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Any software allowing the import of Lightroom catalog and edits?

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greg57

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Hi there,

sorry to be posting yet another "I want to leave Lightroom" thread, but the core issue seems to me wether or not another Raw editing / DAM software allows seemless importing of a Lightroom catalog and edit database?

I hear that Capture One comes close to that except that you lose collections, local retouching and, most imoprtantly, cropping. I crop most of my photos so this is a big stumbling block for me. Can anybody elaborate on the Capture One Lightoom import. Is there any other software out there that does better?

--
Gregory Dziedzic
gregorydziedzic.com
 
Last edited:
greg57 said:
Hi there,

sorry to be posting yet another "I want to leave Lightroom" thread, but the core issue seems to me wether or not another Raw editing / DAM software allows seemless importing of a Lightroom catalog and edit database?

I hear that Capture One comes close to that except that you lose collections, local retouching and, most imoprtantly, cropping. I crop most of my photos so this is a big stumbling block for me. Can anybody elaborate on the Capture One Lightoom import. Is there any other software out there that does better?
Click to expand...
No application will do it seamless. Some may get closer than others, but there will always be differences because the ACR raw engine that Adobe uses is proprietary.
 
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Thank you. I'm a bit warry of software such as Darktable because, while a geek, I'm not so interested in spending too much time tinkering with software. What is your experience with it?
sankos said:
See darktable.
Click to expand...
 
greg57 said:
Hi there,

sorry to be posting yet another "I want to leave Lightroom" thread, but the core issue seems to me wether or not another Raw editing / DAM software allows seemless importing of a Lightroom catalog and edit database?
Click to expand...
There isn't one. Only Adobe products will understand what the edits made in LR/ACR actually mean. Adobe doesn't tell anyone else what their controls actually do behind the scenes.

The catalogue entries for the edit parameters are straightforward to read but what does +50 contrast for example actually mean in terms of the maths behind the control?

Are other software companies going to spend the time and resources reverse engineering all the editing options in LR/ACR instead of just working on theri own ones?
 
Remember how Adobe broke Quark's monopoly for DTP? If I was running a competitor to LR, I'd sure do exactly that.
mclewis said:
Are other software companies going to spend the time and resources reverse engineering all the editing options in LR/ACR instead of just working on theri own ones?
Click to expand...
 
greg57 said:
Thank you. I'm a bit warry of software such as Darktable because, while a geek, I'm not so interested in spending too much time tinkering with software. What is your experience with it?
Click to expand...
My experience with dt is 6 months old, so it's not very extensive, but I didn't have to spend much time to get up to speed, I think. It took me a couple of days to come up with my own default presets (styles) that I can apply to a whole batch of photos and quickly tweak from there, just like I do in LR, C1 or DxO. I can emulate the "LR look" for my cameras with RawTherapee and the "C1 look" with darktable -- it's not 100% the same (it can never be for technical reasons), but it's close enough, and now it takes me exactly the same amount of time to process my photos in those commercial programs as in the free ones. From a practical standpoint LR is better than dt at recovering blown highlights in a more natural way (I'm still learning how to do it better in dt), and its Healing brush is superior. OTOH, dt offers parametric masking, which is not present in LR5/6, and it's a very powerful feature. Plus it has a superior demosaicking algorithm, which allows me to get better quality micro-detail out of my files. Also, you can process your files in the RGB/Lab and HSV colour modes, which makes dt a hybrid between LR and PS, capable of replacing both for a lot of post-processing tasks. It's a seriously underrated program, I think, and I would rank it up there with LRCCC and C1.

Make no mistake -- the learning curve is there but I'd say it's a similar curve as learning PS (a lifelong process). It also depends on how many raw converters you've had experience with. I think it's like with learning a foreign language -- the more you know, the easier it is to learn a new one. Before darktable I'd probably worked with more than 10 raw converters, so it wasn't really that difficult for me. But I do RTFM and watch a nice webinar or two to see what's possible in any raw converter I try and then I develop my own workflow with the tool.

Trying to be objective, I think the learning curve of C1 is easier than dt, but you pay with money for that.

--
Marcin
 
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Thank you for your very comprehensive answer.
sankos said:
greg57 said:
Thank you. I'm a bit warry of software such as Darktable because, while a geek, I'm not so interested in spending too much time tinkering with software. What is your experience with it?
Click to expand...
My experience with dt is 6 months old, so it's not very extensive, but I didn't have to spend much time to get up to speed, I think. It took me a couple of days to come up with my own default presets (styles) that I can apply to a whole batch of photos and quickly tweak from there, just like I do in LR, C1 or DxO. I can emulate the "LR look" for my cameras with RawTherapee and the "C1 look" with darktable -- it's not 100% the same (it can never be for technical reasons), but it's close enough, and now it takes me exactly the same amount of time to process my photos in those commercial programs as in the free ones. From a practical standpoint LR is better than dt at recovering blown highlights in a more natural way (I'm still learning how to do it better in dt), and its Healing brush is superior. OTOH, dt offers parametric masking, which is not present in LR5/6, and it's a very powerful feature. Plus it has a superior demosaicking algorithm, which allows me to get better quality micro-detail out of my files. Also, you can process your files in the RGB/Lab and HSV colour modes, which makes dt a hybrid between LR and PS, capable of replacing both for a lot of post-processing tasks. It's a seriously underrated program, I think, and I would rank it up there with LRCCC and C1.

Make no mistake -- the learning curve is there but I'd say it's a similar curve as learning PS (a lifelong process). It also depends on how many raw converters you've had experience with. I think it's like with learning a foreign language -- the more you know, the easier it is to learn a new one. Before darktable I'd probably worked with more than 10 raw converters, so it wasn't really that difficult for me. But I do RTFM and watch a nice webinar or two to see what's possible in any raw converter I try and then I develop my own workflow with the tool.

Trying to be objective, I think the learning curve of C1 is easier than dt, but you pay with money for that.
Click to expand...
 
There are not any hard details abitu the next version of Luminar, maybe after this industry expo this week. But, Macphun is promising in is next version Luminar 2018 (or Luminar Supernova?), which will be available for Windows, that they will make a transition from Lightroom as easy as possible. They are saying its new version will have DAM support, and will work with the Lightroom catalog, and they will have some system to import presets. No mention of edits yet. But given that their sister product is Aurora HDR, I would wait until they release their new software, in November or early next year depending on what you read.

There are some interesting features of their software. I am enjoying the Windows Beta version (even though it has some limited functionality).
 
greg57 said:
[T]he core issue seems to me wether or not another Raw editing / DAM software allows seemless importing of a Lightroom catalog and edit database?
Click to expand...
Johanfoto basically gave you the right answer: Adobe has a propriety and undocumented processing engine. Any company selling a product that would take Lightroom's non-destructive edit list and then apply them in exactly the way Lightroom does would probably be violating Adobe's patents and/or other intellectual property. So in addition to the huge technical challenge required to reverse engineer all aspects of Lightroom's processing, there is probably an intellectual property law reason why such a product would be impossible / illegal.

On the other hand, as long as you're willing to turn your non-destructive edits into rendered edits (i.e., permanent / semi-destructive), then just export all your edited files as 16-bit TIFFs in ProPhoto RGB, and you should have very high-quality versions from which to work in whatever software you might want to use instead of Adobe's. I won't say you won't lose anything, but you won't lose much, at least unless and until you want to partially rework your raw processing.
 
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I was looking at the Darktable 2.2 manual and it says that it can import some of the editing done in Lightroom:

At present, darktable is able to deal with the following metadata of Lightroom generated sidecar files during the import phase:

• tags and hierarchical tags

• color labels

• ratings

• GPS information

In addition, darktable has been designed to help migrate some image operations from specific other applications. The aim is not to make darktable a drop-in replacement for any other software; it's just meant to help you recover part of the work you have invested into your image in case you migrate to darktable. It is very important to understand that this import process will never give identical results. The underlying development engines are very different from application to application, and additionally depend a lot on the specific image. In some cases, it will probably be close, and in some cases, the development will need manual adjustment in darktable.

The migration happens automatically when entering the darkroom view, provided that a corresponding XMP sidecar is found.

At present, darktable is able to deal with the following development steps from Lightroom-generated XMP files (with the corresponding darktable module in parentheses):

• crop and rotate (crop and rotate)

• black level (exposure)

• exposure (exposure)

• vignette (vignette)

• clarity (local contrast)

• tone curve (tone curve)

• HSL (color zones)

• split toning (split toning)

• grain (grain)

• spot removal (spot removal)
 
Non-destructive editing is a dual-edged sword. It is so much better than the way I had to do things using a bit-mapped editor from 1997-2011. I then switched to using Lightroom so I have almost 6 years of work editing about 40k of my photos in Lightroom. I can go back and make changes to the previous editing and I do. Also only the original raw or jpeg out of camera file is stored and all the editing is just a very small instruction list in the catalog. The really bad thing though is that all of these non-destructive editors keep your edits in a proprietary way so you can't transfer the non-destructive instructions to another one. ACDSee, Aftershot Pro, Dartktable, Rawtherapee, etc. are also proprietary. They all are.
 
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I have been experimenting with Capture One and I think some of your assumptions are incorrect:
  • They do have collections, but you may have to establish them again, not sure they can be imported from LR. But the function is there, and seems to be similar to LR
  • There is cropping as well as perspective type cropping. I haven't found any issue there.
  • When you bring photos from LR into Capture One it picks up the ratings and keywords, but not the adjustments as I think any RAW non destructive editor has those saved as a proprietary format.
In addition I have found the RAW engine very capable and in many ways more comprehensive than LR (e.g. layers). I think many have found that the default starting point with Capture One is closer and may take less adjustment.

Some concepts are different. For example no black or white slider, but the levels tool gives the same result.

Two things that I am struggling with:
  • no publish features, which I have used extensively in LR
  • Slideshow is very rudimentary
Anyway I think this is a strong contender as a LR replacement for me.
 
greg57 said:
Hi there,

sorry to be posting yet another "I want to leave Lightroom" thread, but the core issue seems to me wether or not another Raw editing / DAM software allows seemless importing of a Lightroom catalog and edit database?
Click to expand...
No.
greg57 said:
I hear that Capture One comes close to that except that you lose collections, local retouching and, most imoprtantly, cropping. I crop most of my photos so this is a big stumbling block for me. Can anybody elaborate on the Capture One Lightoom import. Is there any other software out there that does better?
Click to expand...
Proprietary edits and features (dumb collections) are proprietary! Much of what you're asking about is proprietary in nature. Not understood outside that software product.

--
Andrew Rodney
Author: Color Management for Photographers
The Digital Dog
http://www.digitaldog.net
 
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yanisha said:
Non-destructive editing is a dual-edged sword.
Click to expand...
Yep. I think it's good for folks who use non-destructive editors to understand this.

I think of my non-destructive edits in Lightroom as, in a sense, potentially temporary. Or a better way to say it is that I think of the image, as it looks with those non-destructive edits, as being in an essentially temporary, or transitional state. Someday, I may need to make that state permanent, or "fixed" in the photographic sense, by exporting a new image with the edits baked in to a TIFF. (My raw files are, in this sense, also temporary, in my view — there's no guarantee that, say, my Sigma X3F raw files will be readable in 50 years, whereas a TIFF will be.)
yanisha said:
It is so much better than the way I had to do things using a bit-mapped editor from 1997-2011.
Click to expand...
Right, I like the advantages of parametric editing, too, but I know that my images are in a transitional state — a working state for my use and convenience. It's not a permanent or archival state.

And I'm mindful that this is just the fact of using a parametric editor of any kind. It's just as true of all the other non-destructive editors, or methods, out there. Some of these non-destructive apps — maybe all of them — will not survive for the next 10 or 20 years. A non-destructive editor from the world's most valuable public company has already bitten the dust (and, of course, it was sold with a 'perpetual' license).

There's just no guarantees. Someday, if I think anyone will ever care about them (maybe my nieces?), I will 'fix' all my photos in as permanent a state as is currently possible — i.e. with edits baked in and saved as a TIFF or JPEG with embedded IPTC keywords.
 
NAwlins Contrarian said:
NAwlins Contrarian said:
[T]he core issue seems to me wether or not another Raw editing / DAM software allows seemless importing of a Lightroom catalog and edit database?
Click to expand...
On the other hand, as long as you're willing to turn your non-destructive edits into rendered edits (i.e., permanent / semi-destructive), then just export all your edited files as 16-bit TIFFs in ProPhoto RGB, and you should have very high-quality versions from which to work in whatever software you might want to use instead of Adobe's. I won't say you won't lose anything, but you won't lose much, at least unless and until you want to partially rework your raw processing.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, that ability to rework my prior edits is very important to me; it's one of the key parts of a non-destructive edit workflow. <sheepish look>

So it looks like I'll be having to work with exporting my last-edited version, importing as much of the edits supported by whatever program I end up choosing (cropping at least seems to be feasible), and re-doing from scratch if I want to change anything. :(
 
Travis Butler said:
NAwlins Contrarian said:
Travis Butler said:
[T]he core issue seems to me wether or not another Raw editing / DAM software allows seemless importing of a Lightroom catalog and edit database?
Click to expand...
On the other hand, as long as you're willing to turn your non-destructive edits into rendered edits (i.e., permanent / semi-destructive), then just export all your edited files as 16-bit TIFFs in ProPhoto RGB, and you should have very high-quality versions from which to work in whatever software you might want to use instead of Adobe's. I won't say you won't lose anything, but you won't lose much, at least unless and until you want to partially rework your raw processing.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, that ability to rework my prior edits is very important to me; it's one of the key parts of a non-destructive edit workflow. <sheepish look>

So it looks like I'll be having to work with exporting my last-edited version, importing as much of the edits supported by whatever program I end up choosing (cropping at least seems to be feasible), and re-doing from scratch if I want to change anything. :(
Click to expand...
 
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