[Leica] Is Lightroom 2.0 Really Shipping?

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

I've used Lightroom since it came out (just as I have Photoshop), and 
I wouldn't be without it.

But I did have some issues on one computer. It would crash fairly 
regularly (about once every 20 hours of use, as far as I could tell), 
and I tracked the problem down to bad RAM. I didn't have any issues 
with other software, but I did a thorough (5 day) memory test on my 
machine and god what I needed to know. I bought some new RAM and 
since then it has not crashed again. This was a Quad G5 box. 
Lightroom will use the addressable portion of your RAM thoroughly.

Daniel's symptons are not the same as I had, but it certainly seems 
as if his laptop has some hardware/software issue that LR runs into.

Photoshop and LR are equally stable on my computers, and that's very stable.

In my estimation Photoshop makes more compromises with respect to 
image quality than Lightroom, and that is why Photoshop is only used 
at the end for the specific things it does better. The fact that when 
you open a file in Photoshop you are then making changes to that 
(opened) file at each step as opposed to Lightroom where you are 
creating a series of instructions that only get applied at the time 
of exporting makes a difference if a number of different things have 
to get done to a file. The LR way is quite definitely theoretically 
better, and it can be demonstrated even though it might take some 
extreme files. In studio situations it would be almost impossible to 
see any difference.

In either case, the original file is not changed, but file used in 
the intermediate stages has been degraded by Photoshop but not by 
Lightroom.

When I have an especially low contrast image that needs fairly 
drastic contrast enhancements to be useable, and then local contrast, 
dodging, gradations and other things have to be applied, the 
Photoshop file turns out to be rougher than the LR file, as more 
information got thrown away in the intermediate stages.

For sharpening, I agree that it has to be done after everything else, 
and especially re-sizing. When I'm ready to print and know the size 
of the output, and type of output, I switch to editing the file from 
LR to CS3, and then resize and use Photokit sharpener for final 
output. If I want to print a different size, I got back to Lightroom 
and go through the same process for the different size or output type.




>I find it puzzling to follow this discussion. Daniel, there must be 
>something strange with your setup if LR makes your computer crash. I 
>have used LR from version 1.0 on both a PC and a Mac, and it has 
>NEVER given me any problem on either platform.
>
>I keep hearing that I need both LR and Photoshop, but frankly I 
>hardly ever open Photoshop, maybe once every quarter. I did upgrade 
>to CS3 only because I could get the upgrade for 62 EUR ($99) so I 
>thought, what the heck. Once in a blue moon I have a scanned film 
>image that needs a lot of spotting, and then PS is a bit better than 
>LR.
>
>As for LR2 being a totally different program than LR 1.4, I do not 
>agree with Tina. I installed it at the end of July, in about 10 
>minutes my catalogue with 7500 images was converted, and the look 
>and feel is pretty much the same, with some subtle changes, mostly 
>for the better. I have just finished a project to get rid of a big 
>stack of CDs which I had used to archive film scans (TIFF files) by 
>copying them onto a dedicated hard drive. I then created a separate 
>catalog for them in LR and imported about 4500 images. Extremely 
>fast, and for the first time ever I have all my film scans in one 
>place and well organized. LR handles the images very fast, and these 
>are TIFFs ranging in size from 30 MB to well over 100 MB (in the 
>case of MF scans at highest resolution).
>
>If I could only have one piece of photo-related software, LR would 
>definitely be it.
>
>Nathan
>
>Nathan Wajsman
>Alicante, Spain
>http://www.frozenlight.eu
>http://www.greatpix.eu
>http://www.nathanfoto.com
>
>Books: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/search?search=wajsman&x=0&y=0
>PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
>Blog: http://www.fotocycle.dk/blog
>
>
>
>On Aug 17, 2008, at 12:22 AM, Daniel Ridings wrote:
>
>>  --- On Sun, 8/17/08, Tina Manley <images@comporium.net> wrote:
>>
>>>  From: Tina Manley <images@comporium.net>
>>>  Subject: Re: [Leica] Is Lightroom 2.0 Really Shipping?
>>>  To: "Leica Users Group" <lug@leica-users.org>
>>>  Date: Sunday, August 17, 2008, 12:02 AM
>>>  At 05:52 PM 8/16/2008, you wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I do work with images one at a time. I care about them.
>>>>
>>>>  Daniel
>>>
>>>  If you care about them, work on them non-destructively ;-)
>>
>>  I never touch my tiffs (scans) or raw files. They are my 
>>negatives. Destroying my negatives has never been an issue.
>>
>>  I process and print, just like I've always done even in darkroom days.
>>
>>  I did like the idea of non-destructive editing, but it wasn't 
>>Lightroom that introduced that, it was Lightzone, software that 
>>lets you process images the way you do in the darkroom.
>>
>>  Later on Lightroom came out with the same thing and hyped it up, 
>>but the facility was already there (and not as buggy) before 
>>Lightroom came out.
>>
>>  You say it is a totally different program.
>>
>>  What I like about Photoshop is that it has never been a totally 
>>different program (that, in order to use, I had to run out and by 
>>another $80 book to figure out how it works since it is basically 
>>undocumented as delivered).
>>
>>  Photoshop just works. Always has.
>>
>>  Daniel
>>
>>
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>
>
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-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
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