Lightroom Develop "Before & After" - B & A What?

KED

In the Develop module, does B&A only compare vs. the very last adjustment? Here's the specific context of my question: I had am image that I was pretty happy with, then just for fun, I applied sharpening to it -- all of the sharpening adjustments except for radius. Then I did a before/after, and the difference is stunning, but for future reference I need to know whether I'm B&A'ing only the last adjustment (edge masking) or the whole set of sharpening adjustments since my last visit to LR.

I think the answer will be from adjustment to adjustment, but I'd prefer that it were the wholesale alternative since there other ways (history) to take one step backward. Anyway, it would be good to know the general principle, and I couldn't find it in Adobe's documentation.

colourbox

It's between the current history state and the first history state. Or, you can go to any history state and right-click it to choose a command that makes Lightroom use that particular adjustment as the Before state.

KED

colourbox wrote:

It's between the current history state and the first history state. Or, you can go to any history state and right-click it to choose a command that makes Lightroom use that particular adjustment as the Before state.

Perfect -- thanks. May I ask you: how do you know this? There are so many features, tricks, etc. in that app, very few of which are documented in Adobe's help documentation from what I have seen. I subscribe to a lot of LR sites' RSS feeds, but finding the answer to a specific question in real time, without posting here or on LR Forums, is really hard.

DonRicklin

KED wrote:

Perfect -- thanks. May I ask you: how do you know this? There are so many features, tricks, etc. in that app, very few of which are documented in Adobe's help documentation from what I have seen. I subscribe to a lot of LR sites' RSS feeds, but finding the answer to a specific question in real time, without posting here or on LR Forums, is really hard.

One can also try at Lightroom Community Help - Wiki, a new alternative to the Adobe Live Documents.
Some of the LR Forum Gurus are Moderators there, but it is not a Forum.

Good reading, though with lots of Resource links to other Tutorials and Articles.

Don

KED

LRmvcDonR wrote:

One can also try at Lightroom Community Help - Wiki, a new alternative to the Adobe Live Documents.
Some of the LR Forum Gurus are Moderators there, but it is not a Forum.

Good reading, though with lots of Resource links to other Tutorials and Articles.

Don

Thanks Don; I already have that bookmarked too, and I just "beta-tested" it quickly on the question that initiated this post; I think I would have gotten close to Colourbox's concise answer but not quite there. Nevertheless, it is a great resource that should only get better with time. I like LR very much (I own Aperture too, so for $99 could upgrade to 2.0 but have no intention of doing so); it just gets frustrating sometimes trying even to understand its functionality in a very specific context (you've helped me on some of that previously), let alone discover its hidden magic.

DonRicklin

KED wrote:

Thanks Don; I already have that bookmarked too, and I just "beta-tested" it quickly on the question that initiated this post; I think I would have gotten close to Colourbox's concise answer but not quite there. Nevertheless, it is a great resource that should only get better with time. I like LR very much (I own Aperture too, so for $99 could upgrade to 2.0 but have no intention of doing so); it just gets frustrating sometimes trying even to understand its functionality in a very specific context (you've helped me on some of that previously), let alone discover its hidden magic.

Well much of what many of us know about LR is from playing with it on a regular basis starting back, now, 2 years ago.

:ivar

The best part IS the Non-destructiveness of it. You can try all kinds of stuff and then just reset it, Virtual Copy it and make a preset.

Jeffrey Friedl's SmugMug LR Plugin makes it ral easy to upload to your account right out of Lightroom!



Don

KED

LRmvcDonR wrote:

Well much of what many of us know about LR is from playing with it on a regular basis starting back, now, 2 years ago.

:ivar

The bets part IS the Non-destructiveness of it. You can try all kinds of stuff and then just reset it, Virtual Copy it and make a preset.

Jeffrey Friedl's SmugMug LR Plugin makes it ral easy to upload to your account right out of Lightroom!



Don

Seems to me that you and a number of other people have invested a lot of your valuable time to explore and expose the mysteries of LR. If you are paid to do so, good for you; if you aren't (and I don't mean you personally but the gurus in general), why aren't you beating on Adobe to do a better job documenting its product? I know that there's a whole industry built around published works that elaborate on/clarify/extend Adobe's documentation of its products (especially Photoshop) but the more people can easily understand about the power of the LR app, the more they will gravitate toward it (in this specific context, away from Aperture).

PS I am well aware that there are books out there on LR, but there are none on v. 1.3 so their utility is limited if not crippled.

DonRicklin

KED wrote:

Seems to me that you and a number of other people have invested a lot of your valuable time to explore and expose the mysteries of LR. If you are paid to do so, good for you; if you aren't (and I don't mean you personally but the gurus in general), why aren't you beating on Adobe to do a better job documenting its product? I know that there's a whole industry built around published works that elaborate on/clarify/extend Adobe's documentation of its products (especially Photoshop) but the more people can easily understand about the power of the LR app, the more they will gravitate toward it (in this specific context, away from Aperture).

PS I am well aware that there are books out there on LR, but there are none on v. 1.3 so their utility is limited if not crippled.

Oh believe me we are, in every way we can and at every opportunity. And we have gotten some results from 1.0 to 1.3.1 from our input.

The Wiki is only one way that Adobe is trying to better Document Lightroom, and why it is Moderated and allows comments. Much more likely to be kept up to date and expanded upon!

One problem is that LR is still very young and changing! This make it hard to keep up with for the Official document writers as apposed to say, PSCS, which is at so mature that there is tons of info on it, but, then it is such a truly complex and bloated App in comparison.

Don

KED

LRmvcDonR wrote:

but, then it is such a truly complex and bloated App in comparison.

Don

Look at you, dissing the flagship of the mother of all PP apps! Much respect!

DonRicklin

KED wrote:

Look at you, dissing the flagship of the mother of all PP apps! Much respect!

I don't use PSCS, much. And I only speak truth! Even Jeff Schewe would make the same (and I think he has) comparison!


Don