Lightroom and PS -- workflow getting more complex

[Noel_Carboni]

Not what I meant at all. With a bit of innovation, one can create (or buy) actions or plugins to do a lot of neat stuff, such as local contrast enhancement. And other stuff you can't begin to do in Lightroom, such as application of effects to select parts of images or creative combinations of edits using layers, masks, mixing modes, ...

And when I can't get best-in-show end results (hey, go look in the processing contest threads) with "just that old pixel editor Photoshop", I'll start looking at alternative workflows.

I'm not saying having a good raw converter is a bad thing, what I'm saying is I don't see why the raw converter has to have 800 bells and whistles that the "pixel editing" application already does, and quite often can do better.

There is nothing sacred about the "original pixels" of a raw image that can't be maintained by just not deleting the original .cr2 (or whatever) raw file. If I didn't want to "edit the pixels" that would mean I got the photo perfect in the camera and I wouldn't be doing digital photo editing in the first place!

And finally, I don't know why you repeatedly insist on trying to break Photoshop down into "the clunky old app" and the "exciting new plugin". The two are shipped together as "Photoshop" (or in a modified version, as "Lightroom"). Honestly I don't care how it's implemented under the covers. It works fine.

-Noel

[Noel_Carboni]

By the way, implied in this is that I've tried using all the various sliders in Camera Raw, and I know what they all do.

But when it comes to "getting the job done", generally speaking I usually do fairly little with the functions of the Raw converter, relying on the defaults I've set mostly, and open the image into Photoshop proper (the old rusty battleship) and have at it there.

A very good example of where I find some of the Raw converter features virtually useless is in the realm of sharpening. Lord knows I've tried all the settings, but the bottom line is I find I want to leave the Camera Raw sharpening set to 0 and I can sharpen images to a better look and feel in the old clunky pixel editor.

-Noel

[AndrewRodney]

Originally Posted by Martin_Doudoroff

I think "features gone wild" is an a pretty good summation of Photoshop itself. Photoshop is this Frankenstein's monster of technology—much of it industry-leading, much of it just legacy—and it's all grafted onto an ancient rusty platform.

True, there's an awful lot of legacy code and functionality that needs to be trimmed away but Adobe doesn’t dare do this or they start a shitstorm with a small and vocal group that might use said tools once a year. That's why Mark Hamburg, the guy who was the chief architect for about 8 years left the team with a clean slate of paper and produced Lightroom, what he proudly calls "the anti-Photoshop". And don't think otherwise about the PS team getting shown how to do a few new tricks that will hopefully make it into Photoshop (Parametric curves, direct select tool etc). It is and will remain a clunky old app as long as it can operate one image at a time, after ever pixel is loaded into Ram. As such, its a great pixel editor but there's a lot more to this game of image processing then baking pixel edits.

[Noel_Carboni]

Small group? How many people use actions? You'd be surprised what's built into actions. You might not care about the ancient Glowing Edges filter, but it works wonders for certain activities behind the scenes.

I'm sure glad Adobe hasn't trimmed out "unneeded functionality". If they choose not to update it to 16 or 32 bit mode, that's okay; there are workarounds. But why pull something out that's working?

It would seem Adobe agrees with me.

-Noel

[AndrewRodney]

Originally Posted by Noel_Carboni

Small group? How many people use actions? You'd be surprised what's built into actions.

I suspect lots of users, myself included use actions, what's your point? Conditional's would be useful and something we've asked for, for years.

What about Contrast and Brightness? For years, it was pretty useless due to the linear behavior (on non linear encoded data). Adobe fixed it but had to place the old "legacy" check box so folks wouldn't have kittens if the behavior changed. When's the last time you used the Pencil tool? Or Solarize? Or Blur More? The Classic CMYK engine is broken and has been for years. The Gamut warning overlay isn't working all that well either, not very useful. You get the point (or maybe you don't).

It would seem Adobe agrees with me.

Well I guess that's all that really matters. How long you've been an alpha tester ?

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Circling back to Mathew's original question:

Originally Posted by MathewLodge

How do you deal with having some image processing tools in Lightroom only, and some in CS3, and the complexity this brings to a workflow? I am finding myself starting in Lightroom, exporting for CS3, and then going back to Lightroom for an image fix.

Lightroom for me is a super RAW processing application which made it feasible to use RAW files for a stock photo workflow for the first time.

However, my JPEG workflow was delightfully simple.

Many of us who have adopted Lightroom (or Aperture) are experiencing similar workflow complexity problems. Some people look at the file exchange process and try to envision better ways to round trip through Photoshop. I think the real problem is that Lightroom and Aperture—as a class of application—are still new and immature tools with respect to established workflows. Many of us remain routinely dependent on Photoshop for this or that task simply because the new applications simply can't do it. I expect there will remain a crucial place for pixel editing software (i.e., Photoshop) for a long long time, but as Lightroom and Aperture continue to evolve, their functionality will expand and many of us will need Photoshop less and less frequently.

Photoshop and the entire pixel editing process holds less than zero attraction for many photographers. Many photographers have been dragged kicking and screaming into digital for this solitary reason. In the last year, I've even met some established professionals who have already completely abandoned Photoshop in favor of Lightroom or Aperture, despite their existing limitations. Instead, these photographers out-source their retouching when it's necessary. It's a cost-benefit analysis: their retouching needs are simply not enough to justify the personal cost of maintaining Photoshop competency. They still need to perform editorial tasks relating to their ongoing work, but they'd rather be off working their next project/assignment than diddling around with Photoshop trying to fine tune individual images or "rolling their own" workflow.

Finally, as Lightroom and Aperture evolve, they, too, risk becoming overly complex. (I know they already are for some people.) There's still lots of room in this market for new tools.

[AndrewRodney]

Originally Posted by Martin_Doudoroff

Many of us who have adopted Lightroom (or Aperture) are experiencing similar workflow complexity problems. Some people look at the file exchange process and try to envision better ways to round trip through Photoshop. I think the real problem is that Lightroom and Aperture—as a class of application—are still new and immature tools with respect to established workflows.

Moving documents between the two can certainly be better and its going to (and is) thanks to the export SDK is now open to outside developers.

This is a good one!

Timothy Armes Photography

But there's still a big, fundamental difference between Lightroom on Raw files and Photoshop (which has to call out to ACR and use the same processing engine). One works with metadata instructions to build pixels, the other operates on pixels. There's rendering which is getting us the digital darkroom we want to control this critical process. Once we build at least one set of preferred rendering instructions, its pretty easy to build off a pixel based document for Photoshop.

I'd like to see more bridge like processing options from the LR grid (there's no Export and Merge or HDR). Better Smart Object support.

Finally, as Lightroom and Aperture evolve, they, too, risk becoming overly complex. (I know they already are for some people.) There's still lots of room in this market for new tools.

I can't speak about Aperture, I have no idea what these guys are up to. As for Adobe, the product will get more complicated as we get more tools that work well with parametric editing. If you look at the spot tool in Lightroom and compare spotting 1000 captures with one copy and paste or doing this with pixels in Photoshop, it becomes clear where we might see more complicated selective editing using instructions to build pixels that way.

Photoshop will always be a necessary power-tool but one you'll have to plug in less and less. And the Photoshop team is making big progress too, some a reflection of Lightroom.

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