Lightroom Classic: Stealing focus on launch

It's more of a mindset thing. I'm doing something else, perhaps just wrapping up an email, and think 'I know, I'll do some photo editing next' and pre-emptively open Lightroom so it's ready to go. This is pretty much the scenario 4/5 times I open Lightroom. After the initial application load it takes a few moments to scan your library and load the last collection also, so I like this all to just be done when I'm ready to edit.

Out of principle though, should an application doing this? Once when it has loaded is fine.

10 seconds is more than enough time to launch some auxiliary programs that I'm going to use, or resume typing that message while I expect LR to finish starting in the background. But noooo. None of that. I have to wait for LR to give back control.

Out of principle, as Jordan states so nicely, no, an application should not. If you push an app to the background, it should respect the user for doing that and stay there like a good boy.

It takes a little longer for me to start, so I go back to a browser or mail and start to type, focus gets stolen and all my keystrokes are sent to LR as shortcurts. That's probably about five keys or so, before I can stop. So now I sent commands, that I dont' know of and can only hope, that they get undone properly with Ctrl+Z.
That's just bad quality programming and a joke, as no other program does that

I believe it's been fixed in a recent update... Have you installed the latest version?

Not in my versions on Windows 10. All apps and W10 are up-to-date. LR stole focus twice and PS three times in a simple test right now. Very annoying and can lead one to click the wrong button as the focus changes just as one goes to click.

4 years later, it's even worse than ever.

So basically you're saying we are starting it wrong?

No, it's not a question of doing it wrong.  I'm suggesting quite an easy workaround for not being able to do something else while LR is starting.  It's quite easy to have multiple desktops opened at the same time.  I have one dedicated to LR, another for Photoshop, another for a web browser, another for email, etc.  A swipe of the fingers on my mouse takes me from one window to another.  While I've been typing this LR was opening.  When I want to edit in Photoshop it automatically switches to the PS window.  Going back is just as easy.  

Using this system multiple apps are not stacked on one desktop; on the Mac they're side-by-side and switching is just a flick of the fingers.

When LR is opening it takes front and center on that desktop.  With multiple desktops open you don't have to worry about that.  Just go do something on a different desktop.  

I'm just hoping that this idea might be useful to those who want to do something else while LR is starting.

Don, many thanks for that workaround tip.

I haven't tried multiple desktops so I don't know how well they will play with my dual monitor setup with one desktop spread over both screens.

I'm not sure I like the idea of hiding one desktop behind another, having to keep track of what's where, I guess not such easy drag and drop from other apps, changing desktops to see if it has finished loading or completed other tasks and not being able to monitor the progress bar in the task bar when it is labouring over something like large imports or multi-image HDRs etc.

I'll certainly try multiple desktops, maybe I'll come to like them. But I still feel dismayed that Adobe can't fix so many minor "faults" and shortcomings they have known about for many years such as focus stealing and improved crop presets. Having to change our preferred way of working is not what Adobe promised.

> But I still feel dismayed that Adobe can't fix so many minor "faults" and shortcomings they have known about for many years

Yes. And that's really a mystery for me.  Most of these (not that) minor problems can be easily and quickly solved. So, the question is either "Are they able to fix these problems ? " OR "Do they actually care ?". Or both ?

I think that many code pieces are written by offshore developers and that there are now not much people that are really in control of this program. That's a first reason. Also, the use of LUA for many parts of the program probably makes tracking bugs rather difficult. I always wondered why they made such a questionable design decision. And finally, the subscription model encourages laziness.

Anyway, as I have already stated multiple times, code quality at Adobe is declining while competitors are making progress in this area. I'm not sure that Adobe are aware of this.

> while competitors are making progress in this area. I'm not sure that Adobe are aware of this.

Adobe probably also knows that losslessly migrating from Lightroom to another similar tool, is not currently possible. Lossy migration is totally possible - so if you're ok with loosing some edits or adjustments, you can do it, but that's not lossless, and out of the question for many.

One of the main differences between the PS and LR UIs is that they have not been written in the same programming language. The Lightroom UI is written in LUA which I have always considered a wrong choice. Anyway, LUA doesn't give as much control on the UI as C, C++ or whatever other more classical language. So, fixing the problem in PS doesn't t mean that this will be as easy in LR. This should be fixed anyway.

TBH what language a program is written in, is of pretty much least concern to the end-user. No amount of technical explanation will create any goodwill if the problem is irritating enough.

I was interested to learn that PS and Lightroom are written in different languages. Patrick's point is probably that the programming teams differ, and a fix in one app does not help the other. And I had never heard much about LUA. It does seem odd to have chosen a scripting language for a compute-intensive purpose, and it might also explain why the Lightroom UI seems sluggish and a little unpredictable. The LUA calls are probably many layers away from native Windows calls. Perhaps the focus -stealing is a feature of some LUA library, and not directly Adobe's fault, who knows. I wonder what Bridge is written in? I used to use just PS, and only recently decided that it was time to bid farewell to Picasa as a photo organiser and browser. As a new user, I find the ecosystem of these three Adobe apps to be odd in the ways they overlap. I have not used Bridge much because it doesn't have face recognition. But it sounds like it may be faster and lighter than LR. 

Even if the focus stealing is a side-effect of some LUA library, I would still hold Adobe responsible and accountable. They made the software, and they made the choice to use LUA, and whatever 3rd party libraries they imported.

To make an analogy: Dell doesn't produce their own LCD panels, but if one breaks, you would hold Dell responsible. You wouldn't go to Japan Display or Toshiba, the company that produced the panel.

Another one: you purchase a new kitchen and a year later the dishwasher gives in. Where do you go? To the kitchen builder of course! They made the choice to include that particular dishwasher, and they are responsible for the kitchen you paid them for.

Altough from a technical standpoint it might be interesting to know that LR was written in LUA, from a user's point of view I simply don't give a monkey's toss. I'm paying Adobe to make something that works well, not something that is written in some fancypants language.

Agreed that Adobe are accountable for writing good programs whatever tools they use. :-)

I just wanted to give some explanations about the why, I was not trying to excuse Adobe for this issue. However, the LUA choice is not something that can be changed. This implies some annoyances that are much worse than the currently discussed (and relatively minor) annoyance. For example, one could wonder why bugs that are older than 5 or 6 years are still there. There's a good chance that LUA is responsible for this because of the lack of the necessary features allowing effective debugging.

Of course Adobe are responsible for their choices but the users should be aware of what they can reasonably expect. After all these years, I'm now convinced that many of these old or recent annoyances will not be fixed until LR is rewritten from scratch. Which will probably never happen...