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When I started using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom I hoped that it would make the same sort of difference to my working day as when I moved from Nikon Capture to RawShooter - Well thought out software meant that all of a sudden I was a really quick worker. RawShooter was both easier to use and quicker - easier because of better layout and much quicker because as soon as you had adjusted one file RawShooter could process and save it in the background while you worked on the next. Lightroom aims to carry that process forward, with a workflow that really does cover everything, but that has a downside. Lightroom is very complicated, and the first section you have to deal with - the Library - is....um..... I’m struggling for the right word here, but horrible is what springs to mind. Strange is another. For some reason known only to Adobe they decided to rewrite the computing rulebook with this area of Lightroom. As a result, you don’t “open” anything as in every other application, you “import”. You don’t “save” anything either, you “Export” it.
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Even the dreaded Import screen is much better in Lightroom 3
Where this, to me at least, gets just plain silly, is after you’ve imported say your “photos” folder. If you then add files to that folder from a memory card or another application like Photoshop, Lightroom is the only application I’ve come across that will not automatically update that folder the next time you look to include the new files. The folder will be there but not any new files, until you import them, or “synchronize” the folder.
Question for Adobe: Why?
The answer, we’re told, is that Adobe, with Lightroom, wants us to work in a logical and disciplined way - importing new files and adding keywords to them, before adjusting them and outputing or Exporting the results. It makes perfect sense in a perfect world where we all work in the same way, but in the real world its an enormous pain. There you go, that’s the word I was looking for.
Adobe have changed the Import dialogue in Lightroom 3 and it is better, but it is still an Import dialogue, and although it now has something a bit like a normal browser window, it’s still different from anything else. Generally I like different, as different normally means, at least in some way, better, but in Lightroom’s case I can’t see how it’s better. Slower, something else to learn, awkward is what I see. That’s a real shame because the rest of Lightroom 3 is at times astonishingly good.
One tip here - When you first start Lightroom and try to import your existing Photos or My Pictures folder, it will probably refuse to import some images. By default Lightroom won’t import more than one version of each picture, so if Lightroom suspects that you are sneekily trying to import more than one version it will refuse to do so. How dare you clutter up your hard disk with multiple copies of your best picture ever....... The Adobe police will be straight round.
The answer is to: Un-tick the box “Don’t Import Suspected Duplicates” at the top right of the import screen shown above and it will then just import what you ask it to, and your blood pressure will return to normal before the ambulance arrives.
My work around for the Library section is to import my whole “Photos” folder and then right click on it and select “Synchronize Folder..” each time I add something new. The import process was very slow in Lightroom 1 and 2, but Lightroom 3 is much quicker so this isn’t a big deal, and however you deal with the Library section, you’ll be glad you did, because the rest of Lightroom is superb.
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