Lightroom 1.1 Unofficially officially announced

Victoria Bampton wrote in post #3298218
Comments are good - they prompt further development!

Two other non-RAW aspects I am aslo interested in would be ability to stack across folder and better functionality for cross-computer users. I have just got a laptop and want to access LR from either that or my PC across my home network without having to configure it or reconnect to files or copy the library every time!

News on the update, direct from Tom Hogarty

http://blogs.adobe.com​/lightroomjournal/

Still no dates though

Victoria Bampton wrote in post #3298425
News on the update, direct from Tom Hogarty

http://blogs.adobe.com​/lightroomjournal/

Still no dates though

Looks like we'll be waiting a bit longer, guys...

I was under the impression that they could add camera support (at the least) without expressly issuing a "dot" release of LR... apparently not, huh?

Hoping they don't lag too far behind ACR on coming out with this... seems kind of lame that they can give those things to ACR users, when from what I understand, much of the ACR improvements are a direct result of the Shadowland/Lightroom project... while we LR users must wait.

At the same time, I'd like to see this 1.1 update be worthwhile... although the more we wait, the more hype its going to have to live up to, and the more I expect it to address MY issues.

davidcrebelxt wrote in post #3298448
Looks like we'll be waiting a bit longer, guys...

I was under the impression that they could add camera support (at the least) without expressly issuing a "dot" release of LR... apparently not, huh?

I can't see any way around this. The coding of Lightroom and Photoshop are very different. (I'm going off my own software engineering experience and public pronouncements here - I'm not an Adobe beta tester or similar).

I know you're really unhappy with the situation - but without reading Tom Hegarty's post, I just wrote this reply to you which got it pretty much right.


Lightroom isn't based around the Photoshop plug-in SDK, so you can't just drop the Camera Raw.8bi file into Lightroom. Quite a lot of Lightroom is written in Lua (I believe that Photoshop is C++ and C), and Tom Hegarty has already said that when Lightroom gets its SDK for plug-ins, the interface to those plug-ins will have to be written in Lua.

I believe that the use of Lua extends to most if not all of Lightroom's user interface code, and is why the Camera Raw interface is subtly different in Lightroom to Camera Raw.8bi. For example, Camera Raw.8bi lacks the interactive curves functionality from Lightroom - this, for me, is a major functionality improvement in Lightroom.


The underlying Camera Raw engine is common (after all, you're not going to rewrite that code in Lua for Lightroom, nor would you want to for efficiency reasons) - but there's more to Lightroom 1.1 than updated Camera Raw code. As I said in the other thread, it may even be of benefit to Lightroom users shipping Camera Raw 4.1 first - if some kind of bug is found in Camera Raw 4.1 (which, as Tom says, is just a module), then it can be fixed and incorporated into Lightroom before Lightroom 1.1 ships.

I've also pointed out other background matters in the other thread - such as Camera Raw 4.1 going out of the door at Adobe along with other CS3 updates. I suspect pressure was put on Tom Hegarty and his team to ship the Camera Raw update as part of this batch of CS3 updates. I'm not going to repeat my other points here.


Camera Raw 4.1 shipping is a positive step for Lightroom users, in that it indicates that the Camera Raw updates are finished, and we now know what the new Camera Raw functionality and new camera support will be. Like you, David, I am looking forward to Lightroom 1.1, but I know I have to be measured. I'd rather it was right, and we mustn't forget that now that Adobe have shipped the product and it's no longer beta, withdrawing functionality from a public version of Lightroom (such as happened with Beta 4's binders) really isn't an option.

I know, too, that things I wish were in Lightroom 1.1 are either almost certain to be delayed (the SDK) or Adobe have yet to be persuaded are needed (soft proofing in the Print module). However, if Adobe provide some way of dealing with libraries on two separate machines (such as those of us who have Lightroom on our desktop and laptop), that will be a huge improvement, as is the new Camera Raw stuff.


The Lightroom SDK almost certainly being omitted from Lightroom 1.1 is particularly disappointing, but Jeff Schewe has indicated that it's 'delayed' (in true Jeff style, with no further elaboration) and Tom Hegarty has explained that they've got to get the interface model tied down properly before they release the SDK. Once they release an interface that third parties hook their code to, it's going to be very hard to make changes to that interface, even if ongoing Lightroom work suggests that that would be the right thing to do. I'm just going to have to wait a bit longer for a Noise Ninja plugin for Lightroom, sadly!

David

Would also like to see progress onthe RSP migration Tool

EOSAddict wrote in post #3299064
Would also like to see progress onthe RSP migration Tool

Sadly, that's another promised thing that hasn't yet been delivered. I guess it's a marker of all the work that the Lightroom team still have to do, which in turn is a reason why we mustn't expect 1.1 to solve all the problems, issues and hopes that we have of Lightroom.


I am somewhat sceptical as to how well "Develop" settings can be migrated across, bearing in mind that Lightroom is using the Adobe RAW engine. I think anyone hoping for a solution for those settings may well finish up disappointed. From what I've read (but can't reference now), the Pixmantec deal came very late in the Lightroom development cycle and that little if any Pixmantec code made its way into Lightroom. Despite the PR at the time, my suspicion is that Adobe bought Pixmantec partly for ideas, and partly for the market share they could get by giving every RSP user a free copy of Lightroom. I suspect most of the Pixmantec source code has got put to one side, not least because of the "not invented here" effect.

Of course, I'm just trying to make an educated guess, and those that know for sure are almost certainly precluded from saying anything.


However, there's clearly data that can be migrated across from RSP. I hope the migration tool isn't something that quietly slips from view, with Adobe thinking that many of those affected will have regenerated their important metadata in Lightroom. I'm not affected, because at the point I was thinking seriously of buying RSP and moving my primary workflow to it, Adobe bought Pixmantec and I stuck with ACR 3 / Bridge CS2 Photoshop CS2. However, I could so easily be waiting for that tool myself.

I hope Adobe has some good news on this soon. It must be so hard sometimes to sort out what to do amongst the clamour of conflicting demands over Lightroom.

David

EOSAddict wrote in post #3298286
Two other non-RAW aspects I am aslo interested in would be ability to stack across folder and better functionality for cross-computer users. I have just got a laptop and want to access LR from either that or my PC across my home network without having to configure it or reconnect to files or copy the library every time!

I did post a solution in another thread but here it is again.

First you need to have a single folder that contains your photos - they can be organised any way you like inside the folder but having a root folder for the photos is key to this method.

For the sake of example lets say the folder is d:\MyPhotos

On the machine with the photos you now use the subst dos command to create a virtual drive letter such as:

subst p: d:\photos

You'll now have a new drive listed, p: which is just a shortcut to d:\photos. If you create a text file with the above command, save it as a .bat file and put it in your startup folder the virtual drive will be created automatically when you boot up.

The next step is to share d:\photos on the network then on any other machine map the share to a network drive and assign it p: as the drive letter.

At this point any machine on the network can use p:\ to access the photos so the final step is to copy your lightroom database to p:\ and then open it on a network machine. The first time you do this it won't find any of the photos but once you tell it to look on p: for them everything will be updated and the changes saved. From then on any machine can open the database and edit photos on p:\ with no more work on the users part.

Hopefully that all makes sense, if it doesn't just shout...

pxl8,

Thanks for this.. I am working on this as a way forward.. but my point was this should be seamless in LR, not thru a user work-round outside of LR.

When I get time I will re-attack this on my system and let you know!

Can I just map that folder as a network drive in Windows? (PS main machine on XP, laptop on Vista!)

One other thing, you can't have the Library on a network drive

You can get round the network drive thing with subst again, so instead of mapping the share on the laptop just use something like this:

subst p: \\mymainpc\photos\

Then p: won't be recognised as a network drive

Ahh OK - thanks!

Be careful about fooling Lightroom into thinking that its library isn't on a network share - there has to be a reason why Adobe put that check into Lightroom.

That said, I find this a huge nuisance, too. I don't think it would have increased the footprint of Lightroom that much to have a database server and client approach. The core of Version Cue is MySQL, so it's not as if Adobe didn't have experience in using a 'full feature' database server in their creative tools. Using something like MySQL would have meant Lightroom databases were multi-user as well.

David

DavidW wrote in post #3301828
Using something like MySQL would have meant Lightroom databases were multi-user as well.

I thought they did use MySQL for LR.

rfreschner wrote in post #3302114
I thought they did use MySQL for LR.

Whoops, my mistake, they're using SQLite.

As you say, the database core of Lightroom is SQLite.

David