouts. This can result in a good few hours of investment in a file which cannot be backed up (other than the save within LR which fails if the book mode crashes).

My own workflow when I choose to use Lightroom only involves temporary use of the LR catalogues, as I always export completed work as DNG, TIFF and jpeg back to my folder system for archiving and backup.

The Lightroom Catalogue, if exported and used as a recovery tool, does not include a copy of the processed Blurb book. I would be most pleased to stand corrected on this if someone can tell me exactly where backup files for the Blurb work are located.

Kind regards

Adrian

Incidentally, for those using the latest version of Mac OS Mavericks, as far as I know many of the plug ins such as NIKS do not work yet with LR. Mavericks is pretty buggy and even causes issues with Apple's own Time Machine system.

[Manfred M]

However, I'm afraid that Graham's post is, for me, so full of inaccuracies that in the interest of any casual users I feel I want to address some points. It really isn't about perspective, and has already been said, you may or may not like the product.

Actually Dave, Grahame is quite correct on the history and initial direction of Lightroom. I've used it since the last beta version (there were several different beta releases) and I've owned every version from 1.0 onwards. It was initially released as primarily a cataloguing tool with some fairly basic mass production editing. The monolithic catalogue was always part of the design. Basic parametric editing tools were always part of the package; the slideshow and tethered shooting have been around for some time as well. The mapping, web and book capabilities were later additions.

One of the major wedding photographers in town uses the mass production, basic editing and slideshow capabilities as part of his "marketing" technique. In weddings where he uses two shooters during the ceremony, he sends the 2nd shooter to the reception while he does the formal post-ceremony family / wedding party shots. The 2nd shooter sits down with his laptop and does a quick cull and edit of the wedding shots and produces a slide show. He has a TV set up at the reception and the slideshow of the ceremony is running as the guests arrive at the reception. Apparently, this has done wonders for his sales, both of additional orders at the wedding itself and with follow-up business. A hidden benefit is that the run-of-the-mill shots that make it to CD or traditional album are done.

[Manfred M]

I've followed several Lightroom forums, and so far as I can judge, all the reports of catalogue or file corruption I've read result from user error or hardware failure.

This is the underlying reason I refer to this as a fatal flaw. One of the key principles in software design on projects I've worked on was to design for exactly these types of failures, because they will occur. Hardware will fail, users will screw up, but properly designed software will minimize the impact of these failures and if the end user follows even a fairly rudimentary backup process, any data losses should be minimal.

The monolithic data structure used in LR is unfortunately prone to this and there are relatively easy fixes, that Adobe has not chosen to implement as a default. The "trick" that I learned from the wedding photographer to reduce risk is to use a new catalogue for every new project, that way if there is a failure, only the specific files associated with the project are affected and all others will be fine (assuming that good backup / archiving processes are followed). This goes counter to the direction that I have seen from other sources.

[davidedric]

Manfred, ref Grahame's post. I agree with your points completely. But we mustn't confuse Lightroom 's origins with its current capabilities.

Dave

[Mike Buckley]

I agree completely, Adrian. I just want to clarify one important detail for others who aren't as familiar with the Book module as you and I.

I suspect it stems from an assumption that users will quite quickly produce a book and perhaps transfer it to Burn [Blurb] in one session. However, for large books a good deal of template and text work is needed, along with some reprocessing and re-cropping to fit the layouts.

If you want to trust Adobe/Blurb algorithms, no additional post-processing or cropping is required outside the Book module to fit the various layouts. The Book module allows you to fit each photo within the designated cell resulting in a cropped image or not.

I have produced only two books and both are important to me, so I didn't trust the built-in post-processing that automatically makes the images ready to be printed. Instead, I determined the approximate printed size of each photo and custom sized and sharpened each file for print purposes. I also added a slight blue tint to black-and-white images so the printing machine has a "color" that it can lock onto rather than have to guess about the tone. Having said and done that, if I were making a book for whatever reason that made it acceptable for me to turn those kinds of control over to Adobe and Blurb, I would save a lot of time by doing all of that within the Book module.

[Richard Lundberg]

I went to Preferences in LR 5.3 and changed text to Large. Didn't do a thing. The UI colr can not be changed only the image background.

[Simon Garrett]

This is the underlying reason I refer to this as a fatal flaw. One of the key principles in software design on projects I've worked on was to design for exactly these types of failures, because they will occur. Hardware will fail, users will screw up, but properly designed software will minimize the impact of these failures and if the end user follows even a fairly rudimentary backup process, any data losses should be minimal.

I understand your point, and I agree with it. And I agree with that principle.

It's probably true that Lightroom has a greater capacity to confuse unfamiliar users than stand-alone image editors, if only because it's rather different from the sort of software model most people are familiar with. That familiar model is "open a file, do something with it, save the file, close the file". Lightroom isn't like that, and this itself can confuse new users, and is a potential source of error (thus going against the principle you outline - I agree with that).

However, in my view the benefits of the Lightroom model are strong enough to justify that initial learning curve necessary for new users. Having got one's head round what the catalog is, the concepts of importing (and exporting) images, and Lightroom's parametric non-destructive editing, in my view it then becomes relatively obvious what's happening and why. With that basic knowledge, I'd say that Lightroom is less error-prone and more forgiving than most programs - given that nearly all operations are reversible.

The monolithic data structure used in LR is unfortunately prone to this and there are relatively easy fixes, that Adobe has not chosen to implement as a default. The "trick" that I learned from the wedding photographer to reduce risk is to use a new catalogue for every new project, that way if there is a failure, only the specific files associated with the project are affected and all others will be fine (assuming that good backup / archiving processes are followed). This goes counter to the direction that I have seen from other sources.

I don't agree with that. The advantage of Lightroom comes from using a single catalogue. For some professional purposes it might be necessary to separate business and personal work, or to separate one client's work from another, but where this is not strictly necessary, the advantages come from fast search and organisation across large libraries (not all of which are necessarily online). I think regular backups of images and catalogue (and keeping edits in xmp data as well a the catalogue) avoid unacceptable risk of any single-point failure. In fact, Lightroom automatically keeps multiple versions of catalogs, backed up and whatever interval you choose.

[benm]

I'm not very knowledgeable about the book module. I generally use Lightroom's "publish to Blurb Booksmart" function, and use Booksmart separately. I would certainly say the Book module is not very functional, and if others are saying it crashes, I wouldn't contradict that. Personally I'd say it's a rather weak Lightroom function.

Early versions of LR4 had a crashing book module. It was fixed around LR 4.3 or LR 4.4. I am currently using LR 4.4 and the book module appears stable.

You definitely need to save the book once you have started making one. You only need to save once; thereafter saving is automatic. The saved file is stored under the Collections tab. If you switch to another collection or file folder or switch to another module and then go back to the book module it will appear that your book is lost. You need to click on the saved book and then it comes back.

You can also create a pdf of the book at any time. But it is not editable within LR (it may be editable with the appropriate version of Adobe Acrobat).

The book module still needs a lot of improvement. For example, you cannot define a page layout; you need to select a pre-made layout. Even though there are seemingly more than 100 layouts it is very restricting.

Using Booksmart (from Blurb) provides more flexibility though it too has some bugs.

[Mike Buckley]

The book module still needs a lot of improvement. For example, you cannot define a page layout.

I don't know about LR4, which you are using, but that can be done using LR5.

[Colin Southern]

Couple of thoughts reading through this;

- Keep in mind that it proper name is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It's very much part of the Photoshop family, but with a different emphasis from "Photoshop proper"; it's cheaper, more emphasis, but limited to only "basic" editing (ie parametric).

- With regards to editing, it's often mentioned (quite correctly) that it's non-destructive to original RAW files - Photoshop is no different. You don't open a raw file in Photoshop - edit it - and then save it over the original file.

[Adrian]

Ben: my experience of the Blurb crashes in LR5 does not correspond with yours in LR4. We did indeed save the book and it appeared in Collections. When LR crashed the book remained in collections but had reverted to the default starting point i.e. no imagery, page layouts and all text deleted. Web searches show this is not a unique problem.

Mike - you are of course right that images can be edited and cropped directly within Blurb in LR5. The reason I (confusingly) referred to processing outside of the book module, is that when I came to produce the layout, I was not happy with some image choices or my previous processing and decided to revamp some of the work. This is inevitable I suspect if dealing with a lot of images and text.

Things that LR could usefully improve as well as addressing the obvious issue of having a proper Blurb back up, include the ability to re-arrange selected images far more easily within Blurb, and more flexibility with template layouts. It's pretty easy to use, but not as intuitive as the Apple product, and nowhere near as flexible as using, say, Adobe InDesign for layouts.

I think Adobe could make a winning product here, but it needs some development. Certainly Adobe have moved LR5 well ahead of Aperture now in my view (as an ex-Aperture user of some years).

Kind regards

Adrian