Lightroom Upgrade at a client - sucess? - keyword problem deal breaker

Question

Hi
Just a small report, on how upgrading a client's LR 2 catalog went.
Background: The client is a professional photographer specialized on garden photography. Her customers are gardening and lifestyle magazines who publish her photos regularly as illustrations to various articles. She has a professional Canon EOS 1Ds MK III equipment and shoots exclusively raw. In a shoot around 300 to 1000 images are shot. The Lightroom catalog has around 20,000 images currently.
In Lightroom she uses mostly DAM and some basic development features, images are delivered either as raw of as JPEG images to the clients. Keywording is especially important. She has an extensive hierarchical list of plants most of them multiword keywords with spaces, and lots of other keywords indicating if images were sent to clients and other stuff.
The upgrade went just very well. I exported the catalog to a new intermediate catalog without previews, installed LR3 and imported this intermediate catalog into LR3 generating new previews from scratch. The hardware is modest, and some functional tests (especially switching images in develop, spot tool, and adjustment brushes) revealed that everything performs well enough.
Then she asked me where she would have benefits from using the new version. And then I told the whole benefit story, which can be read everywhere.
- New process version, better details and noise reduction. She asked where she can see it? Hmm, I switched to 1:1 view changing the process versions, not really much to see on Canon 1Ds Mk III files. Even with noisier files, it was hard to tell, what has actually changed. So only a 4:1 view very tiny changes were visible. The impact on her business? Near to nothing as she does not print large. The differences would hardly be seen in the magazine prints.
- Lens corrections and perspective control: does not really matter in garden photography, but she could see some occasional usefullness.
- Publish services: no real need for it
- Print packages: nope
- Slightshow improvements: no use for it
- Performance improvements: nothing visible
- Effects: completely superfluous
- New import dialog: at first glance a hindereance, as she has to get used to it
Then she asked: did they correct the keyword handling, when entering keywords witrh spaces? (You know the nasty bug, where keyword completion is broken at keywords with spaces). We checked (I knew it wasn't fixed), and of course she was heavily disappointed. Thus, after 2 years of development nothing new for her, keyword bug not fixed? Of course she said, that I should tell her, when keyword completion works, then and only then would she consider an upgrade.
So, despite all the bells and whistles about the new version, I doubt that for many photographers the benefits are really so overwhelming in the real world. It is a pitty that Adobe continues to neglect the DAM features (some fresh ideas for client management would be great), that existing features aren't consequently implemented (esp. the possibilities to query the catalog, and keywording), and that existing bugs are constantly ignored and not fixed.
So, please Adobe, get keyword completion fixed for keywords with spaces immediately !!! This is what professionals need. A catalog without reliable DAM features, renders the catalog concept to a great extend useless. Please listen!
Disclaimer: As I am not a professional for me the situation is not the same. I just report my experience I had, with a photgrapher, who needs a proper asset management. I recommended Lightroom to her because of the overall package (she moved from Cumulus), so I feel a little obliged to help her in this issue. In my case, as a user of a modest Lumix G camera system, I would consider the IQ benefits more signifcant. I don't know, if this is a general observation.
Kind regards
Thomas

Answer 1

W.W. Webster wrote:
tgutgu wrote:
Just a small report, on how upgrading a client's LR 2 catalog went ...
So, please Adobe, get keyword completion fixed for keywords with spaces immediately !!! This is what professionals need. A catalog without reliable DAM features, renders the catalog concept to a great extend (sic) useless. Please listen!
I just report my experience I had, with a photgrapher (sic), who needs a (sic) proper asset management.
So the over-riding conclusion from your experience with just one photographer is that Lightroom is 'useless', and this compels you to demand, in bold type, that Adobe must listen?
That Lightroom has issues and areas for ongoing development is obvious, and Adobe won't dispute this.  But rants like yours add nothing and are unhelpful.  Julie's response is extremely tactful and far more moderate than your post deserves.
Dear Mr. Webster
I think when you post, you should definitely change your tone. Julie simply answered my original post by acknowledging the problem, your accusation that I did not use appropriate "netiquette" is ridiculous. Posts like yours are a real problem of this forum.
I simply gave a user story example to show that not for everybody the shiny advertised new features provide real benefits and that paying attention to a thorough implementation of features can be equally important. I think Julie has recognized this. And the issue is nothing for ongoing developments. Lightroom supports keywords with spaces, so it has to be done consequently. Keywording is essential for DAM. If keywording gets too tedious or leads to wrong keyword assignments, then DAM is really pointless.
The intention of my post was to point Adobe to an apparently small problem, which has quite a big impact to people, who depend on good DAM features. The issue is nothing new, existed since the first release of Lightroom, but nothing was done about it, unfortunately. Now that Lightroom addressed keywords with spaces even with a new preference setting, it was fair to assume, that they had done something about it with care. This isn't so obviously. The issue was discussed in previous threads, but did not get any visible notice from Adobe. I am glad that this has changed now with Julie's post.
In no way did I say that Lightroom is useless or even that I regard it to be so. I merely said that the catalog concept is to a great extend (not completely) useless, if its implementation is sloppy. DAM starts with data entry and only after doing this, you can use it to your benefit. Therefore it has to be efficient, which currently is not. Lightroom is criticized by a large number of users that it is forcing them into a catalog system instead of just providing access to the file system. Long existing bugs like this, likely proves them right in their view.
The competition (I mean complete workflow solutions) is not really better than Lightroom with respect to DAM features, however, my take is, that the developers should be equally ambitious with the quality of the catalog system as they are with IQ, especially if the achievements in IQ are apparently less relevant to owners of high end camera systems. (I could be wrong with the last statement, but it would be interesting to hear if others have similar observations).
Kind regards
Thomas
Thomas