What have I done?????? A3 - > LR3

[MattSepeta]

Shot a wedding Saturday and dumped the photos into A3. Everything is ok.

Started processing and all of a sudden the computer locks up. Totally freezes. Beach-balling mouse can move around, but that is it. Had to force restart my computer. All of the thumbnail previews are gone! Computer starts "processing" in the background and slowly rebuilding thumbnails at the rate of about 1 every 2 minutes.

This is unacceptable for culling, as it would take me over 2000 minutes at that rate! I started randomly clicking photos without the thumbnails and doing some editing once the preview generated. I do this for about 2 hours, planning on letting the computer think throughout the night. A3 crashes my computer AGAIN! Restart, all the thumbnails and previews are GONE, AGAIN!

Enough is enough I figure, and I download the Lightroom 3 trial.

Sure, it is super-wacky looking and confusing to use compared to A3, but it has not crashed or even beachballed ONCE after working on it all day. A3 normally needs restarted a few times a session.


Initial things I have noticed where L3 has the edge over A3:

• Lens correction. I am an UWA junky, especially during the reception on the dancefloor. Being able to apply a preset correction to all my UWA shots is a godsend.
• NOISE! I did some side by side comparisons of the noise removal tools, and L3 blows it out of the water. ESPECIALLY in darker OOF areas.
• Consistency. L3 "just works" as far as I can tell.
• I hate having my raw files constrained in a "Library" file in A3. Love the desktop hierarchy system in L3.

Now some things I like in A3 over L3
• Importing time. Took forever in L3 compared to A3
• Far more intuitive layout. Every aspect of it.
• So far I think I like the sharpening in A3 a bit more too.

Anyways, just wanted to share this bit of info, as I have spent more than my fair share of time bitching about A3s lackluster performance (In my experiences).

Hopefully editing this gig will go smoothly enough to convince me to buy the full version and keep A3 around only for my old files. I have no desire to move everything over, but rather start using L3 over A3.

 

[Kebabselector]

Everytime I upgrade to a new version of LR I try Aperture, I tend to find it struggles badly on my Mac Mini - Lightroom doesn't set the world on fire in terms of performance - but it works.

For me LR is a more polished application, I have no issues with the interface (used it from Beta version) or the need to switch from Library to Develop modules.

 

[tmagman]

i dont find importing that slow in LR. Do you use the actual LR import function? I normally just use the finder to access my memory cards and copy them over to the folder i want them in on my HDD and then I just tell LR to sync my working/imported folder in the Pictures folder and its no more than a couple seconds.

 

[flosseR]

Initial things I have noticed where L3 has the edge over A3:

• Lens correction. I am an UWA junky, especially during the reception on the dancefloor. Being able to apply a preset correction to all my UWA shots is a godsend.
• NOISE! I did some side by side comparisons of the noise removal tools, and L3 blows it out of the water. ESPECIALLY in darker OOF areas.
• Consistency. L3 "just works" as far as I can tell.
• I hate having my raw files constrained in a "Library" file in A3. Love the desktop hierarchy system in L3.

Hmm I don't have my RAWs in a Library at all in Aperture... as a matter of fact most of the time mine aren't even connected or online. Noise I have to give you... that is true.

Sorry to hear about your experience but well.. ***** happens I guess

GHood luck with LR. I tried twice to move to LR..no luck. While it has some compelling features, the whole layout is just fubared and with the price that A3 costs plus ptlens and noise ninja you get better tools that LR at a lower price .. that is if you buy it, which most people dont

 

[snberk103]

Thanks for the side-by-side review. I use LR3, never got around to A3. Once you are used to the interface it works. At least for me.

One tip to make imports go faster is to break the import into chunks, I'm told. If you have 200 images, then pick 50 and start the import, then pick the next 50 and start the import. Supposedly you can start as many parallel import threads as you have cores for best results. I haven't needed to speed up my imports, so it's been a while since I've tried this.

Also, if your A3 and LR3 libraries were on two different HDDs you may have been seeing the difference in HDD speeds and not program processing speed. Just a thought.