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

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

After updating from LR3, LR4 has reset my tone curves. I use custom tone curves on almost every picture, and all my contrast treatments this way seem to have gone. Initially the previews were still the old ones, so I only noticed after opening several pictures in the develop module, just to see my meticulous tone curve adjustments be removed.

Is anyone else seeing this?

[Henkki Zakkinen]

When I switch the curve from custom to linear, all is fine again. But I do not want to do that for every single image 😞

[Henkki Zakkinen]

Okay. I think there are two problems:
* point-curves - they are lost during the conversion from 3 to 4 and apparently recovered by the script.
* adjusted region sliders that get based on the wrong curve during the process-change from 2010 to 2012.

I just don't use point-curves that frequently in Lightroom, hence the script didn't find that many.

Henrik

[Steve Davey]

Hi Tom, was one of those who volunteered to help test a solution, but haven't received any email with a script on it. I have a catalog with some 60,000 RAW images in it, and am more than happy to run any script on it to see what is the story.

many of these images had their tone curves changed when I did the first conversion.

Cheers,
Steve

[stephen_kirk]

As someone who (ab)uses tone curves, I'd love to test out the proposed fix.

[nitram]

Oh, I experienced a strange behaviour of LR.

I created a new catalog for script testing purposes in LR3. I copied some pictures from my main source and imported them into the new catalog.

And... the picture with the manual tone curve I loaded and selected in LR4 last week had its settings still manual but the dialog showed: middle contrast and the preview was just like in LR4!

I was getting nervous then and loaded my old main catalog and everything was fine with that picture.

???

I was really confused.

Then I installed the script, ran it and... everything was fine. All images got their old tone curves back even this weird behaving picture but: the fill light settings were modified for this photo from 70 (even in the history before/after restore) to 45 (just the value of my used preset).

??????

I was more confused.

Is the xmp-file broken? I don't get it.

So far, the script seems ok.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I did the recovery using the recovery script as outlined in the mail

I found that

a) the tone curves are now preserved

b) the script adds two new history steps:
- Before point curve recovery
- After point curve recovery

I assume those new history steps are due to this alpha test and will go in final release, am I right?

Then I found this:

c) when I switch an image over from the 2010 process to 2012, my custom tone curves get replaced with very similar looking ones, except they now are composed of a lot of points instead of the few points that it had before. This way the custom tone curves become pretty much useless to me.



Is this due to this fix? If not, and it's a general thing, this is actually a huge issue for everyone who uses custom tone curves and wants to benefit of the 2012 process.

Tom, please let me know if you want me to open a separate ticket for this.

[Henkki Zakkinen]

I did more testing. Started again in LR3. Had a look at one of the images that was picked up by the script:


Then the same image after converting the catalog to LR4, no script yet:


After the script ran:


After I switched the process to 2012:


Then I finally set the curve to high contrast - where it was before, and it had no manual point-curve adjustments as far as I can tell. Just a holiday snap.

Either I am not properly understanding something, or you are not there yet, Tom.

Let's see what the others say.

Best
Henrik

[nitram]

Chris... check that button on the lower right corner of the tone curve dialog. Then your 'problem' should be fixed.

[Henkki Zakkinen]

That's exactly what I see. More points then there were before. Also custom curvers for images that didn't even have any before.

Two issues if you ask me: one during catalog conversion, one during process upgrade.

[Henkki Zakkinen]

I have quite some photos that never made it to the 2010 process. They apparently are treated differently again. Must do more tests to verify that.
Henrik

[Cornelia-I]

It is supposed to be like this. Was discussed as "Bug or Feature?" during beta.
It is unavoidable due to the different algorithms applied in PV10 vs. PV12.

So love it or leave it.
If reprocessing an image in PV12 it seems best to start afresh if you want to further tweak it.
Cornelia

[Henkki Zakkinen]

Okay. Confusing at least, but I am willing to accept it as a feature.

[nitram]

Henrik, I can't see a difference between strong contrast LR3 and LR4. So far it seems ok.

The switch to PV2012 is just like the switch to PV2010 when LR3 came out. The best thing is to start from scratch.

[Henkki Zakkinen]

I still do not understand why some of my old photos that never had individual point-curve adjustments got picked up by the script, but else the script seems to do what it is supposed to. The curves are back. I deliberately changed a few in LR3, converted again and was happy with the script's results.
I am not sure yet I am happy with the process version upgrade "feature". But then, I do not have to do that, do I? So up to me, if I think the image might look better using the 2012 process, I'll just have to start from scratch. This has nothing to do with the bug the script is trying to fix.
Conclusion: script works, problem dealt with.
Thanks
Henrik

[Henkki Zakkinen]

Neither can I. The questionv rather was: why was this photo affected at all? But nothing to worry about 🙂 I don't have to switch to PV2012.

[Tom Hogarty]

We're testing a solution that will correct the issue for those that have already upgraded to Lightroom 4 so that there is no reason to wait or hold off on upgrading. (Specific to the point tone curve issue)

Regards,
Tom

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I don't necessarily disagree with leaving old pictures on the old process. I guess the reason I'm so taken aback is that I had a different expectation, especially when it comes to tone curves. I'm not sure what percentage of users make use of custom tone curves (you'll see them when you click the button at the right bottom of the tone curves panel), but for many of my pictures this is pretty much the only contrast adjustment they'll ever see. I wouldn't be so upset if only a hand full of my pictures used that feature.

[Henkki Zakkinen]

I understand, but I fear the process might be so different that the only thing that can be done is create a curve that looks very similar with the help of more points? Can't answer that question, but that is what I suspect. As long as you are happy with your old pv versions, no need to touch them, is there? And if you really need to redo a few and end with much better results, worth the work, ain't it? You see, I am not sure yet what to think of it. Sometimes one has to make cuts to improve.

[mauro_morando]

Hi Tom, I tried the script on a test catalog containing nef, dng, and virtual images from different cameras: i worked perfectly.
I'm a Mac user with Lion 10.7.3.
Regards

Mauro Morando

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Even if it's unavoidable, I don't think this is being handled nearly as well as it could be.

The replaced "16-points-curve" is unusable (try making a smooth change to the midtones), so the least Lightroom could do is tell me about doing this to my tone curve and give me the option to delete it and start from scratch.

That would be right way to set a user's expectation and not make them find out by accident while helping them track down a nasty bug.

In Germany we call that "Bananensoftware" (banana software) - ripens at the customer.

[mauro_morando]

I've just tested the "script solution" on a test catalog: it worked perfectly in restoring the 2010 develops. After the script run, tone curves went right on NEF, DNG and Virtual Copies. No "read from metadata in file" was performed.
I'm a Mac user with Lion 10.7.3

Mauro

[robtmann@gmail.com]

This is a real problem, IMO. As I see it, given the nature of software upgrades, eventually all images will have to be ported over to the 2012 process. For those of us that use custom curves heavily, eventually we're going to have to face the fact that our curves are going to have this monstrous collection of points applied to them. I can see going back and re-working an image or two, that wouldn't be a problem. But I imagine that most photographers will have more than an image or two to rework, since point curves have been a part of LR for several years.

[Henkki Zakkinen]

Ich weiß, was Bananensoftware ist 🙂 And I would appreciate a warning as well. You can start from scratch by switching back to linear and then clicking on point-curve again. So knowing what is happening, it is easy.

[Cornelia-I]

I have run the script as well.

As a fan of Michael Frye's editing tip in http://craftandvision.com/books/light... I had quite a number of images to pick for this script: 9388 with recovered point curve and another 1482 with recovered point curve history, as the script result nicely informed me. 10870 in total, ran for ca. 3 minutes.

I did not convert any of those to PV12, so left them at PV10 and went to my best tell-tale image, where I had converted to b/w and applied a double sinus-curve tweak for a solarization effect.
The tone curve looks the same shape as I remember it from LR3 and has the same amount of set points. (Windows, so not able to have both LR versions open at the same time).
But the image looks and prints differently, less pronounced than in LR3, somehow softened.
Despite not having changed PV.

That is a surprise.
In LR4beta I had not noticed any difference as long as I was staying with PV10.

Finally switching to PV12 the softening effect was reversed, now it looks harsher. Another 8 points had been added to the double-sinus-curve.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I guess one reason I'm upset is that I think Adobe could handle their customers' expectations a lot better. I've only accidentally found about about having my custom tone curves switched to something unusable. The least I would expect is a warning when switching the process with a custom tone curve in place.