LR can't cope with presets

[JBedfordPhoto]

This may be known already to devs, but it's made frustrating for users like me who have purchased many presets; if you have too many, LR can't cope. 

My tone curve fluidity is complete garbage; sticky, unresponsive, nothing like the smoothness of Photoshop. It was only when I temporarily changed the name of the tone curve presets folder (so that LR couldn't "find" it) that the tone curve became loose and useable again. 

Devs, what's up with this? If there's a limitation on the number of presets we can have available, then you should be aware of this and either set a limit (don't) or fix this issue. Why should the number of presets affect the functionality of the tone curve in the first place? How are these two seemingly independent entities (function and preset files) tied together? This is certainly worth investigating. 

Furthermore, when I do need to access the tone curve (I have many presets) please include a scroll bar instead of those slow, cumbersome arrows that appear below and above the column. 

[SeanMcCormack]

How many presets are you talking about here and what OS/Lightroom version are you on? 

[JBedfordPhoto]

Latest LRCC and Windows 10 64 home. When I ctrl-A all the files in the tone curve presets folder I get 428. I still don't see how it should matter how many presets I have...

[SeanMcCormack]

That's definitely a lot of presets for just the Tone Curve. And I absolutely understand why you'd have them there, but at the same time, Develop Presets are now better able to handle preset quantity. I don't think the Tone Curve presets in Lightroom were really designed for such numbers. As you've noted, this should be pretty obvious from how basic the UI is. You could try a request for change at https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/categories/photoshop_family_photoshop_lightroom.

[richardplondon]

Hmm. I wonder whether the same difficulty would be met with named Develop presets, each applying different Tone Curve settings (and restricted in scope to just doing that), saved into a dedicated group within the (User) Presets panel? Certainly those are well behaved so far as scrolling, plus (bonus) you can could see a preview of the visual effect of each one, just by rolling over its name. Also you can include or not include whatever else you require, in the same preset.

My own hesitation about relying on Tone Curve for extensive adjustment is that this operates POST Basic panel actions - which themselves operate POST local adjustment actions. Being a dependent and not a primary adjustment, TC has limited ability to smoothly claw back highlights or to nicely stretch out shadow tones - at least, compared to the other available methods in LR which sit closer in the processing chain, to the source picture info. Hence, I myself haven't put a lot of effort into TC presets and I doubt that a lot of developer effort is devoted to this feature either.

[JBedfordPhoto]

Well, the solution was changing (temporarily) the name of the TC presets folder and restart so that LR created its own empty (new) presets folder for TC adjustments. Now the tone curve is smooth. 

I still don't understand the connection between the number of presets in relation to crippling the performance of the tool itself. The two should be unrelated, shouldn't they?

[SeanMcCormack]

Originally presets were like mini programs that needed to load into Lightroom. While Tone Curve presets were always .xmp files, they may have been loaded in a similar fashion. Even older versions of Lightroom couldn't handle excess amounts of presets. They even removed presets lists from the right click menu because of this.

[johnrellis]

I still don't understand the connection between the number of presets in relation to crippling the performance of the tool itself. The two should be unrelated, shouldn't they?

This is sloppy programming by the engineers. Some experimentation shows that the Tone Curve works like the Crop tool. In the Crop tool, if you make a manual crop adjustment and the current ratio matches a built-in or user-defined preset, LR will display that preset name. Similarly, when you manually adjust the tone curve, if the adjustments match an existing user-defined preset, LR will display its name.

Most likely, on every curve adjustment you make, LR is searching the entire list of presets for one that might match the current settings. When you have just a few or even 10 presets, this goes very fast. But when you have 400 presets, it takes noticeably more time, making the tool sluggish.  (This what computer scientists call an O(n^2) -- n-squared -- algorithm.) There are simple coding techniques to avoid this slowth, but it probably never occurred to the engineer that someone might have "too many" presets.

You could post a bug report in the official Adobe feedback forum, where Adobe wants all product feedback: 

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/categories/photoshop_family_photoshop_lightroom. 

Product developers read everything posted there but rarely participate in this forum, which is primarily user-to-user.

Likes

[johnrellis]

I still don't understand the connection between the number of presets in relation to crippling the performance of the tool itself. The two should be unrelated, shouldn't they?

This is sloppy programming by the engineers. Some experimentation shows that the Tone Curve works like the Crop tool. In the Crop tool, if you make a manual crop adjustment and the current ratio matches a built-in or user-defined preset, LR will display that preset name. Similarly, when you manually adjust the tone curve, if the adjustments match an existing user-defined preset, LR will display its name.

Most likely, on every curve adjustment you make, LR is searching the entire list of presets for one that might match the current settings. When you have just a few or even 10 presets, this goes very fast. But when you have 400 presets, it takes noticeably more time, making the tool sluggish.  (This what computer scientists call an O(n^2) -- n-squared -- algorithm.) There are simple coding techniques to avoid this slowth, but it probably never occurred to the engineer that someone might have "too many" presets.

You could post a bug report in the official Adobe feedback forum, where Adobe wants all product feedback: 

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/categories/photoshop_family_photoshop_lightroom. 

Product developers read everything posted there but rarely participate in this forum, which is primarily user-to-user.

[GoldingD]

I find myself having to ask a new question. And perhaps  will learn something new.

Now when I use the tone curve, and I select point curve, I can change from Linear to Medium or Strong contrast. So apparently these are tone curve presets? And Lightroom comes with 2.

And apparently, you can have additional tone curve presets?

Are they treated, or referred to, as develop presets, and do they show up in the presets panel?

Not a big presets user

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[SeanMcCormack]

As Richard has said, you can add Tone Curves presets in the panel. As soon as you move a point on the curve, you get an option to save a Preset in the menu. These presets are shared with the Camera Raw Tone Curve, and prior to Lightroom 7.2 was the only presets shared between Lightroom and Camera Raw. And that's what made them useful. Now that Camera Raw and Lightroom share Develop Presets, which again as Richard has pointed out are more useful, Tone Curve Presets really don't offer any substantial benefit over Develop Presets.

[richardplondon]

davidg: "you can have additional tone curve presets? Are they treated, or referred to, as develop presets, and do they show up in the presets panel?"

No, these are only accessed within the Tone Curve panel and can only refer to Tone Curve settings.

Develop Presets appear in the Presets panel and can refer in a selective way to any Develop settings you choose, including any modification via Tone Curve if you so desire.

So the effect of saving a Develop Preset which is configured to only affect the tone curve, leaving all other settings alone, and which alters curve points in a certain way, would be the same as recalling a Tone Curve preset which alters curve points in that same way. But the former method would be IMO more flexible since you could also include other adjustments in that; apply it at import; or whatever; while managing it within the same panel as other differently targeted presets which you might use.