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...

[PhilipTobias]

Yes, Jim, Lightroom still needs to support more file formats - natively, without third-party plugins.

Thank you for your support and comments. Maybe one day Adobe will listen to its users and add this needed functionality.

...pt

[Merlin3]

For what would be some simple coding to view bmp files by Adobe..., Lightroom would have been the new replacement to what was an excellent DAM software, Extensis Portfolio, (discontinued and Portfolio users not happy !!!!)  but Lr doesnt support a native raster file type hat has existed since the inception of windows, that of bmp. All others do. I am gutted. Thats Lightroom of no use, I have thousands of bmp files, and no  I am not converting them, as I am making them daily with the progs that by default make them, simulators, and also I have to make them for Msoft Access database displays as it only works on bmp.

As such Lightroom falls at first hurdle.

Merlin

[PhilipTobias]

Yes, Merlin.

Lightroom still needs support for additional common image formats. The lack of same is indeed a "massive failing."

Thanks for your comment.   ...pt

[johnrellis]

Merging with another topic.

Please reference the new conversation here: Lightroom: full support for JPEG2000 format

[barryjeff1812]

I don't get why this discussion is 6 years old!! This is not a hard concept, either conceptually or technically. Lightroom needs to support a full spectrum of image file formats including those formats produced by other Adobe products - period! Phil, has anyone told you why this has dragged on for so long?

[alanterra]

Mother: I told you six years ago why you should get married!
Son: Mom!

[PhilipTobias]

>>Phil, has anyone told you why this has dragged on for so long?

No, no official Adobe representative has ever explained why Adobe has dragged their feet so long on providing support for additional necessary image formats.

...pt

PS: Since my original feature request covered multiple common image formats, I hope that combining that with specific JPEG2000 support does not further bury the real need for more image format support overall.

[Thany2]

Question: what is so special about GIF that Lightroom cannot support it?

How can we make Adobe see how common GIF is, and how Lightroom already supports a (albeit extremely limited) set of video formats?

GIF engines are *plentyful* and should be dead-easy to implement. Heck, even Photoshop can read and write GIF (among very many others!), so why are the Lightroom devs so stubborn in comparison?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Oh? Lightroom didn't support .bmp ? 
Now I have to go for ACDsee? Wow. 

[barryjeff1812]

It is actually worse than this - Lightroom gives certain file types (e.g., jpeg and png) the same namespace. Thus, if you have two files of the same name with these different extensions, only one can be shown in Lightroom. 

[johnrellis]

In general, LR allows you to have many files in a folder all with the same basename but different extensions, e.g. a.arw, a.dng, a.jpg, a.mov, a.nef, a.png, a.psd, a.tif:



There's a special case of JPEGs getting paired with raw files, but you can disable that behavior with the option Preferences > General > Treat JPEG Files Next To Raw Files As Separate Photos.

Have you observed otherwise?

[barryjeff1812]

Thanks, John, for this reply. I'll look into this. Assume your suggestion worked unless you hear otherwise.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

You've got some great ideas there Floris, but I can't vote on them because they're all in one list. If you post them separately, other people who also like the ideas can vote too, and that gives them a much better shot at being implemented.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

You've got some great ideas there Floris, but I can't vote on them because they're all in one list. If you post them separately, other people who also like the ideas can vote too, and that gives them a much better shot at being implemented.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

I'm really sad it has become the way Adobe does development.

No offence to you Victoria, personally, of course, as we can all see how you're doing your best to keep up, and doing a good job at it.

It's just it's not feasable for everyone to go through and 'fill tickets' for the team about obvious things. There are probably 2 or 3 things that got an 'under consideration' status over a year of 'great ideas'.  I gave up giving feedback long ago. You totally get the feeling that you're using a beta software while payling full price monthly without any sort of roadmap.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

That is sad Armen. I've seen some really old feature requests implemented over the last couple of years, and the number of votes does illustrate how popular a feature would be, so they are taken into account. It's true that they don't offer a roadmap in advance, because things don't always work out quite as easy as they first sound.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Greetings,

Thank you for your enthusiasm for the Lightroom family of products. For your Ideas to gain more prominent notice and have maximum impact with the team, there are a few things you could do to help.

Ideas, or feature requests as some call them, work like this on the Feedback Forum:  Each individual Idea is single post anchoring a thread. All of the people who have a similar idea and relate their rational will be merged into a single master post that contains all the comments on a single topic.  This has a few advantages:

1. It gives Adobe a place to accumulate votes (by either creating a thread that is merged into the master thread or by hitting the [Me Too] button in the upper right corner. Adobe can see at a glance, search for, and rank the top features being requested without having to search for scattered posts. The engineering staff can read the user’s comments and divine the best ways to implement a given request.
2. By being a part of this master Idea thread, when an Idea comes to fruition and becomes an active feature in the software, Adobe updates this thread. Participants in the thread, those who’ve been merged in and those who have hit the [Me Too] button will be notified by email to updates and feature announcements related to the original request.

You can help us out by doing a few things to make your idea count. First, if you have an idea, search to see if idea is already posted as a formal Idea. If it is, hit the [Me Too] button and if you like add your individual comments to the thread. Second, if you don’t find the idea is already posted, create a new thread and post your idea for a new feature.  Please keep the Ideas as one idea per thread so that we can merge them with the correct master threads if necessary.  We don’t have a way to merge an Idea into multiple threads so if you make multiple feature requests in a single post, it is very likely to get lost in the shuffle, lessening its impact. 

[kernol-jon]

Oh dear ... the "official response" is governed by a "tick-the-box" mindset. An incredibly thoughtful and indeed useful post will be summarily ignored because it does not conform to the "rules" that each point must be set out in its own little box ... all 17 of them !!!

The irony is that even after taking the time to dismember the ideas - no matter how good they may be ... and judging from other threads - no matter how "popular" those threads may be ... the probability of getting any developer response is pretty much zero.  

See for e.g. this one 
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/i-like-the-new-lightroom-cc-but-i-hate-auto-s...

[kernol-jon]

Just an after thought - surely Adobe can progress beyond this linear approach to the Community and make use of abundantly available AI algorithms [try Google] for interrogating and sorting all the "big data" housed within the community to determine the frequency with which ideas are shared and the extent to which they fit with existing development plans?

It does seem strange that in the 21st century a leading creative house like Adobe still needs to have customer ideas placed in little boxes ??

I'm sure a lot of "out the box" thinking has gone into the development of premium products like Premiere / Photoshop / Lightroom etc etc ... time to apply the same to this community.

Jira would be a great start - as suggested by Floris  😉

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Good on you Floris -

I could not agree more - and felt that a simple "Like" was not adequate appreciation to you - both for your initial string of of solid suggestions and for your candid response to being told to dismember your original post.

I have been and remain active on several other product communities - including the Windows Insider Program - all of whom seem to use intelligent tools to evaluate the threads within their communities.

Road maps aside - this community seems to have less respect from the developers than any of the others I belong to.  Makes me wonder whether its primary purpose was simply to allow good folk to get things off their chest [cathartic effect] but never intended to be taken too seriously by the developers.

Once upon a time - many moons ago - I recall similar criticism of a video editing suite forum that I belong to - but they have made huge leaps in actively participating in the threads with meaningful comments on issues being worked on. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I've been asking Adobe to let us see pdfs for... how many years now?... in their "surveys". 
Obviously no one is listening! 
Surely this can't be that difficult a request, especially when so many users are in favor. 
But I guess users don't count.

[PhilipTobias]

Thank you - Keep pressuring Adobe to support additional image formats in Lightroom.

[nermie]

Please Adobe, make your Creative Suite truly integrated with at least our own products. I want to be able to use LR to import,view and manage PDF files (an Adobe standard). I can do it in Bridge without any fuss, why can't I do it in LR. I understand this feature request goes back at least 8 years and still nothing has been done about it. If you negelect the very core premise of your CC products, i.e. seamless workflow integration, then Adobe and the CC suite will soon lose relevance and value, a competitor will come along that listens to its user needs and they will attract your customers. Once you lose your customers trust and confidence, it is very hard (and expensive) to win them back. I have been an Adobe LR user since the beta days, it is generally a good product, but it is losing its shine. In the past, third party LR plugins like import anyfile would get around this issue but that no longer works with latest versions of LR.

Another example of lacking true integration that I have raised before is not having the ability to drag and drop edited images in LR into Indesign and keep the non destructive edits. There is Live captioning between programs, but not Live edits. A significant oversight resulting in a time consuming workflow of having to edit in Photoshop, then re-save the image so the image can be placed into indesign.

Please  stop procrastinating on this matter, you have the expertise and the ability to solve these issues quickly and efficiently, just do it.

[PhilipTobias]

Thank you, Doug Willis.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

> In the past, third party LR plugins like import anyfile would get around this issue but that no longer works with latest versions of LR.

Have you reported that to John?