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Lightroom and the Q


ATAR1

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Hi. I recently joined the Q club and want to understand what the Q profile in Lightroom does to the raw files?  I have been a long time Lightroom 5.7 user and prefer not to go to CC. But unfortunately 5.7 doesn’t have the preset Q profile available. Perhaps I can just mimic it and create a custom default profile? Anyone else using 5.7 to process Q files?  Thanks. 

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Yes I am using LR5.7 as well, and 'developing' Q images is fine – you don't need any preset, just vary to suit taste. But if you seem to make the same changes repeatedly, LR allows you to save as a personal preset and apply subsequently. (My experience is that you don't need to save presets anyway, but others are really keen on them.) Agree that CC is an expensive route to take, and Mac users will find their OS limits updates – eg, with mine I cannot use LR6 with current updates.

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IMHO, LR CC (Classic) is a bargin. I’ve been a LR user since early beta releases. I’d guess approaching 15 years. I’ve seen it continuously improved with new capabilities and performance. I’m running it on an 8 year old iMac 27”. I plan to upgrade my iMac soon. It’s no longer zippy, but it still handles my library of 125K images just fine. Combined with photoshop CC, my needs are pretty well met. All for the price of 2-3 cups of coffee a month and I always have the latest features. I don’t much care for or use LR CC which is cloud based. It is unnecessary and too much overhead for my tastes. 

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38 minutes ago, Infiniumguy said:

IMHO, LR CC (Classic) is a bargin. I’ve been a LR user since early beta releases. I’d guess approaching 15 years. I’ve seen it continuously improved with new capabilities and performance. I’m running it on an 8 year old iMac 27”. I plan to upgrade my iMac soon. It’s no longer zippy, but it still handles my library of 125K images just fine. Combined with photoshop CC, my needs are pretty well met. All for the price of 2-3 cups of coffee a month and I always have the latest features. I don’t much care for or use LR CC which is cloud based. It is unnecessary and too much overhead for my tastes. 

Totally agree with all of this. I'd much rather pay a low monthly cost rather than a big upfront cost.

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1 hour ago, Infiniumguy said:

IMHO, LR CC (Classic) is a bargin. I’ve been a LR user since early beta releases. I’d guess approaching 15 years. I’ve seen it continuously improved with new capabilities and performance. I’m running it on an 8 year old iMac 27”. I plan to upgrade my iMac soon. It’s no longer zippy, but it still handles my library of 125K images just fine. Combined with photoshop CC, my needs are pretty well met. All for the price of 2-3 cups of coffee a month and I always have the latest features. I don’t much care for or use LR CC which is cloud based. It is unnecessary and too much overhead for my tastes. 

Lightroom Classic CC lives on my iMac with the files on a Raid drive backed up with TimeMachine.  Nightly the LR files are updated up again to a a duplicate on a separate external drive.  Paranoid, yes!  Lost images? No!

Lightroom CC lives on my laptop and all my phones and tablets.  When on a shoot, I back up the cards to a WD MyPassport Pro during breaks.  At night, the cards are all loaded into LR CC on whichever device I am carrying and thusly get to the CC.   I do a preliminary triage: x=to be rejected later; 0=maybe; 1=probable keeper

Back home, all of the images are on my drives since LR Classic imported them all.  Then the awful triage begins. I often just delete all the X files.  Worst case, I still have the original cards and the images on the MyPassportPro.

All for a cupple of cuppas per month.  And the updates are frequent.  I only went a few days without native support on my new EOS R raw files before everything was updated.

Would I go back to LR6?  Nope...!

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On 11/3/2018 at 3:25 PM, Infiniumguy said:

IMHO, LR CC (Classic) is a bargin. I’ve been a LR user since early beta releases. I’d guess approaching 15 years. I’ve seen it continuously improved with new capabilities and performance. I’m running it on an 8 year old iMac 27”. I plan to upgrade my iMac soon. It’s no longer zippy, but it still handles my library of 125K images just fine. Combined with photoshop CC, my needs are pretty well met. All for the price of 2-3 cups of coffee a month and I always have the latest features. I don’t much care for or use LR CC which is cloud based. It is unnecessary and too much overhead for my tastes. 

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I MUCH prefer Photoshop to Lightroom. Lightroom is great for both batch processing (weddings, school pictures, etc) and for massive archiving. Although recent versions of Lightroom have become more robust (layers, etc), Adobe is only reluctantly adding these features to compete with C1 etc. Photoshop + Camera Raw is way more powerful (and even more complicated than powerful, since it's intended for commercial designers as well as photographers, but you learn what you need and [try to] ignore the rest).

But just today I downloaded a 30 day free trial of dxo Photolab2, which is a different editing model for RAW conversion, and, I must say, has a couple of stunning features. You can run Photolab within Lightroom, but not within Photoshop (though through conversion to TIFF files, there's easy compatibility). 30 day free trial....

 

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Not sure what I'm doing right or wrong, but I run Lightroom v6.14 on my 2012 Mac mini (16G RAM, 1TSSD, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 quad) running macOS Mojave v10.14 with no problems.

I've been using Lightroom to render all my photos since 2006 or so, and LR 6.14 has everything I need. I don't like software by subscription service ... so if/when LR 6.14 stops working, I'll move to another solution that does not have subscription fees associated. Luminar 2018 and Affinity Photo are my two current hot prospects. 

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I haven't seen layers in Lightroom, but otherwise I agree that Photoshop is way more powerful as an editing tool. That's great if you need that power, but 99% of the time I don't, and I like the benefits of the Lightroom cataloguing, tool terminology that reflect traditional photographic processes, and file management.

Lightroom CC has more limited editing tools than Lightroom Classic, and more limited cataloguing/file management. But it has benefits which you don't get from LR Classic:

- Direct sharing of albums from your catalogue; no more saving to dropbox/onedrive, then creating a link - then telling the recipients to download them asap as you're running out of space. You just email the link and let them download as an when the recipient wishes.

- Availability of your photos anywhere via LR CC apps on PC/tablet/phone, or via any web browser. This is great for showing your work to others (grannies and clients).

- Face recognition - it's extraordinary the power of this Adobe online function as a way of finding all the photos of a person, without using keywords.

The fact is I want the benefits of LR Classic, LR CC and Photoshop - none of them is good enough on its own.

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14 hours ago, bags27 said:

 

But just today I downloaded a 30 day free trial of dxo Photolab2, which is a different editing model for RAW conversion, and, I must say, has a couple of stunning features. You can run Photolab within Lightroom, but not within Photoshop (though through conversion to TIFF files, there's easy compatibility). 30 day free trial....

 

I have been using DxO products for years (now Photolab2 Elite which is their latest/greatest), and at this point prefer them to Adobe products (I don't feel like there is anything missing as far as features, and my workflow is much faster). The only complaint I have is that the Nik Collection they acquired is still not integrated into Photolab2, but that is hopefully just a matter of time.

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I think that when you use Lightroom Classic in a proper way with its intensded Workflow then one can not just say that you do not like the monthly fee and that one could just switch to something else. Just an. example:

I used Apple‘s Aperture for many years and unfortunately I had to go to something else as Apple discontinued their Software. The Data Management System included in LR (Database, Keywords, GPS plus plus plus) can not be just moved to something else and I suffered a lot when I had to give up Aperture. ALL my images were NOT processed any more etc. etc.

You can easily say that you will change the Software and then you change again and the again, from LR to C1 to something else to something else . . means that you do not properly use these tools or just use them to quickly process a DNG and then export the JPG and delete the RAW. That kind of „workflow“ I hear again and again. But I think that this is the complete wrong way of using LR. 

But if I understand well it is about thre. Q here 😇

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On 11/4/2018 at 8:23 PM, ramarren said:

Not sure what I'm doing right or wrong, but I run Lightroom v6.14 on my 2012 Mac mini (16G RAM, 1TSSD, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 quad) running macOS Mojave v10.14 with no problems.

I've been using Lightroom to render all my photos since 2006 or so, and LR 6.14 has everything I need. I don't like software by subscription service ... so if/when LR 6.14 stops working, I'll move to another solution that does not have subscription fees associated. Luminar 2018 and Affinity Photo are my two current hot prospects. 

I'm 100% in agreement with what you say. One thing, and apologies if I am being a bit dim here, but if one moved to (say) Affinity Photo or Capture One how would one store / manage / browse through one's photo collection? I use possibly use Lightroom more as a "catalogue" than I do as an image manipulator.   

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On 11/10/2018 at 8:12 AM, LexS said:

I thought that the profile is in the dng's, you don't have to have a LeicaQ profile in LTR.

All the Leica DNG files I've had have an embedded profile ... that produces cartoonish, horrible color by default. The Adobe Standard profile produces a much more neutral, and properly editable, color. 

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49 minutes ago, hcbrelb said:

I'm 100% in agreement with what you say. One thing, and apologies if I am being a bit dim here, but if one moved to (say) Affinity Photo or Capture One how would one store / manage / browse through one's photo collection? I use possibly use Lightroom more as a "catalogue" than I do as an image manipulator.   

This is the part of the workflow that I haven't worked out yet ... mostly because I don't have to yet. :) 

One simple thing I could do would be to let Photos on macOS manage my photos with its albums, etc. Or find and use a DAM that I like, like Cumulus or others. 

I'm not in any rush. 

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On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 9:30 PM, ramarren said:

All the Leica DNG files I've had have an embedded profile ... that produces cartoonish, horrible color by default. The Adobe Standard profile produces a much more neutral, and properly editable, color. 

The Leica IS the standard (Adobe) DNG !

There must be something wrong in your settings somewhere in the camera or LTR.

I have absolutely no issues in LTR.

 

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1 hour ago, LexS said:

The Leica IS the standard (Adobe) DNG !

There must be something wrong in your settings somewhere in the camera or LTR.

I have absolutely no issues in LTR.

 

I'm sorry, but your statement is incorrect. I don't have a Q, but Embedded is a separate choice from the Adobe Standard camera calibration profile in all my Leica files from M9, M-P240, M-D, SL, and CL: 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

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As example, here is the difference between that frame processed to the defaults with the Leica Embedded ccp vs the Adobe Standard ccp.

01 is processed with the embedded ccp, 02 is processed with the Adobe Standard profile. You can see how the Embedded profile has exaggerated blue and red saturation nearly to the clipping point. 

01: 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

02: 

Overall contrast saturation and contrast are higher across the board, and some data is lost to clipping depending upon the scene. 

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On ‎11‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 7:41 AM, LexS said:

The Leica IS the standard (Adobe) DNG !

There must be something wrong in your settings somewhere in the camera or LTR.

I have absolutely no issues in LTR.

 

By default, LR applies the Adobe Standard profile to imports. I routinely change that to the "embedded" profile, as I prefer its color/saturation.

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