Lightroom v7.3 – Some Thoughts

Well, I’d like to say the past week has been a blast, but Adobe screwed any chance of that happening by releasing version 7.3 of Lightroom on the 3rd/4th.

The week actually started off quite well with me uploading a Raw Therapee basic “get you started’ video:

I created that video primarily to help out anyone who has purchased my latest video training ‘Professional Grade Image Sharpening’ – click this link and get it bought if you haven’t already!

I’d planned to get out and do some photography, and do some serious SEO work on my YouTube channel.

But when I turned my machines on at 6.15am on the 4th I was greeted with some queries from clients and blog/channel viewers about some new fangled update for Lightroom.

Then the CC update panel told me I had application updates for Photoshop and Lightroom, so we clicked update on both.

I’m a bit of a Photoshop junkie, and I always look forward to any update if I’m honest, just so I can go and have a play with it!

But I’ve been a bit ‘meh..’ over Lightroom for quite a while now, for a few reasons.

Firstly, it’s trying to become some sort of pathetic 1 stop shop image processor, catering to the ‘instant gratification brigade’ INSTEAD OF what it’s meant to be – a superb digital asset management program and a raw processor designed to work in conjunction with the KING of image processors – PHOTOSHOP.

Secondly, it’s unique demosaicing algorithm is ludicrously outdated in comparison to C1, Iridient and RT, and its capture/input sharpening controls leave a lot to be desired.  Anyone who has been sensible and bought my massive sharpening training knows exactly what I’m talking about here, as I demonstrate these facts more than a few times!

In point of fact, on the demosaicing front, it’s not as clever as that found in either Canon DPP or Nikon Capture.

But, with a bit of patience and effort, you can strip all the crap background adjustments away, and get back to a relatively neutral starting point; as I’ve discussed many times previously on this blog.

So, once the updates were done, and I’d had a quick look at Photoshop, I fired up the new Lightroom v7.3 – and immediately wished I hadn’t!

Heading over to the Adobe Lightroom Forum I see A LOT of very upset users.

Strangely enough though, heading over to YouTube I see the exact opposite!

But, positive or negative, all the buzz is about the new profiles.

Lightroom v7.3 Profiles

There are tens of thousands of Lightroom v7.3 fan boys out there, plus even more users with a low level knowledge base, who do NOT understand what a ‘profile’ is – and Adobe are using this as a massive marketing tool.

Lightroom v7.3 profiles are simply Lightroom v7.2 PRESETS, re-bundled into something called a profile, and shoved into a different location in the Lightroom GUI.

The subtle difference is this – if you have a preset that gives a ‘certain look’ to an image, when you apply it, the relevant sliders in the dev module move.

But if you have a ‘profile’ that gives the same visual appearance, when you apply it the relevant sliders DON”T move.

A PRESET is a visible, front GUI adjustment, and a PROFILE is a buried, background adjustment.

You’ll see this corroborated by an Adobe Forum Moderator a little later on..

A preset shows up in the control sliders, and you can easily tweak these after applying the preset.

Application of a PROFILE however, gives you no control indication of what it’s done, so you can’t tweak its adjustments because you can’t see them.

Profiles just pander to people who basically want Adobe to process their images for them – harsh, but true.

Presets – for me, the few that I make are simply to save time in applying settings to remove Adobes processing of my images.

But for years there has been a third party after-market revenue stream in preset bundles from certain photography trainers – buy these and your images will look like mine!  So presets too steered their purchasers away from actually processing their own images, but at least those presets were designed by photographers!

Anyway, for those that haven’t seen the two videos I upload to YouTube about Lightroom v7.3 they are embedded below:

I was expecting a mixed response to those videos, from the sane and sensible:

Click me – good old Franky!

Click me

to the plain stupid:

Click me – I’m worth a read!

but I wasn’t expecting the raft of these, this is the tamest:

You have to have a thick skin if you stick videos on YouTube, but what the f**k does  a comment like that achieve?

Anyway, F**K all that. At the end of the first video I do say that if I find anything out about the new default sharpening amount in Lightroom v7.3 I would let you know in a blog article.

So I headed over to the Adobe Lightroom Forum to beg the question – it only took 10 minutes and an Adobe moderator addressed the question, and a bit more besides.

I’ve screen-grabbed it so please click the image below to read it:

I’m interesting so CLICK ME!

So, the important take-aways are:

nothing has changed

and

part of an effort by Adobe to offer a more pleasing “out-of-the-box” rendering

and

At the ‘base’ level nothing has changed. The demosaicing algorithm is unchanged, MelissRGB is still the default colour space within the UI, and the Adobe Standard profile (DCP) for each supported camera is also unchanged. Likewise, the Camera Matching profiles are unchanged.

and

All of the new Adobe Raw and Creative profiles are built on top of Adobe Standard (i.e. Adobe Standard remains the base profile for all supported cameras). As such, these XMP based profiles apply settings under-the-hood.

Conclusion.

So basically the whole version update is geared SOLELY towards people with a camera who want instant gratification by allowing Adobe techs to process their images for them.

As someone who’s understood the photography process, and watched it evolve over the last 40 years, I count myself as something slightly more than just a fat bloke with a camera.

Forget about all this “I care about my images” garbage – I KNOW what constitutes a technically sound image, and ever since the inception of PV2012, Lightroom has been on a slippery slope towards losing it’s full professional image maker credibility.

Like many others, I still use Lightroom, and I always will.  As I said before, it excels in Digital Asset Management, and it’s Soft Proofing and Print facilities are really without equal.

Have they improved any of those features? In a nutshell, NO.

My monthly subscription has gone up by £25 a year, and for my money I’ve now got even more work to do inside the dev module to make sense of my raw files.  If you’ve lost the understanding of what I mean, go and watch the 2nd video again!

Am I even remotely thinking about dropping my subs and using another application?

I might look like a cabbage, but I’m not one!  My £120+ buys me access to a constantly updated installation of the finest image processor on the face of Gods Earth – the mighty Photoshop.

And for those without the required level of prior knowledge, that privilege used to cost in excess of £800+ plus serious upgrade fees every couple of years.  That’s why there was such ripping ‘trade’ in torrenting and cracked copies!

So overall, I’m quids-in, and I can think of Lightroom as something of a freebie, which makes even Lightroom v7.3 good VFM.

Added to that, I can always open a raw file in RT and get a 16bit ProPhotoRGB tiff file into Photoshop that’ll kick Lightrooms version into the last millennium.

But I can’t help it, I do resent deeply the road down which the Adobe bosses are taking Lightroom.

What they should have done is make CC into an idiots version, and re-worked the Classic CC into a proper raw editor with multiple choices for demosaicing, a totally re-worked input sharpening module, and interface the result with the existing Print, Soft-Proof and DAM.

But of course, that would cost them money and reduce their profit margin – so there’s no chance of my idea ever coming to fruition.

I take my hat off to the guys in the C1 dev team, but C1 is far too hostile an environment for any of those thousands of idiots who love the new Lightroom profiles – because that would mean they’d need to do some actual processing work!

And if C1 is hostile, then RT is total Armageddon – hell, it even sends me into a cold sweat!

But photography has always been hard work that demanded knowledge before you started, and a lot of hard learning to acquire said knowledge.

Hard work never hurt anyone, and when does the path of least resistance EVER result in the best possible outcome?

Never – the result is always an average compromise.

And good image processing is all about the BEST IMAGE POSSIBLE from a raw file.

Which brings me nicely back to my sharpening training – get it bought you freebie-hunting misers! GO ON – DO IT NOW – BEFORE YOU FORGET and before I die of starvation!

DO IT!

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