Jill Morgan Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 So all the investment in post-production processing on those images is also effectively lost if you don't renew; that too is stored in the catalog. That will be 100s or more likely 1,000s of hours of work - how much is that worth? That is not correct Martin. The development settings are held in sidecar xmp files and can be opened by any program capable of reading the xmp files. This would include Adobe's own DNG converter and the DNG files could be opened in any program capable of reading DNG. Perhaps you are confusing Lightroom with ACR. In ACR, you have a choice of storing the development metadata in the ACR database or as sidecar xmp files. The latter option is definitely preferable for future proofing. I think Martin might be meaning that since all upgrades are CC only, if you use an upgraded feature, then go back to your old desktop Lightroom, then the changes that you made in the CC version would be gone. Whether that would totally destroy the image, I guess it would depend on which features were used. This keeps you tied to the subscription. If the software doesn't have the features recorded in the xmp file, then it can't display them. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 I was referring to the statement "..that too is stored in the catalog", really to clarify that there is nothing to fear about using Lightroom as a raw converter - the settings are not lost as long as the xmp files are kept with the raws. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russell Watkins Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 I was referring to the statement "..that too is stored in the catalog", really to clarify that there is nothing to fear about using Lightroom as a raw converter - the settings are not lost as long as the xmp files are kept with the raws. It does need an explicit second step though. Martin is correct in saying that the "Develop" data is held in the LR catalog. XMP sidecars are only created if you tell LR to do so either automatically (which is not recommended) or with a manual key press/mouse click "Save" command. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 I was referring to the statement "..that too is stored in the catalog", really to clarify that there is nothing to fear about using Lightroom as a raw converter - the settings are not lost as long as the xmp files are kept with the raws. It does need an explicit second step though. Martin is correct in saying that the "Develop" data is held in the LR catalog. XMP sidecars are only created if you tell LR to do so either automatically (which is not recommended) or with a manual key press/mouse click "Save" command. I stand corrected. I've always set the prefs to write the xmps automatically. The basic premise of what I was saying doesn't really change though - if one was abandoning LR and had not created the xmps, then it would be a simple matter of creating the xmps by saving the data - it wouldn't be lost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Would non-Adobe programs read and use the adjustment, includng cleaning, data in a same or usable way? Would you have to go via DNG (Adobe's open standard). Creating dngs for10,000s of images would be a major exercise and need a lot of storage - I would not want to lose my original raw files. When I have some time I may run a test to see if C1Pro, or anything else I have, will process LR adjustment data from the sidecar. All that said I am not going the subscription route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Would non-Adobe programs read and use the adjustment, includng cleaning, data in a same or usable way? Would you have to go via DNG (Adobe's open standard). Creating dngs for10,000s of images would be a major exercise and need a lot of storage - I would not want to lose my original raw files. When I have some time I may run a test to see if C1Pro, or anything else I have, will process LR adjustment data from the sidecar. All that said I am not going the subscription route. I don't know the answer to that as I don't have any non-Adobe programs at the moment. When I posted the first reply, I was mainly thinking of the ability to export the raws and xmps rather than relying on the catalogue to be read by 3rd party programs. How much of the information such programs can read is another matter. I do think that DNG would be the safest way to go in any case if one was leaving Adobe, as this is likely to be more widely implemented by 3rd party programs and offers the best long-term security for raw files. The original raws can be stored within the DNGs as an option as well, to retain all the manufacturer-specific info in the raws. If storage costs were to be a problem, then it would be be better to keep the DNGs rather than the individual raws and xmps. It shouldn't be a major exercise - just export from Lightroom while you do something else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Problem with DNG is that you may risk losing manufacturer specific features/ information that facilitate the processing of raw. How for instance does DNG cope with Fuji X-trans files? The structures of the colour data is completely different from all the other, Bayer sensored, cameras out there; does DNG retain the lens correction profile data that so many manufacturers use now? Do raw converters treat such DNG files from Fuji in the same way as they do native RAF files - are the results indistinguishable? It seems a good suggestion but there seems to be little solid information on or consideration of the impact of going to DNG at the limits or for use cases at the margins.That said, I can't say I have looked very hard as it is not a route I plan to take. Is there a comprehensive explanation of how DNG works compared with proprietary raw files? I appreciate most of the latter are essentially TIF files with custom tweaks. As I say it does not affect me (at least at the moment) - my main data (>15 years worth) is in C1 Pro catalogs and I do not envisage going cloud (except private maybe) or any subscription route in the foreseable future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 The option to save the original raw in the DNG addresses the concerns about manufacturer-specific features - I am pretty sure that is why they included this option. As for the details of DNG, Jeff Schewe's book The Digital Negative (I think that is what it is called) is probably the best place to get the lowdown without reading the actual DNG specifications. It's an excellent update on the excellent Fraser and Schewe books on ACR, which is where I got my info originally. I tend to absorb what I need for my own purposes and forget about the first principles. Life is too short for me to dig into the DNG specifications though. I'll trust Jeff Schewe to interpret. I'm not currently a CC subscriber. For me, the safeguard at the moment is the fact that I have perpetual licenses for PSCS6 and LR5, so should not have any problems with my files to date as long as whatever computer I own continues to run the software. If I had a camera that wasn't covered by the current version of LR or should Adobe stop supporting CS6, then subscription would be a likely outcome, assuming Adobe make LR subscription-only in the future. That will probably be inevitable eventually for me in any case, as I do regard Photoshop as essential to my work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 I so rarely use Photoshop that I would probably get by with Elements (at least I will if it handles 16bit filesa) or GIMP for what I need. I plan to scan some more of my film archive and I use my copy PS (CC5.1 I think) to clean the TIF files up before I do everything else in C1Pro. I don't need the cleanup of the multitude of dust spots to be reversible! As I discovered LR & C1 don't like dealing with the high numbers of spots on film scans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dov makabaw Posted March 9, 2015 Share Posted March 9, 2015 I started out using PS but after many years moved over to LR. In my experience LR satisfies nearly all my requirements. My only gripe, when I revert to PS, is in cropping. As for CC - why? dov Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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