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

[PhilipTobias]

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...

[johnrellis]

I use Any File for my own catalogs. Please get in touch with me at the support email address: 
http://www.johnrellis.com/lightroom/anyfile.htm#support

[nermie]

John,

I emailed you a few days ago and this was your response;


"LR CC (the new cloud-focused version) doesn't support plugins of any kind, unfortunately, so you can't use Any File with it.  Any File only works with the traditional, desktop-focused version of Lightroom – LR Classic, LR 6, or LR CC 2015 – on either Mac or Windows.

Thanks much for your interest,

   John"

[johnrellis]

Ah, more branding confusion from Adobe's perspicuous product naming.

Lightroom CC (the cloud-focused version of LR) doesn't support plugins of any kind. But Lightroom Classic CC (the desktop-focused version), including the newest version 8.2 released in February, continues to support plugins, and Any File runs well in 8.2.  Adobe continues to develop both Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic.

The title of your post here said "Lightroom Classic CC".  But if you're not sure which version you're running, do Help > System Info.  Victoria's article explains the differences: 
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/the-future-of-lightroom/

[nermie]

My apologies John,
Yes the naming is easy to mix up an that is what I have done.

I do have both Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC and it is Lightroom Classic that I mostly use. I will tri out your PlugIn 
Although I do suggest  that you update your webpage to avoid others that may also be wondering.

[johnrellis]

The Web page currently says, "Any File requires Lightroom 6 / CC 2015 or Lightroom Classic".

[gnits999]

I am delighted to see the plug-in for "Any Files".  I did not know this plug-in existed. Complements to John R Ellis for the effort involved.  I will test it out and make a donation if I find it anyway useful (which I expect to do).

My background is large scale enterprise level commercial application and infrastructure development and implementation. I understand what is involved in terms of integrating systems and applications.

It has been my view, for many years, that Adobe does not under stand the meaning of 'integration' or real world 'workflow'. 

It is astonishing that Lightroom does not fully integrate to InDesign, especially to avoid round trips and the creation of intermediate files that end up  populating / clogging various directories and sub directories. There is a large number of people just waiting for the Data Merge feature in Affinity to ditch InDesign. I will be one of those then supporting Affinity.


It is also really bad form that Lightroom does not allow Creative Suite docs to be managed by Lightroom. I keep a client sub folder for each project, which contains related documents, such as briefs, agreements, project notes, etc.  If Adobe allowed pdf's to be maintained in Lr then I could work around that. Ideally, all documents of the user's choice should be manageable  by Lightroom.  This is seriously short sighted behaviour by Adobe, as it just narrows the audience for their products.


I have been encouraged by some recent improvements in Lightroom and Photoshop  usability. I sense someone in authority has joined the team and has a real world grasp of usability from a user's perspective. A release of Ps a few months ago fixed about 20 scenarios which always confounded new PS users.  Well done.   I hope this trend continues. For the first time in years and years and years I was impressed by a meaningful application update. Complements to the architect of these improvements.


Bottom line. 
Allow Lightroom to manage all file types, priority on Pdf's. Secondly, improve integration between Lr and InDesign or face the prospect of InDesign becoming a sideshow.

[Lumigraphics]

Bridge is the integrated file manager for publishing files. Lightroom is for photographers. I'd rather NOT see Adobe waste resources on adding a bunch of publishing support to Lightroom. Its bad enough that they took developers away from Lightroom to create LRCC instead of working on the existing product.

Bridge has a bunch of features not in LR, and vice versa. And both are buggy and have a lot of UI problems. :sigh:

[PhilipTobias]

Photographers like me don't want to be juggling both Lightroom and Bridge to manage our image assets. Lightroom should be improved to recognize common image formats.

[barryjeff1812]

It's actually worse than some of the comments imply. Lightroom gives certain image types the same namespace. For example, if you have a png and jpg file in the directory, Lightroom will only show one of them.

[Lumigraphics]

I'm a working pro photographer. There is no juggling, Bridge is a file browser and Lightroom a database RAW processor.

[PhilBurton]

I think it is also a shame that there is no multi-user version of Lightroom, to make it more useful in SOHO and workgroup environments, as well as in enterprises. 

[PhilipTobias]

Sorry, juggling two different apps to manage the same image files is just not convenient. And I've been involved in professional photography for about 50 years.

[Lumigraphics]

Bridge and Lightroom haven't been around for fifty years. And my vote is against making LR a publishing hub. They can't even display layered Photoshop files correctly, and a LOT of other things should take priority.

Adobe obviously has limited development resources and is having trouble using them efficiently. They are spread way too thin and instead of doing the existing programs well, they are throwing a lot of mud at the wall. I'd much rather they FOCUS and do fewer things better.

Let Bridge handle publishing and Lightroom handle photography.

[PhilipTobias]

Sorry, David, I disagree. As someone who needs to work with image files in InDesign, Dreamweaver, and other apps, it is not practical to juggle both Bridge and Lightroom to find and manipulate images. Your needs and workflow are different from mine.

[Lumigraphics]

I don't see Adobe adding support for all those formats. That's a big job and not really in line with where it fits into Adobe's ecosystem. I'm voting no.

[gnits999]

1. Mixing Lightroom and Bridge (in my view) is a recipe for disaster.  The most obvious is moving files outside of Lr. There is also potential for side car issues, messages that metadata has been updated by 3rd party apps, etc. 

2. The minimum Adobe should do is cater for their own eco-system. There is no excuse for Adobe to ignore images in their own Creative Suite family.  Adobe have the resources to do this if they wanted to. Catering for non Adobe file formats would be nice to have. Catering for pdf's would be a super fist step.

3. They really only have to cater for the Library module. 

[dbur971]

LR Library module should at least support all formats that PS supports.  Who wants to fool around with two separate image management programs?  Even if no edit feature is provided for certain formats it still get's all your image database in one place.

[PhilipTobias]

Yes, dbur, you nicely summarized this feature request. And you're also right that no one "wants to fool around with two separate image management programs."

[ProDesignTools]

With today's software updates and new releases of the apps, you can now export your photos as PNGs in both Lightroom Classic and in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR):

https://theblog.adobe.com/august-photography-releases/

"With this release, we have added a new file format for your export needs. You can now export images in the PNG file format. Importing PNG files have been supported in previous Lightroom versions."

[Thany2]

It is a small babystep (more like a crawl, really) in the right direction. But I think the broad topic here is about imports, not exports.

Exports are way easier. Anyone can export to any lossless format and use some batch process to turn them into PNG. Importing file formats is where LR needs to add support, because preprocessing them makes duplicate files to keep track of, and cannot ever work for animated files.

[PhilBurton]

I think the bigger issue is that Lightroom is single-user only.  If somehow (I'm not holding my breath) Lightroom became multi-user, then a full-on DAM would make more sense as part of a workgroup or enterprise solution. 

As i said, i'm not holding my breath.  The rest of what used to be Creative Suite is multi-user, with enterprise pricing.  Why not Lightroom? 

there is a "techical reason," which is that the SQLite database used by Lightroom is inherently single-user.  But that's just an excuse.  Adobe could easily replace that database.

[TacoZuidema.com]

Yes I would love this!! really needed!

[E33WW2DTDN]

This is a feature request.  Lightroom Classic is a great photo editor.  But many people love it for its capabilities as a digital asset manager.

It would be a valuable addition if Lightroom could import a more generous variety of file types.  Beyond images, photographers often have a diverse collection of files associated with a photo shoot - related PDF files, DOC files, and other non-traditional files that are not images.  Furthermore, there are files in the visual arts that Lightroom does not currently recognize, such as 360 camera files, Apple iPhone Cinematic videos and portraits, EPS, SVG, and the like. 

Other digital asset managers, such as ACDSEE, already recognize diverse file types such as PDF, DOCX, PPT, XLS, RTF, etc.

It would be super helpful in order to collect, organize, rate, and and add metadata to non-editable files along with the images that Lightroom already manages.

No preview of the new file is needed - just a stub or icon to represet the file for management, movement, organization, creating metadata, etc.

Lightroom already imports files that it cannot edit - namely, video files.  It would be a short additoinal stretch to import other non-editable file types.

Windows users waited for 2+ years before Lightroom Classic was able to import H.265 videos, but with an immediate import function, users could manage files such as these before the Lightroom code is updated to recognize the files.

Please add this feature!