OK, so I’ve been doing this series over on LightroomKillerTips.com called “Things I’d love to see added to Lightroom” and I shared my top seven picks in the last week or so. During the process, our readers posted lots of great ideas for features they’d love to see added, so today I put up a one-question survey where you (we, us, etc.) can pick which feature, from their favorites, is our favorite (if that makes sense).
If that doesn’t make sense, how’s this: “Hey, I posted a survey with a bunch of potentially cool Lightroom features â” could you pick your favorite from the list?”
Here’s the link to the page with the survey.
Hope you have a quick sec to take the survey (it’s just one-question), and then I’ll post the results tomorrow, and we’ll be able to see what the top most-liked feature ideas wound up being (while it’s just a one-question survey, this is harder than it sounds, because their feature ideas are really good. I’d like to vote for literally all of them, but for the purposes of our survey, we only get to choose one each).
Many thanks everybody. Here’s to a much better than average Monday!
Best,
-Scott
P.S. I’m in Hartford, Connecticut on Friday teaching my full-day seminar. Wanna come?
Tried the link and it’s not working. You might wanna update it.
Likewise Scott! Please RT when working – thanks
It’s working now. :)
Broken link. Cheers
It’s working now. TOUGH decisions! I voted for combining the Library and Develop modules. I find switching back and forth a pain sometimes (yeah, I know it’s two tabs next to each other….)
Have a super Monday, Scott!
–John
Sorry I hit the flag button thinking I was agreeing with John (which I was). Nothing inappropriate about his comment ;-)
John’s comment are usually inappropriate. I just flag ’em out of habit now. LOL!! ;-)
I thought the only thing inappropriate about me was my choice of sports teams (according to you). I guess I have to re-examine my whole life now….. 😉
Picking TB is tough :)
I have just made a fairly long post on the Luminous Landscape Lightroom forum “What has the Adobe LR team been doing since LR5 for 2 years?”.
I tried to create a link here to avoid a long posting, but was unable to paste the link..
So, here are just some of the points I made regarding absence of focus by Adobe on the real needs of real Lightroom users. The focus is on usability.
I compiled this list from a brain dump while having coffee on Sunday morning. If I was to think about it I could make a much longer list.
1. Leave a folder and return… Why must I search thru 1000 images to find the image I was previously working on. Most people have at least one card full of images in a folder. Folders have regularly hundreds or thousands of images.
2. Book module disaster. Cannot place text or graphic on a page or a template.
3. Blurb lock-in. I have nothing against Blurb, just been locked in to Blurb.
4. Cannot manage key metadata fields in Mobile version (title, caption, location). I have no interest in the Develop module on an iPad. If I need to develop I will bring a MacAir.
5. I cannot see the colour profile of an image. [I have to do a round trip to PS or use a third party tool].
6. Cannot customise keyboard shortcuts. Does Adobe not realise that I have one hand on a keyboard and another on a wand or mouse. I want to be able to get to my most frequent commands with a single key or really simple mouse click. I do not want to be dropping the wand to use two hands for a keyboard combination. Basic stuff. Not rocket science. Please think of the end user.
7. File rename…cannot easily edit the existing file name manually… We have to write down the old file name, F2 to pick a rename template, just use a custom text and type back in most of the same characters again. This happens a lot because I want to remove the word Edit from a filename from a round trip to Photoshop. I am not complaining about Ps adding Edit to the name, that is useful, but I do not want to send a file to someone with the word edit in the filename. I have other reasons to change a file name as well. [I got a good suggestion to this problem].
8. Cannot properly use metadata in the print module. I would love to properly place a Title under an image rather than a return trip to Photoshop or InDesign and the creation of a clutch of unnecessary intermediate files.
9. Cannot create custom tool panels with our own favourite and most used commands.
10. Cannot have more than a single folder or collection of images available as a window at the same time. This is lazy development of the highest order. All other decent apps I know will allow you have multiple windows inside the same app. Eg. PhotoMechanic. So much for using a database.
11. I should have forward and back arrows, which bring me to the previous image viewed or edited. This is simple. You already remember the last image when I leave LR and return, why not when I leave a folder and return to that folder. Why not have this facility within a folder.
12. Ability to lock an image from future edits. This is very simple and very useful. Make this lock flag searchable in library and in collections. There are workarounds to this but they are all clunky and do not really work. It is close to the top of the request list, and only there for 4 years.
On #7 – change your edit preferences for filenaming to not include the word “Edit” – use a sequence or something else to make it unique and you wont need to edit it.
‘Edit’ was only an example. There are lots of times when I am happy with Edit in the filename. Because I cannot see the colour profile of a file in Lr I often add the colour profile to the filename. When I sharpen and size a master image in PS I often add the image dimensions to the filename. I am happy to have these long names most of the time, but regularly I will want to send a version of one of these files to a client with a simplified client specific name.
There is a solution to this. I have since discovered (thanks to JJJ on Luminous Landscape Lightroom discussion “What has the Adobe LR team been doing since LR5 for 2 years?” ) that the filename is available in the metadata panel. Simply adjust the filename in situ. Brilliant……
However, I still feel the F2 shortcut should allow us first manually adjust existing text before allowing more complex auto field combinations.
Yes it seems a reasonable allowance. Glad you found a way to accomplish.
None of the changes listed in the survey interest me. My vote is for a very simple change. When importing images from multiple folders, one folder at a time, I wish LR would take me back to the folder I just imported from. Instead, it always takes me back to the root directory. As such, I have to choose the hard drive and navigate back to the folders I am interested each and every time.
I am grateful you are doing this Scott. Adobe listens to you.
I chose to combine the library and develop modules, given the processing latitude of RAW files only one module, Develop, is up to the job of determining whether a photograph is a keeper. An auto adjustment button or preset in Develop would be a perfectly good starting point for Jpg shooters for a variety of reasons given that format’s strengths and limitations.
A unified module then needs serious performance improvement. LR was created to handle volume and LR6 has not delivered the promised performance boost necessary to keep up with the volume, size and processing latitude of current image files.
thanks
Adobe didn’t promise a performance boost for anything but the Develop Module and in particular the Adjustment Brush.
I’ll rephrase that then Scott ;-). Adobe didn’t deliver on the expectation that LR6 would address the performance issues that have featured in so many forum discussions since LR3. The stub of GPU acceleration delivered thus far has mostly been a miss, plagued by compatibility issues.
LR is the centerpiece of my workflow and hence my business… and its lagging performance costs me hours (and sometimes days) every time I return from an week-long assignment with 10-30K images. I’m not alone.
You’re well versed in the challenges of sports photography where deadlines and turnaround often dictate jpg (and Photo Mechanic) but PJs also shoot features and personal work where they realize what a difference RAW can make.
In the battle between immediacy and quality that frames virtually every photographic assignment these days, our tools have to be faster. Niche tools like FastRawViewer and ON1’s Perfect Browse are trying to address the problem of working with RAWs rapidly… I keep waiting for my team (Adobe) to hit a home run.
It’s time that Adobe did make some performance promises and delivered. Even low volume shooters will appreciate an application that utilizes the full hardware potential of their machines. I’m assuming all of us want to be shooting more and editing less even if photography doesn’t pay the bills.
I have to use PM for that very reason – and it’s the number one thing I gripe to Adobe about — thumbnail speed for RAWs and JPEGs alike. Make sure you vote on my poll tomorrow. :)
Done! I love the points you’ve taken into consideration. For your next survey, try SoGoSurvey. I find their user interface much better.