Opinions on Lightroom

[Mike Buckley]

Things that LR could usefully improve...[include] more flexibility with template layouts.

I recently learned that LR5 has a lot more flexibility than I realized when I produced my two books. Some stuff about that was explained in one of Julieanne Kost's video tutorials that somehow escaped me while I was working on the books. Is it your experience that Booksmart provides more flexibility than LR5 when it comes to customizing the templates?

[Mike Buckley]

Keep in mind that it proper name is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It's very much part of the Photoshop family

One reason this point is so confusing is that Adobe often sends a very different message. As an example, consider the following copied from the official Adobe Lightroom web site: "Select one or multiple photos and automatically open them in Photoshop to perform detailed, pixel-level editing. See your results immediately back in Lightroom."

[Glenn NK]

It's in LR4 but I don't know when it first appeared.

EDIT: The LR5 manual explains using the Book module in both LR3 and LR4.

Thanks Mike:

It seems that I must have dozed off!! Actually the only parts of LR I use are Library and Develop. I don't even know what Book is for, and have never used Slideshow or Web. I used Print a few times but n now I export to TIFF and have the prints done on a better printer than I care to invest in.

The main reason I use LR is because it's parametric and I can go back and use the new tools that have been added since I started with LR1. As I recall the Gradient and Brush tools were not in LR1, so I'm using them to redevelop older images.

Yours Truly,


Luddite

[Colin Southern]

One reason this point is so confusing is that Adobe often sends a very different message. As an example, consider the following copied from the official Adobe Lightroom web site: "Select one or multiple photos and automatically open them in Photoshop to perform detailed, pixel-level editing. See your results immediately back in Lightroom."

I wouldn't call it a different message - they're just using Photoshop & Lightroom to differentiate the two different products. When I make my initial post on the subject I did it only to illustrate that as far as Adobe are concerned PS and LR are BOTH part of the PS family; they're not competing products -- they're complimentary products.

Adobe's position isn't a case of "should one use PS or LR" it's very much a case of "should they use Bridge + PS" or "should they use LR + PS".

[Adrian]

Mike

From recollection, aided by my wife, the things we could not do in LR Blurb (or at least failed to find) that we could do elsewhere were things like have a different background colour on different pages or run a picture across front to back cover including the spine (blurb breaks the spine). It's fine, but just a bit less creative. Personally I find the templates a bit constricting too, but others may appreciate the simplicity.

Adrian

[Richard Lundberg]

I really can't imagine why an experienced darkroom user would prefer a black Ui. Aperture's UI is customizable and I set to light grey with black type, which is quite comfortable.
One thing (only one) thing I like in Lightroom is the distortion geometry panel tools. I'm not comfortable with the Export either. I think I have settled on ACDSee Pro 3 for my RAW processing. Its distortion and geometry are just as user friendly as Lightroom. Aperture doesn't even have that. ACDSee has a light grey UI, usable font size, fairly decent arrows, no forced catalog, saves as ProPhoto tiff, is fairly easy to navigate to the desired file. Its only problem is that it doesn't support my .RAF files , it opens the dng instead. It seems like there's one extra step at least for any of these apps, so dng conversion is for this one. Not a bad idea anyway.

[Colin Southern]

I really can't imagine why an experienced darkroom user would prefer a black Ui.

Basically it's dark because large light areas mean you're effectively looking into an incident light source, and that makes it much harder to evaluate image levels correctly.

I don't like it either, but that's the reason for it; it wasn't chosen at random to be "trendy" (Lightroom was designed "by photographers, for photographers" as they say).

[Mike Buckley]

Adrian,

LR5 does make it easy to have a different background color on different pages. The Background panel has a setting that allows you to apply the background globally or not. When the global application is disabled, you can select a different color for every page. Alternatively, you can select a photo as a background and control the opacity.

It seems to me that the photo will print on the front, spine and rear cover but only when a hard cover is selected. Even so, I'm relying on my memory about that and could be wrong. It definitely does not include the spine when using a soft cover.

[Adrian]

Thanks Mike - I will experiment further. It was my wife who wished to print different colours on pages and she wanted to to say pages 1 to 10 in one colour (Rome in this case) and 11-15 in another colour (Firenze) etc, and could not find a way of doing it. We'll try your suggestion next time round so thanks for that.

When we tried a colour wrap across the hard spine of book, the spine came out with no image on it - just the text. I can' recall now whether we knew the before we sent it to Blurb out of LR, or whether it was a discovery when the printed book came back.

Thanks for the tip by the way about a slight blue cast. I may well experiment with that for printing as so far although the books are pleasing, the images don't quite pop as I would like.

Kind regards

Adrian

[Mike Buckley]

pages 1 to 10 in one colour (Rome in this case) and 11-15 in another colour (Firenze) etc,

I don't think there is any way to "tell" the software to do that using a setting. Instead, you have to manually apply the desired color to the desired pages. You may be able to select, as an example, ten pages at a time and then apply the desired background color but I never tried doing that.

I can' recall now whether we knew the before we sent it to Blurb out of LR, or whether it was a discovery when the printed book came back.

Before uploading the book to Blurb, it's really important to me to export the book to a PDF and at least review it on the monitor and possibly print it. I do that to look for mistakes I might have made and to determine how the book will appear in the printed format. This is especially helpful when reviewing the details of formatting, whether or not full-bleed pages will truly print with no margins, and of course the details pertaining to the covers and spine that we're discussing. The software outputs a PDF of the front cover, spine and rear cover in one file and the other pages in a separate file.

[yauman]

It has been mentioned several times in this thread that a preference setting will write image edits to a DNG file. I have looked twice and have never found that setting. I don't need it now but may need it in the future and others may also be interested in using it now. So, it would be helpful if someone would please explain exactly how to locate that setting.

There are 3 places where you can do this:

1. At Import time - the first selection is "Copy As DNG"

2. In grid view, highlight all the images you want to convert and at the top menu, under Library, select "Convert Photo to DNG"

3. At export, or using Publishing Service to a Hard Disk (or to the cloud) you can select file type as DNG.

[nimitzbenedicto]

DNG conversion.
There is also an option when importing under the column "file handling"> "build Smart Preview".
This way, you can edit imported pictures using Smart Preview(DNG) and not import the huge original NEF.