P: LR4 doesn't display point curve adjustments made in LR3

I remain concerned about the known and unknown effects that "upgrading" causes to my photos. I found that I can maintain the Tone Curve settings as I set them in LR 3. I did this by importing all of my photos into a new LR4 catalog.

It is important to note that importing the photos erases all History steps in all photos. I have never used history in the thousands of photos I have adjusted, and this led to a more than 60% reduction in the size of my LR catalog.

This also resulted in the loss of virtual copies, however I recovered these by converting the VC's to DNG and importing them into LR4. Collections are also lost, which I do not use. Other catalog items are also lost. However, I recovered all of my keywords and Metadata.

I have not tried it, but I believe that everything, except History can be recovered by importing the photos that I imported in LR4 into LR3, and then upgrading the catalog.

Before trying any of this I made a backup of all of my photos and LR3 catalog, so I can go back and start over if necessary.

The important thing for me is to be sure that my photos look the way I wanted them to look when I adjusted them, including accurate Tone Curves. This approach does just that.

Lee Jay, this doesn't explain why the tone curve is treated differently for tifs an raws.

"When updating the process version on CR2 files, custom tone curves are turned into 16-point-monsters that are pretty much unusable. This is not expected behavior. "

This is because the old medium contrast is now linear, and tone curves have to be smooshed in the same way to keep them roughly the same.

I'm traveling, so I could only do a quick test with LR4.1RC

I'm on OSX Lion, LR3.6 64bit upgrade to LR4.1RC - I'm testing with a test catalog that has pictures with different kinds of tone curves, presets, custom, linear, medium contrast, etc. - they are JPG, TIF and CR2 (5DMkII files).

Initial findings: on first look tone curves now seem to survive the upgrade.

However, I'm still seeing inconsistent tone curve behavior when switching to PV2012

TIF/JPG:
When updating from PV2010 to PV2012, custom tone curves on TIF and JPG files stay the way they were before (e.g. same number of points, same curve). The contrast of the preview slightly changes, but that's expected, given the new process version.

CR2 (Canon Raw):
When updating the process version on CR2 files, custom tone curves are turned into 16-point-monsters that are pretty much unusable. This is not expected behavior.

I couldn't test any other Raw formats, but I assume the same behavior as with the CR2 files.

Hi Charlie,

If the 4.1 RC is failing to find and fix all of your photos with point curves, we definitely want to get that fixed. I need some more info, and will contact you privately.

Thanks,
Ben

Michael, that is exactly the approach the team is recommending.

Regards,
Tom

And... there are so many differences between the 2010 and 2012 process that I'm taking the approach of not updating the process version on images if I'm already happy with the way they look, and only updating older photos if I want to try to take advantage of the new Highlights and Shadows tools - and then figuring I'll have to start processing the image from scratch.

Charlie, thanks for the heads up about 4.1 RC. Maybe I'll wait before updating, since I already used the script for 4.0 and it worked fine.

The issue you mentioned, that when updating the process version you get all these extra points on the curve, is because the new baseline point curve, what's called Linear in the 2012 process, is actually equivalent to the old "Medium Contrast" curve in the 2010 process. If you take an image with a linear curve in the 2010 process and update it to the 2012 process, it will try to match the old linear curve by making a weird reverse s-curve - hence all the extra points.

For that matter, the numbers have changed in the new Basic Tone sliders. In other words, the standard defaults are actually the same (or close as they can get considering the differences in the process), but all zeros in the new process equates to +50 Brightness, +25 Contrast, and 5 Blacks in the old process. The equivalent of having everything zeroed in the 2010 process is roughly -1.00 Exposure, -33 Contrast, and +25 Blacks in the 2012 process.

Michael Frye

I tried the 4.1 RC, and it found only 1 image with a recovered point curve (completely wrong). I tried running the script mentioned previously, but to do that I had to revert back to Lightroom 4.0. I ran the script, and it found 3492 images with recovered point curves. Yes---that sounds about right.

However, when I update an image with a custom point curve to process 2012, it puts 16 separate points on my curve, which previously had only 2 or 3. This renders it COMPLETELY UNUSABLE if I want to tweak it further! As far as I know, Lightroom offers no way to move multiple curve points at a time. Unlike many raw developers, it offers very little for the custom curve user. And now it mangles my carefully adjusted curves with way too many points. What a mess.

At least I love the new highlight and shadow sliders....

Charlie

Dorin,

I can see LR4.1RC converting the LR3 catalog correctly, but not correcting what went wrong when first converted with LR4.0.

How was the tone curve modified? Is it the result of an LR camera default?

Beat