My wishlist after 1 year with Lightroom

Question

I have used LR for the past year as my primary workflow tool and have grown to really appreciate the productivity it delivers. However, we all know there is room for improvement. So I thought I would take a little time to read through the feature requests in this forum, consider my own needs, and assemble a list of the key features that would really matter for my workflow.
A little background I primarily shoot sports often shooting 300-1000 frames per event. I use LR to select, correct, and crop my keepers then export them to my website for sale. I will spend more time fine tuning some the better images, build galleries and occasionally print. I really havent found a need for slideshow. I now have a little over 40k images in my primary catalog. I am at the point where I need more productivity processing the images, particularly for noise removal and color correction, and better tools for managing a larger volume of images.
I hope you find this useful.
a) Better camera calibration - integrated with LR maybe a built-in tool designed to work with a standard color checker
b) Better noise reduction (Noiseware-like)
c) Previews with NR and sharpening applied
d) Improve auto-toning perhaps with configurable options like auto-levels in PS
e) Some kind of magic tool to help correct color when dealing with cycling vapor lights (I shoot a lot of indoor sports in caves) - maybe skin-tone driven. Am I dreaming?
f) Geometry correction tool in lens corrections
g) Gradient tool or similar for ND-like effect to help fix skies etc..
h) Green-eye removal tool
i) Improved spot removal/healing (make it work consistently when applied to the corner of an image)
j) Grain control to help emulate film look
k) Output sharpening in export USM or similar, ideally with some sort of preview feature to enable you to fine tune settings
l) Output sharpening in web galleries again, USM or similar with some sort of preview
m) Improved export plug-in architecture need a formal approach for combining/chaining plug-ins on export (piglets seem a tad limited and they are cumbersome to install and manage)
n) Lua needs to offer the ability to bind in external DLLs or similar libraries (command-line invocation is too crude and slow, and flashing windows consume focus making it impossible to use another tool while export is running)
o) Softproofing for print output
p) Faster performance when scrolling images in grid mode (Elements can do it, why cant LR?)
q) Better tools for backing-up/archiving sets of folders to offline storage
r) Archive to DVD / burn disc feature
s) Plug-in architecture for image processing components
t) Vignette effect tool that works with crops with the ability to set the center-point manually
u) Ability to move sets of folders in one operation

Answer 1

I think Travis has produced a well thought out list.
I agree with most of it, except that I would put somethiings
higher up the list.
(BTW: Thanks to the Adobe team for the antifringing improvements
they actually work and are great!)
I am a pretty intensive user of LightRoom. I only have 20K images
but the flow rate has increased and although I find LR to be very
efficient the limitations are starting to bug me. Hence I am always
hoping for an update that delivers some more functionality.
My List: (Shorter, but things left off do not mean I don't want them!)
1. Need a better starting point than just the raw with invisible camera calibration presets applied.
a. I want a lot more control over the auto application and set up of camera calibration presets. An ISO 100 image is handled way differently to an ISO 800 or 1200.
b. I want an auto toned, colored (something like "Perfectly Clear" used in BibblePro) as my start point. In otherwords I want a way more
intelligent start point then the current fairly crude and invisible
one. (Other auto engines include ColourScience, DXPro). However at
present I prefer the Perfectly Clear. Some of these do things like
move greens and blues to nicer hues, remove green (or other) color
casts, local contrast enhancement, face detection and de-redding
skin tones e.g. ColourScience) etc.
c. The option to plugin 3rd party stuff (in particular global
auto editors) and to set it an intelligent default start point.
(I know the start point won't be right for every image but it
will be for a enough to make it really valuable.)
2. The Sharpening (though improved) and Noise control needs to be
much better. At present the preview does not reflect sharpening
changes accurately.
(I have a v-large, high gamut monitor and sharpening and noise changes
are accurately reflected in BibblePro but not LightRoom).
2. More global image edits need to be available. For example- transformations (e.g perspective, lens distortion correction, ND
gradient exposure adjustments, Chanel mixer, etc).
3. Sometimes the LR controls are too coarse, I would like some way to
quickly (e.g. hit "minus" a few times) reduce the range of these some of the controls. Or maybe better choice of range for some controls
could be based on preset or on adjustable default settings, e.g.
right click brings up gain control on each slider say!?.
4. As a image manager it is a problem that LightRoom has a problem with some large images. LightRoom should simply handle the lot
no questions asked. In particular I have photoshop pano tiffs that
LR complains about. Also it would be great if I LR could process
my BibblePro files. (BiblePro uses ".bib" files in place of ".xml"
to do exactly the same thing as LR.)
5. Collections are way improved, but still need more control over
them. i.e. ability to sort on a number of criteria. Also joining,
dividing, evaluating images independently of ratings in underlying database/catalogue.
Anyway I hope the LightRoom Adobe team keep up the good work.