Tag Archives: lightroom CC 2015

Good Contrast Control in Lightroom CC

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Contrast Control in Lightroom

Learning how to deploy proper contrast control in Lightroom brings with it two major benefits:

  • It allows you to reveal more of your camera sensors dynamic range.
  • It will allow you to reveal considerably more image detail.

contrast control

I have posted on this subject before, under the guise of neutralising Lightrooms ‘hidden background adjustments’.  But as Lightroom CC 2015 evolves, trying to ‘nail’ the best way of doing something becomes like trying to hit a moving target.

For the last few months I’ve been using this (for me) new method – and to be honest it works like a charm!

It involves the use of the ‘zero’ preset together with a straight process version swap around, as illustrated in the before/after shot above and in the video linked below.  This video is best viewed on my YouTube channel:

The process might seem a little tedious at first, but it’s really easy when you get used to it, and it works on ALL images from ALL cameras.

Here is a step-by-step guide to the various Lightroom actions you need to take in order to obtain good contrast control:

Contrast Control Workflow Steps:

1. Develop Module Presets: Choose ZEROED
2. Camera Calibration Panel: Choose CAMERA NEUTRAL
3. Camera Calibration Panel: Choose Process Version 2010
4. Camera Calibration Panel: Choose Process Version 2012
5. Basics Panel: Double Click Exposure (goes from -1 to 0)
6. Basics Panel: Adjust Black Setting to taste if needed.
7. Details Panel: Reset Sharpening to default +25
8. Details Panel: Reset Colour Noise to default +25
9. Lens Corrections Panel: Tick Remove Chromatic Aberration.

Now that you’ve got good contrast control you can set about processing your image – just leave the contrast slider well alone!

Why is contrast control important, and why does it ‘add’ so much to my images Andy?

We are NOT really reducing the contrast of the raw file we captured.  We are simply reducing the EXCESSIVE CONTRAST that Lightroom ADDS to our files.

  • Lightroom typically ADDS a +33 contrast adjustment but ‘calls it’ ZERO.
  • Lightroom typically ADDS a medium contrast tone curve but ‘calls it’ LINEAR.

Both of this are contrast INCREASES, and any increase in contrast can be seen as a ‘compression’ of the tonal space between BLACK and WHITE.  This is a dynamic range visualisation killer because it crushes the ends of the midtone range.

It’s also a detail killer, because 99% of the subject detail is in the mid tone range.  Typically the Lightroom tonal curve range for midtones is 25% to 75%, but Lightroom is quite happy to accept a midtone range of 10% to 90% – check those midtone arrow adjusters at the bottom edge of the parametric tone curve!

I hope you find this post useful folks, and don’t forget to watch the video at full resolution on my YouTube Channel.

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Lightroom Instagram Plugin

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instagram plugin for LightroomLightroom Instagram Plugin

Even though I suppose I am rather tech-savvy for an old fart, I have major head-problems with most social media.

Facebook took me years to get the hang of..

And even though I have an account, followers and everything I simply CANNOT get my head around Twitter …. it makes NO f***ing sense to me at all!

Over the last year I’ve also been aware of the growing use by professional of this other “thing” called Instagram.

About two months ago I asked my son Richard to explain how it works:

“It’s simple Dad, it’s Twitter for images”………..I couldn’t work out who to shoot first, me or him.

But, after much grief I was eventually shown how to put an image on Instagram.  I have an iPhone and an iPad but bare in mind it took me ages to work out how to put pictures on them.

And ALL mobile apps confound the hell out of me – so overly-simplified I find them difficult to use and I run out of patience!

So here I am looking at Instagram and seeing that I have to send an image to my iPad then I can upload it to Instagram – WTF????

I put a single image on there – it took me at least 30 minutes, and Rich was pissing himself laughing which didn’t help!

I tried a couple of programmes that were supposed to help put images on Instagram from a desktop machine, but they turned out to be more bloody complicated than the iPad method.

Needless to say I put Instagram on the back-burner.

BUT………………..someone has done something EPIC.  They’ve made a Lightroom Instagram Plugin – and it works!

It’s called LR/Instagram and you can download it HERE

Lightroom Instagram Plug-in

Simply click the download link, unzip the the file and copy the LRInstagram.lrplugin file to your Lightroom plug-ins folder.

Open up your Lightroom Plug-in Manager and click “ADD” then navigate to the file itself

lightroom instagram plugin

and click Add Plug-in.

The plug-in will appear under Publish Services in the bottom left panel of your Library Module.

lightroom instagram plugin

Click “Set Up”

Assuming you’ve actually got an Instagram account (if not then get one) all you need to do is fill in your account U/N and P/W and click Login:

lightroom instagram plugin

Once logged into your account you need to set the export preferences – I actually leave them set as above (default) with added standard screen sharpening and a custom watermark.

Simply click ‘Save’ and you’re done!

Using the Lightroom Instagram Plugin is easy if you are used to any of the other publish services inside Lightroom, but if you want to see it in action here is a short video on my YouTube channel – if you are viewing this post via email then the video will not show up – read it on the blog itself

This Lightroom Instagram Plugin seems to work flawlessly and definitely speeds up and simplifies publish images to Instagram – all I need to do now is work out an effective hash-tag method!

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Lightroom CC2015.5.1 Update

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Lightroom CC2015.5.1

Lightroom CC2015.5.1 and Lightroom 6.5.1 UPDATE

Adobe have just released a new update for Lightroom CC2015 & Lightroom 6.

This update is of particular relevance to Nikon users who were suffering with the missing lens data information I posted about previously.

The new update is touted as fixing the problem, and it certainly does so for new imports from what I can see.  But for images that are already in your catalogue and are showing the “unknown lens” tag in your metadata and filter bar, you are going to need to do a bit of extra work!

Adding the update does NOT fix the existing issue!  WTF……….??

So here is how to FIX the problem.

  1. Open your catalogue Library Module in Lightroom CC2015.5.1 or 6.5.1
  2. Click on All Photographs in your Catalogue Panel (top left below Navigator)
  3. Hit the backslash ( \ ) key to bring up your filter bar
  4. Select All Dates together with All Cameras & All Lenses, and select the Unknown Lens category

Lightroom CC2015.5.1

  • Head up to the contextual menu and go Select All – all cells should now be highlighted

Lightroom CC2015.5.1

  • Go to Metadata in the contextual menu and select Save Metadata to Files

Lightroom CC2015.5.1

  • Go back to Metadata in the contextual menu and select Read Metadata from Files

Once you click READ you will see your images sequentially vanish from the selected UNKNOWN LENS view as Lightroom updates its metadata records.

HOWEVER – this does NOT work with ANY Virtual Copies, Proof Copies or video files that you have within said catalogue.

To correct these, you have to make new virtual copies, then select the old ones and copy all Develop Settings from the old ones to the new ones! And don’t ask me what you do with video files because I can’t work that one out.

What a bloody carve-up!

If you want the official instructions from Adobe they are HERE

Creative Cloud subscribers should also take the new Photoshop CC 2015 update – this adds camera support and fixes to CameraRAW.

On a lighter note the new update has also added new camera support for the Pentax K1 and Sony DSCRX10M3

Lightroom – Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation

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Lightroom – Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation.

We all know how good Lightroom is – but it’s also a total pain in the arse!

Ages ago, I did a post about Lightroom 5 and accurate colour HERE and, according to this blogs page-view stats, that post still gets a large global viewing figure every month – so it’s something of an on-going problem for a lot of users.

But things have moved on a bit since then, and we are now working with the v5 release of Lightroom 6/CC 2015 – and things haven’t got any better, sadly, from the perspective of actually “seeing what you captured”.

The problem lies in the fact that Lightroom, for a long time, ceased to be a “neutral” RAW handler.  It uses a variety of ‘behind the scenes’ algorithms to add what it thinks are good adjustments in terms of exposure brightness and contrast.  In other words Lightroom adds hidden adjustments which we cannot see because they are not registered on the adjustment sliders under process version 2012.

Why does it do this – God only knows!

But when I take into account the support Lightroom currently offers for mobile phone cameras, cloud synch etc, I can’t help thinking that Adobe are trying to give Lightroom some sort of mass-market appeal by adding what the designers and coders think is some sort of WOW-factor to image previews – though I might be wrong!

But whatever Adobes reasoning, the fact remains that SOME OF US want to see our raw files for what they are – straight gamma 2.2 encoded versions of what the sensor recorded.  Only by learning how to Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation  can we actually arrive at a suitable starting point for the development process.

The Case To Answer

Firstly, a lot of you might be wondering WTF I’m ranting on about – your RAW image previews look great before you start doing anything to them – mmmmm….

If that’s the case then NEWS FLASH – RAW files should look as flat as dish-water pre-process, and you have do some work to make them look good.  So believe me, if your raws look “nice ‘n punchy” from the get-go then something is wrong somewhere!

Out there in photography land there are two RAW file handlers that are notorious for being “neutral” in their initial raw render – Raw Digger, and Iridient Developer.

Let me demonstrate the “case to answer” by using the same image I used the other day when giving Canon an indirect slagging off over lossless compression:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file opened in Lightroom with no user adjustments BUT WITH Lightroom ‘hidden exposure compensation’.

Now let’s open the same file in Raw Digger:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file opened in Raw Digger with no user adjustments.

And now in Iridient Developer:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file opened in Iridient Developer with no user adjustments.

And now, just for good measure, my Lightroom-processed version of the image:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file processed in Lightroom WITH user adjustments.

Both RAW Digger and Iridient Developer give the user a much better processing start point simply because they are neutral and don’t go about making contrast-loaded ‘background adjustments’.  And I’m sure you can see that the final Lightroom processed version of the image bares more resemblance to the RAW Digger and Iridient screen grabs than the Lightroom ‘as is’ preview.

Now if you are a total maniac then you can go and download either of the two aforementioned raw developers and get yourself super-confused or you can learn how to ‘neutralise’ the Lightroom background adjustment ‘crap’ – which is far easier!

How to Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom.

Step 1.  Scroll down to the Camera Calibration Panel in the Develop module and switch the Process Version from PV2012 to PV 2010:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 1 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Step 2.  Scroll up to the Basics panel (a very different looking one if you never used Lightroom 3!) and make the following changes:

  1. Blacks from 5 to 0
  2. Brightness from +50 to 0
  3. Contrast from +25 to 0
Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 2 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Step 3.  Move to the Tone Curve and change the Medium Contrast tone curve to Linear:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 3 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

DO NOT concern yourself with the fact that your image has gone dark and flat, it’s to be expected!

Step 4.  Scroll back down to Camera Calibration and switch the process version BACK to PV2012, then scroll back up to the Basics Panel:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 4 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Step 5.  Yes I know it still looks awful, but if you now change that -1EV to 0 on the exposure slider you’ll get a great process start image:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 5 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Looking at the before and after images you can see that we have got contrast under control – in other words we have removed the excess contrast added to the image with the  Lightroom hidden background shenanigans.

Indeed, we can see exactly how much contrast has been removed with this ‘by the numbers’ process by looking at the -33 Contrast value – DO NOT RESET THIS BACK TO 0!!!!

The process has decreased contrast still further by lifting the Blacks value to +25.  You need to check the shadow areas on the image in this respect.  If they are looking a bit noisy (Hello Canon!) you might want to drop the blacks value to maybe +5 to +10 and open the shadows a bit more with a small positive adjustment to the Shadows slider in the basics panel.

And so processing is just a matter of a few subjective tweaks until I’m happy with the image:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Click to view larger image.

In the Tone Curve panel you can see the multi-point Custom Curve the process has added.  If you click the up/down arrows to the right of the word Custom you will see a menu giving you the option to save the curve:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Saving the custom curve.

I save the curve with the name 2010to2012 – by default it saves as an .xmp file, and to the user/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/Curves file path (Mac).

Saving the curve is useful as it makes for a very quick adjustment of further images.

However, there is a caveat (isn’t there always!) and it’s this:

The majority of  adjustments in Lightroom are specific to camera sensor and ISO.  In simple terms the same numeric value of adjustment to any control slider can have differing effects depending on the sensor it was made by and the ISO at which it was shot.  It’s very important that you wrap your head around this fact.

The curve I’ve produced here is correct for a Canon 1DX at the shot ISO which was 1000 or 800 if my memory serves correctly.  I could apply this curve to a 100 ISO image shot with a Nikon D800E, and it would do a good job, but I might get a slightly better result if I go through the whole process again to produce a custom curve for the D800E using a 100 ISO shot to begin with.  But even if that new curve visually gives a different result it will still have the same numeric values in the basics panel!

If I save the curve and then apply it to another image via the Tone Curve panel the contrast and blacks Basic Panel values do NOT change – but you will get a better distribution of contrast.

You may want to generate and save at least a low and high ISO variant of the curve for each of your camera bodies; or you could be a smart-arse like me by just using one curve and eye-balling the finer tweaks.

You can also create the curve and then save the settings as a User Develop Preset and then apply it to future imports via the import module.

So there you have it, how to Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom and see you images properly – have fun folks!

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Lightroom 6.3 Update

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Lightroom 6.3 – latest update from Adobe.

lr

Well, it’s here – at last.  Adobe have released a new 6.3 version of Lightroom 6/CC 2015 that seemingly addresses all the problems associated with the abomination that was v6.2.

Should you install it ?  Go on, live dangerously….!

Seriously though, I’ve installed it and it seems to be working fine.

Patch files are here MAC and Windows if you want to do the direct update instead of going through the Creative Cloud Updater – which has been running a little slow.

So what are the benefits of the update?

The bloody Import Dialogue is back as it should be for starters – Thank God!

Dehaze Filter – now available as a Localized Adjustment in the Radial & Graduated filters and in the Adjustment Brush.  This is actually very neat, and makes the Dehaze properties very useful in my opinion.

There is support for new cameras – see here for the list and new camera tether support – see here

Sadly though, Nikon and Leica still exhibit known tether support failure under El Capitan – so Mac users are stil best off sticking with OSX 10.10 Yosemite.

So here’s the list of known v6.2 issues fixed, according to Adobe:

  • Fixed several instability, functionality and performance issues introduced in Lightroom CC 2015.2.x/6.2.x.
  • Fixed a bug that caused edits made and saved in Photoshop or 3rd party plug-ins to not appear in the Develop module.
  • Fixed a bug related to user default for Chromatic Aberration Correction no longer honored after new Import option was removed.
  • Fixed several bugs related to Panorama Merge.
  • Fixed a bug so that Rotated photos will correctly show as rotated when in Full Screen view.
  • Fixed a bug that caused a performance slowdown when creating Standard sized previews on high resolution monitors.
  • Fixed a bug that caused image previews to be incorrectly displayed as completely black after import if “Auto Tone” is on in preferences.
  • Fixed a bug that caused crash when using the Radial or Graduated Filter.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Palette, a 3rd party hardware device, to stop working with Lightroom.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Map module to appear pixelated and photos to be  dropped in the wrong place when using hi-dpi monitors on Windows.
  • Fixed a bug related to Full Screen that prevented you from exiting Full Screen view while using the Spot Healing Tool.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Flickr Publish Service to improperly publish multi-word keywords.

So folks, there you have it. It’s a new update, so perhaps you might want to wait a few days, just to see if there are bugs arising in the new version.

I’m just glad the Import Dialogue no longer looks like it belongs on the CBeebies Channel !

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Latest Lightroom news from Adobe

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Latest Lightroom news from Adobe

LRCC2015splash

I’ve been teaching the latest version of Lightroom for the majority of this past week; mostly without a hitch. All-in-all, I’ve seen Lightroom 6/CC 2015 v2.1 working without any problems on 7 different machines; though these were all Macs running OSX 10.10 Yosemite so I can’t comment on PC or the dreaded El Capitan 10.11 OSX version.

I know lot’s of folk are still having problems with the existing release, and that a roll-back to v1.1.1 is still proving their option; but seeing as I manage to get v2.1 working without a hitch I suspect folk are not tidying up their systems before installation as much as they could – remove all traces of Lightroom and do a fresh install.

BUT…………yep, there is always one isn’t there!

Thousands have been moaning about the new, very different, and I have to say rather annoying Import Dialogue..

So the Latest Lightroom news from Adobe is that we can expect another update sometime very soon that will give us the old style import options back – WooHoo!

Tom Hogarty of Adobe made the announcement about 9 hours ago – you can read it here

Tom has been doing a lot of ‘back-pedalling’ and apologising to users on mass this week for the lack of beta-testing of the v2 release, and the new import dialogue options, or rather the lack of them.

He’s obviously never heard the old adage “if it ain’t broke DON’T fix it” !

Personally, I think Eric Chan should be put in the overall “Lightroom Head-Honcho” position over at Adobe – I doubt very much if this shit would have been allowed to happen if it had been so.

Adobe roughly means “house of mud” – mmmm………let’s hope it stops raining soon ehh boys!

For Mac users – I’ve still not upgraded to El Capitan 10.11 OSX.  If anyone has, and has managed to keep Lightroom CC 2015 v2.1 running, please can they let me know in the comments below.

Lightroom Crash Cured?

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LRCC2015splash

Lightroom Crash Cure – hot-fix from Adobe

Adobe have now released a hot-fix for the Lightroom CC 2015/6.2 crash problem.

I applied the new patch to two machines and they both appear to be fully functional, but some people are still reporting problems.

The update should appear in your CC Apps panel notifications, or under Help>Updates.  If it doesn’t, you can try restarting Lightroom. I’ll tell you now that neither worked for me, so I manually downloaded the fix, so here are the links:

Mac 2.1 fix HERE

WinPC 2.1 fix HERE

If you are still having problems, please let me know.

And just to be clear, I have still NOT upgraded to El Capitan OSX 10.11.

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Lightroom Dehaze – part 2

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More Thoughts on The Lightroom Dehaze Control

With the dehaze adjustment in Lightroom (right) the sky and distant hills look good, but the foreground looks poor.

With the dehaze adjustment in Lightroom (right) the sky and distant hills look good, but the foreground looks poor.

In my previous post I did say I’d be uploading another video reflecting my thoughts on the Lightroom/ACR dehaze adjustment.

And I’ve just done that – AND I’ve made a concious effort to keep the ramblings down too..!

In the video I look at the effects of the dehaze adjustment on 4 very different images, and alternative ways of obtaining similar or better results without it.

You may see some ‘banding’ on the third image I work on – this is down to YouTube video compression.

In conclusion I have to say that I find the dehaze ‘tool’ something of an anti-climax if I’m honest. In fairly small positive amounts it can work exceptionally well in terms of a quick work flow on relatively short dynamic range images.  But I’m not a really big fan in general, and It’s possible to create pretty much the same adjustments using the existing Lightroom tools.

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Lightroom Dehaze

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 The Lightroom Dehaze Control

I’m getting a bit fed up with seeing countless folk raving about this new dehaze slider control in Lightroom, ACR etc.

dehaze,lightroom,Andy Astbury,WildlifeinPixels

The control itself can be found at the bottom of the Effects panel in the Develop module in Lightroom CC 2015, and at the top of the ACR FX tab.

Yes it’s certainly useful, but I have yet to see anyone illustrating its bad points – so Uncle Andy has made a video: if you are reading this in email, click this link to watch the video https://www.wildlifeinpixels.net/blog/lightroom-dehaze/

I do tend to waffle a bit in videos so apologies for that…!

You might want to click the YouTube icon bottom right corner and watch this video at a larger size.

I’m not saying that the dehaze control in Lightroom and ACR is crap – far from it.  But I am strongly advising that you deploy it with some caution, especially when images contain small fine edge detail.

Under these circumstances, positive value dehaze control adjustments can have disastrous effects on fine detail.  You might not be aware of these ‘on screen’ but send the image to A2 print and you could be in for some tears.

I’ll be doing another video on the dehaze control shortly, showing some of the positives that I see in it.

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Lightroom CC 2015 Crash Fix.

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***Attention – if you are looking for help with the problems associated with Lightroom CC 2015/Lightroom 6 version 2.0 – October 2015 – then please go to this latest post page HERE and scroll down the page for the Temporary FIX.  This Lightrom crash fix/rollback method applies to both Mac & PC users***

Lightroom CC 2015 Crash & Performance Issues – (first release).

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There are a great many folk out there experiencing crash or freeze problems with the new Lightroom CC 2015.

The biggest problem, and the one that has effected me, is random crashing in the Develop Module, and a ‘jittery’ crop rotation tool.

If you have suffered from this then you will most likely have an ‘not too new’ nVidea GPU – or so it would appear.

Lightroom CC 2015 makes use of the graphics GPU acceleration on your computer, and this is ‘turned ON’ by default upon installation of the application.

But it seems that older nVidea chipsets are causing some quite considerable speed reduction problems, to the point where the application can run out of ram and basically crash.

Adobe are supposed to be creating a fix (according to the forums) but you can get around the problem really easily.

Open up Lightroom CC 2015 and go to your Lightroom preferences:

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

On the preferences panel you’ll see a new tab called ‘Performance’

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

You will see a checked ‘tick box’ for Use Graphics Processor – UNTICK IT, close the preferences panel and restart Lightroom CC 2015.

I’m on a mid-2009 Mac Pro running 10.10.3 Yosemite and a bog standard (for the day) nVidea Geforce GT120 512Mb graphics card.

Lightroom CC 2015 was slower than Lr5 on this machine, it would crash, the crop tool occasionally looked like it was a ‘motor neurone’ sufferer, and the heal/clone tool was harsh, pixelated and quite slow.

Turning OFF GPU acceleration has seemingly cured all my woes, and now it runs as smoothly as Lightroom 5 did but with the Photomerge options and other benefits of Lightroom CC 2015.

On that same performance tab there is a ‘system info’ button you can press that’ll give you the specifications of your machine and Lightroom installation:

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

The word ‘Passed’ next to the Open GL support means nothing, and if you you click the ‘Learn More’ link on the performance tab of Lightroom preferences it’ll take you to THIS PAGE on the Adobe support website.

On that page you will see this:

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

Now this explains A LOT!

Running a standard (sub 2K) 24″ monitor with sub 1Gb of VRAM, even with updated driver support for Open GL 3.3, means you are running at a resolution of 1920 pixels long edge and in effect you will not really benefit from Lightroom CC 2015 GPU acceleration in the first place.

I’m also running Lightroom CC 2015 on a mid 2011 27″ non-retina iMac with a horizontal resolution of 2560 pixels and an ATI Radion HD 6770M 512Mb graphics chipset.  This machine hasn’t crashed as such, but is certainly better run with the GPU acceleration turned OFF too.

Here is a very rough test you can do:

  1. Open a FULL RESOLUTION image in the Develop module.
  2. Pick up the Heal/Clone tool and set it to Heal with the opacity & feather controls to 100%
  3. Paint a random stroke on the image, and while painting, look carefully at the white edges of the stroke – are they smooth and feathered, or harsh and slightly granular?
  4. If they are the latter the go and turn OFF GPU acceleration and repeat the process – you will see the edges of the stroke look much better.
Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

Click to view LARGER

So, think of it this way; Adobe have put a facility into Lightroom 6/CC 2015 that makes use of very latest up to date computer graphics systems AND it’s ‘active’ by default.

If you run a new iMac 27″ Retina then you are running 5120 pixels on the long edge – that’s 5K graphics, and the new GPU acceleration will help you.

If your system fails to meet the operating criteria then having the acceleration active will cause you problems.  The severity of the problems you experience will be proportional to how ‘out of date’ your graphics are; so TURN IT OFF !

I can’t speak about installations of Lightroom CC 2015 under the Windows operating systems, but looking at the forums it seems that the same sort of problems exist for PC users.

A friend called this morning saying that the default installation ran smoothly and at warp-speed on his new retina macbook, but was noticeably slower than Lightroom 5 on his desktop PC – same problem, same fix.

Crash and slow-down problems with Lightroom CC 2015 are not OS problems – they are GPU VRAM/RAM problems, so don’t waste your time defraging hard drives and running system ‘junk checks’ if Lightroom 5 ran well.

 

Lightroom CC 2015 Launch Hang Problem?

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

If you are experiencing launch hang, splash screen hang or crashing of the application on launch then GO HERE where you’ll see the instructions in the image above.

Kyle Bailey kindly sent me a solution/fix for a windows crash fix if you literally can’t uncheck the graphics acceleration check box:

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Andrew, but I couldn’t untick the graphics processor box –Lightroom would crash when I tried. I just spent a couple hours with tech support and thought I’d share our solution:

Close LR first. Open device manager, double click on display adapters, right-click your graphics card (mine was AMD Radeon), choose install drivers, browse system, pick from list. Make NOTE of which is currently active, then change it to standard VGA. It may prompt you to reboot, but don’t do it.

This will make the screen look crazy, but don’t worry! Now, open LR, untick the graphics box, and close LR.

Finally, go back into device manager and change it back to the original driver and viola. Next time you start LR, the box will remain unticked.

Cheers for that Kyle.

 

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