There is an interesting thread on the NAPP forum about Adobe Lightroom not measuring up as a true professional application. Since I am setting up a new studio machine today I decided to test it and confirm or deny the accusations. I have about 50k images on my iMac 20 that I decided to import into the LR database. I set it to import last night and went off to bed. This morning I arose to the black and white screen telling me to shut down the system. I did. I sent the report to Apple. I started LR and after 16 minutes I got to see the Library window. I clicked on an image (it only imported 26k images into its database before it killed the system) and watched the spinning rainbow for about 5 minutes. I then tried to tab to the Develop window and saw more spinning rainbow... lots more. I tried to quit the application in a civilized manner, but that just led to another ten minutes of spinning rainbow. Finally I was able to use the force quit option, and that is the last time LR will ever appear on my monitor.
Shooting weddings and portraits for a living, I have to keep about 6 months of work on my machine for print sales. With two togs, it's not uncommon to upload 3000 images after a wedding and have 1000 potential keepers to work up as proofs. That's just not going to happen with this application. Aperture takes it all in stride. I had hoped that LR, with its extra knobs and buttons, would reduce the number of trips into CS3 for preparing proofs. It certainly has the potential, but it just can't manage the volume of images that a pro keeps on system. Don't get me wrong, I love all things Adobe, but LR is just not up to their standards.
Bottom line... if you have to manage more than a couple thousand images, don't bother with Lightroom. By the way, there are some members of NAPP that used LR on Windows XP that upgraded to Vista, and they've had to go back to XP to get LR to work. Vista and LR don't play nicely together for some folks. The threshold for trouble seems to be around 5000 images in the database for both XP and OSX users. If you are under that image count it seems to do well (except in Vista).
So... until Apple releases an upgrade to Aperture that supports my 1D MkIII raw files, I'll be converting with DPP and managing images in Bridge.
I only played with the beta version, but saw absolutely no value in it for my purposes. IMO, Adobe should hang their heads in shame over LR.
Posted by Andrew Stagg on June 21, 2007 at 10:35 AM
I currently have 13000 + images in LR under XP. (oldish P4 1.5Gb RAM)
It is quick and stable with no issues in load times.
The only dissapointing bit is the dust spot removal stuff - it is a bit slow.
I will be completing a new system tomorrow - Vista Ultimate, Core2 Extreme 2.93, 4Gb RAM + 2 terrabytes of SATAII storage. I will let you know how well LR works on this. I hope that it works OK as I am fond of my workflow in LR.
Kelly,
My (our) experience with LR and Aperture have been almost opposite of yours. My wife shoots from 4-6 weddings per month generating several thousand images/wedding and has experienced no problems with LR. On the other hand, Aperture was a nightmare - slow and cumbersone. LR gives her a quick prep of proofs without full blown editing in PS. She has well over 15000 images in one database with no problems. Additionally, we both shoot for several large motorcycle organizations in which, between the 2 of us, may generate over 5000 images for one event and have had no problems as well. Plus, we have a large database of nature shots too. Whether this matters or not I'm not sure, but we are using Intel Macs - 2 iMacs and 2 MacBook Pros. So far we are happy with LR and even happier we could dump Aperture.
Don,
I was using an iMac 20 last night when I had my issues with lightroom. It really held a lot of promise for me with the extra knobs and buttons for workflowing my proofs. Aperture just doesn't have some of the neat features that lightroom does. I'm glad it's working for you and your wife. Aperture, on the other hand, is the tool that uploaded and manages the 50k+ images on my iMac. They're probably in 100 different project folders. Aperture gets a little pokey when you first open a project with 100s of images, but it doesn't break down on me.
Never tried importing much into Lightroom...Aperture is running fine with 100K+ referenced shots in it and I've a few more years to add in to it too. No slow downs in it once it's generated its thumbnails (the larger preivews are turned off). The only real issue I have with it so far is that the smart albums (search/query) break when trying to run them on more than 100K shots .
Might see if I can break Lightroom sometime
ps. Apple just release 10.4.10 - which includes 1DIII support plus a few others. Fire up Software update and you should get the new stuff.
Discussion
6 repliesShooting weddings and portraits for a living, I have to keep about 6 months of work on my machine for print sales. With two togs, it's not uncommon to upload 3000 images after a wedding and have 1000 potential keepers to work up as proofs. That's just not going to happen with this application. Aperture takes it all in stride. I had hoped that LR, with its extra knobs and buttons, would reduce the number of trips into CS3 for preparing proofs. It certainly has the potential, but it just can't manage the volume of images that a pro keeps on system. Don't get me wrong, I love all things Adobe, but LR is just not up to their standards.
Bottom line... if you have to manage more than a couple thousand images, don't bother with Lightroom. By the way, there are some members of NAPP that used LR on Windows XP that upgraded to Vista, and they've had to go back to XP to get LR to work. Vista and LR don't play nicely together for some folks. The threshold for trouble seems to be around 5000 images in the database for both XP and OSX users. If you are under that image count it seems to do well (except in Vista).
So... until Apple releases an upgrade to Aperture that supports my 1D MkIII raw files, I'll be converting with DPP and managing images in Bridge.
It is quick and stable with no issues in load times.
The only dissapointing bit is the dust spot removal stuff - it is a bit slow.
I will be completing a new system tomorrow - Vista Ultimate, Core2 Extreme 2.93, 4Gb RAM + 2 terrabytes of SATAII storage. I will let you know how well LR works on this. I hope that it works OK as I am fond of my workflow in LR.
Andrew
My (our) experience with LR and Aperture have been almost opposite of yours. My wife shoots from 4-6 weddings per month generating several thousand images/wedding and has experienced no problems with LR. On the other hand, Aperture was a nightmare - slow and cumbersone. LR gives her a quick prep of proofs without full blown editing in PS. She has well over 15000 images in one database with no problems. Additionally, we both shoot for several large motorcycle organizations in which, between the 2 of us, may generate over 5000 images for one event and have had no problems as well. Plus, we have a large database of nature shots too. Whether this matters or not I'm not sure, but we are using Intel Macs - 2 iMacs and 2 MacBook Pros. So far we are happy with LR and even happier we could dump Aperture.
I was using an iMac 20 last night when I had my issues with lightroom. It really held a lot of promise for me with the extra knobs and buttons for workflowing my proofs. Aperture just doesn't have some of the neat features that lightroom does. I'm glad it's working for you and your wife. Aperture, on the other hand, is the tool that uploaded and manages the 50k+ images on my iMac. They're probably in 100 different project folders. Aperture gets a little pokey when you first open a project with 100s of images, but it doesn't break down on me.
Might see if I can break Lightroom sometime
ps. Apple just release 10.4.10 - which includes 1DIII support plus a few others. Fire up Software update and you should get the new stuff.