Lightroom: Relative Develop Presets would save the day!

Are these plans likely to be manifested in Lr4-final, or more likely Lr5?

I'm not promoting plugins. I think its appropriate to inform people what solutions are available for their problems, whether its plugin or native.

Agree with Rob, he's offering alternatives, work arounds and suggestions that are pretty fair

tu lo que quieres es que te coman los huevos hijo de puta

Definitely agree auto-sync needs relative capability too. (I use DevAdjust more for applying relative adjustments of various individual settings (to multiple selected photos), than for applying relative presets).

The idea of "smart" relative adjustments I find very intriguing. If you could experiment enough to figure out what are equivalent perceptual (relative) adjustments for various settings, I may program that into DevAdjust, or Adobe might be more likely to program it into native Lr4or5. e.g. a percentage may be adequate for some settings, but others may need a different formula...

Note: your example above with tint is almost doable right now (natively) via quick develop - in grid mode its like relative auto-sync, it just doesn't include all the settings (tint is available as relative quick adjustment, but finest granularity is +5) - with the alt key you can access a few more...

I think one central difficulty is that "basic settings" and "tweak adjustments" might have to be regarded separately - a question that does not apply with Autosync at present, if auto-sync is used with images that are quite similar in the first place.

Using auto-sync across one image that is underexposed and another that is overexposed does not really work very well since however we have individually worked around these differences, will be steamrollered by the applied corrections. The perceptual meaning of a +5 change in fill light is not only different when you are going from 0 to 5, than it is when going from 5 to 10. It can also be very different even going from 0 to 5, in the context of one image with a +1 stop Exposure correction and a 0 blacks, as against another with a 0 stop Exposure and a 5 blacks. I doubt that this can be programmed around except as some kind of "compensated Auto" that would eliminate prior individual adjustments.

One can easily imagine the "shaping adjustments" such as fine WB, tint, brightness, vibrance, clarity, (parametric) tonecurve shaping, overall sharpening strength being applied successfully as a relative adjustment and in these cases, a simple numerical method would probably be fine. I am assuming these are subjective tweaks made after the basic image settings are in place, and that they would be small in magnitude - though if we want to make a rash and crude change instead, I suppose we might as well be left that option! However the greater the magnitude of the change the less it will produce the same subjective effect since we will soon exceed the comfortable envelope on certain images and soon get into clipping, noise and threshold problems that may not be apparent on our primary image.

If we stipulate that relative adjustments are specifically ABOUT being able to work across groups of more dissimilar images, then we must expect such problems more often than with our present Autosync practice.

My real point was aimed at the other adjustments such as coarse WB, Exposure, Blacks, NR, sharpening radius and threshold, and some others which IMHO are better considered as both "basic" and "individual". We set these things in order to have a "proper" image that will usefully underly the "shaping" adjustments - to the point where we are happy with the image on an objective level, and want to start making some VCs and exploring the subjective treatments that it will support. Whitepoint and blackpoint are rather technical necessities which I would not expect to manipulate as a group "beautification", nor do I think they are really amenable in their nature to that kind of approach.

So I guess a new relative-sync function needs to focus on a subset of tools only, and restrict itself to a quite low-magnitude and rolled-off power of alteration. Analogous to the gentle "relative" massaging that the parametric tonecurve applies, as distinct from the potentially huge and untrammelled and highly image-specific "absolute" things the points tonecurve is capable of.

RP

Thanks Richard,

Yeah, its really hard to come up with generic formulas for mass relative manipulation of settings with any meaningful intelligence. I do like the idea of intelligent auto-presets though, where one could say: "I want this kinda dark with lots of black clipping", then click a "do it" button and have it. Or, "I want this bright and low contrast, highlight-clipping OK", and do it, or say "I want this highly contrasty but with no blown highlights", and get that... I submitted an Idea a while ago for it: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

- the idea being to set a *smaller* set of sliders that are aimed at setting things more qualitatively, then have the analyzer compute the actual values and adjust things accordingly. DxO has something like this.

Anyway, I'm not sure why Adobe decided to go with absolute for auto-sync, since if selected photos are all starting from the same starting point, relative *is* absolute, and if they aren't starting from the same starting point, then I *never* want absolute adjustments - maybe some people do. Maybe they had relative already taken by quick-develop, so absolute seemed to be available still for auto-sync. Really dunno...

Personally, I think the best solution would be integration of library and develop modules, and integration of quick-develop with auto-sync, plus unified/simplified targeting, such that one could set things to same absolute or relative, without blinking, then slap a couple keywords on 'em without thinking too much about it...

Cheers,
Rob

niceeee; love this ideaaaaa

There is a need for both types of adjustments - relative and absolute. Take white balance adjustments for example. I.E. I'll adjust a group of wedding photos to have the same "look" Depending on lighting and camera settings there are times when dialing in a white balance of 5000k on one photo will look the same as a white balance of 4500k on a different photo. Obviously sometimes it's nice to quickly dial in a white balance of the same nominal value, say 5500k for a group of photos. Other times, I just want to warm up a group of photos. Some of these photos might be at 3500K, 5500K and 6500K but I want them all to look "warmer" being able to bump each one up by 500K would save TONS of time.

Also, having the ability to take a group of photos that I've previously edited with exposure adjustments (some are +.5, -.3, +1.0 etc)... to take that group of photos and relatively brighten them up from where they currently are... brighten all photos by 1/2 stop, would be a huge time saver.

All that I would need would be a little tickbox next to the autosync button to choose relative or absolute.

Is it really so hard to hit the "R" key to get into Crop (from anywhere in Lightroom) and then the "G" to get back to Grid or "E" to get back to Loupe once you're done cropping? If you think about it that way does it raelly matter where Crop officially sits?

It's an additional unnecessary step. Also, especially on my (slower) laptop, it's not an instantaneous change back and forth between modules -- as much as a couple of seconds each time. Doesn't sound like much, but when I'm editing hundreds of images at midnight and have to be up at 6 AM, every minute counts. Besides, if things were as I suggest, then I could do everything in Develop, including the occasional adjustments that don't even exist in Library.

I don't see how it's an extra step. Even if the crop tool was in the Library module, you would still have to enable it, which means clicking or typing something. Whether in your head you are changing modules or simply enabling a tool, it's still only one step. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for faster, I just don't see how it can be faster than one step...

Please re-read the second paragraph in my original post. I'm suggesting the option of relative adjustments in the Develop module. If those were enabled, I could stay in the Develop module and avoid the extra step and cumulative additional time of going back and forth between modules. Again, it may not seem like much, but it sure adds up over several hundred images at a time. As it is now, I must either constantly switch back and forth between modules, or make two passes through all the images, once in Library, and then again in Develop.

Either way. whether the relative adjustments were an option in the Develop module (preferred), or if Crop was moved to the Library module, I would still be saving a great deal of time in the long run.