LR4 a few observations

[Richard King]

- soft proofing - excellent
- auto exposure - always seems under, by 0.5 - 1.00 stops
- auto WB - always seems cold
- the sliders seemed more intuative in LR3, especially now they have replaced them with hilights, shadows, whites, blacks
- noise and moire reduction on a paintbrush - genius

And yes I do have a fully profiled and set up screen

so far 9/10

 

[AndyWest]

So is it really worth the jump from 3 to 4? One thing that's good is that it now supports the RAW files in the Panasonic LX7 which I'm getting very soon

 

[Richard King]

Only if you find soft proofing useful. Wedding photographers / anyone who shoots fabric will find the addition of Moire reduction to the brush tool useful, especially if you have a camera with no AA filter

If converting the Panasonic files to DNG's and then pulling them ito LR is a pain, then yes - also very useful.

I'm still getting my head around how they have fiddled with the sliders, I prefer 3 in that respect. my workflow is currently slightly slower - I expect it will be the same as before soon

The map, book options are gimiky, and not really that useful to me.

 

[Anthony.Ralph]

Process version 2012 is better when compared to process version 2010. The use of the development sliders in PV2012 are quite different and don't equate item-for-item with the ones in pv2010. Following a (fairly) strict top-down approach with the sliders in pv2012 yeilds good results, although the nature of LR 4.xx allows and encourages the subsequent tweaking and re-tweaking to obtain optimum results.

Further the Tone Curve feature has been improve and expanded with the inclusion of the point curve with it's drag-on-image capability (don't think that was in 3.xx?)

The other improvement, apart from the enhanced noise reduction facilities and quality is the enlarged capability of the Chromatic Aberration controls.

It took a little while to get familiar with the changes, but the superior results in skys for example look really good to me.

Oh, and the Brush and Graduated Filter controls have been improved and extended in a very good way.

Anthony.

 

[Richard King]

Process version 2012 is better when compared to process version 2010. The use of the development sliders in PV2012 are quite different and don't equate item-for-item with the ones in pv2010. Following a (fairly) strict top-down approach with the sliders in pv2012 yeilds good results

Are you suggesting starting with WB, then exposure, contrast, hilights.. and working down?

 

[Anthony.Ralph]

Are you suggesting starting with WB, then exposure, contrast, hilights.. and working down?

That is what Jeff Schewe (and others) have suggested and what I do; as it tends produce results quickly and easily. As I noted above, this doesn't preclude going back and tweaking particular sliders if necessary on a given image.

Anthony.

 

[swanseamale47]

Yes LR is designed to work down to get the quickest easiest results, but as Anthony says it doesn't stop you tweeking after. The actual edits are applied in the correct order anyway, regadless of slider order, the beauty of parametric editing.

 

[Buck]

I always work in a top down way with LR3 - WB first (if at all) then just work my way through.

I have updated the default settings in Develop to include a few tweaks I always apply to save me time.