Back to C1

A setup with an external drive to host the RAW images is not that exotic. And I don’t know how often other users change a drive because it’s too loud, but I can imagine other users to download their images to a laptop / external drive when abroad and lateron transfer them to their home base.

I just was browsing through some old folders. And saw ratings disappearing - all of them were gone. Auto Synchronisation is OFF and I wonder what this weak app is going to destroy next? DOP files all got the current date although there was no need to change anything, I didn’t edit, I just wanted to view some images. That’s a disaster. More than ever: NO UNRELIABLE APP allowed here!

Well, it’s hard to take this blanket nagging seriously. And statements in capital letters disqualify themselves per se.
Otherwise I agree with Janaka. I am using DXO now for around 5 years and never had to restart the computer because of PL. I can even count the number of app crashes on one hand. Also never had problems with one of my approximately 27500 .dop files.
Only problems in fact I once had, was after updating from PL 3 to version 4. There was indeed a bug, which prevented an update of the database.

But it was a specific problem and at the end fixed.

1 Like

You’re right about the capitals, I agree on that. Just put yourself in my shoes and try to imagine how ratings of images in a few months old folders suddenly disappear one after another. I don’t have the knowledge, capacities and nerdism to “enjoy” experimenting on the apparently needed and typical “workarounds” to make an app do what I naïvely took for granted: Ratings or keywords or any other post-processing work should only change if the user does want to change it.

This is indeed infuriating and I can understand the shouting. What worries me more is, that DxO has been slow to act on this bug…

1 Like

Sure I can feel with you and agree, one should be able to use an app without workarounds for getting solid results. But sometimes the app is cause of the problem and sometimes not. For example I cannot save webpages anymore as a webarchive with Safari 15.3 (and also before with 15.2) on latest Catalina. And the only way to cancel the process was by force quit. It took me some time to find out, its not me alone and already discussed on apple support communities. So first workaround posted there was, use escape to cancel the save process. The next workaround, save as a pdf. Third workaround, don’t click on save but use enter. But then it is saved as HTML, which mostly gives no proper result, when opening again.
So it looks like apple has screwed up here.
Question on your problem is, did DXO screw something up here, or is something else interfering. This should be investigated by the dxo support for sure.

At the moment I don’t know what to change.
Apparently it’s a bigger problem to synchronize simple things like ratings and I can’t exclude I messed up with something, then back upped the mess without knowing I might have created one - as I said, Auto-Sync is OFF.

This rather difficult to predict (not to mention “to control”) behaviour is new, but there was no update of any involved app. Since I use PL I am rather careful to not mess with the .dop files but speaking of mess: two extra files for one image is new to me and I am not at all convinced that hundreds and thousands of .dop files all ofter the place is a better way than one solid, well thought database. Also, speaking of small companies with limited resources: I start to see the downsides and also start thinking about how futureproof continuing with this app can be. My answer so far: no one really knows the future and small companies depend on the endurance of the few employees. But this also applies to Capture One. While bigger companies like Adobe do face other shortcomings, I really can’t say that this part of photography has become more enjoyable one the years, it’s the opposite.

Worse is I can’t remember, when and in which folder it started, I simply cannot deliver a recipe how it went bad, so it will become difficult to find the cause.

Also do have auto sync off. My system on to sort my photos is also more based on the finder structure in macOS, which serves for me fine. So PL is just mirroring this. Also started very late with adding keywords to my photos. And my rating system is just green or red, no stars. Sometimes I do, but only because I am culling with FastRawViewer. So problems with any kind of this, would be annoying, but no disaster. But it would be completely different if the image processing were to go down the drain. That would be the end of the fun for me, too. Hope you will find a solution for your problem.

Whatever. I’m probably one of the longest standing users of Adobe Lightroom on this forum, as the first time I used Lightroom it was in beta and had not even been named yet. At the time, the competition was Apple Aperture which was vastly superior.

  • mediocre RAW developer: C1 and PhotoLab are both considerably better RAW development tools. Aperture was better in the day, although Lightroom did eventually outbat Aperture for high ISO photos.
  • weak bitmap editor: Photoshop and Affinity Photo are both much better bitmap editors. Lightroom flakes out with serious retouching, just as PhotoLab does. Not sure how robust the C1 bitmap retouching tools on a photo with heavy retouching.
  • mediocre file manager: slow Lightroom has been the number one complaint about Lightroom for decades. Catalogue corruption and broken catalogues have been a number two complaint. The file manager in Lightroom is not fit for purpose. The only reason it still exists is the inherent laziness of man (or photographer) and the absence of decent competition. Working with the Aperture catalogue was a pleasure (big issues with sync though and getting data out reliably, always Apple’s weakness, playing well with others).

Now that PhotoMechanic has a multiple, unlimited catalogues feature in its Plus edition, photographers do have a far fast, more robust and feature rich alternative. PhotoMechanic Plus catalogue still does have major interface issues (i.e. it’s not that easy to learn to use) but at its core it’s a proper robust database where it’s easy to get data in and out. It’s probably better to start with working infrastructure than an okay interface on top of fundamentally flawed infrastructure.

Someone will know doubt point out that the Lightroom catalogue is better than the PhotoLab catalogue features. I couldn’t agree more. Nothing would please me more if DxO would focus on the RAW development in PhotoLab and allow photographers to use PhotoLab without a database at all (which causes all kinds of unnecessary sync and update issues).

Adobe could care even less about your photos than your stock broker. Both your stock broker and Adobe have two things in common: all they care about is the stock market and what interests them at this point is what they can pull out of your wallets. The Creative Suite applications are basically dancing girls to distract users while Adobe pickpockets them every month. MBA-style management are all about their stock options and extracting a maximum of value in the short and medium term.

The actual software is poorly coded with all kinds of spyware built-in which cripples people’s computers and makes them less reliable. Adobe’s path to building cross-platform applications is to load an unlimited number of additional frameworks into the heart of your OS, ensuring inefficient performance and compatibility nightmares. Despite all the money of Croesus, Adobe prefers not to invest in building true Mac and Windows applications which run efficiently and pushes the burden back out to the user, taking over his/her computer, compromising his/her computer’s performance and security.

1 Like

OK. When i think to adobe, I can’t only think lightroom alone, but to the whole suite of product they give to process images, so I don’t imagine using it without using photoshop too (wouldn’t make sense to me).
I see them as totally linked. So yes, lightroom is of course not the best bitmap editor, because bitmap editing is done in photoshop when using adobe products.

Alec, you’ve written this a few times now and I’d be interested in a few facts that support your claims. Please add links to a few well-founded texts that outline poor code and spyware. TIA.

3 Likes

I would also be interested in seeing some support for the claim of poor coding. Without seeing the source code or disassembling the binary I don’t see how anyone can point to poor coding techniques. Even then the claim of poor coding is often nothing more than a claim that someone implemented the code in a different way from what they, the commenter, would have done.

I am sure Adobe, like all major software companies, has coding standards so a claim of poor coding is either a claim that the standards are poor, that the coding does not conform to the standards or that it is too buggy. Which is it?

If the claim is that the standards are poor please give specifics about Adobe’s coding standards that you disagree with. If the claim is that the coding does not conform to the standards please tell us how you know. And if the claim is that the code is too buggy please be specific about the bugs you are referring to and whether or not you have submitted them to Adobe for fixing.

I was a software engineer/architect for 25 years before I retired and a college professor teaching mathematics and computer science for almost 10 years before that so I am interested in knowing what basis you have for your claim.

2 Likes