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PhilipTobias
Known Participant
January 19, 2012
Open for Voting

P: Support Common Image Formats (EPS, GIF, PDF, BMP etc.)

  • January 19, 2012
  • 275 replies
  • 9772 views

Feature request: Please add Lightroom support for common Adobe publishing and Web image formats, such as EPS, AI, PDF, GIF, and PNG.

Many of us use Lightroom to manage client images in NEF, JPG, PSD and other formats. But the clients' associated images, which are used on their Websites and in their logos and publications, are invisible to Lightroom. If Adobe Bridge can display these other image formats, why can't Lightroom?

Even if Lightroom did not provide direct editing support for these other image formats, it would still be extremely useful if Lightroom could catalog and display them.

It would also elevate Lightroom from being "just" a photo editor into the realm of being a true Digital Asset Manager (DAM). Now that Lightroom includes basic video support - isn't it time to support all the common image formats that our other CS applications use?

Please vote for, as well as reply to, this request if you would also like to see Lightroom support these additional common image formats...

    275 replies

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    Kim Letkeman
    Participating Frequently
    May 6, 2014
    You are presuming that the user knows that it is Adobe's own products that will become incompatible. You are further assuming that the code is not already in there but disabled (Adobe makes decisions like that all the time.) Too many presumptions invalidates the argument.
    K
    Kim Letkeman
    Participating Frequently
    May 6, 2014
    A classic "begging the question" fallacy by including the premise in your argument that this code will "bloat Lightroom" ... As has already been mentioned, the files may have come from elsewhere and loading each one to resave it is a huge waste of time. Lightroom needs utility, and worrying about tertiary issues like "bloat" without any evidence is the moral equivalent of wearing tin foil hats to protect against alien mind invasion.
    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 6, 2014
    Oh sure, I am following the discussion and I agree with the main point. I'd have no problem whatsoever with these PSDs (and any other file types) being imported and displayed with OS thumbnails.

    Where I differ is that I don't think non-maximized PSDs justify bloating LR with the code that would allow LR to reconstruct and display them as images. As I'm sure you know, there's a lot of weird stuff that may be in these PSDs, so that's not going to be a simple task. And why should Adobe do it when the solution is already in the user's own hands - resaving those files in a compatible format with an action/droplet. You can't expect LR to protect you from the consequences of your own decisions.
    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 6, 2014
    I am totally in favour of your request, Phil, and have often expressed similar views. But that doesn't mean I think it's a great idea to bloat LR with the code (which isn't trivial) to decipher a proprietary file format where the user has explicitly chosen to make files incompatible.
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    Thany2
    Known Participant
    May 5, 2014
    First of all, one doesn't deliberately save in an incomaptible format. Folks just choose whatever option is most convenient. As for non-maximized PSD, such files are simply more compact, and can save a whoooole lot of disk space. As for other formats, yes, they might be more suitable, however weird that might seem. A file format for every occasion ;)

    Secondly, the Lightroom user might not be the author of the files in question. Files may have been downloaded from an uncontrolled source, other files may have been handed over by a client, or a coworker with a totally different rig. Either way, not only for very large files and very large amounts of files, re-coding everything is never a desireable option. It takes effort and time, and it takes more work to keep originals and converted files in sync.

    As stated, Photoshop can handle most files. So Adobe has all the sourcecode they could ever need to implement this. All that remains for them is to gather the will to do it.
    T
    Thany2
    Known Participant
    May 5, 2014
    The non-trivial part is APNG (supported in Firefox an all other Gecko-based browsers, possibly more), which are just everyday run-of-the-mill png files, but with extra metadata for frame 2 and beyond. The tricky bit is that these files are both animated and static.

    Same for GIF files: they shouldn't always be treated as video, altough these days it's relatively likely that they are animated.
    K
    Kim Letkeman
    Participating Frequently
    May 5, 2014
    Are you not following the discussion? I and others are quite clear that the primary issue is we want Lightroom to own our image folders and to reflect their contents in its catalog. This allows the use of Lightroom's excellent tagging and other features to be brought to bear on everything we have created, regardless of the source editor.

    Lightroom only needs to allow these formats to be recognized, the code to handle them is already there or is trivially ported from photoshop.
    K
    Kim Letkeman
    Participating Frequently
    May 5, 2014
    Lightroom can handle video formats already and should have no problem with animated formats. Heck, every browser can do it already, so the code is nothing short of trivial.

    I had a long and involved debate with Andrew over at Pixel Genius on the forums regarding ACR support at more than n-1 photoshop versions and he swore up and down that it was impossible because of the complexity. I asserted that in fact it was not impossible at all and was probably in fact trivial. But is was a marketing decision to force upgrades.

    And then Adobe went to the subscription model and could not force upgrades any more, so CS6 magically works with the next version of ACR for the very first time.

    This is all just a matter of Adobe getting off the high horse and supporting people in the real world. Simple to code, difficult to convince.
    P
    PhilipTobiasAuthor
    Known Participant
    May 5, 2014
    John, Many people NEED to save related files together. We don't want to change their formats. We want Lightroom to support these formats. ...pt
    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 5, 2014
    You deliberately chose to save files in an incompatible format, clicking through warning messages. An action could fix them.
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