The feature-set within Lightroom’s newly released 1.2 ‘update’ - should have really been a mere patch or a service pack, and carried the 1.1.1 designation - as that’s all it really is.
Lets have a look at some of the main new updates/fixes [complete list available over at Adobe]:
XMP bug - where Lightroom, upon having the “Automatically Update XMP metadata” setting - would run like a dog and simply become un-useable.
1:1 previews - Lightroom used to ‘ignore’ your request to disgard any full previews after a specific time-frame. I ended up [and I'm sure so have others] with over 5GB of ‘previews’ - which were supposed to be discarded on a daily basis.
Metadata Panel - If you’re a Windows user, you would have noticed intermittent display problems when trying to drop down the Metadata Panel.
As shown by the above, this is merely a fix-pack, and nothing else. Which is unfortunate given the feature-set brought along by the initial 1.1 update.
This tells us that either Lightroom was released as a Beta in V1.0’s clothes, and the real deal was provided in the form of 1.1 release.
Given the above performance, we shouldn’t be seeing any more updates for another 6 months. After which 2.0 will hopefully be released encompassing what I find missing in Lightroom:
- Dual monitor support - common guys [and girls], you can have detachable panels in Photoshop - and not in Photoshop Lightroom.
- Export Watermark embedding - what is available now on ‘Export’ - is a joke. There are workarounds, such as droplets in Photoshop; yet they either are too time consuming - or simply take too much time. Lightroom is about simplifying the photographers workflow, so give us a customizeable export tool.
- Smart Collections - I just wanted to look for all photos that I haven’t added any keywords to, and then thought I’d save that search for another day - guess what - you can’t! Lightroom doesn’t support smart collections of any kind. A quick look in google, revealed it’s a well known problem/limitation with Lightroom. Fingers crossed this will be addressed in the next version.
