Adobe 'Doubling Down' on Lightroom in Wake of Apple's Aperture Announcement

[portcontrol7]

When does "doubling down" go away?

 

[thekev]

In a sense that describes me as well. I see Apple's direction in OSX, apps and even computers are such that its leaving me out in the cold. I love my rMBP - its a great laptop but I'm not about to spend 2k on my next laptop. As for OS X - I'm not seeing much in Yosemite that is a draw. Their treatment of Aperture is such that I am actively laying the groundwork to migrate my images over to LR.

I've taken a few days to digest my feelings because I didn't want my anger and disappointment to color my opinion but all in all, I have trouble with trusting in apple for any application needs from now on.

Lightroom takes up less hard drive space, which is nice. There are a couple open source projects that I think do a much nicer job on raw processing than either Aperture or Lightroom, but getting a usable workflow set up on OSX with one can be tedious. I think part of the problem is legacy workflow and code, because there are so many great algorithms for things like edge finding and color correction out there that haven't been implemented by Apple or Adobe. If you want to do any serious editing, there are better displays out there than you can get on any notebook. People sometimes get hung up on the resolution of the rmbp, but I would choose stable color and uniformity.

 

[MacMan988]

I have already paid for the camera and the mac. I don't want to pay to keep my photos organized.

 

[cgc]

They just announced huge updates to OS X and iOS.

Again people, those you mentioned were silent updates. Let's wait for official announcements at the events in September/October before we bitch and moan.

Do you really think Steve Jobs was the only person who knew how to run a company?

If the past performance of Apple with and without then again with Steve Jobs is any indication, yes, I think he was the only person who could run that company.

 

[Macist]

It seems a lot of photographers, especially the 'prosumers' use Lightroom as a sort of glorified Instagram with horrible presets slapped on to any image arbitrarily.

I think when this happens images can kind of look 'Lightroomy'.

I also think Lightroom interface with its pointless modules is bonkers. Aperture was much better in this regard even though it had failed to keep pace with features.

I prefer much subtler processing and use of real colour, just tweaked here and there.

I may return to Capture One, look at AfterShot Pro (was good when it was Bibble) and others.

 

[cube]

I have already paid for the camera and the mac. I don't want to pay to keep my photos organized.

It is normal to have to pay for proprietary software. What is not normal is giving away proprietary software for free.

 

[thekev]

I have already paid for the camera and the mac. I don't want to pay to keep my photos organized.

You can always leave feedback for Apple, but it certainly isn't Adobe's problem. They don't see anything from either of those purchases.

 

[C99]

Who cares that it's smaller when all the insides are now connected by a rat's nest of cables to a bunch of boxes that used to be neatly tucked away inside the tower case.

You can have just the Mac Pro on the desk and the external stuff anywhere you want in your desk or even in another room. The image is a bit deceiving. It ends up being cleaner if you do it right. One of the big problems is that the new Mac Pro has no PCIe slots, so you can't install any cards like the GPU and special sound cards. My 2008 Mac Pro was able to accept a GTX 650Ti Boost to replace the slow and dying ATI 2600.

So aside from the "cool factor", I'd rather have 2013 Mac Pro hardware in a 2012 Mac Pro case.

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Prediction: Apple will acquire Adobe.

If it means shoving Flash into a pit of lava, I'm all for it!

 

[e-coli]

Good grief. Just click the arrows if you want to see the photo unencumbered.

Or maybe just get an interface designer so I don't have to keep rolling over to show/hide critical pieces of nav because you stuck them on all 4 sides. Good grief.

 

[imajez]

It seems a lot of photographers, especially the 'prosumers' use Lightroom as a sort of glorified with horrible presents slapped on to any image arbitrarily.

Oh no some people use a tool badly, blame the tool. Not that you necessarily know what tool was used.

I think when this happens images can kind of look 'Lightroomy'.

I think when people say this sort of thing they are talking of of their posterior.

I also think Lightroom interface with it's pointless modules is bonkers. Aperture was much better in this regard even though it had failed to keep pace with features.

Just like the pointless tabs in Aperture, which basically do the same thing with the same single click. Don't really notice any difference between the two paradigms myself. You click on tab/module, you get new tools.
But because LR gives you more options, more tweaks etc then modules reduce clutter compared to cramming it all in a single tab. Anyway the places and Faces views are effectively the same as LR modules - they just aren't called modules that's all.
Personally I loathe floating pallets cluttering up my workspace and obscuring image, it all seems a bit last century. Rebranding them as HUDs instead doesn't change the fact they are a bit naff/clunky.

 

[e-coli]

So you have no idea how to use LR and are slagging it off. Nice one.
All tools can be hidden away and can be revealed with a mouse over, a click or keyboard shortcut at your preference. So a very clutter free environment and the 'flourishes' can be hidden or customised.
The photo organisation is actually very good, maybe if you learnt to use the software rather than blindly attack it, you may realise how good it is.

I use it. I have for years. I personally hate it. Assume much? Any app which has hundreds of web pages devoted to "simplifying your Lightroom interface" is a fail. Its a photo editing app. Call me crazy, but the photo should be reasonably unencumbered. Aperture was far more elegant.

Organization wise it's great for people who love that endless folder structure. I just want a tidy bundle. Currently it feels messy and makes my head hurt.

You're pretty defensive about that app. Some people will dislike it (plenty, actually). That doesn't mean they're ripe for a flaming.

 

[imajez]

Or maybe just get an interface designer so I don't have to keep rolling over to show/hide critical pieces of nav because you stuck them on all 4 sides. Good grief.

Yet having 'critical' bits on 3 sides and last century style pallets floating at random places over the images is OK? Any way the navigation is done with arrows, mouse, trackpad etc, I don't use the panels for navigation myself. In fact I had to try and think if you could, you can, but why bother when there are easier methods?

Now for all the slagging off of LR's terrible layout, confusing modules, useless organisation abilities, ugly UI and so on remember that the vast majority of photographers chose LR over Aperture, the programme that is being killed off. And it's incredibly well liked because it has made our lives as photographers so much easier. I'm certainly not saying it's without faults, but overall like PS before it they nailed the basics of how LR + PS should work in version 1.0 of both of these two quite different programmes.

 

[imajez]

You can have just the Mac Pro on the desk and the external stuff anywhere you want in your desk or even in another room. The image is a bit deceiving. It ends up being cleaner if you do it right.

Except it doesn't. There's no getting away from extra cables and enclosures which cannot possibly be neater than all the same bits in one [more compact overall] case.

One of the big problems is that the new Mac Pro has no PCIe slots, so you can't install any cards like the GPU and special sound cards. My 2008 Mac Pro was able to accept a GTX 650Ti Boost to replace the slow and dying ATI 2600.

You can add PCI slots via a Thunderbolt connector to a PCI enclosure, so more things attached to the nMP. Therefore even more clutter. Just like in the pretty accurate image.

So aside from the "cool factor", I'd rather have 2013 Mac Pro hardware in a 2012 Mac Pro case.

Almost what you asked for.

 

[C99]

Except it doesn't. There's no getting away from extra cables and enclosures which cannot possibly be neater than all the same bits in one [more compact overall] case.


You can add PCI slots via a Thunderbolt connector to a PCI enclosure, so more things attached to the nMP. Therefore even more clutter. Just like in the pretty accurate image.


Almost what you asked for.

There's no viable or cheap Thunderbolt to PCIe solution yet, especially for high-end GPUs. But the new Mac Pro can be neater than the old one since it's a small, quiet cylinder instead of a big, slightly noisy box. Either way, you still need cables going to it if you intend to use even one USB device. You can bundle cables together, so it'll look pretty much the same to have lots of cables rather than a few. Again, not I really care about how my setup looks.

If you want to change a hard drive, you don't have to open the computer. If you don't want to hear the sounds from the drives, you can put them inside somewhere insulated or in another room. I love the eSATA speed of all my hard drives in my Mac Pro, but I wish I could swap them more easily.

That new Mac Pro server rack is hilarious
But being serious, it's a little more fitting than an old Mac Pro rack since server racks are supposed to have hard drives and computers separate.

 

[imajez]

I use it. I have for years. I personally hate it. Assume much? Any app which has hundreds of web pages devoted to "simplifying your Lightroom interface" is a fail. Its a photo editing app. Call me crazy, but the photo should be reasonably unencumbered. Aperture was far more elegant.

Yet floating palletes [see screenshot] over the image is OK, even in full screen mode?
I use LR and have no problem seeing an uncluttered image. In fact LR has less chrome than Aperture and it's extremely easy to hide what you are not needing. See screenshot of how LR looks when I adjust an image. If you simplify that anymore you won't actually be able to do anything.
I never assumed you didn't use LR, however I did know you didn't know how to use it properly though judging by your remarks.

Organization wise it's great for people who love that endless folder structure. I just want a tidy bundle. Currently it feels messy and makes my head hurt.

Learn to use it properly then. Collections are basically the same as Albums, both can be smart or Dumb and projects are basically folders but are called projects instead.
And if you have say 250k or 500k images you are hardly going to put them in a tidy little bundle of one project are you? You will need lots and lots and lots of projects or be very anal and thorough about keywording and have large numbers of smart albums. Either way you will have very large numbers of folders/projects/albums/collections or whatever you name the 'buckets' you keep your images in.
BTW a sensibly organised nested hierarchy is much easier and quicker to navigate than a flat structure once you have large numbers of items.

You're pretty defensive about that app. Some people will dislike it (plenty, actually). That doesn't mean they're ripe for a flaming.

Correcting people on their inaccurate statements is not necessarily being defensive. There are millions of web pages for everything you can think of, doesn't mean much a lot of the time, particularly in this case. LR's interface doesn't need simplifying as that would only make it harder to use, it can already be very pared down and minimal. People do need to learn to use it better that's for sure and the following is about all you need to know about the interface and showing UI parts.

'Shift + F' cycles through the screen modes to hide the chrome. I leave it on the minimal setting as Menu will appear if you need it on mouseover and 'F' will toggle completely full screen.
Set top/bottom panel to autohide, appear on mouse over or mouse click according to taste. I have show on mouse click and then autohide as I rarely use them. Or use f5 + f6 to toggle them on/off
Tab clears/reveals the main side panels and F7 + F8 does them individually. Or set them to autohide etc as with top/bottom panel.
't' toggles tool bar - rarely use it myself and '\' toggles filter bar.
Finally 'L' toggles through lights out mode so you can reveal/dim/hide the chrome.

Pretty easy really. And if you need to know the shortcuts for wherever you are, Cmd+/ will display them. And if using small monitor/laptop 'solo mode' on panels [right click panel to get option] will auto close other sections when you move between panel sections.

 

[katewes]

With all due respect, I think you're getting all worked up prematurely…

So, "IF LR6 is standalone"—stop right there. Problem solved. Buy it, "own" it, use it until you die. Where'e the problem?

I guess you've only used Mac for a few years. I have some software that was optimised for Mountain Lion, but could not work with Mavericks, and I had to buy the new edition. That's just one example. There are tons of examples of software that is broken with each new iteration of OSX. Even with Aperture, Apple is promising to update it to work with Yosemite, because, as is, Aperture probably will not work with Yosemite.

Hence, in response to what seemed to you as a no-brainer, today's LR5, if I cannot get updates later on, may not even work on Yosemite, let alone Macs in a few decades time. And I want to access my photos in a few decades time, particularly the edits I've made over the decades.

I think your reply is an example that society is filled with people who think short term but don't realise that they are essential short term thinking people. If there were no people like you who make up the majority, then the majority of society would not be short term thinkers. I mean, since the majority of society are short term thinkers, who think they're not, there must be lots of people on this forum who are like that.

 

[imajez]

There's no viable or cheap Thunderbolt to PCIe solution yet, especially for high-end GPUs. But the new Mac Pro can be neater than the old one since it's a small, quiet cylinder instead of a big, slightly noisy box. Either way, you still need cables going to it if you intend to use even one USB device. You can bundle cables together, so it'll look pretty much the same to have lots of cables rather than a few.

Mines prety quiet. External HDs units make more noise, so I don't want more of them. And the cables won't be as neat as you think because they are going to different places. A nMP + 2x 4HD enclosures + thunderbolt PCI expansion + cables and power supplies is never going to be neater or smaller than a single elegant case with one power lead and wireless mouse/keyboard etc.
The cost of expansion is not relevant when talking about form factor and tidiness. Though the new small form factor certainly costs you even more money in pricey peripherals that used to be be internal.

If you want to change a hard drive, you don't have to open the computer. If you don't want to hear the sounds from the drives, you can put them inside somewhere insulated or in another room. I love the eSATA speed of all my hard drives in my Mac Pro, but I wish I could swap them more easily.

Open a computer or an enclosure makes no difference. And why would I put my HDs in a room other than my office? Back up HDs yes, but placing noisy enclosures in other rooms is not a good solution.

That new Mac Pro server rack is hilarious

I saw a mock up of a nMP inside a MP tower case style design, but now can't find it.

----------

I guess you've only used Mac for a few years. I have some software that was optimised for Mountain Lion, but could not work with Mavericks, and I had to buy the new edition. That's just one example. There are tons of examples of software that is broken with each new iteration of OSX. Even with Aperture, Apple is promising to update it to work with Yosemite, because, as is, Aperture probably will not work with Yosemite.

Hence, in response to what seemed to you as a no-brainer, today's LR5, if I cannot get updates later on, may not even work on Yosemite, let alone Macs in a few decades time. And I want to access my photos in a few decades time, particularly the edits I've made over the decades.

I think your reply is an example that society is filled with people who think short term but don't realise that they are essential short term thinking people. If there were no people like you who make up the majority, then the majority of society would not be short term thinkers. I mean, since the majority of society are short term thinkers, who think they're not, there must be lots of people on this forum who are like that.

This is exactly why many businesses use Windows. MS does its best to not break compatibility and supports legacy systems/software. Whereas Apple don't care as breaking things means you need to upgrade and buy new hardware.

 

[e-coli]

'Shift + F' cycles through the screen modes to hide the chrome. I leave it on the minimal setting as Menu will appear if you need it on mouseover and 'F' will toggle completely full screen.
Set top/bottom panel to autohide, appear on mouse over or mouse click according to taste. I have show on mouse click and then autohide as I rarely use them. Or use f5 + f6 to toggle them on/off
Tab clears/reveals the main side panels and F7 + F8 does them individually. Or set them to autohide etc as with top/bottom panel.
't' toggles tool bar - rarely use it myself and '\' toggles filter bar.
Finally 'L' toggles through lights out mode so you can reveal/dim/hide the chrome.

Thanks for the tips. I had a bad taste in my mouth from Lightroom 1 on and it's never gone away. Obviously I have to learn it now. Maybe it'll grow on me. Anyhow...thanks for the info.

 

[imajez]

Thanks for the tips. I had a bad taste in my mouth from Lightroom 1 on and it's never gone away. Obviously I have to learn it now. Maybe it'll grow on me. Anyhow...thanks for the info.

Glad to be of help.

 

[captain kaos]

There are a lot of articles covering this already. Essentially you want to export your entire Aperture library, which is a built-in feature. If you have RAW or are worried about losing metadata, make sure to export with XMP sidecars. Lightroom will read those in and make the same adjustments.

Still, you'll lose facial recognition. No such feature in Lightroom, unfortunately.

Thats a lot of data. For example i started with aperture 2, so i have a lot of photos "imported" in to aperture, ie they are within the aperture icon in applications. Then when it was usable i started to "link to" my photos. So for me to export my photo library it would need to make copies of my external RAW files to bake in the XMP data, so thats TB of data.

 

[repeters]

Lightroom is not cloud-based

I was a LR Beta tester back in the day. It was kinda rough back then, but they eventually got it right. I did have Aperture for a while and liked it, but I eventually migrated over to an all Adobe environment after I dropped Final Cut. I still use LR 3 (I now, so outdated) but it does what I need.

I've read the previous threads and it looks like if I want to upgrade to the latest version, it's cloud-based. I have no interest in that. I wonder if Adobe allows any kind of upgrade option for early adopters? Probably not...

The latest version is not cloud-based. Lightroom is still on your computer along with all of your images.

 

[n-evo]

This is exactly why many businesses use Windows. MS does its best to not break compatibility and supports legacy systems/software. Whereas Apple don't care as breaking things means you need to upgrade and buy new hardware.

Upgrading your hardware won't fix any compatibility issues between a new OS X version and legacy software though. On top of that I remember Adobe software having compatibility issues with new versions of Windows as well. In the end it's Adobe's choice to issue updates or not. Of course only providing said updates to the latest version will force people to buy (/subscribe to) new software if they want to use the latest OS X version. That's more money for Adobe, not Apple.

 

[j133yc]

Sad but happy

I was wondering when this would happen to be frank. Sad that I now know for sure that Apple has killed one of its VERY successful application creation, that pioneered the RAW management and editing tool. I was a VERY happy customer since its inception but ever since Aperture 3, I didn't really see much improvements and frankly, started to lag behind others in terms of rendering and features. Though I must admit, it still trumps others in terms of UI tidiness and speed. It's still capable for some older cameras but my recent purchase of Leica M made me think hard of switching because Aperture just couldn't handle the moire issues from the ultra sharp images.
So I gave Lightroom a try and subscribe to their deal (Photoshop and Lightroom CC at that reduced price package). I am happy to say that it performs brilliantly. All files are clean and crisp. I had done a comparison between the two in my blog if any of you wants to see the comparison. The blog was written before I made the switch last year. Now I am happy and know that Adobe WILL continue to develop LR and of course PS for a very long time. Just that I need to learn from scratch for LR.

It's not too specific but it highlighted my concern between the two software.

Apple, I am a little disappointed in you

J

 

[Steve121178]

If it means shoving Flash into a pit of lava, I'm all for it!

Hundreds of millions of people use it daily to consume media, games etc. Flash isn't going anywhere.

 

[R2FX]

Yet having 'critical' bits on 3 sides and last century style pallets floating at random places over the images is OK? Any way the navigation is done with arrows, mouse, trackpad etc, I don't use the panels for navigation myself. In fact I had to try and think if you could, you can, but why bother when there are easier methods?

Now for all the slagging off of LR's terrible layout, confusing modules, useless organisation abilities, ugly UI and so on remember that the vast majority of photographers chose LR over Aperture, the programme that is being killed off. And it's incredibly well liked because it has made our lives as photographers so much easier. I'm certainly not saying it's without faults, but overall like PS before it they nailed the basics of how LR + PS should work in version 1.0 of both of these two quite different programmes.

you seem to be pushing your pro LR arguments way too hard... one may start to wonder whether you're making living of shooting pics or selling Adobe licenses