>> I couldn't work without it. [Lightroom]
> And I can't work with it.
Moose, I'm a little confused here. You have identified a particular
need. The solution is presented, but you aren't accepting of the
solution...
Now that I've gotten that off my chest. (We really are alike. You know
that, right?)
I do agree that Lightroom isn't without certain issues. For file
import duties, it really does run circles around almost everything out
there. The one glaring exception is Olympus Studio. That program
actually did file import very well. But the one which you might want
to look very closely at is "Photo Mechanic".
Photo Mechanic may be just the ticket you are looking for.
On Saturday, I spent a few hours with a photographer friend who was
helping me move the washer and dryer to our new house. As is to be
expected, we got around to talking about cameras and software. He uses
both Lightroom and Capture One. Capture One for the actual Raw
conversions, Lightroom for the import, sorting and some
post-processing. An anology came to mind:
In the world of audio, you can buy amplifiers which match in every
specification, yet sound different. Same with speakers, but let's
stick with the amplifiers for this analogy. The frequency response,
SNR, THD, etc., may all match. But the sound doesn't.
This is how he and I feel about Lightroom. From a technical
perspective, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it and the
pictures are just fine. But when compared to some of the other
converters, the Lightroom files look "solid state". Capture One files
look "tube". Who knows what it is, but this is something that I sense
and can see in people's images posted all around the web. When I look
at portraits and wedding pictures done by other professional
photographers, I can see the Lightroom "look" without understanding
why it has that look.
Back in the '90s when I was working in the pro audio and broadcast
industry, this was something that we had to deal with in our
conversion to digital. It was really apparent when we created
equalizers and dynamic processors. The math didn't work out. There was
a lot of customized algorithms out there to make an equalizer sound
like the real thing--especially a "British EQ" which you could only
come close to mimicking, but never perfectly duplicating. I worked
with several major companies that made editors, but each one had a
completely different algorithm. From a technical specification
perspective, the EQ built into any Yamaha digital mixer is one of the
most accurate and best EQs ever made. But, honestly, it sound
horrible. Pro-Tools followed the pure data model too and that one is
horrible. The WAVES plug-ins sound really good, though. Why? A whole
lot of secret sauce. Don't get me started on anything named "Mackie".
I get a nasty twitch when i have to EQ anything on a Mackie mixer
either analog or digital. In the world of dynamic processors, the
differences are even greater. Allen and Heath and Soundcraft are quite
decent.
Yet, when you compare technical specifications, these are all identical.
But they are not identical. In fact, as I've personally involved in
the development of some of this "secret sauce", I can guarantee that
they aren't identical and we can game the technical specifications by
knowing how the tests are done. It is really easy to get awesome specs
for the precision tests. How you get there is where things vary
greatly. I know that in one case where we were trying to get the EQ to
match a particular trait, we had at least two man years invested in
the development, programming and testing of it. The EQ software which
began as a couple hundred lines of code turned into thousands of lines
of code. You could get it to match traits for some audio material, but
not others. It was an iterative process that ended up flooring us for
how complex it got. We never expected to open up such a can of worms.
Yes, I am happy to say that one of the two EQ projects I was involved
in resulted in a product that I actually have in my home studio. So is
the dynamic processor and the reverb engine.
AG
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
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