View single post by Robert
 Posted: Sun Oct 22nd, 2017 18:51
Robert



Joined: Mon Apr 2nd, 2012
Location: South Lakeland, UK
Posts: 4066
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Thanks JK, do any of the suggestions have a viable Digital Asset Management module? GPS Location (Maps), Face recognition, hierarchical keywords and metadata searches? These are key to my using Lightroom. I will not use multiple software titles to perform the basic DAM functions and the basic image processing functions.

I accept specialised things like star trails, focus stacking and sophisticated panorama processing demands specialised software but the vast majority of image management and basic processing should be within one software application program.

I have been reading up on the forums about the NEW Lightroom CC (cloud based), not unexpectedly there is a lot of reaction.

I have to preface this by saying I have not yet actually downloaded the NEW Lr CC myself. I intend to D/L it to my MBP this week but it's not going anywhere near my main library! I have some images on the MBP which I can use to experiment with.

It seems the new Lr CC no longer has the map module, nor face recognition per se, hierarchical keywords and folders have also gone. From what I can gather ALL image files are dumped into one giant container. NO folders. That said I have read that you can use local file storage, but how that works I'm not sure yet.

Again from what I can gather they are emulating what Apple has done with Photos and using Artificial Intelligence to sort out the mess. It should be able to find buildings, waterfalls, boats and rudimentary stuff like that but wether it can identify specific instances of boats, like 'fishing boats at Morecambe' or South American waterfalls, I very much doubt.

If Adobe CAN overcome this obstacle and get the AI to make sense from chaos then I have no doubt they are on a winner, however, I rather doubt AI is up to the level needed just yet, I am getting way too many wrongly named faces in the face recognition module, even good clean likenesses, or inanimate objects are being wrongly named.

The sheer impracticality of uploading large numbers of very high res NEFs to the cloud servers will put most people off. Most professional and serious photographers have many Tb of image files to which they are liable to need quick access.

While I an understand (perhaps) the convenience of having finished images available on-line, I don't see the point in having hundreds of images which are stacked to create either panoramas, HDR images or star trails on-line, on the other hand they are not to be thrown away either. Anything which is oof, movement blur or badly exposed gets short shift, but well exposed sharp images which comprise a stacked image are kept.

Much to think about here.



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Robert.