Leica has announced an incentive to encourage owners to upgrade to Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription model. The company is offering a 20% discount on the first year’s fees, a saving of around £20. The offer is not a substitute for the existing free copy of Lightroom that comes with most Leica cameras; instead it is an effort to encourage people to move to the more convenient and more extensive Creative Cloud.
Although initially suspicious of a subscription-based service, I decided to upgrade to Creative Cloud about 18 months ago and have not regretted it. I a tyro Lightroom user at the time, having migrated from Apple’s Aperture when that company ceased support for the application. The basic Creative Cloud subscription offers not only Lightroom but also Photoshop. Other family applications are available for trial and can be added to the subscription as required.
Not only is Creative Cloud more convenient to use, with a clear desktop dashboard (which can be opened in a window or pinned to the toolbar as a dropdown), it ensures that you are always up to date with the latest versions and camera plug-ins.
Adobe Creative Cloud costs £8.57 a month, including VAT, if you pay monthly. The annual prepaid cost of £102.30 offers almost no saving so you might as well pay monthly. If you want the entire suite of applications the cost rises to £45 a month.
If you wish to take advantage of Leica’s introductory offer visit the Leica Owners’ page—you will need to register but you have probably already done so.
I use Iridient embedded in Lightroom under ‘Photo/Edit in’ for Fuji images. Sharpening and making other adjustments in Iridient gives better quality results than doing the same thing in Lightroom but Lightroom has better organisational facilities. I get the best results by going in and out of Lightroom to visit Iridient. I sometimes use Iridient for Leica images but, generally, they are quite OK in Lightroom on its own. I also have other applications such as Silver Efex and full Photoshop embedded in Lightroom and use them with images from all camera makes that I use.
Now for my Cloud related question. Is it possible to do such moving in and out to other non Adobe applications, such as Iridient, with the same ease, with a Cloud based version?
William
Thanks for the information, William, which I think Stephen will find useful.
As for Lightroom v Creative Cloud, I can only speak for the Nik suite. It works with Lightroom in CC just as it did in the previous version of Lightroom. The Nik software, including Silver Efex Pro, is available as a right-click menu operation when editing. I don’t know about Iridient since I haven’t used it. Perhaps someone else knows?
My recent experience with the Adobe behemoth is that I purchased a copy of LightRoom simply to deal with my weird “.NEF” files that my old Nikon scanner produces, no Apple product would open them, Lightroom does and then claims to convert them to “.DNG” files… However, post processing, Lightroom is still the only product that will open them, so it hasn’t really converted them. They have to be exported as Tif, or more usually JPG before they will open with other software products.
Bearing in mind the vintage nature of the Nikon software, and similarly the concept of scanning negatives, I thought that it would be appropriate to use an old PowerMac, I already had a single processor version, but I splashed out on Ebay for a 2.5ghz quad core model with 4gb of memory (£45… last of the big spenders).
Now I don’t expect companies to fall over backwards to help but Adobe takes the biscuit… They have downloadable copies of Lightroom on their website which date back to the earliest iterations of the product, and which would support these old machines, but they would not “sell or lend me" an old serial number and the serial number that I bought would not work with the old products.
Recently, I have via "Jonathan Slack" read of a possible alternative to Lightroom called "Iridient" -http://www.iridientdigital.com -. I downloaded their (demo) product and had the same issue regarding my ".NEF" files, but when I contacted their support, instead of the "like it or lump it" approach offered by the large corporates, that I find increasingly unacceptable, I was contacted, almost by return by a support bloke who asked me to send him a couple of files, to see whether he could accommodate them in the next update!
Whether the company does, or doesn’t, remains to be seen, but it made me feel better than the bad taste that I sometimes get from the monster corporates from the good ole USA.
Anyway, I still use Apple products, and I have room for Lightroom, but I don’t think I will be buying their subscription… Even if it does have a 20% discount via the Leica owner’s site, something that is not backwardly compatible, nor flexible enough to allow for the oddball user/prankster, doesn’t get my cash.
The Iridient product is supportive of the "open Raw" standard, and that can only be a "good thing" in relation to the longevity of our digital files.
My reticence on Lightroom was purely based on the fact that I had put a lot of effort into Aperture and worried about the learning curve. I had considered changing to Aperture previously but decided to stick with the beast I knew. However, Apple’s decision forced the issue and I am now very glad I changed.
Your tale of woe on the old versions is something I haven’t really thought about. I tend to need only the modern stuff and have never had to delve into older Macs (except when they were new Macs) so can’t really add anything to the argument, except a dollop of sympathy.
"I really don’t want piles of cameras cluttering up my house” All I can say is that you should see my house.
On the Ricoh GR, I like it a lot and it is the camera I slip in my pocket when I don’t want to carry a camera. It has its quirks, but there’s no gainsaying an APS-C sensor in such a small body with a lens that retracts and covers itself. It’s the only camera that doesn’t really need a case.
I am interested in your choice of alternative Leica digitals—T, X-Vario, SL. If you can settle for a crop sensor then the T is actually very much improved. It looks good in black and the lenses are superb. I have a few reservations about the touch control but it is something you get used to. The XV is a very underrated camera and I know several friends who swear by it. Its only downside is the slow lens but, then again, how often to we spend shooting at f/2 or even f/2.8. As a travel camera it takes some beating. It is available at very attractive prices on the secondhand market although prices have stabilised after the initial sell-off because the camera is actually very good.
The SL is a different beast. Before making a decision you need to feel the weight of the camera with the 24-90 lens. It’s a whopper and looks more like an S than an M. While I can see the benefit of the SL as an alternative to the M for use with M (and other) lenses, I am not sure I am ready to cart around such a big bit of kit. As I say, go and try it before deciding. I am still waiting for a test camera but I could have different views when I have used one for a few weeks.
I should add here, that my comment above is an extract from a much longer rambling exchange with Mike earlier today… I extracted the parts that were relevant to Mike’s blog above.
Suffice to say, as Mike is indicating in his reply to me, I am also in the market for a new digital camera, and I am currently feeling that a Leica product is the most suitable for me… I am a simple soul. But which one?
The XV has a poor EVF, the T has a better EVF (an excellent EVF!) and as things stand, is my likely choice. Apparently, the firmware update has ironed out some of its initial "quirks".
The rider to this might be the release of a variation of the "M" that really removes the un-essential… a non-boutique version of the M60, that would be really cool. I realise that the M doesn’t have a zoom function, but the lenses are so small, that it is not much of a burden to sling a couple of old lenses into one’s pocket.
…I also posited the new SL, but I am not a pro… Mike tells me that the size is more like a DSL and I am not interested in the Japanese tourist look!
How anyone is supposed to use a camera without a viewfinder is a mystery to me?