I’m definitely in the category of pleased Lightroom users. While testing can be time consuming, it is rewarding when features you need show up in the program. That said we did get a bucket load of new features with version 1.1.
I’m starting to think forward to things I’d like to see in V2.0 (or even a 1.5 if such a thing were to happen). Here’s a few.
Output Sharpening: While we do have limited sharpening for Print, there is currently no way of specifying how sharp we need our exported images. Non constrained images have the Sharpening settings from the Detail panel applied. This is wonderful, but where it falls down is when we resize our images. Anything I export for use on the web at 700X467 is simply soft. There’s no 2 ways about it. I’m not happy with this. There needs to be some way to let Lightroom know that I need a sharper image going out. Yes, I could do this in a Photoshop Droplet, but I’m using the Post Processing to send the file to an FTP droplet for automatic upload.
Another way this would be useful is in Web. Wouldn’t it be great to set sharpening levels in our Web galleries? I think it would.
Lens Distortion corrections: Barrel and Pincushion distortion are common on the wide angle lenses required by our crop digital camera. I would be great if Lightroom could correct these in the RAW. A side addition to the crop tool in the form of perspective would be great too. I’d like the pull in to tie to the dimensions of the image too. What do I mean? Well when we fix perspective, a lot of the time we end up with squashed buildings. I’d like Lightroom to calculate the crop that visually corrects this.
Smart Collections: Eric Scouten discusses saved searches in a recent Lightroom Podcast. I’ve been requesting this for ages. While the programming end of it is no longer my forte, it seems to be a reasonable request that a collection can be formed based on specific criteria and updated automatically as new, relevant, material is added.
Website Generation: As an extension of a Web Gallery, it should be possible to create an entire gallery page with sub galleries in Lightroom.
Photoshop Handling improvements: When we do a roundtrip to Photoshop, I don’t want a file to appear in the Library until I actually save the file. This requires a hook in Photoshop (and of course it will only happen in a newer version of Photoshop) that can tell Lightroom that it is now saving a file and where it is saving it to. This way I can send files to Photoshop for HDR and only have the final image appear in the Library, not all the individual files. It would be the same for images sent for stitching.
Reallocation of pixel restrictions: With a 10,000X10,000 pixel restriction in Lightroom, it is hard to store panoramas internally as most are greater than 10,000px in one dimension. Even if this 100 Megapixel limit was kept for now, could we please change it so that the total Megapixel count is the limit, not the one sided affair we currently have. That would mean for example that a 20,000X5,000 pixel image would be importable.
There ya go. Just some ideas floating around my head about things I need currently! Back now to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
When it comes to the web galleries that Lightroom produces, please can it produce a gallery that is compatible with IIS7 (Vista and the soon to come Server2008). This applies to both html and flash galleries.
I have tried it out on a Vista machine, as well as a free IIS7 host – both of them bombed out! The gallery shows, but without the images. There are placeholders in the place of the images, but no image! This applies to the thumbnails, as well as teh larger size images. The galleries view fine when viewing them outside of IIS7 (C:galleryindex.html), but not through http://gallery/index.html.
This is going to prove a big issue when there are more people hosting on IIS7.
Please could you make it a quick update!
Thanks for the blog – it is very interesting!
Regards
Alain Jacquet
Morey,
MS06-006 seems to be a regular false positive with McAfee. I’ve gone through both the template code and the file code, but can’t find anything out of order. If you see this again, can you do a view source and send it to info at seanmcfoto dot com?
beside output sharpening which is one of most wanted features I would love to be able to load jpeg2000 files into LR… I have no idea why this file format is not supported..
What about the ability to globally snapshot all photos at once? Instead of having to go through and snapshot 500 photos one at a time, allow you to make a selection and then snapshot them.
Every time I visit this web site I get a virus alert for the following file:
C:Documents and SettingsxxxLocal SettingsTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5TSJGHPP0movie[1].qtl
McAfee calls it a “Exploit-MS06-006”
Adobe: Buy DXO – NOW!
Nice list.
(It is funny how people don’t realize how many of these library features have been in PS Elements for years, isn’t it?)
My #1 request has to do with keywords.
I like the way they are organized in PS Elements… they have the “People” parent category there, and you can create heirarchy under it.
But the slick thing Elements does is when searching by keywords, you toggle them on and off with a checkbox (automatically doing and AND search… no typing necesscary).
I could see this taken a step further… as you toggle keyowrds on, automatically have them entered into the Find dialog… from there you could add modifiers into the Find dialog, and re-order the keywords to do more complex searches (and never once HAVE to type a keyword, or type its whole hierarchy, or remember its exact spelling.)
Actually, I wouldn’t consider that esoteric at all.
One thing I found instantly great when I switched to Mac, was being able to start typing a filename and having the Finder jump to that location in the folder.
Keywording needs it too.
I was thinking too about a ‘People’ Pane (although I’ve been warned never to mention a program that has a feature when suggesting features!). This would be dedicated to naming people in our images. Of course I could create a People hierarchical keyword and place all names below it, but this is tedious have to type >People after every name in groups photos.
Here is a very simple request. My keyword list is VERY long which is OK with me, BUT I would like a feature where I could type the first letter of the keyword when exploring the list which would automatically take me to the spot in the list where that letter starts. Many lists in many programs have this feature and it would be a lot easier and faster than using the scroll bar. How is that for an esoteric request?
This is a really solid and useful list of extensions. And I think it is a quite realistic one. I’d only like to add soft proofing which was already mentioned.
Keep up with the nice blogging “work”.
Lars
The only shame is in being both wrong and anonymous.
Check your facts:Photoshop Elements had stacks before Aperture. Versioning is not an Apple invention either. (For the record, if you want to know the actual history of LIghtroom. check out http://photoshopnews.com/2006/01/09/the-shadowlandlightroom-development-story/
)
And is case you didn’t notice, Aperture copied a lot of features from Lightroom in their recent revisions. It still doesn’t have curves, clarity, vibrance, decent spotting (I mean, honestly, the spot tool in Aperture sucks). No camera calibration, ditzy folder management, etc.. I’m not saying Lightroom is perfect- it’s not, but with the two of them on scales, Lightroom tips the balance. And it’s cross platform.
When 2 applications have a similar function it is inevitable that feature hopping will occur. That is why Adobe keeps quiet about updates. I’m sure the next version of Aperture will probably have curves, multiple libraries, better print management, etc. Such is life. Perhaps they may even clean up their interface.
I find it interesting that the Lightroom is becoming more and more like Aperture in it’s feature set. First, they copied stacks (but not as nicely), now people want the equivalent of smart albums…is there no shame?
Soft Proofing is a big requirement for sure. I know that Jeff Schewe and Andrew Rodney are encouraging Adobe to get this right for future versions.
We did get some great new things in Version 1.1. While our current needs are no less important, it was great to get the Catalog system, Clarity and better Detail control.
Yes – Vignetting would be great. When I’m in a hurry and don’t want to spend much time, I just select the picture (which has been cropped), choose “edit in Photoshop” which creates a new copy, and then drag the vignette liders back to create a nice effect in the corners, and then don’t ever even touch the photo in Photoshop.
It’s a fast way to get the efect I’m looking for, but when you have to go through stuff like that it’s clear that the process is somehow broken.
I’m sure they know about these things and they’ll be in the next version, but then I thought that before 1.1. 🙂
I think you’ve got most of the big ones, Sean, output sharpening IMO being critical. One more big one for me is soft-proofing. Because Lightroom work in a very large color space, almost every output space is going to be smaller, and we need to know what effect that is going to have before we actually do the output and get a nasty surprise.
Sounds great Brian. I’d like them to have a separate vignette for crops too!
Sean – love your blog, love your list of wishes. You mention geometry correction (pincushion, barrel, etc.) but I’d like to lobby for two versions of this: One version that corrects the full RAW frame and another version that only affects the portion inside the cropped frame.
In other words, I want to be able to crop down to, say, half the frame, and then appply a slight fish-eye look to it just by miving a slider.
Also, to echo anonymous’s comments, the watermark tool is so simple that it’s really useless. I want to be able to select where on the picture to apply it (long edge, short edge, always on the bottom edge, centered, etc.) and the relative size of the watermark. Sometimes I want to export pictures with a short little “copyright Brian Johns” on the bottom while sometimes I want to export them with a big huge 20% transparent banner right across the middle. It would be nice to choose.
I’ve got a whoel laundry list of suggestions, but I don’t want to hijack your blog comments…
I would like to see more flexible watermarking tools. For me, the ability to add copyright info from the metadata is just not enough. I’d like to use other text, modify the font and font size, add shadows, and decrease the opacity as well…
Those would be nice Rene, but would require a paradigm shift in the way Lightroom works. Lightroom does use masks internally, but the only one that we really have access to is in Sharpening. Unless we cna create canvases and have direct access to brushes to create masks, I don’t think it’s immediately an option.
You’ve made made remember something else that I mentioned in a recent post on the forums that I’ll add to my post!
The only I would add to your list is HDR and the ability to stich images.