P: Add Layers to Lightroom

There could be.

Is there a difference in the resulting data using raw+parametric edit versus altering the values of existing RGB pixels?

>Undo is limited.

Yes it is. No question 5 levels of undo is far more useful than 1. But how is 1 undo or a Save As not accomplishing exactly what the so called non destructive workflow describes (we didn't apply a destructive edit to the original data)?

>So, in my mind, neither undo nor save-as are equivalent to non-destructive editing, at least not for the long haul...

That is leading me down the semantic rabbit hole, sorry. I thought the definition of 'non destructive editing' I'm hearing here is that the original is left alone. Which an Undo would accomplish, or a Save As.

I find the entire notion that doing something that doesn't affect the original (despite what may happen to the saved iteration) not a useful concept and not non destructive.

"I see a lot of user requests being arbitrarily dismissed because they need "pixel pushing" and can't be done in a "parametric" editor."

- paraphrased by Rob:

"That's already in Photoshop, and may not be easy enough to do given Lightroom's design".

R

Undo is limited. For example, in EditPadPro, although undo persists through saving/restarting, the number of steps is limited. In Lightroom, the number of steps is virtually unlimited, but can't be confined to a single photo, and is cleared upon exit.

Save-as leaves a trail of bread-crumb files, and I could say more but shall refrain.

So, in my mind, neither undo nor save-as are equivalent to non-destructive editing, at least not for the long haul...

Again, calling a process where an original document isn't touched at all a non destructive workflow, while ignoring what happens to the data we edited for a reason seems like a huge exercise in marketing speak. Or am I really missing something?

I don't think anyone would disagree with you Andrew that some edits can be less than optimal. It is just that the original discussion was around the premise that some operations are not possible or reasonable to execute in a parametric editor, not the quality of each edit.

I think we got sidetracked on the term "destructive".

As TK has stated, I see a lot of user requests being arbitrarily dismissed because they need "pixel pushing" and can't be done in a "parametric" editor. We all understand that there are performance and logic issues in the parametric model.

>undo and save-as are good to have if you are using a destructive editor, but are not really a substitute for a non-destructive editor.

I don't follow you. If you undo, no damage. Just like if you Save As... no damage to the original. So are not both processes make the application non destructive?

Yep - undo and save-as are good to have if you are using a destructive editor, but may not be a sufficiently satisfying substitute for a non-destructive editor.

>If you can't go backwards anymore, then your edits have been destructive.
If you can go back to where you were before, then your edits have been non-destructive.

And nearly every application on this Mac can do this as I pointed out (Save As, Undo etc). MS word has even more provisions than that, so it's a non destructive text editor. I asked, so what? There's nothing new here.

That fact now brings us to the effect of the edit of our data. We both know the theoretical benefits of high bit capture and editing and why it is provided to us.

IF you send me the best quality capture you ever made and I size it way down, add too much noise and use the Posterize command then save as a JPEG at quality 20, what's the effect on THIS data? That the original is untouched doesn't affect what I just did a one bit.

My take, and I'm trying to be open to the concepts and semantics here, is that what happens to the data we DO EDIT is what should be discussed, not what DID NOT happen to the original that was never edited.

I think TK and I are in agreement about what happens to the data sent to a printer with Adjustment layers (there is some destructive data loss. Actually I'd prefer to just say data loss as destructive sounds serious. It certainly can be).

What we need to agree or disagree upon is the result of taking raw data and a set of instructions to render RGB pixels. In terms of that data, not the raw original we can't view anyway, is this destructive? Forget the original. Let's concentrate on what we end up with after we do an edit. One way to edit is build instructions for rendering our raw data, the other is editing those numbers afterwards in Photoshop with or without Adjustment layers.

Again, calling a process where an original document isn't touched at all a non destructive workflow, while ignoring what happens to the data we edited for a reason seems like a huge exercise in marketing speak. Or am I really missing something?

If you can't "destroy", or create, or modify pixels - for *output* anyway, then it's not much of an editor.

My .02:

Whether editing is destructive or not depends solely on whether you can go backwards or not.

If you can't go backwards anymore, then your edits have been destructive.
If you can go back to where you were before, then your edits have been non-destructive.

Granted, the manner in which one may be able to go backward, in Photoshop, is radically different than the manner in which one goes backward in Lightroom, and therefore what's easy/hard to do non-destructively can vary a great deal. Still, it seems to me that the definition of the term "non-destructive" is pretty darn straight-forward.

PS - I hope I don't get sucked too far into this discussion, but I guess it's the risk I take by chiming in...

Disclaimer: I have most definitely not read everything written recently, word-for-word, so please forgive (and ignore) if my comments really don't fit into the debate.

Rob