P: Lightroom: consolidate/flatten/merge history steps

Sure history doesn't include undos (and I don't think it's worth adding them), but minor incompleteness doesn't invalidate the value of what's left.

Pedantic, I know, but I did say "supervise". That means being responsible for running the PP guys. Had the history been faked, how would a training need be identified?

If people only care about the end result, they can do without history entirely, can't they? That ability is there already. If you need a simpler display, ask for that - don't mess with the underlying data.

I'd not go near hacking the database - it needs to be easy and simple.

I'd not go near hacking the database - it needs to be easy and simple.

But John, the history isn't a record of every operation (since it doesn't record undos)

If I make 6 tweaks to a slider to get my desired result, wind back to the starting point and then type in the numeric final value the end result is exactly the same and there is no record of the incremental changes (which is my point in that sort of consolidation is what most people care about).

Unless you actually watch your assistants, you don't actually know how they create the images ... and most would ask, should you care? And if you have time to spend watching them, why do you need assistants?

It's the end result that most people will care about - the macro-adjustments, not the micro-adjustments/management.

But John, the history isn't a record of every operation (since it doesn't record undos)

If I make 6 tweaks to a slider to get my desired result, wind back to the starting point and then type in the numeric final value the end result is exactly the same and there is no record of the incremental changes (which is my point in that sort of consolidation is what most people care about).

Unless you actually watch your assistants, you don't actually know how they create the images ... and most would ask, should you care? And if you have time to spend watching them, why do you need assistants?

It's the end result that most people will care about - the macro-adjustments, not the micro-adjustments/management.

The biggest part of the problem is detecting which instructions could be consolidated. Once that's whipped, and there is a UI to condense them on the display, then I think it would be easy enough to also allow the user to rip 'em out for good, if desired. Does anyone really care whether other users leave them in or take them out?

Barrie,

It may be possible to consolidate history steps directly in the database using SQL. I know everyone (who wants this) would prefer Adobe integrate it into Lightroom proper, but other workarounds may yet emerge...

Rob

Philosophical but practical too. Summarised displays would certainly be beneficial, but purging the underlying detail will just result in lots of "I want to purge this, not that" or "Lightroom wrecked my history" nonsense.

Without the detail, how can the summaries be flexible? It's not simply the adjustment slider that provides value. For example, I'd often like to summarise by when work was done - by session, by day, between exports/prints. Alternatively, I also recently supervised some assistants, one of whom made 50 minor adjustments where the other used 2 or 3. I wouldn't want cover ups.

And again it comes down to a kind of triage. What would I want more - faking the history or making history searchable by smart collections, for example. Easy choice.

Philosophical but practical too. Summarised displays would certainly be beneficial, but purging the underlying detail will just result in lots of "I want to purge this, not that" or "Lightroom wrecked my history" nonsense.

Without the detail, how can the summaries be flexible? It's not simply the adjustment slider that provides value. For example, I'd often like to summarise by when work was done - by session, by day, between exports/prints. Alternatively, I also recently supervised some assistants, one of whom made 50 minor adjustments where the other used 2 or 3. I wouldn't want cover ups.

And again it comes down to a kind of triage. What would I want more - faking the history or making history searchable by smart collections, for example. Easy choice.

John - It sounds like your objection is on philosophical grounds.

But practically, for many of us, there is no value to a sequence of intermediate crop adjustments whose net affect is one crop. Unless of course you may want to revisit those intermediate crops. But consolidation would only be done, on demand, once the settings are satisfactory.