Lightroom updates

[Citysnaps]

Any Lightroom users here?

Two years ago, and using LR from the beginning and after being annoyed with Adobe's subscription decision and resisting the change for a long time, I finally bit the bullet and went subscription with Lightroom. And am now totally onboard.

Adobe's updates have been solid and time-saving. The most recent update, being able to automatically mask subjects or sky (for subsequent editing) with a single click, are a great example. I'm hoping that's further expanded to creating separate individual masks when there are multiple subjects in the frame. Shouldn't be that tough (for most situations).

 

[Pumbaa]

Sounds great!

Are there any other updates you’d like to mention?

It’s been a while since i used LR due to computer reorganization and a drowned DSLR, on top of covid-19 limiting travel options. I hope to dive back in soon - the storage situation for my new computer has been sorted out, and I scored a replacement camera on eBay. At least I hope so, won’t know for sure about the camera until it pleases UPS to deliver it.

 

[Eric]

Any Lightroom users here?

Two years ago, and using LR from the beginning and after being annoyed with Adobe's subscription decision and resisting the change for a long time, I finally bit the bullet and went subscription with Lightroom. And am now totally onboard.

Adobe's updates have been solid and time-saving. The most recent update, being able to automatically mask subjects or sky (for subsequent editing) with a single click, are a great example. I'm hoping that's further expanded to creating separate individual masks when there are multiple subjects in the frame. Shouldn't be that tough (for most situations).

View attachment 9922

No shit? I always use LR Classic through the subscription model as well (live this BTW) do you know if that feature is available? I'm always masking off areas but single click is something I have not seen yet.

 

[Citysnaps]

No shit? I always use LR Classic through the subscription model as well (live this BTW) do you know if that feature is available? I'm always masking off areas but single click is something I have not seen yet.

LR Classic subscription here as well. It’s in the most recent update; came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s not 100% perfect. But still really good. You can also auto-mask sky, which can also be tedious by hand.

And you can also invert masks, which is also handy for changing everything that you didn't previously mask.

 

[Citysnaps]

Sounds great!

Are there any other updates you’d like to mention?

It’s been a while since i used LR due to computer reorganization and a drowned DSLR, on top of covid-19 limiting travel options. I hope to dive back in soon - the storage situation for my new computer has been sorted out, and I scored a replacement camera on eBay. At least I hope so, won’t know for sure about the camera until it pleases UPS to deliver it.

I guess one of the most important updates is that LR is now M1 native. A couple other nice features are Texture and Dehaze sliders. There's also a bunch of new "style" filters, but that's not something that interest me.

I think there's also a new super interpolation feature that's supposed to work really good. I haven't messed with that yet as that's not something I normally need to do.

 

[Clix Pix]

I use DXO PhotoLab 5 rather than Lightroom, although I know LR is very popular with a lot of photographers. Years ago Aperture and Lightroom came out at around the same time and I did a brief trial of LR but decided that Aperture was the better choice for me. Now of course Aperture is no more and I had to spend some time trying out various editing programs before landing on DXO and deciding that it feels the most intuitive to me. I'm able to fairly easily get done what I want to do -- I am not very good at editing/retouching and for a long time balked at doing anything more than the simple basics. I'm not into fancy stuff and I don't shoot much in the way of landscapes so I don't need to worry about skies and such. I'd rather spend my time shooting than editing! Years ago when I had Photoshop I didn't really use that program to its full advantage -- never got into using layers and all that.

One thing which has put me off even trying out LR is that with its DAM it more or less takes control of one's images and catalog, and I prefer to do things myself and to know where my images and files are. I'm not big on keywording, either, and of course that is what really makes a DAM valuable. I don't usually have a need to search for a particular image or group of images on a certain subject, and I have my folders and files in a hierarchical structure with names that are meaningful (at least to me). So, for instance, I can pretty quickly find photos of Alfred, since I tend to title all new images of him as "Alfred...." (Alfred Takes Flight, Alfred With a Mouthful of Fish, etc.). Aside from that, many of the functions and features that LR offers are available in other programs and no subscription required. Many of those functions and features I probably would never use anyway, as I've found over the years. All that said, maybe one of these days I still might do a trial of LR just to see for myself what it has to offer these days.....

 

[Citysnaps]

Also... If you look at the woman's purse in the above photo you'll see the body of it was not masked. LR's AI algorithm apparently determined that was an object in front of the woman, rather than being part of her. It's a matter of interpretation, I guess, as to whether it's part of her, or a separate object on the street.

Not a biggie; smearing some mask over that by hand just takes a second.

 

[Clix Pix]

I guess one of the most important updates is that LR is now M1 native. A couple other nice features are Texture and Dehaze sliders. There's also a bunch of new "style" filters, but that's not something that interest me.

I think there's also a new super interpolation feature that's supposed to work really good. I haven't messed with that yet as that's not something I normally need to do.

That is another reason I have been dragging my heels on getting into anything new right now, as in a few months I'll probably be buying a new M1 MBP Pro or Max and I figure that by then things will have settled down in the various editing programs and other software. I don't want to get into using LR extensively on my current Intel 2018 machine, my primary editing machine, and then get a new machine and have everything somewhat different due to the M1 chip and such.

I think the "super interpolation" feature is in Photoshop, not sure about LR, and from what I've read about it this actually sounds similar to what one can do in Topaz Gigapixel. It can be useful at times -- I've used it when shooting some images with the RX10 IV bridge camera, which has a measly 1" sensor and just 20 MP resolution. I've found that in some situations using Gigapixel can improve the looks of a given image rather nicely. It's not something one would need to use on a regular basis, though.

 

[Citysnaps]

I use DXO PhotoLab 5 rather than Lightroom, although I know LR is very popular with a lot of photographers. Years ago Aperture and Lightroom came out at around the same time and I did a brief trial of LR but decided that Aperture was the better choice for me. Now of course Aperture is no more and I had to spend some time trying out various editing programs before landing on DXO and deciding that it feels the most intuitive to me. I'm able to fairly easily get done what I want to do -- I am not very good at editing/retouching and for a long time balked at doing anything more than the simple basics. I'm not into fancy stuff and I don't shoot much in the way of landscapes so I don't need to worry about skies and such. I'd rather spend my time shooting than editing! Years ago when I had Photoshop I didn't really use that program to its full advantage -- never got into using layers and all that.

One thing which has put me off even trying out LR is that with its DAM it more or less takes control of one's images and catalog, and I prefer to do things myself and to know where my images and files are. I'm not big on keywording, either, and of course that is what really makes a DAM valuable. I don't usually have a need to search for a particular image or group of images on a certain subject, and I have my folders and files in a hierarchical structure with names that are meaningful (at least to me). So, for instance, I can pretty quickly find photos of Alfred, since I tend to title all new images of him as "Alfred...." (Alfred Takes Flight, Alfred With a Mouthful of Fish, etc.). Aside from that, many of the functions and features that LR offers are available in other programs and no subscription required. Many of those functions and features I probably would never use anyway, as I've found over the years. All that said, maybe one of these days I still might do a trial of LR just to see for myself what it has to offer these days.....

I did a similar evaluation of LR vs Aperture a long time ago. What bugged me about Aperture at the time (maybe they improved it later), was whenever you did a brush edit on part of a RAW image, Aperture needed to create a huge tiff to accomplish that in order to not touch the RAW image. And that was at odds with the notion of editable non-destructive edits. LR stores a list of image edits/modifications made to each original RAW, making your edits undoable in the future, if needed.

Also... knowing that Adobe's well was filled with engineers and scientists whose expertise was image processing/science, it seemed Adobe would be in the game for the long term. I didn't have that same level of confidence with Apple.

With LR your image files can be anywhere, in any folder system you might come up with. When you import your images "into" LR, they're not really going "into" LR. Rather, LR keeps a database of pointers that point to the location of where your images (each image) happen to be stored. It's still, for me anyway, to have a good folder structure setup.

It's never too late to convert to LR. If you have an image folder structure that you like and makes sense to you, LR will happily use it when importing your images.

 

[Eric]

LR Classic subscription here as well. It’s in the most recent update; came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s not 100% perfect. But still really good. You can also auto-mask sky, which can also be tedious by hand.

And you can also invert masks, which is also handy for changing everything that you didn't previously mask.

Just played around with it, very cool, and different. It'll take some getting used to but I can see it being a lot more accurate when it comes to gradients and masking... I've essentially stopped using gradient filters on my cameras as a result of these tools because you can get nearly the same results with proper masking. I'm also careful not to doctor my photos too much, just basic color/contrast/exposure corrections for the most part.

 

[Clix Pix]

I did a similar evaluation of LR vs Aperture a long time ago. What bugged me about Aperture at the time (maybe they improved it later), was whenever you did a brush edit on part of a RAW image, Aperture needed to create a huge tiff to accomplish that in order to not touch the RAW image. And that was at odds with the notion of editable non-destructive edits. LR stores a list of image edits/modifications made to each original RAW, making your edits undoable in the future, if needed.

Also... knowing that Adobe's well was filled with engineers and scientists whose expertise was image processing/science, it seemed Adobe would be in the game for the long term. I didn't have that same level of confidence with Apple.

With LR your image files can be anywhere, in any folder system you might come up with. When you import your images "into" LR, they're not really going "into" LR. Rather, LR keeps a database of pointers that point to the location of where your images (each image) happen to be stored. It's still, for me anyway, to have a good folder structure setup.

It's never too late to convert to LR. If you have an image folder structure that you like and makes sense to you, LR will happily use it when importing your images.

Ah, thank you, Citypix, for this info, which clarifies things for me! I had the (obviously wrong) impression that LR created its own catalog and that the images were in there and would be difficult to shift around if I had the need or desire. Makes sense to me now......

 

[Citysnaps]

Ah, thank you, Citypix, for this info, which clarifies things for me! I had the (obviously wrong) impression that LR created its own catalog and that the images were in there and would be difficult to shift around if I had the need or desire. Makes sense to me now......

The only tricky thing is...if you move your original RAW, and then want to edit it later, you can still see the preview in LR, but trying to edit it in LR will pop up an image not found message. At that point you can use LR to help you find it to update it's location in the database for editing.

 

[Eric]

After playing around with this for a little while I'm noticing that the masking is really not that different. Prior to this update I would simply drag my filter down across the sky (say linear gradient for example), then I would "show masking" to mark it red so I could see the actual area, then turn on the luminosity mask and use the slider to pull mask out other elements in the shot.

So far, from what I can see this is essentially the same thing only in a different subset of the tools, the biggest difference is the auto masking but even then it can be achieved with the luminosity mask. There's a bit of a learning curve here to use the knew toolset but it's still a cool feature.

 

[Eric]

Just spotted this at the bottom of LR when looking at all files before setting up my filter.