Adobe adds Retina display support to Photoshop Lightroom 4
Adobe's newly updated Photoshop Lightroom 4.3 adds support for HiDPI displays, such as Apple's redesigned 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3 is not yet finalized, but has been made available as a release candidate through Adobe Labs. The professional photography software is available as a 410-megabyte ZIP file for OS X.
The distinction of "release candidate" indicates the software has been well tested, but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of Adobe's customers. That means an official, final release of Lightroom 4.3 to all customers is likely coming soon.
In addition to support for Apple's MacBook Pro Retina displays, the new Lightroom 4.3 also includes fixes for the following bugs
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3 is not yet finalized, but has been made available as a release candidate through Adobe Labs. The professional photography software is available as a 410-megabyte ZIP file for OS X.
The distinction of "release candidate" indicates the software has been well tested, but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of Adobe's customers. That means an official, final release of Lightroom 4.3 to all customers is likely coming soon.
In addition to support for Apple's MacBook Pro Retina displays, the new Lightroom 4.3 also includes fixes for the following bugs
- Unable to upload a large panorama to Adobe Revel via the Revel Publish Plugin
- Unable to add a second photo to a page layout in a Book. This only occurred when the ?Show Unused Photos? filter is selected in the filmstrip.
- A photo can be flagged as both a ?Pick? and ?Reject? at the same time when using the Toolbar to apply flags
- Using multiple fonts within the same text cell inside a Book can sometimes cause Lightroom to crash
- Exposure becomes the active adjustment slider in the Basic panel (within Develop) when moving from image to image
- Customers using Photoshop Elements 11 were unable to upgrade their catalogs in Lightroom 4
- Custom Cell padding options in the Book Module reset in between Lightroom sessions
- 1080p video files shot on iPhone 4S flicker on replay
- Leaving the Book Module after using multiple text colors in the same text cell can sometimes cause the book to be lost.
- Canon PowerShot S110
- Canon PowerShot G15
- Canon PowerShot SX50 HS
- Casio Exilim EX-ZR1000
- Casio Exilim EX-FC300S
- Nikon D600 (expanded to full support)
- Olympus PEN E-PL5
- Olympus PEN E-PM2
- Olympus STYLUS XZ-2 iHS
- Panasonic DMC-GH3
- Pentax K-5 II
- Pentax K-5 IIs
- Pentax Q10
Comments
And once again, Apple drags Adobe, kicking and screaming, into the future.
I wouldn't expect anything less from you.
Originally Posted by nikon133
I wouldn't expect anything less from you.
Yep, I'd drag them kicking and screaming, too. If I have a vision for the future, I know it's better than anything else out there, and I want to see it done, by gum I'll get it done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
And once again, Apple drags Adobe, kicking and screaming, into the future.
I don't see your problem with this. It was tested and updated. These are not small applications. If they delivered a stable update within a few months to appease a smaller subset of their user base, why are you angry at them? They're way too conservative in other areas, but this was reasonable for something that would have required a lot of testing. When I say they're too conservative, I'm thinking more about how After Effects only gained a 3d camera tracker with CS6 (although other applications that had one cost way more). Their 32 bit support is still kind of weak, especially when they've tried to implement IBL functions and a raytracer within their applications. Some of the older 2D filters could have been tied into such a system. The improvements on their brush algorithms in CS6 were huge, but they should have come earlier. Prior to that Painter and Manga Studio had way better brush systems and pressure algorithms. I'm looking at things that took years to see any fixes. The thing you've chosen to focus on represents a small fraction of their user base and a lot of work, yet they took care of it mid-cycle within a few months. This goes back to the kool-aid where people really expected Adobe to do a full port of Creative Suite retroactively when no other developer of comparable size did anything of the sort as it was impractical.
Originally Posted by hmm
I don't see your problem with this. It was tested and updated. These are not small applications. If they delivered a stable update within a few months to appease a smaller subset of their user base, why are you angry at them?
I don't have a problem with it. I'm not angry. I'm quite happy it's being done, it just shouldn't have required Apple making the change for it to be done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
And once again, Apple drags Adobe, kicking and screaming, into the future.
So you think Adobe should have redesigned their applications for the possibility that Apple may at some time in the future produce a computer that has a screen of undisclosed resolution ahead of that being announced or produced in order to be forward thinking? Right, I can see that being suggested at an Adobe board meeting last year. Are you nuts? Of course they had to wait for it to be released before they could work on it. There is no other way. Did you think it could be done ahead of time when Apple doesn't share anything with other companies that need information to integrate their products with Apple?
Just to clarify, nothing can be dragged into the future, screaming or otherwise.
Originally Posted by mstone
So you think Adobe should have redesigned their applications for the possibility that Apple may at some time in the future produce a computer that has a screen of undisclosed resolution ahead of that being announced or produced in order to be forward thinking?
Does no one really have any foresight? Is Apple the first to ever even so much as hint at the idea of displays with resolutions so high as to be impractical to be directly coded for? I really don't think so. Windows has had RI since Vista. Apple had been talking about it since before the launch of Tiger. The idea of making resolution independent software didn't first come up when the 15" rMBP came out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Does no one really have any foresight? Is Apple the first to ever even so much as hint at the idea of displays with resolutions so high as to be impractical to be directly coded for? I really don't think so. Windows has had RI since Vista. Apple had been talking about it since before the launch of Tiger. The idea of making resolution independent software didn't first come up when the 15" rMBP came out.
Retina isn't resolution independent. That is a completely different ball of wax that is something which a an OS would need to implement not a publisher of application software like Adobe. We are talking about the issue of png files not svg. The only things that can be made resolution independent, to my knowledge, are elements that are defined as vectors, Béziers, or gradients. Bitmaps in the UI, as far as I know, are not resolution independent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
I wouldn't expect anything less from you.
You shouldn't expect anything less from Adobe.
Apple has to drag anyone that's on their system by virtue of the fact they run on Apple's OS. Same goes for MS with Windows. There is surely a philosophical difference and you're more likely to have major app developers querying MS for certain changes more than they would from Apple but this is pretty damn fast for the size of the app and light speed for Adobe.
There is no reason Adobe should have said back in 2010 when the iPhone doubled its resolution that we need to include double resolution apps at the same points if and when Apple does the same thing with their Macs. There were also SDK changes which I believe assist with, assuming the developer follows along. Adobe should be praised for this achievement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
I don't have a problem with it. I'm not angry. I'm quite happy it's being done, it just shouldn't have required Apple making the change for it to be done.
Developers always lag behind, because they do not make such updates without at least a known road map for hardware that can run it and all tools to implement such a thing are available on the OS end. We heard about resolution independence for years. Now that a working product is out at a much higher screen resolution, they've update for it. I didn't say they shouldn't make improvements. I was indicating that features without a known road map should not be a high priority. Adobe annoys me at times, but they aren't necessarily worse than any of the other major developers with products that are distinctively relics of the 1990s. I was actually pretty shocked by some of the improvements in CS6. They fixed things that have plagued a portion of their users for years. It has background file saves so you don't have to get coffee while a 2GB file is compressed and saved. They fixed the brush engine, so things like tapered strokes set to pen pressure actually work on a level similar to other paint packages. It's very snappy. As little as I use liquify as even in situations that require reshaping, there's typically a better way, it now renders instantly via OpenCL. If I look at the cumulative improvements, I just couldn't go back.
Bleh I drifted off topic. My point was that they had bigger issues to fix than preparation for something that may or may not have materialized. I've wanted to see higher resolution displays for years. If I could have a 24" display with significantly higher resolution than 1920x1200, I would be happy. It's an excellent display size in terms of balancing real estate while being easy to navigate quickly, yet I want more resolution for absolute smoothness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
And once again, Apple drags Adobe, kicking and screaming, into the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmm
I don't see your problem with this. It was tested and updated. These are not small applications. If they delivered a stable update within a few months to appease a smaller subset of their user base, why are you angry at them? ...
I do see a problem and here it is - Once upon a time, when Apple (or Microsoft) introduces a significant software or hardware change (or a new product), they'd have important partners ready to showcase or even ship compatible product upgrades. In fact, they would have worked together in the preceding months to ensure compatibility at launch.
Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office are both ideal showcases of RP. I bet Apple would have sold even more rMBPs by now if these companies sent representatives to show off what their products looked like with RP at either the summer or fall events (when the 15" and 13" RP laptops were respectively launched). For sure, we wouldn't have had idiot pundits writing that RP was redundant or served no purpose. Yet, neither Adobe nor Microsoft was ready to deliver in the summer, and were not invited in the fall. Or perhaps Apple not notify them? Did they deliberately take their sweet time? It's not ideal in either case. I think it is a failure of marketing and/or product management for all parties involved.
In fact, if I am not mistaken, the last 2 or 3 Apple events have fewer 3rd party vendors presenting than what I remember from earlier ones. Wouldn't it be nice, for example, to have instituted the Lightning licensing program earlier and have Belkin coming on stage to showcase a compatible accessory at the same time iP5 was introduced?
While that's true, it ignores several other factors:
1. Key developers know about technologies before the public. So Adobe has almost certainly had significant amounts of time to develop the new software.
2. Adobe has a history of screwing Mac users and Apple. Look at how long it took them to release Intel versions of their software. Look at how often the Mac version lags behind the Windows version. Look at their very visible public efforts to move people off the Mac a decade or so ago (even offering free side-grades). Look at their failure to use key Apple technologies in their products - which made the Mac versions slow, buggy, and bloated.
Adobe has earned every bit of criticism they're getting. If they're serious about supporting Mac OS X, they need to prove it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
And once again, Apple drags Adobe, kicking and screaming, into the future.
What does that even mean? Should Lightroom have supported "retina" displays before they existed?
1) I highly doubt that Apple contacted Adobe to say they will start doubling the resolution of their Mac displays in a couple years. The whole point of the doubling is so apps will still be pixel perfect, just at a factor of 2, without any optimizations.
2) Everything you state reinforces that Adobe did well here.
That's a bit harsh given the history 'twixt Apple and Adobe - 32/64 bit Photoshop, Carbon/Cocoa, delayed Leopard leaving Adobe mid cycle with CS updates to name one convoluted issue.
Given that we cut Apple some slack over delayed implementation of certain features eg LTE, until there is an addressable market and that hardware generally leads software, dontcha think it should work both ways? I'm sure Adobe views Apple business much more seriously now than even 5 years ago - however reluctantly they react. Business is business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ankleskater
Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office are both ideal showcases of RP. I bet Apple would have sold even more rMBPs by now if these companies sent representatives to show off what their products looked like with RP at either the summer or fall events (when the 15" and 13" RP laptops were respectively launched). For sure, we wouldn't have had idiot pundits writing that RP was redundant or served no purpose. Yet, neither Adobe nor Microsoft was ready to deliver in the summer, and were not invited in the fall. Or perhaps Apple not notify them? Did they deliberately take their sweet time? It's not ideal in either case. I think it is a failure of marketing and/or product management for all parties involved.
It's not like I disagree with you that they'd make excellent demos for an Apple event, but I do not get the impression that Apple works closely with these developers to have immediate support worked out at the time a new product is released. Pundits bore me anyway. As far as the rMBP, I didn't personally buy one. It will likely fall into my notebook replacement cycle with a future version. There are certain things I dislike, but that display is arguably the best quality display I've seen from the Apple brand since their CRT days. I'm referring specifically to picture quality. They're really very nice. The glare is cut to a tolerable level, and it tracks sRGB quite well.