Lightroom 4 beta #1 test complete - final results.

Question

Regarding the default processing and basic tone controls:
Default processing (automatic shadow/highlight recovery) is awesome, usually. In cases when it's not it can be painstaking (and not always satisfying) to compensate for using basic controls and/or tone curve.
Basic tone controls have a fundamental design deficiency:
     - One can not make successive refinements, where each gets you closer to the goal. Sometimes you have to make corrections that goof up much of what you've already done, then settle everything back in, and then do it again. For example, one may need to increase exposure in order to have a little more "fill light". That will destroy all the work you've already done on the highlights, necessitating readjustment. I see this as a fundamental design flaw. And no, one can not always predict the proper exposure up front, when the proper setting means a massively blown out top end, for example. You must see what happens with the rest of your settings, in order to know what the proper exposure is.
Basic tone controls do not allow one to adjust photos with sufficient control without a lot of work (and sometimes even with a lot of work):
     - Too many of my photos end up with most tones good, but one or two tones are off. And there seems to be no good way to correct it without a lot of fiddling, tone curve, or locals. The reason is obvious if you adjust the various controls and watch their behavior in the histogram. Even if the tones in the photo click really nicely with PV2012 (and >50% do), it's possible to see the potential for trouble - for example, the adjustment of highlights and shadows do not have a smooth and organic blending with the adjacent zones. Maybe this can be corrected with some tweaks, but it definitely needs to be corrected.
Bottom-line:
I'm done for now. I really hope Adobe will address these issues - I don't want to have to throw away the thousands of hours I've invested in Lightroom and plugins...
PS - I apologize in advance to those who would like me to post more examples than I and others already have. My sense is that most respondees will try to refute, and I just don't have the time/energy to take up a fight. Adobe will either get the message or they won't, and either remedy or not...
Recommendation to others:
Make up your own mind about it. I'm sure results are just fine for some folk, but I can not, in good conscience, recommend Lightroom 4 to anyone at this point. The big print giveth, but the small print taketh away...
Rob

Answer 1

Cornelia-I wrote:
Sorry John,
I think you are really unfair now to Rob.
I have read a lot in his posts about describing what the starting situation of an image is and what he wants to achieve.
Then how he progressed using the LR4-tools.
Where he had success and where not, because it drove him into an endless iteration circle starting again from exposure adjustment.
Nobody could adress his concerns or offer a solution how to better apply the new tools. Though he has asked several times for enlightenment, if such were to be had.
I was reacting to the constant whining....and was getting tired of hearing what could not be done (relative to PV2010) vs. what could be done on PV2012.  New software requires new learning....and I am sure Rob knows that...he even admits that he was reacting in frustration.
As Rob...and Eric...have said....the sliders are going to only get you so far....and eventually we will learn the fastest path, if we share that info....after that fine tuning maybe (will be) needed by doing it the old fashioned way....curves, dodging, burning, etc.
Cornelia-I wrote:
I will be interested in reading updates of "Real Word Camera Raw" or Michael Frye's  "Light and Land - Landscapes in the digital darkroom" and see how they cope - definitely a challenge.
Jeff does "Real WOrld CR", and we are hearing from him....and will in the LuLa video.  I am sure there will be lots of other authors such as David Du Chamin, Guy Tal, George Jardin, Lee Varis....who will update there workflow techniques to PV2012.....and all of them in a positive can do and here's how to do it manner.
The Adobe team wants to put out the best product/tool that they can.  How anyone could think that they would want to replace a nicely working (pv2010) solution with a "compromised" solution (pv2012) is quite unimaginable to me....and it is not change for change sake....the only reason to make this big and drastic a change at this time would be with the expectation that it will be dramatically better.  I am sure it will be....it might take some additional minor tweaks....but more important, positive attitude and learning of new things by us.
John