Lightroom B4 -- no intention to provide "insert" capability

From discussions on the old Pixmantec (RSP) forum, where the RSP users are all promised one paid-up-license to Lightroom 1.0, I discover that there is indeed no "insert" button in Lightroom, and from Michael Tapes' feedback, I conclude that Adobe doesn't think this is the right way to work. If you are familiar with C1, RSP or other common raw file development packages, "insert" is the button you push to move an image into the rendering queue, so that a JPG or TIFF output can be generated in the background while you move on to the next image of interest. It's a very natural way of working, preserving my focus on the image in front of me, and usually resulting in little delay in getting pictures out for local modifications in PS, for printing, for posting.

For the program developer at C1 or RSP, the tricky part of providing this background rendering capability was making sure that the parameters (output size, crops, color balance...) as set when the image is sent to the queue are preserved for use when the image gets its turn to be rendered at some later time. There have been bugs in this. Adobe seems to intend to finesse this problem by only rendering when the "develop" module has control. During that time one set of global settings are in effect (in addition to the image-specific meta controls), and nothing else can be done in Lightroom.

If anyone has been following this more closely than I have (I have only about an hour's experience with B4, gave up on B3), and can correct me, or add some insight, please do.

scott

scott kirkpatrick said:

Adobe seems to intend to finesse this problem by only rendering when the "develop" module has control.

Click to expand...

Adobe has always had a one track mind. Consider, for instance, that when adjusting there is very little else you can do, scrolling, and display size (only in recent versions), but you cannot, for instance, toggle the viewing of a layer or switch between mask viewing and image viewing. You must first close the adjustment dialogue, click the layer icon, then reopen the dialogue. Note that I'm still on CS1 and Adobe does slowly improve these things, so maybe some of these restrictions have already been removed.

- DL

I'm also still on CS1. I added ACR's most recent version, pointed it at the Leica M8 .dng file that is now circulating, and was told that support services required for this task would not be found in CS1. Amazing! But the LR beta could see it.

I thought the root of Adobe's single-track structure was their Win95 versions, when they had to redevelop everything that Win95 was trying to do for them, since they felt they could do it better. Ten+ years later, that is not a healthy legacy. Wouldn't you think that LR could get beyond it?

scott

I find it quite interesting that so many people - photographers and developers - don't yet see the two different ways of batching:

1. Let every photo in the queue be adjusted the same way.
2. Adjust your photos individually and add them to a queue to be rendered.

The first method is the most known and widespread, used, for instance, by Nikon capture NX - to my great disappointment. The second one was utilised by pixmantec for RAW Shooter - and is definitely the preferred one because it is much more flexible.

Like Scott I haven't had much time to play with LRb4, and I have abandoned b3 rather quickly. Hopefully Adobe listens to Michael Tapes, who has or will surely bring up Method 2 in discussions with Adobe [as surely has been done by the other Michael].

Looking forward to dling B4 when I get home (in Maine) and trying it. I was a long time user of RSP so have my biases, but still went between C1 and RSP most of the time. Both had the possibility of working behind the scenes, so to speak. I used ACR only occasionally and have B3 on my HD and tried it out quite a bit, adding my thoughts to the RSP and LR forums.

Diane

Wow — I'm so used to working this way in Capture One, it would be a major step back to have to do it the old "batch" way.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Lightroom B4 has made tremendous strides since B3. Take a look at my videos within a day or 2 when they are posted. Still more to g, but then again the program is not scheduled to launch until early 2007 from what i read.