# Lightroom 4 : some joy, some misery...



## morris david (May 2, 2012)

So, I've been using LR for a while now, I think since version 2...was very happy with LR3...and after seeing the develop improvements in LR 4 I upgraded...

I've been content with the upgrade, i mean the new process engine is great, some of the new features very welcome, but i there are some things that bug me...

I really hate that my presets don't do to images what they used to do. I had a large and steady collection of presets that i used for a base in LR3 and now they don't work anymore...I mean they were like 'home' for me...and i knew exactly how to push my images around from that base of presets...like a folder of B&W presets I created with various 'looks' to them all with subtle differences...none of it looks right anymore, and it'll be a lot of work to re-do, but i will...

is anyone else annoyed about this?...maybe it's just me...

the other thing, I'm sorry I tried the RC2 version...now i can't work anymore until the color problem is solved...this is the first time i've tried rc versions and i'll never do it again...but i had some purple fringing issues going on with one of my older cameras and the new tool sounded great so i wanted to try it...

i use a dual display set up, a nec 2690 attached to my macbook pro, and when you shift from library to develop the colors get washed out...it's a known issue...i hope it gets fixed quick...in the meantime, i feel a bit stuck...i may have to go to camera raw in photoshop to continue my work, but damn, i hate not having all my work in its place like it is in library...

does anyone know if it's possible to go back a version to RC1?...hell, I'm thinking it might be better to go back to the initial LR4 and start again...

don't mean to complain as a first post, but it is what it is...


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## donoreo (May 2, 2012)

The presets were designed for the old process version.  It would have been nice for Adobe to make a quick conversion tool for them.  There are instructions on the Lightroom Journal on how to update them manually, but it is a bit hit and miss I find.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 2, 2012)

Hi Morris, welcome to the forum!

Completely understand the frustration.  It's been a rocky time all round!

Yes, if you've still got the RC1 download, you should be able to go back.  I'm sure I can track one down if not.  Or yes, you can go back to 4.0.

The presets issue, I do understand, and you can still use them with LR4 but you'd have to use PV2010 of course.  There is never likely to be a way to 'convert' them automatically to PV2012 presets because the sliders are so different.  You've seen the effect of the update conversion attempt, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.


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## morris david (May 3, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Morris, welcome to the forum!
> 
> Completely understand the frustration.  It's been a rocky time all round!
> 
> ...



Hi Victoria...thinking of rc1 as a transitory state i think i just tossed it right after install...i can't find it on my back up disks...

so, yes, if you have an rc1 link/download available for mac I'd love it...i did find one via the adobe photoshop forum but the link supplied was for windows, i found that out after i downloaded it this morning...

I'm not sure of what to do with it anyway...delete the LR4 rc2 from my applications folder, re-install 4 (i have the disk) and then update to rc1 again?...is that how it would be done?...

I get it about the presets...nothing to do but start pretty much from scratch...it's ok...maybe it breaks the routine, will improve my pp skills...i'm trying to look at it with a positive light...i mean it's a tradeoff...the new, better processing comes at a price...it has taken a while, I was so at home with lightroom 3.6 or whatever the latest version was, but i'm finally getting to like the new Lightroom...


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## morris david (May 3, 2012)

donoreo said:


> The presets were designed for the old process version.  It would have been nice for Adobe to make a quick conversion tool for them.  There are instructions on the Lightroom Journal on how to update them manually, but it is a bit hit and miss I find.



yeah, I've tried a bit, it's hard to work that way...


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## Victoria Bampton (May 3, 2012)

Here you go: http://labsdownload.adobe.com/pub/labs/lightroom/4-1/lightroom4-1_rc1_mac_032912.zip

Just drag the old one to the trash and run the installer.  If it throws any errors, let us know.


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## morris david (May 4, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Here you go: http://labsdownload.adobe.com/pub/labs/lightroom/4-1/lightroom4-1_rc1_mac_032912.zip
> 
> Just drag the old one to the trash and run the installer.  If it throws any errors, let us know.



excellent...backed up and optimized my catalog, followed your instructions and it worked perfectly, no fuss, no mess...thanks so much...now i can get back to some work i put on hold...

kind regards...


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## morris david (May 4, 2012)

donoreo said:


> The presets were designed for the old process version.  It would have been nice for Adobe to make a quick conversion tool for them.  There are instructions on the Lightroom Journal on how to update them manually, but it is a bit hit and miss I find.



i did some more looking around and found these instructions...i've only tried it on two presets so far, just choosing the 2010 process version, and it worked pretty well for the b&w conversion looks i've created...yes, it's a bit time consuming, but i've only got maybe 20 to 30 presets i used pretty often, so i'll re-save those, with tweaks if necessary, and call it a day...

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/04/updating-develop-presets-for-lightroom-4-2.html


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## Victoria Bampton (May 4, 2012)

Technically, if you open a 2010 and a 2012 version of the same preset in a text editor, you can even copy the text over so that both lots of settings are in the same preset file, save taking up more space.


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## rNeil (May 5, 2012)

Victoria,

I'm just pretty lost right now. Just changed to Lr4, and wow ... it's so different in how it handles my images I don't even know where to begin. Some images, the "auto" does a decent job of setting a basic start point ... but for more than half, it isn't just off a bit ... it's nearly bizarre what it does. Top third of image shoved to VERY bright, mids and shadows dumped very dark ... upper-mids pulled down and stretched out at times ... the other two reactions it has are to dump nearly everything into the bottom half, or shove most of it up top. Really bizarre.

I've been a professional studio/environmental portrait photog for 30+ years, not a weekender but lived on my work. Had my own custom and production color lab in the studio for many years, dealt with all the lab-tech stuff of daily control strips and densitometry ... and "old" Lr was pretty much an easy learn for me. Found that I could crib out the command for auto-black out of the auto-tone preset (ditching the other settings) ... set profile to the D2X-Mode-1, a couple tweaks of hue/sat/luminance, set as default, and most of my images studio, environmental, wedding, imported nicely. A tweak here and there for most was all that was needed.

This beast ... wow. It moves the 'exposure' setting all over the place on me when allowed to do "auto", when I've set that in the camera thank you very much ... and I can't find a way to preset the low values without the whole auto-tone ... I'm at a loss other than individually working every bloody image. Surely there's something I'm missing?

Neil


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## Victoria Bampton (May 6, 2012)

Neil, to be honest, I'd ignore auto right now and just adjust using on the new controls.


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## rNeil (May 7, 2012)

Victoria,

The missus and I are a bit bamboozled by the new Lr ... that "image-adaptive" thing seems at the moment at least a bit of a nightmare for a professional portrait photog ... a series of images, from the same lighting/background/manual-set camera moments apart, just slight changes in face direction or whatever ... and the 'default' image Lr4 loads can jump a stop or two any which way in exposure. That's not on 'auto' ... it's the way Lr simply decodes each image. I was asking about Auto-tone in a way to try and figure out how to get around this.

I'm used to our images of each section of a setting loading into Lr looking the same, as they have through previous versions. Now they're all over heck and gone. Sorting this out is taking too dang much time. And ... from searching around here and over at Adobe and other places ... I'm not finding a lot of enlightenment. Most of the comments I've read (or received for my own questions) center on an explanation of why you need to use five or six sliders in succession now ... but when you get there, it's a really better image.

Fine ... I can see that this is capable of really FINE work.

But mostly, what I need is to QUICKLY move a whole session's images from 3-7 different 'scenes' into a nicely done cohesive set. I'm ... having some frustrations. Our total process is radically slowed down from even 2.7, as SLOW as that version operated on our machines. And we're not talking 'bout the missus right now ... SHE'S expecting me to solve things for her work on her own sessions. Advice?

Neil


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## Victoria Bampton (May 7, 2012)

Ah, yes, I wasn't thinking of fixed lighting portraits.  Let me dig some out and play around with them.  

That said, at all 0's, I wouldn't expect it to be jumping by a stop or two anywhere.  It'll roll off the highlights automatically now, rather than you having to adjust a recovery slider, but the overall exposure should still match your camera exposure.  Something odd's going on there.  It sounds like it's applying auto automatically - is everything still on 0 after import?


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## rNeil (May 7, 2012)

Thanks, Victoria  ... and on import, the 'exposure' setting is all over the place, so ... I wasn't sure if that was it's 'image-adaptive' feature or if it's doing 'auto' ...

Loaded RC2 hoping it would be different, but ... nah, still one image to the next can vary a stop or two, and mostly ... will.

Neil


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## rNeil (May 7, 2012)

About the 5th-6th time trying to do a guesstimate as to settings to create a "default" for my D3 ... then re-imported a group of images. It's not as much between-image change as I'd been getting, saw to it this time that I adjusted every single tone/presence control up and down a bit before setting it 'to' something ... and they seem to have stayed, though the images don't seem to be exactly the same even if the settings are. Closer, though. In some cases pretty close.

I wonder if one DOESN'T set every single slider before telling it to update to these settings for camera default, if Lr essentially 'runs home to mama' for the whole thing? And I did see a techie explaining that "image adaptive" does mean that if Lr's 'engine' sees two images in some way as different, the way it 'describes' them into technical terms as "exposure", "contrast", and on down the list can be slightly to more than slightly different for each image. The explanation was that this way, it actually "sees" and therefore displays the "real" image better, and can give the user better results. Though it can be un-nerving at first. Well, I've been pretty well un-nerved ... but this may finally get me to at least a bit more consistency.

Neil


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## Victoria Bampton (May 8, 2012)

Ah, no, sliders actually moving isn't image adaptive.  In short, it just means that the range of some sliders (behind the scenes) adapts to the images, and that some sliders create masks.  

Have a look in preferences > presets tab and make sure 'apply auto' is unchecked.  Also, you might want to check your defaults haven't been accidentally updated to something odd - go to Develop module > Develop menu > Set Default Settings and press the Restore Adobe Defaults button.

Once that's done, reset the photos to default and let's see a screenshot of how they match up.


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## rNeil (May 9, 2012)

Preset prefs was set "right", with the "apply auto-tone" NOT selected. So ... checked that.

And since I reset the default after playing with all the sliders as above, it's ... mostly sort of 'normal'. But sure isn't quite the same as before, in 'old' Lr. Cool what one CAN do with it ... but it seems that before, all I needed to normally hit to get a "clean" image tone ... was import which included a few personally-set defaults, such as apply only the 'auto-black' section of the old 'auto-tone' preset, and some changes I'd made in H-S-L sliders. Then adjust exposure if needed (normally not for our pro work)  then maybe adjust brightness and/or contrast a titch.

Now ... it seems I need to set most of the sliders with most images or image groups. I'm not used to needing to mess with the whole set of tools on every image/group ... sigh.

Neil


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## Victoria Bampton (May 9, 2012)

You've still got the option of "old" Lightroom by selecting the old process version.  That said, I'd love to see a comparison of old and new.  It might just be a case of tweaking the defaults to suit the new settings.


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## romap (May 14, 2012)

I love LR4. 
Using Maps for all my photos now. iPhone + GeoTagr App + LR4 Maps = amazing tool. 

Have published all my presets for Lightroom 4 here: http://peregontsev.com/My-Presets-for-Lightroom-4


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## macjim (May 14, 2012)

In seriously thinking about going a over to Apple's Aperture 3 and giving up on Lightroom 4. I've never known such a
Bug ridden software before especially as it was release as a working new version. Each installed version of Lightroom 4 has differing problems — the problems on my MacBook Air are different on my MacBook Pro — one is a clean install and the other is an upgrade. I won't go into the problems I've suffered as it would take too long so that's why I'm serious about changing even though I loved Lightroom 3.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 14, 2012)

I understand the frustration Jim.  They've changed SO much this time, and it's introduced a load of bugs that they're still trying to track down.  They're working like mad to try to track them all down and fix them, so hopefully they'll get the worst of them under control before too much longer.


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## macjim (May 15, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> I understand the frustration Jim.  They've changed SO much this time, and it's introduced a load of bugs that they're still trying to track down.  They're working like mad to try to track them all down and fix them, so hopefully they'll get the worst of them under control before too much longer.



Thanks for that. I couldn't get the JPG's off my card in Lightroom 4 and was frustrated by that. But I had a bright idea last night and gave it a try this morning. I fired up iPhoto an put the card in, much to my surprise all the JPG's imported of the card! So at least I have them saved to my MacBook - all I need is the RAW photograph dealt with now. I'll hold off for now going over to Aperture.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 15, 2012)

I'm glad to hear that Jim.  Are you using 4.0 or have you updated to the latest RC?  There was a bug with importing raw+jpeg which has been fixed in one of the RC's.


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## macjim (May 15, 2012)

I'm using LR4. I had tried 4.1RC but went back to 4. If I had been able to figure out how to go back to 3, I would have.  The card problem started to get worse when the camera firmware was installed along with the lens firmwares.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 16, 2012)

I missed which camera Jim, but there are a couple listed in the most recent RC, so hopefully it'll be fixed in the final 4.1.


Unable to import RAW+JPEG files directly from Canon 5D, Canon 5D  Mark II, Nikon D700, Nikon D90, and Sony NEX5 cameras when connected  through USB.
Unable to import both RAW + JPEG files when using the built-in SD card reader on Macbook laptops.


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## morris david (May 2, 2012)

So, I've been using LR for a while now, I think since version 2...was very happy with LR3...and after seeing the develop improvements in LR 4 I upgraded...

I've been content with the upgrade, i mean the new process engine is great, some of the new features very welcome, but i there are some things that bug me...

I really hate that my presets don't do to images what they used to do. I had a large and steady collection of presets that i used for a base in LR3 and now they don't work anymore...I mean they were like 'home' for me...and i knew exactly how to push my images around from that base of presets...like a folder of B&W presets I created with various 'looks' to them all with subtle differences...none of it looks right anymore, and it'll be a lot of work to re-do, but i will...

is anyone else annoyed about this?...maybe it's just me...

the other thing, I'm sorry I tried the RC2 version...now i can't work anymore until the color problem is solved...this is the first time i've tried rc versions and i'll never do it again...but i had some purple fringing issues going on with one of my older cameras and the new tool sounded great so i wanted to try it...

i use a dual display set up, a nec 2690 attached to my macbook pro, and when you shift from library to develop the colors get washed out...it's a known issue...i hope it gets fixed quick...in the meantime, i feel a bit stuck...i may have to go to camera raw in photoshop to continue my work, but damn, i hate not having all my work in its place like it is in library...

does anyone know if it's possible to go back a version to RC1?...hell, I'm thinking it might be better to go back to the initial LR4 and start again...

don't mean to complain as a first post, but it is what it is...


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## macjim (May 17, 2012)

The Fujifilm X-Pro1.


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## clee01l (May 17, 2012)

macjim said:


> The Fujifilm X-Pro1.


I don' think your camera is included yet in the LR4 supported list.
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/04/lightroom-4-1-rc2-now-available-on-adobe-labs.html


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## macjim (May 30, 2012)

Lightroom 4.1 is now out and available to download (full non RC version)


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## macjim (May 30, 2012)

Victoria, I'm now 98% happy now with Lightroom 4.1 as it now works with my X-Pro 1 and my external editors, but one problems still hasn't been fixed and that is Flickr export uploads. Ive deleted the plug-in. Applied a fresh downloaded version etc but it wont upload. It just gives an error message ( that's using Lightroom 4.1 which was an upgrade from Lightroom 3 where it worked ok ). The daft thing is on my MacBook Air which had a clean installed LR4 ( not upgraded from a previous version ) it works just fine. Cn anyone suggest a fix for me?


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## Mark Sirota (May 30, 2012)

macjim said:


> It just gives an error message.



What does that error message say?


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## macjim (May 30, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> I missed which camera Jim, but there are a couple listed in the most recent RC, so hopefully it'll be fixed in the final 4.1.
> 
> 
> Unable to import RAW+JPEG files directly from Canon 5D, Canon 5D  Mark II, Nikon D700, Nikon D90, and Sony NEX5 cameras when connected  through USB.
> Unable to import both RAW + JPEG files when using the built-in SD card reader on Macbook laptops.



Fujifilm X-Pro 1


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## macjim (May 31, 2012)

Mark Sirota said:


> What does that error message say?



I've actually deleted the plugin in the hope that I could reinstall it but I doesn't work. That means I don't get the messages now. But it was simply saying the plugin is installed but there may be a problem and th publishing error message just says it can connect to Flickr


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## Victoria Bampton (May 31, 2012)

Have you tried revoking the Lightroom permissions at the Flickr website, and authenticating again in the plug-in?  There are some API changes going on at Flickr at the moment.

Is this the built in Flickr plug-in or Jeffrey's one?


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## macjim (May 31, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Have you tried revoking the Lightroom permissions at the Flickr website, and authenticating again in the plug-in?  There are some API changes going on at Flickr at the moment.
> 
> Is this the built in Flickr plug-in or Jeffrey's one?



No, I hadn't thought about that. I'll do that first. It was the built in one but when I went to the Abobe web site to download the plug in I could only did Jeffreys one - it didn't work. I tried reinstalling LR4.1 to see if would add the plug in back but it didn't work


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## macjim (May 31, 2012)

I've revoked the permission for Lightroom and I'll try re-connecting my LR4.1 back to it. One thing I noticed about that plugin is it shows itself as a Flickr plugin but in the LR plugin manager it's shown as Carousel?


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## macjim (May 31, 2012)

Update: I bit the bullet and deleted LR4.1 and moved the Plist files etc to the trash. I then installed the 4.1 and linked it to my LR4 Catalogue and ... Tada! Flickr uploaded is now back and working but the only downside is the previously uploaded photos that were in the publisher are no longer there. It just means if I edit the previously edited photos they won't be changed in Flickr, which I can live with.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 31, 2012)

Stranger and stranger - but I'm glad you've got it working.  If you end up going with Jeffrey's one, which has more features and is updated more regularly, he has a way of connecting up photos that are already on Flickr with their LR equivalent.


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## macjim (May 31, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Stranger and stranger - but I'm glad you've got it working.  If you end up going with Jeffrey's one, which has more features and is updated more regularly, he has a way of connecting up photos that are already on Flickr with their LR equivalent.



I might give it a try alongside of the Adobe one just to see if it has any advantages. I like the idea of it being able to re-link those uploaded files – has anyone had any experience using Jeffrey's plugin?


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## Victoria Bampton (May 31, 2012)

Jeffrey's plug-ins are very popular and widely recommended - go for it!


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