Lightroom 2.0 ships

[DougAxford]

I've spent some time doing further research on LR2. I was quick to see how the editable profiles would be fantastic but after much reading, there are a very large number of people upgrading to 2.0 complaining about speed issues. The Adobe forum is worth a read if you are considering buying.

Adobe Forums - LR2 is SLOW

These are 2 excerpts:

I thought the days of the Mac spinning beach ball were over, and then I upgraded to LR2. I would be so happy if Adobe did nothing more than concentrate ALL their efforts on improving speed before even thinking about any new features. I've given up on the adjustment brush for all but the simplest of things. I'm finding it much faster to export to PS3 and do my work there. I also find it absurd to have to consider new hardware just because of a single software upgrade. I've been a big fan and advocate of LR but if this what we can expect from their upgrades I will be forced to consider alternatives.

It can not be the hardware that is the problem since it also appears on new quad-core Macs with 6 GB RAM. How much faster than that could it be? I don't think 2.0 was created for future hardware only

My thought right now is to wait at least until this problem is fixed. I am definitely NOT a person who has excess time to kill waiting for software to work. If anyone has heard of possible release dates of PS CS4 and whether or not it might be fully 64 bit on pc's, I'd appreciate an update. My guess is that I may be wanting to wait for CS4.1 anyway.

As an industry, we seem to be having problems with both software and hardware that need more beta testing prior to release. LR added many features in the final that were not in any beta (as far as I have read) and that may be the problem here.

As an alternative, check out this link: Bibble 5 Speed Test

Bibble 5 is shown converting 116 RAW images from a Canon 1D Mark 2 dSLR from RAW to JPEG in 21.9 seconds. That's .189 seconds per image on a 16 core AMD. I have never tried Bibble, but I know there are many on this forum who like it a lot.

Intel released info yesterday about working on CPU's with a hundred cores for release in '09-'10.

OMG, what is happening to us??? Will raw conversions be so fast that we don't even have to go for a coffee?

[BobSmith]

I've noticed only minor speed issues in certain circumstances with v2. Every now and then when scrolling through a large collection (over 1K images), I get the spinning beach ball (Mac OS) for quite a while.

There's one pretty serious bug with v2 regarding keywords. When a catalog is converted from v1.x to v2, all keywords remain intact. However in some circumstances they are set NOT to export when derivative files are created. You can manually change this setting but it has to be done by editing each keyword individually. That can get more than a little tedious with catalog that has many keywords. There's no problem with keywords created in v2. It's just keywords in the catalog at the time of conversion from v1.x. A fix from Adobe is supposedly on the way soon. These bugs aside, I still think the upgrade to 2 is well worth the cost and minor inconveniences

Bob Smith

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Originally Posted by DougAxford

I was quick to see how the editable profiles would be fantastic but after much reading, there are a very large number of people upgrading to 2.0 complaining about speed issues.
...
[i] I thought the days of the Mac spinning beach ball were over, and then I upgraded to LR2. I would be so happy if Adobe did nothing more than concentrate ALL their efforts on improving speed before even thinking about any new features. I've given up on the adjustment brush for all but the simplest of things...

Performance is tricky to discuss, because it depends so much on specifically what you're trying to do and what the software is doing on your behalf. I would generally agree that Lightroom's local correction tools are less responsive than one might be accustomed to in Photoshop. Adobe may be able to further optimize that user interface in the future, but it may also just be a really processor-intensive approach. I think Lightroom's tools are well-suited to light retouching and image tuning, but if you do chronic, heavy retouching, you'll probably keep using Photoshop. Note that you can still use Lightroom without relying on its retouching tools: Lightroom integrates quite well with Photoshop.

One can read all the reviews and message boards one likes; ultimately, the only way one will be able to figure out whether a product like Lightroom suits them is to download the trial and put in the hours evaluating it. The biggest risk is missing the forest for the trees by bringing too many assumptions to the party; Lightroom and Aperture are particularly vulnerable to that.

Originally Posted by DougAxford

If anyone has heard of possible release dates of PS CS4 and whether or not it might be fully 64 bit on pc's, I'd appreciate an update. My guess is that I may be wanting to wait for CS4.1 anyway.

Adobe tries to hew to an 18-24 month release cycle for their major products. That makes May '09, give or take three months, the approximate release window for CS4. Reportedly, a 64-bit edition will be available for Vista, but until further notice, anticipate there will be strings attached.

Originally Posted by DougAxford

As an industry, we seem to be having problems with both software and hardware that need more beta testing prior to release. LR added many features in the final that were not in any beta (as far as I have read) and that may be the problem here.

Yep. People want it both ways: they want the new features yesterday and they want their software perfectly stable. Which hat they wear corresponds to whatever grief they're experiencing.

[ChrisPerry]

116 RAW images from a Canon 1D Mark 2 dSLR from RAW to JPEG in 21.9 seconds. That's .189 seconds per image on a 16 core AMD. I have never tried Bibble, but I know there are many on this forum who like it a lot.

Intel released info yesterday about working on CPU's with a hundred cores for release in '09-'10.

OMG, what is happening to us??? Will raw conversions be so fast that we don't even have to go for a coffee?

16 cores? Yeah, ANYTHING will blaze with enough horsepower to push it through. That's equivalent to 8 machines like i''m running. That's 14 or 15 images on a 'normal' machine for comparison, so perhaps 22 seconds is fast. I could go time mine I suppose. I use DPP and I bet it takes longer.

[Pete Woods]

Here is a good overview video of LR2

Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ 2.0 Learning Center | National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP)

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Originally Posted by Martin_Doudoroff

Adobe tries to hew to an 18-24 month release cycle for their major products. That makes May '09, give or take three months, the approximate release window for CS4.

Well, I was at least partly wrong. Adobe is going to do a webcast presentation on September 23 to unveil more aspects of CS4. It's unclear at this time whether Adobe is initiating more public betas or when the new products will actually ship.