Lightroom 3.3 Performance Feedback

[Tom Hogarty]

Please use this discussion topic for your feedback on Lightroom 3.3 RC and the final Lightroom 3.3 release when it becomes available.  The Lightroom team has tried very hard to extract useful feedback from the following discussion topic but due to the length and amount of chatter we need to start a new, more focused thread.  Please post specifics about your experience and be sure to include information about your hardware configuration.

Regards,

Tom Hogarty

Lightroom Product Manager

[Guest]

thewhitedog wrote:

I keep waiting for someone "in authority" to start a new thread. So far no one has ventured to do so; certainly no such change has been noted here. Though there's nothing technically preventing me from starting such a thread, I suspect not so many people would move over there if I did so. Rob could do it, or Seán: I think people would follow their lead. For whatever reason, any Adobe staff following this thread (if any still are) haven't felt the need to do it. Either they find the discussion here sufficient for their purposes with 3.4 RC, or they've given up on us entirely, focussing instead (we can hope) on the bug reports they get through the proper channels.

On the subject of what should or should not be added to Lightroom, I think they nearly broke its back with the last round of "improvements." All the touted performance enhancements were more than offset by the new image processing features. Personally, therefore, I hope the engineers are spending their time optimizing what we already have and not on adding more bells and whistles. While it may not be hard to think of new things we'd like Lightroom to be able to do, it should be equally easy to imagine what such additions might do to the program's already questionable performance. Unrestrained feature bloat is the last thing we need - or should wish for.

Well, you tend to forget, that mostly you can judge the overall quality of Lightroom 3 only based on how it operates on YOUR environment (and maybe a few others). Unfortunately, you generalize your experience too much, and make assumptions and claims that aren't felt by everyone.

Just to make it clear, I have also some problems with not-fixed bugs, but none of those are related to performance, and they are clearly defined and acknowledged.

In my opinion, Lightroom is by no means bloatware. It has about the right mixture of tools, I need for my workflow, and I wouldn't like to miss anything. There are only a few features, which I don't use: slideshow and tethered shooting. That is pretty good for such a mighty program and shows how well Lightroom is focused to photographic workflow. Some people don't like the database concept, those might have to look for other software, I think the database is one of the key assets. Yes, and I want new features, which would benefit my workflow - most notably soft proofing and an enhancement of the local editing possibilities.

Me, and many others, think that LR 3 was an improvement, even on the performance area (for example local edits run much smoother than in LR 2). If I look subjectively to my situation, I can't see that the statement of questionable performance is correct. LR is not the fastest software in all respects, but it allows a fast workflow generally. And nobody I know of, which uses Lightroom, has performance problems.

Most parametric editors have their particular problems - being either stability, image qualtiy, performance or poor implementation of features (usability, thoroughness). Some of the competitors show only minor progress (Lightzone, DxO, Bibble, RawTherapee). By all means, Lightroom is probably still the best all around package we can get here.

Instead of drawing conclusions that Lightroom is not a recommendable solution, you should rather abstract from your situation and recommend everybody interested to testdrive it thoroughly before purchase. I think it is quite clear now, that the behaviour of Lightroom differs in various environments. Not all the problems are reproducable and fully understood, some of them might even not be in the responsibility of the Lightroom developers.

The thread here is to track the problems down and not to discuss, if Lightroom has already turned into bloatware, which it has not, in my opinion. Also keep in mind, that LR 3.4 has still release candidate status. For that circumstance, currently occuring and maybe newly introduced bugs, get a bit too heavy reactions here. 3.4 is not a production release.

[thewhitedog]

@ tgutgu: I've been following this thread - and the one before it - for a long time now and I have much more than my own experience to go on. Indeed, my experience is far from the worst reported here. The fact is, though - as has been noted many times - that Adobe advertised Lightroom 3 as having dramatically improved performance and the best most have been able to claim is that it works more or less as well as Lightroom 2.7. While you mention improvements in local edits, many others report the program bogging down with local edits. There have been endless quibbles about how many local edits are appropriate to expect the app to handle, which is nothing but a distraction from the fact that it doesn't handle them reliably. And such bootless debates have led the discussion far off into the weeds.

My generalizations are based on the totality of what I've read here. You have your own issues with Lightroom; other people have other issues. I've described my biggest problem with 3.4 RC several times and don't feel it's necessary to repeat it every time I post. The arrow key bug made the RC unusable for me; I filed a bug report on it and left it at that. You're right, though, I do generalize, but I do so to try to reach beyond my personal experience and comprehend the meaning of the whole. None of this should be taken to suggest that I don't like the improvements in Lightroom 3, even the ones that contribute significantly to the performance slowdowns people report. It took me awhile to get used to the new import dialog, for instance, but now that I have, I like it. I very much appreciate the improved noise reduction and sharpening capabilities. Likewise, I approve of the change in focus from importing into a proprietary catalog to importing in place, which made possible improved integration with Photoshop and the heretofore unsupported ability to actually use Lightroom as a file manager - though still with a narrow focus and being no replacement for Bridge in overall resource management capability.

But the primary reason for this forum, as Tom just reiterated, is not to sing the praises of Lightroom, but to report and discuss problems. Unfortunately, when people do complain, someone else feels compelled to tell them they're using the program wrong, or some other such insult to their intelligence. As a result, a lot of the chatter here has gone off topic and become defensive in nature, everyone protecting their "turf", rather than learning, or being willing to learn, from others who have had different experiences with the program than they have. As you just did with me, insisting that because you don't experience the slowdowns others have reported that I am somehow misguided in generalizing on their experience.

Some here consistently take criticism of Lightroom as some sort of personal attack. I suggest that it is they, not the critics, who are misusing this forum. The forum was not started to defend Lightroom or Adobe; it was to take problem reports so that Adobe staff could do a better job of fixing the problems. In some cases people have offered suggestions on how to use Lightroom more efficiently. These seem to me to be, broadly speaking, within the scope of this venue as a user to user forum. But this thread was intended, as specified repeatedly by Adobe staff participating here, to help them gather information. So it is more than a user to user forum in this instance. I will presume to suggest that if people spent more effort on trying to understand the difficulties that others are having with Lightroom and less time defending the program against criticism, this forum would be far less contentious and far more on point.

[Samoreen]

Hi,

thewhitedog wrote:

But the primary reason for this forum, as Tom just reiterated, is not to sing the praises of Lightroom, but to report and discuss problems. Unfortunately, when people do complain, someone else feels compelled to tell them they're using the program wrong, or some other such insult to their intelligence.

...

Some here consistently take criticism of Lightroom as some sort of personal attack. I suggest that it is they, not the critics, who are misusing this forum. The forum was not started to defend Lightroom or Adobe; it was to take problem reports so that Adobe staff could do a better job of fixing the problems.

I fully agree with this. Documented critics and problem reports are positive contributions. Many users reporting problems are also computing professionals who are not "baying at the moon" but are able to identify and document software bugs and design mistakes. So this forum is not the right place for LR evangelists. We are already convinced that it's a good product. We just want it to be fixed. And not posting critics and bug reports would just mean that we don't care any more, which would be much worse news for Adobe (meaning that we are considering switching to another product - not much competition around here but Bibble is stabilizing).

[areohbee]

TK2142 wrote:

areohbee wrote:

It would require extensive re-design of Lightroom.

I don't think so. IMHO, it would just require removing inefficiencies and adding some optimisation.

Wasn't the purpose of LR3 to re-design LR so that it becomes faster?

I really dont know. From the outside, there was very little evidence of a fundamental editor design change. My guess: it was all they could do to add the fantastic new PV2010/NR/Sharpening/Fill-Light improvements (and lens corrections) and "get it back in the box". As has been noted, the re-design for performance improvement never really amounted to much... And also, there were significant design changes in the database handling affecting plugins, and some very nice and fairly extensive enhancements to the SDK (I always want more, but it was substantially improved).

TK2142 wrote:

We "all" know? I can think of an exception...

J.S. knows it too, but he also knows more about the inherent limitations in the existing Lr design than anyone who's willing to share on this forum.

TK2142 wrote:

Maybe we would have less "off-topic" discussions if we felt that the "on-topic" discussions had impact.

I feel ya. I vary daily in my leanings toward hope and hopelessness, Lr-wise... - hang in there.

Lightroom: Ya gotta love it, and ya gotta hate it...

R

[TK2142]

areohbee wrote:

J.S. knows it too, but he also knows more about the inherent limitations in the existing Lr design than anyone who's willing to share on this forum.

What makes you so sure that J.S. knows it too? Note that he refers to the limitations of "parametric editing" not to limitations of "particularities of LR's internal design".

I'd have to accept if Adobe chose to never make LR a 80/20 application for portrait photographers because they want to sell PS too. I wouldn't like it but I would have to accept it in an adult way.

What I don't have to accept is that someone tells me that LR cannot be changed/extended because of technical reasons. I also don't want other people to believe that there are technical limits to what you can do within the parametric editing paradigm and that resorting to a two-application scenario is unavoidable. That's why I'm posting more than I should allow myself to.

[Jeff Schewe]

TK2142 wrote:

I'd have to accept if Adobe chose to never make LR a 80/20 application for portrait photographers because they want to sell PS too. I wouldn't like it but I would have to accept it in an adult way.

Then accept it because in terms of workflow, any photography involving substantial retouching (well beyond a few sensor spots) is not what Lightroom is designed for...do the tone and color corrections in LR but the serious retouching is really gonna need to go elsewhere.

[areohbee]

TK2142 wrote:

What makes you so sure that J.S. knows it too?

NX2, Aperture, & Bibble are all living proof that you can have layers in a parametric editor, and all adjustments local, and shared masks...

TK2142 wrote:

Note that he refers to the limitations of "parametric editing" not to limitations of "particularities of LR's internal design".

I try to listen to what he means not what he says - you need a J.S. bias filter between your ears and your brain...

TK2142 wrote:

I'd have to accept if Adobe chose to never make LR a 80/20 application for portrait photographers because they want to sell PS too. I wouldn't like it but I would have to accept it in an adult way.

What I don't have to accept is that someone tells me that LR cannot be changed/extended because of technical reasons. I also don't want other people to believe that there are technical limits to what you can do within the parametric editing paradigm and that resorting to a two-application scenario is unavoidable. That's why I'm posting more than I should allow myself to.

I confess I dont know what it would take to enhance Lightroom's editor to be more capable - I only know in general that the overall design dictates what is easy to do and what is not, without ripping it apart and starting again from scratch... Nor do I know the extent to which Photoshop influences their decisions regarding Lightroom's editor, but in my opinion:

- Adobe would be foolish to exlude things from Lightroom soley to boost Photoshop sales.

- Adobe would be foolish to not take Photoshops capabilities into consideration when choosing features to add to Lightroom.

R

[Jeff Schewe]

areohbee wrote:

- Adobe would be foolish to exlude things from Lightroom soley to boost Photoshop sales.

- Adobe would be foolish to not take Photoshops capabilities into consideration when choosing features to add to Lightroom.

Both are true...if Adobe wanted to avoid competing with Photoshop at all, they wouldn't have produced Lightroom in the first place (and they almost didn't) and yes, some things that CAN be easily done in a pixel editor is factored in when they decide what to add to Lightroom.

Since the primary mandate of Lightroom is for workflow and not low level image manipulation, there are things better left to Photoshop which is the reality of the situation. ACR/LR is tasked with those things that are appropriate for parametric editing...the rest is left to Photoshop.

[dougryan]

Jeff Schewe wrote:

areohbee wrote:

- Adobe would be foolish to exlude things from Lightroom soley to boost Photoshop sales.

- Adobe would be foolish to not take Photoshops capabilities into consideration when choosing features to add to Lightroom.

Both are true...if Adobe wanted to avoid competing with Photoshop at all, they wouldn't have produced Lightroom in the first place (and they almost didn't) and yes, some things that CAN be easily done in a pixel editor is factored in when they decide what to add to Lightroom.

Since the primary mandate of Lightroom is for workflow and not low level image manipulation, there are things better left to Photoshop which is the reality of the situation. ACR/LR is tasked with those things that are appropriate for parametric editing...the rest is left to Photoshop.

Competing with Photoshop isn't really an issue as far as I can see. PS does SO much more than what is needed and used in a photographers repertoire, so it's not really the photographer whom is the main consumer. But where competition is concerned, Adobe should be thinking about the other programs which have been mentioned here (Bibble, Aperture etc.. ) because if all we LR users are going to see in terms of newly added features are social networking gimmicks, then at some point a lot of us are going to start veering off into those other directions.

But hey, I woudln't even complain about much of anything if LR's performance was back up to par. The fact that it isn't, however, just makes all the other niggles stand out more.

Doug

[TK2142]

areohbee wrote:

NX2, Aperture, & Bibble are all living proof that you can have layers in a parametric editor, and all adjustments local, and shared masks...

That doesn't stop J.S. to make claims to the contrary.

areohbee wrote:

I try to listen to what he means not what he says - you need a J.S. bias filter between your ears and your brain...

I'll have to go by what he says. This is what people without your "J.S. bias filter" will hear. I don't want them to hear what is wrong.

[AlanUniqueName]

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

Jeff Schewe wrote:

Well, Lightroom hasn't changed from being a parametric editor, so yes, I sill believe that Lightroom prevue continues. Substantial imaging involved with retouching, layers, compositing–the things that Photoshop is designed for–won't be put into Lightroom because it's not technically feasible with the parametric editing paradigm.

Jeff

Ignoring for one minute perceived or subjective quality or performance issues with the Bibble 5 product today - it does appear to support Layers, non-circular regions for develop adjustment or painted regions for develop adjustments and also supports non circular heal and clone.    All of which are parametric and non-destructive in Bibble.

I am not being critical; I am genuinely seeking to understand how this Bibble functionality is fundamentally different to some of the similar things you state won’t be put into Lightroom because it is not technically feasible with the parametric editing paradigm.   

Also more specifically - are you saying that in your view layers, region based adjustments and region cloning will probably never appear in Lightroom?

Thanks for any clarification.

[Jeff Schewe]

AlanUniqueName wrote:

Ignoring for one minute perceived or subjective quality or performance issues with the Bibble 5 product today - it does appear to support Layers, non-circular regions for develop adjustment or painted regions for develop adjustments and also supports non circular heal and clone.    All of which are parametric and non-destructive in Bibble.

Lightroom has painted in regions (and gradients) for develop adjustments...as far as I know, Bibble doesn't have multiple pixel layers. The one thing it does seem to have (aside from it's own performance issues) is non circular healing...which is indeed possible parametrically, but hasn't as of yet, shown up in ACR/LR (not saying it will or won't, just that it ain't there yet). But when you look into the technical aspects of storing edits in metadata, there is indeed a hard line between what can be done in pixel editing (PS) and parametric edits (ACR/LR). The more you pack into metadata the less efficient the metadata becomes. As it stands, spot healing and the adjustment brush and gradient masks are not really real...they are stored metadata description of what WILL happen once the file is processed. The more you add, the more complicated the instruction set becomes. That's one of the reasons that local adjustments in ACR/LR are limited to a subset of all the image controls.

All of this is to say, it ain't easy and it's also something that doesn't really fall into the Lightroom/Camera Raw mandate. Past a certain point, the returns diminish and aren't worth the efforts.

But this isn't a direct explanation for why some people are seeing severe performance problems...clearly something else is afoot. And that is something I'm pretty sure really does want to address.

[Guest]

Well, the thread left - partly on my fault - the intention Tom Hogarty originated it for: to supply useful information about performance issues. Now, we are again in the mood to discuss, if it is the majority, who faces problems, or if it is the minority.

With regard to the last posts, I have to second Jeff Schewe, that Lightroom works mostly as expected. In general, it is stable, fast, suitable for its tasks. How far we can get with parametric editing, depends obviously on factors, not fully understood, but based on my own experience the architecture and code quality is at least so good that it works flawlessly in general in my environment.

I have upgraded to a new camera (GH2) with larger files, and a much higher resolution monitor (2560 x 1440), have increased and recreated the standard preview size to 2048 pixel, and have yet to find any point where performance has degraded due to this changes. In fact, subjectively, I find that editing is even a bit smoother now, brush strokes and spot healing work well.

My point was rather, that acknowledged and reproducible bugs and issues, don't get attention in visible results, and that no follow up communication takes place, even if the bug was acknowledged publicly here. So it is always a lottery game for the user, once a new release is announced: will my issue be fixed?

If things aren't fixed in a new release, I think it is fair enough for users to ask about the whereabout of the clearly described and reproducible bug, and to remind the developer team, to fix it. As long as the communication works as it is, this is the only way for a customer to ask for progress.

My specs:

Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition, 4 GB RAM, Intel i5-750, 2.67 Ghz CPU, Nvidia GTS 250 graphics card.

Monitor: EIZO SX 2762W (2560 x 1440)

[Jeff Schewe]

tgutgu wrote:

My point was rather, that acknowledged and reproducible bugs and issues, don't get attention in visible results, and that no follow up communication takes place, even if the bug was acknowledged publicly here. So it is always a lottery game for the user, once a new release is announced: will my issue be fixed?

Well, I don't disagree with this...it is somewhat a lottery. What does and doesn't get fixed is above my pay grade (meaning it ain't my job to decide). Regardless of the size of the Lightroom engineering team relative to the size of the Photoshop team, there is a thing called "triage" which tries to identify the most critical issues impacting the largest group of users. Those are the bugs that are deemed mission critical.

But depending on the severity of the bug or issue, it may get deferred. There X number of hours times X number of engineers times X number of bugs that determine whether or not a given bug gets attention in a dot release.

Clearly, Lightroom could use more engineers but not unlike a pro sports team, it's not a guarantee that throwing more engineers at a problem will result in improved productivity...there is a thing called "Team Chemistry" (I would point to the Miami Heat NBA team as an example of anti-gestalt).

The best thing for users to do is to make sure they report issues and do so as completely as possible. The more people experiencing a give issue, the greater the likelihood it will get attention. That's really all users can do (and should do).

[thewhitedog]

@ TK2142: If you don't want or need everything Photoshop can do, or a reasonable subset of it that would make the price a practical expense, you might take a look at Photoshop Elements. For under $100 you get an app with many of the most useful features of Photoshop without all the overhead. If I'm not mistaken, you can access Elements just as you do Photoshop out of Lightroom because it, too, uses a current version of ACR. What I don't know is if it support Smart Objects. I'm sure someone on this forum can speak to that.

But Smart Objects are the way around the destructive editing you are concerned about with Photoshop. In effect, a Smart Object includes a copy of the original file you edited in Lightroom and opened in Photoshop. You can, therefore, edit that Smart Object with ACR even after you've opened it - and saved it - in Photoshop. I don't know why this solution isn't publicized more widely because it seems a dream come true to me. If you right-click over an image in Lightroom you will see among the options in the contextual (pop-up) menu the item Edit in; the fly-out menu from that includes Open as Smart Object in Photoshop. I haven't used this technique much so I can't speak to all the issues involved but it appears to me to be decent way to preserve access to your Lightroom settings in the context of a Photoshop file.

Your unwillingness to deal with more than one version of a file, on the other hand, seems both arbitrary and unreasonable. If you need the functions for which Photoshop is more suited, multiple files are a small price to pay for the flexibility they give you.

Instead of setting out a list of more or less random demands, you should look at your work from the perspective of desired results. Choose the results you want and then select the tools that can most effectively produce those results. It's simply the case that if Lightroom cannot provide everything you need to get the results you want in an efficient manner, you will need to consider adding additional tools to your repertoire.

In the meantime, for those having trouble with Lightroom, we can either dial back our work strategies to fit into what Lightroom can do, and hope that the issues we have with the program will be resolved eventually. Or we can look elsewhere for an application that does the job with fewer hassles. Since Apple has dropped the price of Aperture so drastically, it's become a far more attractive alternative to Lightroom. There are other options, like Lightzone to consider as well. Of course that means learning how to use yet another program, but for some it may be the better, even a necessary choice. This is especially true given the disappointing list of fixes (and the new bugs) in the LR 3.4 RC. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels their trust and patience have been betrayed. This feeble list suggests that fixes for the serious performance problems that many people have with Lightroom will not soon be found. From a user perspective it doesn't matter why these problems have not been addressed, especially given that we have no way of knowing why. It only matters that they have not been - and that we no longer have a reasonable expectation that they will be, given how close-mouthed Adobe staff are about what they are actually working on. Yes, they have their reasons for so much secrecy, but there is a price to be paid for that secrecy in declining customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. In the end it doesn't matter what Adobe's policies and priorities are. It only matters that solutions have not been forthcoming.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

Your unwillingness to deal with more than one version of a file, on the other hand, seems both arbitrary and unreasonable. If you need the functions for which Photoshop is more suited, multiple files are a small price to pay for the flexibility they give you.

I find it to be such a hassle, that I generally prefer to use LRs tools for this purpose over the superior tools in PS just so I don't have to manage another version of a file.  So, I'm up to 100% retouching on LR and 0% on PS.  I know use PS for exactly one purpose - compositing.

Since Apple has dropped the price of Aperture so drastically, it's become a far more attractive alternative to Lightroom.

Only if its cost is minus $3,000 to cover the additional costs of their computers.  I just (finally) bought two new computers and their costs compared to the roughly equivalent high-spec Mac Book Pro 17s was about that amount.

[TK2142]

thewhitedog wrote:

If you don't want or need everything Photoshop can do, or a reasonable subset of it that would make the price a practical expense, you might take a look at Photoshop Elements.

Thanks for the hint. I know about PS Elements. Does it still have no tone curve controls? Anyhow, I'd still be stuck with destructive editing thrown into the workflow, needing to manage multiple images, and running two applications in parallel.

thewhitedog wrote:

But Smart Objects are the way around the destructive editing you are concerned about with Photoshop.

Unfortunately not. Smart objects allow ACR editing within PS but they don't help with the issue of having potentially destructive edits and requiring a second image to deal with.

thewhitedog wrote:

Your unwillingness to deal with more than one version of a file, on the other hand, seems both arbitrary and unreasonable.

I disagree. The need to leave one user interface to deal with another, stressing a machine with two applications, and having to deal with an extra version are just undesirable side effects of having to deal with two applications rather than one. The real problem is the "chasm" in the workflow. Imagine you reconsider some edits you have done to the image that was imported to PS. Even if it has been imported as a smart object then you would have at least fire up PS again to let the changes ripple through (provided you were able to use non-destructive edits only). Not elegant.

Lee Jay doesn't like the "two file" issue either.

thewhitedog wrote:

It's simply the case that if Lightroom cannot provide everything you need to get the results you want in an efficient manner, you will need to consider adding additional tools to your repertoire.

Or I could ask LR to be extended. I asked nicely of course. BTW, I'd also respect an Adobe employee's request to cut out the off-topic discussion here. It is just when I allow myself to get provoked that I come across as being grumpy.

I could have done without lens corrections. All I need is better performance (in the develop & library modules) and decent healing/cloning/retouching support.

thewhitedog wrote:

Or we can look elsewhere for an application that does the job with fewer hassles.

Yes, for sure. The thing for me is: I really like LR's UI and IQ. I think it would be unfair to demand fantastic IQ if it didn't already have it because accomplishing such a good RAW engine is no small feat and cannot be expected from just any team. The frustrating thing is that LR is let down by deficiencies in the "bread and butter" programming. No ingenuity required, just solid software engineering. I don't think it is too much to ask for the latter.

[thewhitedog]

I like Lightroom, too. And I don't think it's too much to ask for them to optimize the basic functions of the program. But what you and I think is reasonable probably carries absolutely no weight with Adobe. The question then becomes, what are you, or I, or anyone else for that matter, going to do if they continue to ignore our priorities for the kind of trivia they've been focussing on so far - as evidenced by the 3.4 RC?

I understand Jeff's loyalty to Adobe and the Lightroom staff, but the available evidence simply does not support his assertion that they focus on the most important and urgent issues.

So, either we jump ship, at considerable expense in time and money or we tough it out and make due with the application as it is. Like many others here I've submitted both bug reports and feature requests. And like others, I was supportive for a long time, optimistically hoping for the best, until the 3.4 RC undermined my trust and respect. But beyond kvetching about Adobe's half-a$$ed efforts to fix Lightroom, what can I actually do? Well, I can stop recommending Lightroom to others. Which I will most certainly do.

[AlanUniqueName]

thewhitedog wrote:

.... you might take a look at Photoshop Elements. For under $100 you get an app with many of the most useful features of Photoshop without all the overhead.

I wish that everytime someone suggests this, they would add "if dropping to 8 bits per channel at this point is acceptable to you".

Alan.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

AlanUniqueName wrote:

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

thewhitedog wrote:

.... you might take a look at Photoshop Elements. For under $100 you get an app with many of the most useful features of Photoshop without all the overhead.

I wish that everytime someone suggests this, they would add "if dropping to 8 bits per channel at this point is acceptable to you".

Alan.

With this particular workflow (LR to PS), it nearly always is.  8 bits per channel isn't a major problem once you've already done the major portion of the corrections and adjustments in the raw workflow and already have a nearly-finished image before you start retouching in PS.  Of course, there are always cases where extreme adjustments will be made locally in PS that can cause an issue, but this is rare for most people especially if they use LR's tools well in the first place.

[Samoreen]

Hi,

So Adobe wants user feedback in order to fix these performance problems. But are they doing what is needed to achieve such a result?

In every commercial application I have ever written, I have always implemented a "debug mode" feature. When a user reported a problem that I could not reproduce in my lab, I asked him to open the application's "Preferences" dialog and to check the "Debug mode" option. With this option enabled, the application started to record every user actions, tracing entry and exit points (and exit codes) of every important routine, collecting information about the user's system, etc. Once the problem had occured again, the user had to disable the debug mode option and to send me the log file. 90% of the time I could see what happened and fix the problem (or explain to the user what he was doing wrong or what was wrong with his system) without having reproduced the problem on my own systems. And I'm not talking about small applets. I implemented this in complex applications involving a user interface, system services and device drivers. By the way, this demonstrates that the statement "not reproduced, not fixed" that we have read here too many times is not justified.

If I was able to do this for my apps as a small software shop, I'm wondering why Adobe can't do that for Lightroom. There are a lot of commercial software on the market having a similar option. Of course, such a feature is a little bit more difficult to add "after the fact". It's preferable to think about it during the software engineering phase. Also, when the application uses multithreading (like LR does), the logging system has to be protected against re-entrancy. But any seasoned programmer can deal with this.

When implemented properly, such a feature has no impact on the software performance. When the option is disabled, the debug code does nothing at all. When enabled, this code may slightly affect performances but again, if this is done properly, the impact will be very limited.

If we go back for example to the "frantic registry accesses" problem, a debug mode feature would have help determine what's going on (which code is running repeatedly) when the problem occurs.

So I'm wondering : since LR version 1.0, bugs have been reported that Adobe could not reproduce and nobody has ever considered implementing a debug mode feature or writing a specific debug version (which is another way of achieving the same result : collecting information from and tracing execution on the user's system) ?

[DanTull]

There are a number of field diagnostics options in Lightroom 3, actually. There's a command line switch for emitting all errors thrown from Lua to a log (very useful for a certain class of bug), there's various logging facilities that can be turned on to gather data. I (and other engineers) have cornered dozens of former mystery bugs using these switches. There's also some much heavier trace logging which can be used, though that's a bit like a firehose, does definitely impact performance, and takes a lot more analysis to tease out.

I also knocked off several nasty Windows crasher bugs (none of which I was ever able to personally reproduce) by analyzing crash dumps.

But, as you note, since I've added it after the fact (while I've been on the Lightroom team a long time, it was a big codebase well before I got here and I've added things not because I was asked to, but because they make my work easier), it's been hard to establish. In LR 1.0, all the (somewhat primitive) diagnostic capabilities were compiled out of release builds _on purpose_, so my first task was to reverse the thinking process on such supportability features.

Similarly, I've advocated a simple rule for further work: when you chase down a bug that took a long time to figure out, add the logging that would have made it easy as part of the fix. Especially since bugs tend to cluster, this tends over time to cause the system to converge on something in which bugs are easier to diagnose. I push back on  bugs that engineers say they can't reproduce and ask "what you need to see to understand what's going on without reproducing the bug directly"? That's a cultural thing that just needs education to fix. My rule is "cannot reproduce is not an excuse", though often what the diagnostic reveals is the essential clue to know how to reproduce it (other times, it's the clue that tells you how to fix it even if you can't quite figure out how it got that way).

There are even some profiling mechanisms in place in LR, though they're less comprehensive than I'd like and for a profiler, incomplete data can often be worse than none at all because it leads you to the wrong conclusion since the real problem isn't properly recorded. There's also lots of tools (some of the stuff from SysInternals comes to mind) that can provide invaluable insight.

So all that is to say, this is not a question of having thought that debug capabilities are useful or even how I'd go about building them into Lightroom (I've advocated a similar stance in the past and it's paid off then, too), it's about available time. You might ask why I've been so quiet on the forums lately. Time. I've been nearly 100% tapped on stuff related to the next version. I have a few items I plan to circle back on, but I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to allocate. Constraints suck.

Addendum: I know "Constraints suck." sounds like a really snarky way to end my post (I can't help it, I'm a bit of a snarky guy at times). I mean it very sympathetically, though. It absolutely kills me that anybody has anything but wonderful experiences with Lightroom and if I had the resources, I would personally hunt each and every bug, but I have limits. I will say every moment I spent sifting through chatter is a moment I'm not spending finding the good leads on important bugs.

Oh, and one other thing: don't _ever_ wait for authority to start a new thread. These are the "user to user" forums. Structure is presumed to be responsibility of the participants.

[Bob_Peters]

DanTull wrote:

There are a number of field diagnostics options in Lightroom 3, actually. There's a command line switch for emitting all errors thrown from Lua to a log (very useful for a certain class of bug), there's various logging facilities that can be turned on to gather data. I (and other engineers) have cornered dozens of former mystery bugs using these switches. There's also some much heavier trace logging which can be used, though that's a bit like a firehose, does definitely impact performance, and takes a lot more analysis to tease out.

So, under what circumstances and how can users gain access to this information so that we can pass it along to Adobe?  This strikes me as a very valuable tool.

[TK2142]

DanTull wrote:

My rule is "cannot reproduce is not an excuse", though often what the diagnostic reveals is the essential clue to know how to reproduce it (other times, it's the clue that tells you how to fix it even if you can't quite figure out how it got that way).

Dan, you have earned a ton of respect from me for your brave post. I appreciate it very much!

I sense that the team should be larger than it is and that the team is not to blame for that. But I don't want to speculate.

Your post convinced me that it makes sense for me to install 3.4RC and report feedback.

It is great to hear that you have the option of field diagnostics. I trust that you are using them with a select set of users. Please don't hesitate to approach me to activate any logging, should you get the impression that the behaviour I report would be interesting to analyse.

If only a select few ever get to activate the switches, I wonder what unecessary overhead is caused by the logging when it is inactive. Wouldn't it be better to have a separate debug build and ask the select users to install this one if you need data from them?

But I do want to end this post on a positive note and thank you very much indeed for what you are doing for LR and letting us know about it.

Thank you.

[TK2142]

On my Windows machine, using 3.4RC, sliders (such as white balance or in the adjustment brush panel) move with up/down arrow keys, but the response is all over the show. Sometimes a press causes a normal increment, sometimes it causes the larger increment that only the shift key should produce. Sometimes the large increment is 200, sometimes it is 250 (-> white balance slider).

The "+/-" keys seem to work reliable but the up/down key behaviour is broken AFAIC.

The responsiveness of the exposure slider depends on whether panels like the "Detail" panel are active or not. It seems that the whole rendering pipeline is used all the time, instead of exploiting the fact that one could make incremental updates to renderings already produced. The speed of 3.4RC on my machine is tolerable but could be a lot better.