What new features in Lightroom 6 ?

[bitm07]

With Adobe Photoshop Lightoom 6 expected to be released later this year, what new featured would you like to see in the new version ?.

[AnOpticalView]

Quote "am telling you what one of the lead programmers from Adobe has explained. He has also gone ahead and explained why Lightroom has different hardware needs and so is different than Photoshop. This man knows the guts of the programming and the hardware and software issues involved, and this was his conclusion, and many people accept his statement. Nevertheless, if you feel that there is a way to make Lightroom have greater performance using the GPU than the CPU, please go ahead and explain how this can be done."

Yes and they are economical with the truth.  I was a Senior Software Engineer, IT Quality Engineer and IT tutor for nearly 30 years so I know.  I am an expert.  Admittedly rusty but the proof is in Photoshop and especially After Effects which benefit massively by using CUDA GPU based acceleration alongside the CPU.  The benefits are fabulous but Lightroom is a more down-market product (althoughly widely adopted) and perhaps it wasn't worth implementing?  Who knows but I do know many are no longer even considering Photoshop muchless Creative Cloud and are quite happy with Lightroom.  This product may well form (for non-professionals) Adobe's biggest cutomer base and as such a faster product is good.

[Michael D Sullivan]

DumbMarine wrote:

Have you tried importing Nikon D610 .NEFs into Lightroom 4?

The D610 came out before, or during the lifetime of LR4, and wasn't supported by it.  It wasn't abandoned by it.  It is supported in LR 5.

[AnOpticalView]

Lol.  Substitute the words "not supported" for "abandoned" does that explain it?

[areohbee]

I am glad Adobe does not waste their time and our money maintaining legacy versions of Lightroom software (e.g. retrofitting support for native raws of new cameras..).

Forcing you to convert to DNG if you want to keep using a legacy version seems like a very reasonable compromise to me.

My advice? if you can't afford a Lightroom upgrade and a D610, consider a different camera model.

[rhackel]

I'd like to see either or both: a much easier way to move libraries between computers, as well as access a library located on a server.

[gener7]

I was helping someone a while back set Photoshop interface to the Russian language, but to my surprise I do not see Russian as an option in LR's preferences.

So LR needs to expand from the 12 packs already in there.

[areohbee]

Consider making that a feature request direct to Adobe (it might be lost here in the user-to-user forum):

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/new

[gener7]

Thanks for that.

I forget sometimes in these U2U forums that while staff may drop in, the feedback page is the proper venue.

So that's done aand hopefully LR will have all 27 language packs CC offers, instead of the default 12.

[areohbee]

You're welcome.

gener7 wrote:

Hopefully LR will have all 27 language packs CC offers, instead of the default 12.

Keep hopes high and expectations low (lotsa stuff on the to-do list never gets done..).

~R.

[petr_krenzelok]

Hello,

I use LR since 4.x, now with the latest 5.3 version. But I am also working with onOne Perfect Photo Suite. And while I can understand LR does not have true layers, I would definitely welcome improvement in the presets area, as I can find recent presets being almost useless:

1) Allow us to set the opacity/strength for the development preset. It can be done, as there is an external plugin, which does so.

2) I want to go even further - recently, development presets can be used only upon the whole image. I would welcome one special Brush, which would allow you to paint-in/out the desired preset in certain areas. This feature would take the LR to the different level. You simply can't compare here to the capabilities of OnOne PPS.

3) Make presets interfaces more consistent! When you compare development presets, brush presets and crop presets, those use different interface and also different underlying logic. E.g. crop presets are not editable, you can add only 3 of them IIRC, and those are stored in a database of catalog, not an editable external file. There is definitely room for an improvement ...

As for me, I use only Library and Develop modules, just recently started to use Print module. But - OnOne PPS added the Browse module and they seem to be working on rating/flagging stuff. Once delivered, there is one less reason to use LR, as development capabilities in regards to weak presets, can't simply stand a comparison ...

Cheers,

Petr

[kevincrow]

Definitely camera shake reduction and smart sharpening from photoshop CC.

[tfischus]

Hello,

I'd really like to see some added features to the slideshow; at the bare minimum add a Ken Burns effect and best case add some additional transition features. Its an area where most people are going somewhere else to make slide shows; I'd love to do it all in LR.

Also, I'd like to ability to copy and paste a radial filter; so that I have 2 radial filters with the same exact size. For instance, sometimes I want to lighten a face, but cool shadows else where; if I could easily copy and paste a radial filter, than I can stack them on top of eachother and have one inverted to lighten and the other cooling shadows.

And if I'm getting picky; the ability to import photos to different desitnations, apply different key words etc from the same import screen. I might do a newborn shoot that also has other family memebers in it. So being able to import all and have separate key words would be helpful. Or if I had a couple different shoots on one card, it would be convenient.

Thanks for asking!

[JanCilliers]

No question about my most desired feature.... 100% GPU Acceleration. Zero/Minimal image processing on the CPU.

[areohbee]

Offloading processing to GPU:

* May not happen anytime soon.

* May not help as much as you hope even if it does happen.

Thus, It might be worthwhile to specify which aspects of Lr performance are the most bothersome to you..

~R.

[JanCilliers]

As someone who often uses GPU accelerated software for image processing, I think I am reasonably well versed in what GPU acceleration can and cannot do.

In Lightroom we work with large raw images... usually above 20mp. The interactivity of these images has been improved recently with the 100% jpg proxy images. This is great for the Library view. However, in Develop view, the interactivity is slow. By having the GPU take care of the image processing, we should be able to see the image change and adjust when moving the sliders around without any noticeable delay or lag. It should be a 100% smooth interactive experience.

[areohbee]

JanCilliers wrote:

I think I am reasonably well versed in what GPU acceleration can and cannot do.

To be clear: my intent was not to discredit.

(but just because you used software with GPU acceleration and it was fast, and Lr does not use GPU acceleration and it's slow, does not mean Lightroom could be sped up much by incorporating GPU acceleration)

Eric Chan of Adobe (who also claims to be well-versed..) has stated that:

* It wouldn't help much (in develop module).

* It probably won't be happening anytime soon.

* Users should say what the problem is, rather than how to solve it.

Also, Lr performance can vary wildly from machine to machine. For me, in develop module, there is almost no perceptable lag between slider adjustment and visible effect. All cores are utilized at near 100% in develop module... If you are not having such performance, then there is a good chance Lr is not operating normally (optimally) on your machine.

Anyway, +1 for improved performance, however they can do it..

I'd like to see lib previews kept up to date, and images intelligently pre-rendered/cached for develop - to reduce the initial loading delay.

Cheers,

Rob

[D Fosse]

GPU acceleration may be more problematic than it appears. Color conversion using OpenGL is distinctly inaccurate in Photoshop, resulting in gradient banding and often loss of shadow detail.

The problem has been known for a while, but I didn't realize the extent of it until recently. I did some critical testing on an Eizo display I'm considering replacing with a newer NEC PA, and so I looked especially at shadow and highlight separation, and gradient distribution. The monitor passed BTW, but I discovered dramatic differences in Photoshop rendering with OpenGL on or off.

In an sRGB file, with OpenGL off, I have shadow separation all the way down. I can (barely) see 1,1,1 against a background of 0,0,0.

Turn OpenGL on, however, and black clips at between 3 and 4.

It has already been known for a while that a ProPhoto gradient displays with cyan banding in Photoshop/OpenGL on. This was first documented by Noel Carboni in the PS forum.

The banding is most apparent in the shadows, but again, I didn't realize how bad it was until I went looking for it (I usually work in Adobe RGB in Photoshop). And it turns out that this isn't the only problem - there is also a general luminance banding not present when you turn OpenGL off. All problems appear to get worse the larger the document color space is. So Lightroom would get the full effect.

All in all, there may be good reason the Lightroom/ACR team is holding back on GPU acceleration.

I posted my results here: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1436085?tstart=480

[99jon]

The best new feature for me in LR6 would be some kind of automatic keyboard shortcut lock. So for example when working in the metadata panel adding captions, you can’t accidentally trigger other functions.

[markalanthomas]

I agree.

It's the single key commands which drive me crazy. With some frequency I will accidentally change the rating and label of an image I didn't mean to change. Often it'll happen like this: while adjusting an image in a 5-star smart collection, I'll click the White Balance temperature field and type, say, 6055, only to then realize that the temperature field never really activated and I have just applied the Yellow label to an image, and changed its rating to zero stars, causing it to vanish from the smart collection. Really annoying.

I want an easy, native way to change and/or disable keyboard commands, particularly the ones which are a single key. There used to be a plug-in (or something) which let you mess with this stuff, and I did try it, but there were a few things I could never change, so I gave up on it.

[JaredPeters]

I love Lightroom 5 to pieces and would never consider replacing it with Photoshop. However, I do find myself yurning for more of the less involved Photoshop features which have everything to do with photos. I'm talking mainly about HDR and Panorama (Photomontage) tools. I feel these features are the most common features of Photoshop which photographers will want to use/have access to and I don't see any reason why these shouldn't be a part of Lightroom. I am not willing to take out a CC subscription or buy Photoshop purely for use of these two features (I also don't believe these features being included with Lightroom would take away any sales from Photoshop). It would be great if I could import my photos to Lightroom, as I always do, and then be able to quickly and easily create a photomontage or HDR image from my imported photographs right inside of Lightroom.

In short, HDR and Photomontage should be features of Lightroom.

Ps. Some sort of graphical optomisation or other would be great too. I get far more lag than I'm comfortable with on my 15" Retina MacBook Pro where I really shouldn't be experiencing lag at all. There are also odd graphical glitches I've noticed too with photos not rendering right and ending up as a mess of pixels and also sliders not having an effect when moved in small increments (I got all the way to the extreme end of one slider by moving it very small amounts at a time, with no effect on the photo - this can't be right).

[Guest]

Introduction of a 10 bit pipe-line would be great. That would bring it into line with Photoshop wrt GPU, monitor suitability/resolution etc.

[Rich Beaubien]

One of the improvements I'd like to see is in the multiple monitor area. Right now that secondary screen is useful for review but I'd love to be able to designate which image view is the secondary. I currently use two Dell monitors one a 24" and the other a 17". Not a great combo for Lightroom. Occasionally I use them for Library reviewing. The primary is the 17" and the secondary the 24. But If I have to switch to the Develop Module I end up dragging the primary over to the 24". I'd love to be able to make (Develop) corrections in the secondary window. Or another way to address this issue would be breakaway panels ala Photoshop.

[Gregory Brunner]

I would really enjoy Tethered Capture Support for Sony Cameras without buying dna software plug-in.

Greg

[areohbee]

GregoryBrunner wrote:

I would really enjoy Tethered Capture Support for Sony Cameras without buying dna software plug-in.

Why? (I mean, other than saving yourself $30) - does the plugin not function adequately relative to native support?...

[Gregory Brunner]

Hmm, I can't find something wrong on saving 30$ but that's a matter of opinion.
Mainly because other cameras are supported for free. And your answer is not correct. Its not 30$, it is 30$ each LR Major Version and Camera Model.
Example: If you use a Alpha 850 and a A99 you have to buy the software twice each LR Major Version.
Apart from that point, the plug in works absolutely fine.
Greg