Wishlist and speculating on Lightroom 5

[hamish niven]

Any news, ideas thoughts of the next iteration of Lightroom?

Message title was edited by: Brett N

[vainsang73]

Well, actually there are two things that I don't like in Lightroom and make me lose a lot of time. Firstly, and this would be killer features to me, I would like to be able to assign multiple parent keywords to a keyword (like defining tags, group of tags and which groups a tag live in). For example, let's say I have the following keywords :

- a keyword children, for photos with children in general

- a keyword family, for people in my family

- a keyword blond, for blond people

- a keyword Lily, for my daughter Lily

Let's say my daughter Lily is blond, I would like to tell Lightroom that the "Lily" tag is child of "children" AND "family" AND "blond", so that when I tag a photo "Lily", this photo must be found when I search for photo tagged blond, or photo tagged family, or photo tagged children, or tagged Lily, or any combination of these.

The second thing is that I would like to be able to perform some advanced searchs with combinations of OR and AND conditions on filters.

And last thing as a bonus, make Lightroom to be able to be accessible on a network, because when I open lightroom from my laptop work and then work on my desktop, I want to be able to get my last modifications automatically. I also want my wife to be able to browse lightroom photos while I'm editing some files.

If theses features could be added in Lightroom 5, I would be sure to upgrade !

[Pbeck1]

How about a standalone image viewer by Adobe (that runs independently from Lightroom, but included with the installation), thus starting up and running lightning fast?

[ssprengel]

Are you imagining something that only displays image-embedded previews, or something that reads and displays things from the LR preview database if they exist or renders from the default settings if non settings exist (like a view-only part of Library)? In my opinion, anything except displaying the image-embedded preview (which initially comes from the camera and has nothing to do with Adobe settings) is going to be slow, especially if the viewer needs to render from Adobe default settings, so the tradeoff is speed vs correctness of the preview.

[Pbeck1]

Good question, and i suppose it depends on what the user would want the viewer  for.

I can think of 3 main reasons:

[1] Pre development for viewing, rating and rejecting images

[2)]During development

[3] Post develpment including viewing exported finished images

Personally i think Lightroom pretty much cators for [1] & [2] already. So that just leaves [3] (obviously catering for [1] too), and so yes using embedded or Jpeg (if viewimg Jpegs). It would be a lightning fast image viewer, that loaded and ran independently from thre main Lightroom program, and would negate the need to have a standalone image viewer like Faststone, etc.

Features i would like to see would included full screen ability, and total navigation and zoom control using the just the mouse (i.e zoom with mouse wheel, and left click for next image, right click for previous image)

[ssprengel]

The Library module is intended for the fast, pre-development rating application. About the only thing that could be made faster is a mode where you could use the camera-embedded preview or an out-of-date preview instead of ever rendering one.

Bridge does #1 and #3 if you have Quick View enabled which uses the camera-embedded preview in lieu of rendering anything, and if this imagined viewer program is independent of LR then it is how is it different than something like FastStone?

During Development I don’t understand an independent viewer would work or be useful since by definition you aren’t in Develop if you are viewing previews and rating things and being a single-user application LR and this viewer couldn’t be used at the same time as LR.

What problem(s) are you hoping to solve and what compromises are you willing to live with by using an Adobe-created viewer that is different than LR’s Library module?

[Pbeck1]

If i'm honest, my thinking was mostly about a standalone image viewer styled by Adobe. I personally would use it to view my finished exported photos from Lightroom (which are normally Jpegs).

It doesnt really have to be Lightroom specific, i.e you could just use it as a standalone image viewer to view all kinds of images tiffs, jpegs and all. A bit like a replacement for the windows photo viewer.

Yes, i can download software like Faststone image viewer, but i just thought it would be cool to have one made by adobe, and yes that amongst other Adobe software, it could also come bundled with Lightroom.

Bridge is not quite what i had in mind, as i dont have/can't afford Photoshop etc, and it's a lot more than just a viewer.

[areohbee]

Pbeck1 wrote:
If i'm honest...

I appreciate your candor... .

Pbeck1 wrote:
my thinking was mostly about a standalone image viewer styled by Adobe. I personally would use it to view my finished exported photos from Lightroom (which are normally Jpegs).

Not a bad idea, in my opinion. - consider making such a request to Adobe here:

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

I can imagine configuring it as a (built-in) after-export action, for example.

One of the advantages (in addition to familiar styling...) would be to assure proper color handling, since so many viewers are still color-management challenged.

R

[Pbeck1]

Not a bad idea, in my opinion. - consider making such a request to Adobe here:

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

ok,

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

[cfransw]

http://www.cameraegg.org/adobe-lightroom-5-public-beta-to-be-announced-soon/

[boumy9999]

Thank you c. franz w!

[Bob_Peters]

FYI:  The original article is no longer on TechCrunch.  It looks like TechCrunch touched a nerve somewhere

[hamish niven]

oops, oh well, good news for those hoping LR will be improving soon

Bob_Peters wrote:

FYI:  The original article is no longer on TechCrunch.  It looks like TechCrunch touched a nerve somewhere

[Jeff Schewe]

hamish niven wrote:

oops, oh well, good news for those hoping LR will be improving soon

How long can you hold your breath?

Literally :~)

Check out the Lightroom Journal in a short while...

[raffi2]

Done:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom5/

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

hamish niven wrote:

rather "Give us some more info" from Geoff the Kiwi the other week, then nothing, but I expect he's busily researching my questions..... (tumbleweed rolls across the deserts of NZ)

Bump your thread then.  There's a lot of traffic running through these forums, and it can be easy to miss a reply.

[areohbee]

hamish niven wrote:

There were some noises the other week about a new RAW processing program which seemed to be lightning fast and started the images with a pleasing default.

Which one?

I did notice PhaseOne has released a new version (7) of CaptureOne recently, which they are claiming has a new raw engine. Their marketing for the new version seems squarely aimed at Lr to me... - I haven't tried it.

[hamish niven]

that may be interesting Rob. Nope it was not that, rather a brand new piece of software - not much help am I there.

[Bob_Peters]

This may be what Rob was referring to.  See the August 9 entry in John Nack's blog for additional links.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2012/08/adobe-mit-team-up-on-halide-a-new-imaging-language.html

[hamish niven]

Hi Rob and Bob

This is a different alternative to the one I was thinking of - Darktable, going to try this now now.

However, the processing of LR4 is so remarkable, that it is very very hard to beat.

[areohbee]

Very interesting Hamish. I'll be interested to hear how it goes when you try it. I'll probably be using Lightroom til the day I die (or Adobe dies), but I can't help but be interested in how the alternatives stack up.

PS - I agree Lr4 is very very hard to beat, and I think Adobe knows it, as do most of their customers.

Cheers, Rob.

[richardplondon]

PS - I agree Lr4 is very very hard to beat, and I think Adobe knows it, as do most of their customers.

as individual user software, I agree completely.

However, I do see a clear space for a (perhaps second-tier, more expensive) product that should be intercompatible with LR to the extent possible: a multi-user-accessible DAM in the LR "mould" - obviously with a different DB platform involved to enable that. Not necessarly an enterprise scale system, just sufficient for 2-5 people to share an image library sensibly. LR Pro, group edition.

[edwin_ludicrous]

Building on your idea, forget LR 5, I'd like the next single user edition of LR5 to be called LR4(PWV) for 'properly working version'. I have a dream: of a programme that doesn't feel the need to sweat the hardware to within an inch of its life, but stays comfortably within the performance limits of current hardware. I have a dream of a piece of software that gets properly fixed before moving on to the next dispiriting fail that tries to do too much, and then that gets fixed before moving up to the next dismal, miserable improvement.

I originally joined the computer rat-race many years ago with an 8286 and a magnificent 40mb HD. I now have a machine that is a 100 times more powerful, running a 100 times more slowly than the 8286 - a veritable 64-bit Ferrari doomed to drive endlessly down the congested streets of London.

I know it's the way of the world to tolerate the paying customer endlessly whining about the flawed software we get delivered to us. But once, just once, I wish stuff got fixed before moving onwards and upwards.  Lightroom 4 is an astonishingly joyless and demoralising experience. Spare me LR5.

Hate the thing, just hate it.

[hamish niven]

I hear you Edwin

LR PWV would actually be every users wish and dream, ok apart from the few who's machines are for some reason working perfectly.

I'd like to think that it is Adobe's goal to also get there as well, but there is a code issue somewhere in the guterline of the process, the plugins, the architecture that is causing this issue and enough combinations and iterations to make the situation fraught.

I've just invested in 2 Mybook Thunderbolt Duos at $559 each from B&H. They are faster than my imac, however when I run a catalog of 10 photos on my internal hard drive I get sluggish speeds and disappointing a disappointing result.

I'm hoping these beasts improve the speed, cos it was not a cheap exercise upgrading from USB2 / firewire 800.

[Lee_Jay]

hamish niven wrote:

I hear you Edwin

LR PWV would actually be every users wish and dream, ok apart from the few who's machines are for some reason working perfectly.

It's more like those few that, for some reason, are having problems.  Most people aren't.

I have LR4 on three different machines, and it works fine on all of them.

It would still be helpful to figure out why it's such a problem on some people's machines.

[Keith Reeder]

Lee Jay wrote:

It's more like those few that, for some reason, are having problems.  Most people aren't.

Yep, this.