Sunday, April 26, 2015

Well, and then there was a crash

Unrelated to LR or Paddy, my development machine crashed. Hard. Also, my BCF 2000 died. I almost cried. That was the machine that got me hooked on MIDI for picture editing in LR 3. So I spent all weekend free time doing Windows stuff and being cranky. And ordering a new hard drive. The BCF replacement....maybe. I have a BCR 2000 that I almost like better now because I have more controllers without switching presets. I miss the "woooosh" of the mechanical sliders, though.

While I couldn't push the issues forward, thanks to online backup, I now have my Paddy development environment set up on my work laptop again. Not as good as three screens, but between airport lounges in London, the U.S. Midwest, and Canada, I might get done something this and next week even on a small laptop screen. Yes, that's where I will be earning the money to pay the bills in the next 14 days.

For those of you who are impatient: I have a really, really (really) well paying day job with lots of travel that is as unrelated to Photography as you can imagine, and then some. I also have three kids, one of which has a general health issue, one has a learning disability, and one has an anxiety issue stemming from the fact that the parents spend probably too much time with the other two. Between photography and them, they come first. Also, other stuff like going out with my wife. Paddy is what I do when I have time and don't  sleep. So, I would guess Paddy CC will be out in 6-8 weeks. But I can promise right here that we will get there. It's just a matter of time. I have the sliders working under certain conditions, but not under others (e.g., grad filter selected with a JPG in 2003 mode......arg!). I just want to change some other things as well while I am at it to make this thing more robust..

Also, I am not impressed with LR CC. The facial recognition is fun, but I don't use mobile (zero need), touch interface. there is no real improvement for what I do other than the brush in the grad filter. that is great, I love it, but.....not a new release to me. More like a small additional feature set. I would have loved content-aware fill......

So, if Paddy is important to your high-throughput workflow, stay with LR 5 until I am done.


Friday, April 24, 2015

Friday development status

This update shows that LR6 really has not that much new. I have most of the sliders running, even the complex ones like HSL that change assignment. The only really new piece is the brush in the gradient filter, but it doesn't ruin Paddy. The work a while ago with LR 5 did pay off. Now I need to test a few reset buttons, and then make sure everything works in the old process modes and for JPG, but good progress

LR CC - Paddy CC

Now that LR CC is finally out, I am starting to update Paddy. Bad news is that this will be a slow process as I am very much in demand in my day job and for the family.

The good news is that the LR control scheme is close to the old one. I did some forensic science during the week, updated the Paddy source codes for the renames of control schemes last night, and I got some basics working - for instance, the main sliders! Yeah!

The bad news is that they didn't change the dynamic control scheme, so the startup for the beta version will still be awkward.

Here is the path forward


  • Get a Beta version out that has the same functionality as we had for LR 5 (with no registration)
  • Set up a new discussion board - the old is broken
  • Gather feedback and improve, and in parallel work on a new startup scheme
  • Set up new Webpage
  • Update User guide

Now, I have LR CC. I am unlikely to buy the stand alone in addition, so I will just hope that Paddy will work for it