Category Archives: Software

Lightroom 6

Lightroom

An upgrade in need of work.

Lightoom 6 became available yesterday and you can either be suckered into Adobe’s Creative Cloud rental offering or you can buy the stand alone upgrade for $79 if you use LR 4 or 5. Given that Adobe cannot keep even its crown jewel – the code to Photoshop – secure (a recent hack saw much of that code stolen, not to mention 38 million users’ details, by Ivan and his mates) I bought the stand alone upgrade and you should know Adobe does not make it easy.

The default upgrade path from within LR5 takes you to their Creative Cloud page and there is no link to the stand alone version. How thoroughly disingenuous is that? To get there:

  • Go to this link
  • Go to ‘Photoshop Lightroom 6 – $149’ and click ‘Buy’
  • Change your purchase from ‘Full’ to ‘Upgrade’ – Adobe misses no opportunity to try and cheat you
  • Select the version of LR you own – LR5 in my case
  • Check-out. It’s $79 for the upgrade in the US, doubtless much more abroad as you can bet they will not miss any opportunity to rip off their users

By contrast the CC rental version has Adobe dialing into your computer every so often to check you are legit. You really want to give access to your machine to these clowns to whom business integrity and honorable treatment of its customers are anathema? Further, over the usual 2 year upgrade cycle, you will pay $240 in rent compared with $79 for purchase. Sure, the $240 gets you Photoshop but that leaves your computer vulnerable to attack, so I recommend buying a used copy of CS5 or CS6 as the CC ‘enhancements’ are all noise. Alternatively, download the free Gimp which has most of PS’s functionality at an attractive price – as in ‘free’.

The download is 762MB and took some 15 minutes. The upgrade will ask for the serial number of your previous version so you had better have it handy or you will spend the next year of your life begging the customer-hostile people at Adobe for it. That’s if you can even get through to Mumbai. Good luck with that.

That’s the nasty stuff out of the way for a business which treats its customers like dirt, and always has. But then whatcha gonna do? Use discontinued Apple Aperture or, worse, the execrable Photos which just replaced iPhoto – great if selfies are your thing, I suppose? Nope, if you want timely RAW upgrades and an excellent processing, cataloging and printing app, hold your nose and buy LR. And as your latest digital camera will be replaced two years hence and you can bet the RAW format in its replacement will be incompatible with anything you have, LR (or PS) are the only game in town, with PS being a CC only product now. (I still happily use CS5 in the desktop version).

After download and input of the new and old serial numbers (LR6 resolutely failed to find LR5 on either my Mac Pro or my MacBook Air, which is about par for the course with Adobe software upgrades), installation takes another 3 minutes or so. The catalog format has changed so before you upgrade it make sure you have a good backup of the old one, just in case:

If you really like to waste time and clog up your processing resources, be sure to enable Apple Cloud sharing; I turned mine off faster than you could say Adolf Schickelgruber:

One of the most exciting aspects of LR6 is that someone placed a whoppee cushion under the slothful programming staff and finally got them to use your graphics card to help in sharing the load with the CPU in processing tasks. Or so they say – see Panoramas, below. CPU use was awful in the first place – just run Activity Monitor in LR5 or earlier and you will see very few of your CPUs cores being used. By sharing the task with the GPU (much as Apple’s FCPX 10.1 and later does) Adobe is promising to up the processing power. Go to Preferences->Performance and make sure this box is checked – mine was by default:

Under Catalog Settings I turn off automated back-up as I use Carbon Copy Cloner to do that – no need to trust Adobe with anything here:

LR6 trashed my Identity Plate (the logo displayed at top left in the app) and, wouldn’t you know it, refuses to allow me to edit it:

Oh, well. So this is what I now see:

Performance? The first switch from the Library to the Develop module takes a few seconds, like it always did; thereafter flips between the two are instantaneous, like they always were in LR5.

New features:

HDR processing has now migrated from PS to LR. You select the images to merge, go to Photo->PhotoMerge->HDR (or hit Control-H) and after about 20 seconds your HDR image is ready (timed with two Panny GX7 RAW files). Nice:

Note the processing options, above.

Photos->PhotoMerge->Panoramas (control-P) is another feature which has migrated from PS – can you spell ‘Cannibalization’? I merged 8 RAW Panny GX7 image into one (assembly took LR a scant 15 seconds) but the actual Merge process was bog slow at 10 minutes – much longer than it takes in PS CS5. Further, checking Activity Monitor I saw CPU use maxed out at 15% which is execrable, and given that I have an excellent GPU (the Nvidia GTX680) in my dual CPU 12-core Mac Pro it’s hard to see what, if anything, is doing the work here. While this was going on my Mac Pro pretty much locked up and I could do nothing else. Plus I had to help the process along by clicking the ‘x’ by the processing bar a couple of times, thinking the app had locked up. Bad job Adobe.


It takes 15 seconds to get here. Then 10 minutes to do the Merge.

It gets worse. While both the PS and LR merged files show identical resolution and export of either to a full size JPG took just 17 seconds, the LR6 version is all of 52.5MB in size, compared with just 28.6MB for the PS CS5 version. Clearly the Merge function in LR6 is not ready for prime time.

The best that can be said about the core functions in LR6 is that Adobe has managed not to screw them up. Of the new ones HDR is OK, Panoramas is a disaster. The Books module continues to only offer Blurb as the publisher and it’s far easier to use the separate Blurb app than the mess in Lightroom. So why upgrade? For the same reason you need to junk Apple’s Aperture – because new RAW formats will not be made available in either Apple’s failed product or in LR5 or earlier.

Speed in general: It’s pretty mind boggling to see how many writers are simply repeating Adobe’s claim that LR6 is faster. Mouthing a press release or lying because you derive revenue from touting Adobe products is not the same as testing and there is no discernible speed increase in LR6 compared to LR5. Indeed, cold starts are a few seconds slower and the first flips to the Develop or Print modules behave likewise. This on a dual CPU 12-core Mac Pro with lots of RAM and an excellent GTX680 GPU. If you are buying LR6 because you think it’s faster than LR5 you are a sucker who needs to learn that the vast majority of photo gear writers are conflicted putzes who share Adobe’s standards of integrity.

A cynical non-upgrade:

The overall impression I came away with regarding LR6 is: “What have they been doing these past two years? An HDR module (code lifted from PS), a Panorama module (code messed up and lifted from PS) and claims for non-existent speed incresases? That’s it?”

As for getting help (F1) within LR6, Adobe again illustrates it’s attention to detail and this is what I get:


Help(less) Lightroom 6.

Update May 9, 2015:

Adobe’s mendacity regarding GPU processing and purported speed gains is shown well in the chart below, based on a recent survey where two thirds of users saw no speed increase or a drop in performance:

Click the chart for the story.

Apple Photos for OS X

Software

Another failure.


Another purported solution looking for a problem. Apple Watch, anyone?

Once upon a time – many years ago – iPhoto was a sweet application. Import of images was easy, addition of text always worked with no frustration and creation of customized web pages using either the built in code or aftermarket plugins was easy, fast and elegant.

Apple tried to get serious about still photo processing with Aperture but it was flawed software which never had the company’s full attention. The design was chaotic, with no logical work flow (the description ‘scatterbrained’ comes to mind), the machine demands were very high so you had to have the latest Apple hardware to make it run at half decent speeds (shock news there) and the application only worked with OS X.

The best thing I ever did with Aperture was to migrate to Lightroom which, even in its early versions, ran fast, was logical and far easier to use. Adobe has always done a great job of keeping current with the myriad of RAW formats coming to the market seemingly weekly, updates coming soon after new cameras are released. LR is now so capable that round trips to Photoshop for regular work are rare. Lightroom remains fast, compact and as useful on OS X as it is in Windows, the files readable in either. Adobe’s greatest challenge is likely in deciding where to draw the line in not cannibalizing its Photoshop cash cow any further.

I migrated to Lightroom in 2008 and frankly the signs for Aperture’s demise were already on the wall, with increasingly infrequent updates and interminable RAW delays, interspersed with constant bugs. It took many years for Aperture to die, however, the product finally being put out of its misery last year, but not before Apple cynically offered cheap/free versions for reasons I cannot fathom. Those who delayed conversion to the superior Adobe application(s) merely increased their conversion problem, which they are struggling with right now. Loyalty to software in a fast changing world is futile.

Now Apple has added Photos to OS 10.10.3 (Yosemite) and a like app to iOS. I downloaded OS 10.10.3 – mostly to see what else it would break – and toyed some with Photos. (If you use Trim Enabler for your SSD management and a ‘made for Apple’ Nvidia GTX680 GPU in your Mac Pro as I do, be sure to disable Trim Enabler as the chances are you will lose all video when moving to 10.10.3).

I wish I had not wasted my time with Photos. I use iPhoto for quick snaps which have no place in my ‘serious’ Lightroom catalog and generate occasional web pages for our family albums. The conversion process from the iPhoto catalog was seamless, and the iPhoto catalog remains accessible. Thank goodness.

Much of the sorting capabilities of iPhotos remains – Photos, Albums, Projects – to the point where you really wonder what has changed. Then you realize that there is no Web page output – you can create bulky ‘m4v’ slideshows, but not traditional thumbnail/big image web pages. The decent processing controls in iPhoto have been dumbed down for the iOS generation – people with poor visual sense and undemanding presentation standards.

You can find (normally hidden) adjusters for Sharpening, Definition, Vignetting, White Balance and Levels, and like these the excellent Highlights and Shadows adjusters are hidden, the assumption being that anything other than a slider is too much for the pea brained iOS mentality of the user. Stupefying. Yes, you can still print from Photos, but I recommend exporting the original to Lightroom or Photoshop and doing the job properly where you will see a professional and familiar User Interface.


The controls are there if you can find them.
The dumbing down of the UI continues apace in Cupertino.

Annotating images with text is a joke. It has gone from buggy in the last version of iPhoto to near useless in Photos. The only available choice is for the text to appear on the image itself and there’s no way that I can find of using a neutral background for the text, meaning it inevitably gets lost in the image. Sorry, but EXIF data alone do not cut it for family albums.

Of course, iPhoto, while still usable, is dead. New RAW formats will doubtless not be supported so unless you propose to stick with your existing gear, it will be curtains as soon as you upgrade. And given the modern 2 year life of digital cameras ….

You have to wonder why Apple even bothered here. Or maybe not. Given the shallow mind set of the typical iOS consumer (‘selfies’, for goodness’ sake), it’s what he deserves.

Swing set

Lightroom, Photographs

Cayucos beach.

Taken over a decade ago, I was reminded again how much Adobe has improved the processing controls in Lightroom in versions 4 and 5, especially the Highlights and Shadows sliders, when reprocessing this old image for printing.

Absent the occasional need for, say, the Healing Brush for removal of overhead cables or for selective outlining with the Magic Lasso to confer background blur, both Photoshop tasks, Lightroom really has 95% of what any practical photographer needs, allied with an excellent database cataloging system with easy metadata filtration and sorting.

Crown Graphic 4×5, 150mm Xenar, Kodak Verichrome sheet film, hand held.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Software

Much improved.

I have been using CCC as my backup application of choice for more years than I care to remember. The author, Mike Bombich, finally went commercial recently and it now costs money to buy. Not very much money and there is no more important application on my computer.

The app’s user interface has been greatly improved, making the user experience far more user friendly than before. As before CCC will offer to clone the Recovery Partition – an invisible partition on the destination drive which permits OS X recovery if your normal boot drive is damaged.

You can go to Mike’s site by clicking the image below:


Click the image for the CCC site.

OS X Yosemite

OS X

Solid.

Yosemite has had a long beta test period with several iterations, so the risk of major issues with the latest release of OS X should be low. That said, iOS8’s poor start, with 8.0.1 actually disabling the ability to make calls (unpardonable), suggests that just because a beta test period is long, there’s nothing to stop Apple making jarring errors in ‘fixit’ releases, especially under the management of a CEO who seems reluctant to ruthlessly punish basic errors through dismissal, in marked contrast to the style of his predecessor.

I first upgraded my 2014 MacBook Air to Yosemite and the only issue encountered was that the first download failed, maybe attributable to overloaded servers at Apple. I burned the download to a USB flash drive using the Terminal utility, so as not to have to depend on downloads for each of the many Macs in the home. In this way all I need is the flash drive to install the OS. My first reactions were:

  • Blah, crude, flat, children’s crayon-like look to colors in apps (icons, buttons, etc.). Not an improvement.
  • Faster than Mavericks – either the placebo effect at work or just the result of a clean install.
  • No issues with LR 5, PS CS 5 (I do not use CC by design) or color printing.
  • Had to upgrade to new CarbonCopyCloner ($20) for backups. A much improved interface makes it worthwhile.
  • Have told FaceTime prefs in the FaceTime app to accept phone calls via the iPhone – have yet to test.
  • Continuity is excellent – shows where your other Apple devices are in, say, Safari, and allows you to click the link. Ingenious.
  • Geekbench and wifi speeds are unchanged.
  • Had to download a Java script fix, which Yosemite reminds you to do, for Safari.

So after an untroubled experience with the MBA, I decided to install Yosemite on my classic Mac Pro from the copy saved on the flash drive, albeit with some trepidation as a few users of these older machine (mine is a 2009, much upgraded) have reported problems.

In the event there were no issues when testing with both single (a 3.46GHz W3690 Xeon CPU) and dual CPU (both the stock dual 2.26GHz Nehalems and speedier 3.06GHz X5675 Westmeres) processors and processor trays installed. The Nvidia GTX680 GPU has three monitors attached. Two use DVI and the third uses DP. My Mac Pro is updated to 802.11ac wifi and Bluetooth 4.0 – look here to do this – and the BT 4.0 update, which is required if you want to receive phone calls from a nearby iPhone. I use a Logitech USB microphone, speakers and a wired keyboard and mouse. I also had to update the Nvidia web drivers for my GTX680 GPU – now on v. 343.01.01f01 – an easy download from Nvidia’s site with no issues.

For reference, my Mac Pro boots the OS from an SSD installed on an Apricorn PCIe card, not from a drive in one of the regular internal drive slots. This allows the SSD to run at its full SATA 3 speed, rather than at the slower SATA 2 speed to which the regular slots are constrained, simultaneously freeing up a regular drive slot. More on how this is done appears here.

Will OS X be dumbed down to the level of iOS? This has been a real concern for a while but the direction Yosemite is taking suggests this is not the case. With iOS 8.1 the level of integration between the two operating systems is meaningfullly enhanced – AirDrop, Continuity, Handoff, Instant Hotspot all work brilliantly – yet there is no intimation of OS X becoming dumbed down. This is encouraging.