Well, much better than mine, obviously, but I still think the highlights are a little flat... But of course we're talking near impossible dynamic ranges here, so compromises have to be weighed against time spent. Who can spend a week on a single image? I used to, but simply can't anymore ... View more

That's a potential trick I was indeed unaware of. I'll take a look. Thanks. ... View more

Have you ever been able to get anything sensible out of HDR? I haven't and have frankly given up on it. All I get are these drab, flat images that are completely devoid of any sign of life: (ignore the ghosting, this is just an illustration) I do much better on my own: I think the basic problem with HDR is that it just compresses everything, indiscriminately. So you lose all local contrast. Are there any tricks I'm unaware of? This is PS CS6, and I tweaked the controls the best I could. ... View more

The strong blue shadow cast was confirmed by applying an extreme curve to the version on rob's site (linked above): IME shadow casts can ruin an image completely - and be b*stards to nail down. But once you're on to it, a lot of things fall into place. Nice image, and one worth spending some time on. The glow on the snow-covered peaks has potential for a great shot, if you can keep the moon from blowing out. I think it should be possible. ... View more

Rob Cole wrote: there is a nasty blue color cast to deal with That's probably mainly in the shadows (IOW most of the image). This is a case where histogram-peeping can actually help, because you can see the shadow blue cast there: I strongly suspect that neutralizing the black point with split toning can correct most of that. Just an observation in passing - I don't have the original. ... View more

BWBergi wrote: Today it should be no problem (for adobe) to get the new RAW-algorithms BEFORE the cam is avaiable for any customer. Cam-manufacturers should have an intrest - like adobe to - in applying new cam-dates as close to the new modell releasedates! Yes, in an ideal world. But that's not the way it works. The Lr team has to buy a camera off the production line just like everyone else - thanks to Nikon. And if Nikon decided to support DNG - the only thing with potential for becoming an actual industry standard - the whole problem would go away, just like that. ... View more

Yes, you can soft proof to sRGB on a wide gamut monitor. The point of having a secondary "sRGB" monitor is to check how the images look in a non color managed environment. With Lightroom or Photoshop that point is moot. --- Although I see this is an old thread revived, I'd like to add something to the original question. In terms of a monitor's usability, the sad state of affairs is that the really important properties of a monitor are never measured, and not part of the official specifications. First among these is panel uniformity. You'd think that was a given, but it's not. The Dell U2410 and the infamous red/green issue is already mentioned. I got one of those too, and returned it within 24 hours. It still amazes me that they even thought they could get away with it - the thing was essentially an expensive doorstop right out of the box. Dell got an enormous amount of bad press over this, but it wasn't just the 2410, the whole Ultrasharp line was basically a lottery. When pressed, a Dell representative on their forums admitted that they only measured the central spot of the screen, and if that was within spec, they shipped it. (And of course it isn't just Dell, that's only an example. Apple Cinema displays - and presumably iMacs - are reported affected by this too). The thing is that IPS panels (and wide gamut backlights) are pretty expensive compared to ordinary TN panels to begin with, and the target market is pretty small as it is. So to sell a "reasonably priced" IPS monitor like the U2410, some corners have to be cut. Tight tolerances are first to go. Actually, the panel in the U2410 is the same used by Eizo in their 24" Color Edge models at four times the price. Which isn't to say that all reasonably priced IPS monitors are bad. Most of them are perfectly fine - it's just that you have to be careful, and if possible try it before you buy. The risk of getting a lemon is definitely there. So given all that, I would say that wide gamut or standard gamut is way down on the list of priorities. Get a monitor that is basically healthy, that's the main thing. A good standard gamut monitor beats a wide gamut one that turns out to be practically useless. ... View more

This could be a camera limitation. I just tested with a D800, and the camera's live view function is disabled as long as the USB cable is connected. It doesn't matter whether Lightroom is open or not. Live view is supposed to work with HDMI (at least for video), but I have nothing that will accept a HDMI input on my computer, so I can't try that. ... View more

What the heck is that supposed to mean It means you look at what the real situation is, and make your plans accordingly. No tethering support for the D600? OK. What are the options? D800? Wait and use my old camera a little longer? Use other software? Gee whiz ... too bad you and Keith weren't around 38 years ago when I opened my studio That would have been, let's see...around 1975...no, I wasn't around then. It was about five years later that I got the Nikon F2, and then the F3, F4, the Mamiya RZ67 (still around)...granted, things were much easier back then. A roll of 135 Tri-X fit the Nikons, but not the Mamiya. That was about the extent of compatibility issues. ... View more

what I did when I needed to tether with my D600, I fired up Aperture 3 and shot the job Well then, excuse me, but what is the problem? You have tethering software, fine. You do know that Nikon's offering, Camera Control Pro or whatever it's called, is not exactly free either? You really need to take responsibility for your own working environment instead of blaming everybody else. ... View more

OK, some of that is fair enough. But this isn't about how things ought to be. This is about how reality works. And empirically, fancy new features do come at the expense of regular maintenance. They really do. I've seen it in the past five PS versions. And just for the record, I define "bug" very narrowly: Anything that I'm the only one seeing, is not a bug. That's a system problem. And bugs by nature are subtle, or they would have been caught. Anything major, like a crash, is something else. A bug-fixing release, nothing new, would get my money if there's a lot of them and it's software that my living depends on. So what we're discussing here is where do you put the threshold. How much is it worth to get that new feature. For me, the answer to facial recognition is simple: nothing. If it was free, I'd take it. And while we're on the subject of how hard can it be: How hard can it be to do some research before buying a new camera? ... View more

Butch_M wrote: ... the constant input by a few folks (...) is getting extremely tiresome Well, I could turn that right around. The point I'm trying to make is that we're talking about priorities. These fancy new gizmos aren't for free - they cost engineering hours (lots of them). You seemed to complain loudly about lack of D600 tethering support in another thread. Case in point. All your arguments seem to boil down to how hard can it be. Just do it. Well, somebody has to do the work. Another case in point: I just got Photoshop CS 6, and was immediately appaled not only at the number of old bugs still left unfixed, but new ones that were clearly introduced through sheer carelessness. I can hear them: We don't have time for that. We need to finish background saving by may - everybody wants that. I for one don't want Lightroom in the same situation. I realize I'm probably on the losing end of this battle. Bug-free doesn't sell. Gee-whiz does. But I just wanted to cast my vote, and I don't think I'm alone. ... View more

FACIAL RECOGNITION.... PLEASE !!!! Maybe it's time to split Lightroom into professional and amateur editions, along the lines of Photoshop and Elements. Some of us use this software to make a living. What we need above all is reliability, speed and efficiency, and that's where we want the engineers to spend their time and resources. Anything that takes away from that is bloat. I can only speak for myself, but face recognition is about the last thing in the universe I need from Lightroom. I know where I can find Aunt Hilda; that's what keywords are for. Keywords have one big advantage over any hypothetical face recognition feature: it's 100% reliable. I googled "face recognition" just to find out what all the fuss is about. What I found is that it's basically used in security systems, where people line up nicely for a full frontal shot (and don't smile). What happens if that person turns away slightly, with a big fat grin? Here's what happens: it doesn't work. Picasa has it, fine. Use Picasa. ... View more

Get the trial, or better yet, go >here< (Mac link) and download 4.3 directly. Either way, it's the full deal. When you launch you get this: ... View more

colblip wrote: actually installed 16gb but can't get win7 to recognize the other 8gb If you built this yourself: Take a look in the motherboard manual; it could well be that it only supports 8GB. That was a very common limit a couple of years ago. If that's not it a BIOS update could be in order (be careful and follow procedure to the letter, if the update fails the board is...well, toast). If it's a "brand" machine try their forums. ... View more

Just to give a different perspective: When you go pixel-peeping it's tempting to think that you need to get rid of every last grain of noise, but in reality a little noise doesn't always hurt the image. I started out in the analog age, and for B&W my all time favorite was Tri-X developed in Rodinal (those old enough will nod in recognition) - that combo had incredibly crisp and pronounced grain, almost to the point where it could be out of focus and still look sharp...it was great for action shots. ... View more

To me this just looks like very aggressive NR in the jpeg. You can see some detail is also lost, specifically the loose strands of hair. But I can't make out the white specks, I've never seen anything like that. ... View more

Absolutely. A request for unspecified "CMYK" is a sure sign of an outdated process and people out of touch with modern color management. I wouldn't trust them for a second. Adobe RGB is the current industry standard because it allows prepress to easily repurpose the file if press conditions change. Soft proofing is a different matter, but no point as long as they don't give you a specific profile. ... View more

The thing is that it's adaptive, so it's really different from image to image. The sliders don't perform the same fixed operations. As for me, I was a bit uncomfortable with the old basic panel, since I found it difficult to visualize what the sliders were supposed to do. Recovery, fill light...I just couldn't relate to that (and recovery in particular didn't really work as advertised). So I tended to rely on Photoshop for the final touches, using smart objects and lots of adjustment layers, ending up with massively complex files. Highlights, shadows, whites and blacks - that I can understand. And on top, PV 2012 is so effective that I now usually finish the image in Lightroom, never even touching Photoshop except in special cases. It's a huge relief, and it has made my life a lot simpler. Actually I believe Lightroom has made me a better photographer. Knowing the image will end up in Photoshop sooner or later, it's so tempting to get lazy and say "I'll fix that later" instead of taking the trouble to get the lights right, physically remove disturbing elements, in short get it right in camera. The final image always benefits. And, it turns out, takes less time. ... View more

Can't be done, and rightly so. If something goes wrong in transfer your images may be lost. The safe way to do this is to use a card reader, and format the card in the camera afterwards. After a while it becomes routine. ... View more

Well, I gave up on HP some time ago, for precisely this reason. They make good hardware, but they insist on doing all the thinking for you. "Just push this button, everything's taken care of"...I hate that. I'm a bit surprised that icc profiles actually exist for this printer, because HP is known not to do that, at least for the consumer models. But if they don't show up, what's the use. ... View more

I think John means where does he set the printer profile. The internal space in Lr is of course linear Prophoto, which you can't change nor ever need to, but that is converted to the printer profile when it is sent to print (just as it is converted to the monitor profile when sent to the display). It's here, in the Print Job panel: Try to click "other" and see if there's anything there. ... View more

This is getting interesting. That's four people so far, myself included, who experienced the same thing: 4.3 RC resolved all performance problems, 4.3 final returned them. The odds of this being mere coincidence are diminishing, although I suppose it still could be. So what happened between RC and final? Are the Lr engineers testing something, but decided to hold back full implementation a while longer? I hope so. Either way, it tells us that this thing can perform like any other software, it is not our machines that are underpowered. ... View more

bob frost wrote: Is Color Eyes making v2 or v4? It's optional. I think the default is v2, in any case I've always stuck with that. It's notable that many canned profiles (shipped with monitors) have been v4 lately (this surfaced in the PS forum IIRC). But those profiles are notoriously bad in so many ways that they should be avoided at all costs, few manufacturers get it right. Usually sRGB, or Adobe RGB for wide gamut, is much better. The problem is that many people just run the disc that comes with the monitor, not knowing what it installs. ... View more

bob frost wrote: Eizo ColorNavigator software produces LUT profiles which seem to work fine. It's probably not LUT profiles as such, only those made by CEDP. If Lightroom spends a great deal of its time reading in the monitor profile (as someone else found out a while ago), a small error could rapidly turn into considerable slowdowns. I don't know how Eizo's ColorNavigator software (for ColorEdge monitors) differs from EasyPix (for Flexscans), but it's likely that they write profiles in basically the same way - but with an expanded feature set and possibly higher precision. As I noted above, I don't have any problems with EasyPix. Actually it gives vastly better results than CEDP on my two Flexscans, even if I use the same sensor - probably because it calibrates to the monitor's internal 10-bit LUT instead of the video card. As for the profile itself, some calibrators have been known to cause problems in Photoshop in the past, not strictly following protocol, so errors can happen. ... View more

Back to ColorEyes Display Pro: I haven't uninstalled completely, but did disable it from startup, set sRGB as default monitor profile at OS level, and rebooted. I verified in Photoshop that sRGB was indeed the active monitor profile. No change in Lr. But actually it's not so bad now, after switching from LUT-based to matrix-based profiles. In Library, 1:1 previews render in about a second. In Develop, switching between images likewise takes about a second until the image snaps and the sliders become active. The sliders themselves are still a bit jerky, but basically follow the cursor and the image updates accordingly. I guess this is as good as it gets. With the LUT profiles, 4.3 was really, really slow. Still, it baffles me why the RC apparently handled that while the final didn't... ... View more

bob frost wrote: I seem to remember someone else with problems was using Color Eyes Display software. Have you tried uninstalling it and just using a simple sRGB profile as a test? Or using the Eizo software on both? Yes, I read the same re ColorEyes a couple of days ago, which is what got me thinking. Up to now I haven't been all that worried since the machine is on its way out anyway. I know I should test this ASAP, but there's always some urgent work so I keep putting it off...it'll have to be plain old sRGB because the Eizo software won't work with those monitors. I'll see what I can find out. What's certain is that LUT vs matrix made a difference. ... View more

Victoria Bampton wrote: Don't forget to include details such as your system specs Not to sound too negative, but people have been doing that since day one of 4.0, and still nothing even remotely resembling a pattern has emerged. Hardware-wise, it's just completely random. Yes, PV 2012 is CPU-intensive, but old single core laptops churn happily along while high-end octo-core workstations choke. I have two systems, one has performed well ever since 4.0, the other one (although older) has had problems in varying degrees with the different versions. Two things that helped were updating video card driver and swithing from LUT to matrix-based monitor profiles. Still, there is something odd going on, and those two things were clearly relieving symptoms but not curing the disease. Good machine: Core i5 750 (the only quad-core i5), Gigabyte UD3 mobo, H55 chipset, 16 GB DDR3. Win 7 pro 64-bit. Bad machine (old, but still performing as new): Core2Duo E6750, Asus P5K, P35 chipset, 8GB DDR2. Vista business 64-bit. Video card identical, ATI HD 5850, same driver version. Software installed identical, the two machines are kept synchronized at all times so that I can work on either. WITH ONE EXCEPTION: calibration software. Good machine Eizo EasyPix, bad machine Color Eyes Display Pro. --- I'll be replacing the Vista machine in a month or two, and when I do, I'll install Lightroom on a completely naked OS and test for each piece of software added. If time, I'd also like to do the same with the old machine before it's ditched, just out of curiosity. ... View more