P: Add Layers to Lightroom

Cough...

I've just had a look at AfterShot/Bibble and that seems to use layers for adjustments......

First, I don't understand your point. The local adjustment won't be accurate if the underlying noise reduction and sharpening isn't accurate. The latter are examples for shortcuts taken in order to gain performance. Whether they affect the image on a global or local level does not seem to be relevant.

Second, where is the problem of achieving performant local adjustments? It is just like using a layer in Photoshop with a layer mask. I don't see why you regard local adjustments as a challenge.

That comment applied to noise and sharpening, not local adjustment which need to be accurate as you lay them down.

I fear the current way of storing metadata in LR is not very clever (catalogs compress enormously using simple WinZip and that's not even exploiting a lot of redundancy in catalogs). With reasonable cleverness applied, metadata should not outgrow image data. But I think we agree on this point.

We also agree that the Develop module preview should be an accurate reflection of the final result. Yet, we both know that this is not the case for LR3 (noise reduction and yellow/orange highlight rendering). LR4 may have improved things, but there is certainly a precedence for a "good enough" approach.

Furthermore, either you edit at "1:1" magnification at which point you don't need to render all of the image (thus saving time), or you edit with less magnification which makes it possible to take certain shortcuts as some details won't be visible unless you look at them at "1:1" magnification (or higher).

Finally, note that "good enough" need only apply for the time it takes to generate the next best approximation of the preview. Remember, you agreed with Rob Cole's suggestion?

Andrew, I believe that "Educate yourself before you talk further nonsense" was a fair summary of your statements "That, like much of your post is incorrect and shows a huge misunderstanding of the processing." and "You’d do yourself some good, save the rest of us some time if you would read the Adobe White Paper (URL above) by Peter Krogh.".

I purposefully didn't put the summary statement in italics because you didn't say it verbatim. I'd be very surprised if you were now seriously claiming that my summary does not reflect the message you sent with your actual statements.

And what were you intending with your "You can’t turn a kitchen knife into an effective tool to handle screwing in screws" analogy, if you weren't talking about LR and layers?

Your "get both tools" advice does not work in the case of LR & PS, but you chose to ignore my point.

Yet you accuse me of ignoring "points made". On the contrary, I put in effort to try and explain why your "points" don't make sense. Initially, you were very concerned about that LR does not alter data whereas PS does. After I refuted that point, you suddenly could not care less about originals. Your remaining point about precision ("rounding errors") could be easily refuted as well. Could, if one had the patience. Excuse me for having ran out of patience.

Please, try to use your Adobe contacts and ask them whether anything I've written is wrong. I understand you talk to the public about Lightroom and other Adobe products, so it would be good for you to spread the correct facts, not to tell those who have a correct understanding that they have a "huge misunderstanding" and need to read some white paper.

"Of course there is is penalty for
a) recording user actions while they happen (negligible, though!)"

Actually, if you aren't quite clever and careful about how you do it, the metadata for that can easily grow to be larger than the image itself.

"However, there are optimisation techniques, such as caching. It is therefore not true that "all the operations have to be performed each time any operation is changed"."

Yes, it is, if you want the results to be an accurate reflection of how the image will look when exported, which I think is pretty critical to the editing process.

Andrew, I don't think there is much progress, so I think it is time to not continue this discussion.

That is a smart tact considering you ignore the points made, the questions asked of you but worse, and put words in my mouth such as “ Educate yourself before you talk further nonsense" or “ You were thus suggesting that LR (kitchen knife) cannot be turned into something that supports layers (screwing in screws).“

Andrew, I don't think there is much progress, so I think it is time to not continue this discussion.

I feel that you have moved from your original "Educate yourself before you talk further nonsense" position that you confronted me with, but I do not see the value in exchanging further posts on the same subject.

Let me just quote something you wrote in your last comment: "Both tools exist. Just get one of each.".
My answer is "No, thank you."

If both tools cooperated to work on one object, I would agree with you. If I could use the screw driver to poke holes into a coconut in order to break it and then could use the kitchen knife to separate the edible parts from the shell, I'd get both tools.

However, the LR & PS situation is different. These tools do not work together on one image. They cannot be used in a collaborative fashion, achieving a non-destructive imaging (NDI) approach.

Whatever comes out of PS is different to what went into it. This means in LR we are dealing with at least two copies of an image. This does not support seamless NDI. This is not what I want. Hence I won't "get one of each".

If PS could be used as a rendering engine in the background while all management and editing control is exerted from within LR then I may "get one of each".

But then again, I don't need the full power of PS for e.g. better retouching support and/or few other additions. So why buy and use a super-duper-gianormous swiss-army knife (Photoshop) in the background to support a regular kitchen knife (LR), if it is more straightforward (and cheaper, and less demanding on the executing hardware) to add a tiny little bit from the super-duper-gianormous swiss-army knife to the existing kitchen knife?

Lee Jay, your "very loosely connected to reality" comment is a stark exaggeration.

The only counterpoint you are making regards performance. Note that I mentioned "performance aside" or similar multiple times.

Of course there is is penalty for
a) recording user actions while they happen (negligible, though!) and
b) the need to replay all editing actions ever performed on an image.

However, there are optimisation techniques, such as caching. It is therefore not true that "all the operations have to be performed each time any operation is changed". As a very simple example, a change to an operation that occurs at same stage in the rendering pipeline does not need to retrigger any rendering stages before it as long as a cache of each stage is kept. Other optimisations (that may or may not slightly impact on previewing fidelity) are possible.

In summary, I do not accept your conclusion that the parametric approach excludes certain image operations because of performance considerations.

Furthermore note that certain workarounds users have to apply right now -- e.g., use fifty healing circles in a row to retouch a longish object -- are surely slower to process than a single healing application allowing the definition of a longish area (by brushing, by polygon, by an ellipse, ...).

P.S.: Final renderings will of course always require full re-renderings (i.e., imply the full sum of costs) unless enormous disk caches are used, but I believe most users care more about editing interactivity.

For those who cannot wait for their final renderings to finish there is
a) PS.
b) Bibble 5 which artificially limits the number of editing operations you can apply to an image. Hence, there will be a limit to rendering times as well.

You were thus suggesting that LR (kitchen knife) cannot be turned into something that supports layers (screwing in screws). This is incorrect.

No, I stated (didn’t suggest) one should use the right tool for the right job, I stated that given much time and money, “LR Pro“ could do everything all single Adobe App’s do today. I never said it was impossible. I said it was impractical and unnecessary. And a Kitchen Knife is a great tool... in the kitchen (I’m not knocking that specific tool).

The perceived chasm between "pixel pushing" and "parametric editing" is often used to explain to people that LR cannot do things that PS can do.

So you say, but it wasn’t here. What was stated is that there is limited engineering time and money to make a kitchen knife into a screw driver. Both tools exist. Just get one of each. Or maybe you subscribe to the $10,000 military toilet seat mode of software among other things.

The statement just says LR and PS are no different in how they need to change working copies.

I disagree in terms of the results of the processed data. I could care less about the original since I never alter the original data in either application (the old Save As point).

In the case of PS, nothing ever needs to be destroyed ever, as long as you keep inventing new names for every iteration.

So the adjustment layer that has to be flattened doesn’t alter the data? And if it does, you are saying there are no rounding errors which are destructive to the data?

BTW, whether the original is RAW or not is irrelevant. In either case LR does not overwrite original image data. In either case PS need not overwrite original image data.

For the third time, the original data isn’t under discussion, it is what results from the original data! If you never want destructive edits of pixels, don’t edit them!