Stock Notice: Loupedeck Photo Editing Console for Lightroom 6 & CC

[jdavidse]

Regardless of price, I cannot fathom the usefulness of this product unless you are trying to edit from your couch.

This is made for wedding photographers and high-volume editors. Think about what happens when you use a mouse to adjust a slider. You first move your eyes to the slider, then the pointer to hit the tiny slider. Then your eyes go back to the picture while you move the sister. Then (at least for me) your eyes go back and forth a few times to check on the value of the slider, and back to the image. Each time your eyes leave the image, they need to readjust, and you may miss the subtlety you were aiming for.

With a hardware interface, your eyes *never* leave the image. Muscle memory develops and you can fly through hundreds of images in much shorter time. Let's say the hardware saves you 15 seconds per image. If you have to edit 1000 images, then you just saved hours of your time. And your eye fatigue goes way down because you're not skipping all over the place looking for tiny sliders.

There have been many attempts at solutions over the years. I use a Logitech game pad with the keys mapped to Lightroom functions

This thing is seriously stupid especially for that price also if it is for people with muscle issues, it should be marketed that way.

Professional colourists, audio engineers etc predominantly use custom designed interfaces that cost 10x this because it speeds up their workflow and gives them more tactile control over the changes they're making.

If your time is money and using a dedicated interface saves you half an hour a day (which it will once you've learned to use it), it pays for itself in no time at all.

While I don't know much about this particular interface, the idea that building hardware interfaces is 'seriously stupid' is... well... lets just say pretty dumb.

No, I don't think that specialized hardware interfaces are dumb at all. I've bought plenty of all sorts, and by all standards, this one is really cheap.

However, in this case, I think that the dials and such add nothing, and if anything, would slow down the workflow. It is much slower to turn a dial to move a slider from left to right, than just sliding it, or even more accurately, just typing in "25" or using your mouse to choose a preset.

If I were to seriously critique an objection, I would say that I think that for a device like this, dials need to be marked so that far left is 0 and far right is 100%, and it should be easy to look at the dial, and know that you're at 75%, or +3.5EV or +2 Vibrance or whatever. They should work like ring USM, and not like STM

But this paradigm would not work Lightroom, because from one photo to the next, the dials need to (automatically) be reset to different positions. So in order to make that happen, every dial would need to be motorized, and that would make it way too expensive for the target audience.

Well, there is a thing called motorised sliders. The dials are commonly rotary encoders and some of the better devices (the Loupedeck doesn't seem to be one of them) use LEDs to show you where on the scale you are. You can also see the sliders move in Lightroom.

With the MIDI2LR you should be able to have motorised sliders move when you use your mouse to change things in LR, but Loupedeck writes that "Unfortunately, Loupedeck cannot get feedback from Lightroom".

If you've got dials and sliders, you can modify more than one parameter at a time, such as contrast and exposure or blacks and shadow that are not really independent. Much faster than going back and forth between sliders with your mouse.

 

[jdavidse]

I think it's a clever niche product.
I also think that without a motor to return all the dials to zero when you move to the next photo then it might be a little impractical.
It will appeal to some creatives.
It's ironic that lightrooms sliders emulate a sliding deck console.
Now there is sliding deck console emulating Lightroom.
Maybe Lightroom should have a variety of interfaces and one of them could emulate the Loupedeck

There is no "zero" on the dials. That's why they are dials and not sliders. When you move to the next photo, whatever the present position of the dials are is the zero point. It's kind of like when you adjust aperture or shutter speed on your camera. You never have to "return" the dials to a zero point when you switch modes.

 

[Chuck Alaimo]

This!!!! I don't use this particular product but, about 3 months ago I decided to give pallette gear a try - https://palettegear.com

as a wedding and event shooter I have lots of images to go through, cull and edit. with mouse only i it's a lot of action on the right hand, which is also the main hand holding a heavy camera all day. I tried to go the keyboard shortcut way, but that was a big old pain in the butt as there is no way to direct select which slider you want. yeah, the arrow buttons can scroll you down, but that was real clunky, and it doesn't leave the slider highlighted so it was back to the stupid carpel tunnel mouse - if you wanted more than the basic panel, back to the mouse - if you used a brush or a radial filter, no choice really but mouse, and lots of pain in at the end of the day in my right hand and wrist.

Culing was just as bad, as the arrow keys are on the right side so to use your left hand for that your stuck putting the keyboard in a funky angle so you can use your left hand.

So i decided to try pallette gear out - because in theory it could cover 2 birds with one stone --- faster workflow and taking the burden off my right hand --- so its mostly working out --- workflow is a lot faster for culling - and a little quicker for general editing. The biggest thing though is it does help to even out what the left and right hands are doing which does lead to not having a ton of pain in my hands!!!!

And --- with pallette you have arcade style buttons --- so it does kind of make things more fun for editing!!!!!

Regardless of price, I cannot fathom the usefulness of this product unless you are trying to edit from your couch.

This is made for wedding photographers and high-volume editors. Think about what happens when you use a mouse to adjust a slider. You first move your eyes to the slider, then the pointer to hit the tiny slider. Then your eyes go back to the picture while you move the sister. Then (at least for me) your eyes go back and forth a few times to check on the value of the slider, and back to the image. Each time your eyes leave the image, they need to readjust, and you may miss the subtlety you were aiming for.

With a hardware interface, your eyes *never* leave the image. Muscle memory develops and you can fly through hundreds of images in much shorter time. Let's say the hardware saves you 15 seconds per image. If you have to edit 1000 images, then you just saved hours of your time. And your eye fatigue goes way down because you're not skipping all over the place looking for tiny sliders.

There have been many attempts at solutions over the years. I use a Logitech game pad with the keys mapped to Lightroom functions

This thing is seriously stupid especially for that price also if it is for people with muscle issues, it should be marketed that way.

Professional colourists, audio engineers etc predominantly use custom designed interfaces that cost 10x this because it speeds up their workflow and gives them more tactile control over the changes they're making.

If your time is money and using a dedicated interface saves you half an hour a day (which it will once you've learned to use it), it pays for itself in no time at all.

While I don't know much about this particular interface, the idea that building hardware interfaces is 'seriously stupid' is... well... lets just say pretty dumb.

No, I don't think that specialized hardware interfaces are dumb at all. I've bought plenty of all sorts, and by all standards, this one is really cheap.

However, in this case, I think that the dials and such add nothing, and if anything, would slow down the workflow. It is much slower to turn a dial to move a slider from left to right, than just sliding it, or even more accurately, just typing in "25" or using your mouse to choose a preset.

If I were to seriously critique an objection, I would say that I think that for a device like this, dials need to be marked so that far left is 0 and far right is 100%, and it should be easy to look at the dial, and know that you're at 75%, or +3.5EV or +2 Vibrance or whatever. They should work like ring USM, and not like STM

But this paradigm would not work Lightroom, because from one photo to the next, the dials need to (automatically) be reset to different positions. So in order to make that happen, every dial would need to be motorized, and that would make it way too expensive for the target audience.

Well, there is a thing called motorised sliders. The dials are commonly rotary encoders and some of the better devices (the Loupedeck doesn't seem to be one of them) use LEDs to show you where on the scale you are. You can also see the sliders move in Lightroom.

With the MIDI2LR you should be able to have motorised sliders move when you use your mouse to change things in LR, but Loupedeck writes that "Unfortunately, Loupedeck cannot get feedback from Lightroom".

If you've got dials and sliders, you can modify more than one parameter at a time, such as contrast and exposure or blacks and shadow that are not really independent. Much faster than going back and forth between sliders with your mouse.

 

[KeithBreazeal]

After watching a few videos on this, No. I edited tape to tape video for many years and the controllers were well designed.
The first thing that caught my eye was that the knob layout is ergonomically wrong. They should be along the side edge vertically so they don'y block your movement to the upper controls.
The scroll type wheels are ways too slow to claim it would speed up processing. The smarter method would have been a touch pad that you could slide your finger across to make adjustments.

I think the greatest thing to speed up PS/LR workflow would be to couple slider adjustment to the scroll wheel on the mouse. This would eliminate a tremendous amount of wrist movement. Basically, that is what this controller is doing, but mechanically. That would be an awesome hack!
Just click on the adjustment and scroll away.

 

[KeithBreazeal]

After watching a few videos on this, No. I edited tape to tape video for many years and the controllers were well designed.
The first thing that caught my eye was that the knob layout is ergonomically wrong. They should be along the side edge vertically so they don'y block your movement to the upper controls.
The scroll type wheels are ways too slow to claim it would speed up processing. The smarter method would have been a touch pad that you could slide your finger across to make adjustments.

I think the greatest thing to speed up PS/LR workflow would be to couple slider adjustment to the scroll wheel on the mouse. This would eliminate a tremendous amount of wrist movement. Basically, that is what this controller is doing, but mechanically. That would be an awesome hack!
Just click on the adjustment and scroll away.

I just sent this idea off to Adobe. Tic, tic, tic....

 

[Chuck Alaimo]

That would help a little, but you still have to use the carpel tunnel mouse....for me, better solution would be improved keyboard shortcut use in adobe....so you can just click E to adjust exposure with arrow keys --- but single click keys are already fairly mapped out so that' not gonna work. Your idea may work for some, but for those like me it's just more taxing on my already taxed right hand

After watching a few videos on this, No. I edited tape to tape video for many years and the controllers were well designed.
The first thing that caught my eye was that the knob layout is ergonomically wrong. They should be along the side edge vertically so they don'y block your movement to the upper controls.
The scroll type wheels are ways too slow to claim it would speed up processing. The smarter method would have been a touch pad that you could slide your finger across to make adjustments.

I think the greatest thing to speed up PS/LR workflow would be to couple slider adjustment to the scroll wheel on the mouse. This would eliminate a tremendous amount of wrist movement. Basically, that is what this controller is doing, but mechanically. That would be an awesome hack!
Just click on the adjustment and scroll away.

 

[KeithBreazeal]

I got LR to work with the scroll wheel but 1/10th increments was the finest adjustment. Use the scroll wheel to click on the adjustment's mark location to enable. Go to the PC's control panel and select Mouse. Go to wheel. Adjust for one line at a time scrolling.

 

[hne]

I think it's a clever niche product.
I also think that without a motor to return all the dials to zero when you move to the next photo then it might be a little impractical.
It will appeal to some creatives.
It's ironic that lightrooms sliders emulate a sliding deck console.
Now there is sliding deck console emulating Lightroom.
Maybe Lightroom should have a variety of interfaces and one of them could emulate the Loupedeck

There is no "zero" on the dials. That's why they are dials and not sliders. When you move to the next photo, whatever the present position of the dials are is the zero point. It's kind of like when you adjust aperture or shutter speed on your camera. You never have to "return" the dials to a zero point when you switch modes.

...except the better solutions (than loupedeck) can have either motorized faders or rotary encoders with LEDs showing you current position. Press the knob to zero it is actually faster than trying to turning it back to zero. Palette gear or behringer xtouch compact.

 

[deletemyaccount]

Don't Lightroom sliders serve the same functions?

Yes, but this way you get to buy additional hardware for $300 while you complain about the $100 subscription price for lightroom....

+100 This was seriously funny. Thanks Don!

 

[dsut4392]

Palette gear looks really neat, if a bit pricey. I don't do enough editing to justify the price of these, but am all in favour of dedicated interface hardware in general. Mouse or touch interfaces are so simple to use that they have become the default for most people, who as a result have no co concept of how much more efficient a dedicated interface or keyboard shortcut is.
That said, I have to agree that the layout of the loupedeck doesn't seem very logical, the dials at the bottom of the deck make it awkward to use the sliders without lifting your hands up in the air. The sliders also look a bit small to get a good grip on, and only seem to have a short throw making it fiddly to get exactly the setting you want. Of course that's all based on a few small pictures of the device, in practice it may turn out to be great.

This!!!! I don't use this particular product but, about 3 months ago I decided to give pallette gear a try - https://palettegear.com

as a wedding and event shooter I have lots of images to go through, cull and edit. with mouse only i it's a lot of action on the right hand, which is also the main hand holding a heavy camera all day. I tried to go the keyboard shortcut way, but that was a big old pain in the butt as there is no way to direct select which slider you want. yeah, the arrow buttons can scroll you down, but that was real clunky, and it doesn't leave the slider highlighted so it was back to the stupid carpel tunnel mouse - if you wanted more than the basic panel, back to the mouse - if you used a brush or a radial filter, no choice really but mouse, and lots of pain in at the end of the day in my right hand and wrist.

Culing was just as bad, as the arrow keys are on the right side so to use your left hand for that your stuck putting the keyboard in a funky angle so you can use your left hand.

So i decided to try pallette gear out - because in theory it could cover 2 birds with one stone --- faster workflow and taking the burden off my right hand --- so its mostly working out --- workflow is a lot faster for culling - and a little quicker for general editing. The biggest thing though is it does help to even out what the left and right hands are doing which does lead to not having a ton of pain in my hands!!!!

And --- with pallette you have arcade style buttons --- so it does kind of make things more fun for editing!!!!!

Regardless of price, I cannot fathom the usefulness of this product unless you are trying to edit from your couch.

This is made for wedding photographers and high-volume editors. Think about what happens when you use a mouse to adjust a slider. You first move your eyes to the slider, then the pointer to hit the tiny slider. Then your eyes go back to the picture while you move the sister. Then (at least for me) your eyes go back and forth a few times to check on the value of the slider, and back to the image. Each time your eyes leave the image, they need to readjust, and you may miss the subtlety you were aiming for.

With a hardware interface, your eyes *never* leave the image. Muscle memory develops and you can fly through hundreds of images in much shorter time. Let's say the hardware saves you 15 seconds per image. If you have to edit 1000 images, then you just saved hours of your time. And your eye fatigue goes way down because you're not skipping all over the place looking for tiny sliders.

There have been many attempts at solutions over the years. I use a Logitech game pad with the keys mapped to Lightroom functions

This thing is seriously stupid especially for that price also if it is for people with muscle issues, it should be marketed that way.

Professional colourists, audio engineers etc predominantly use custom designed interfaces that cost 10x this because it speeds up their workflow and gives them more tactile control over the changes they're making.

If your time is money and using a dedicated interface saves you half an hour a day (which it will once you've learned to use it), it pays for itself in no time at all.

While I don't know much about this particular interface, the idea that building hardware interfaces is 'seriously stupid' is... well... lets just say pretty dumb.

No, I don't think that specialized hardware interfaces are dumb at all. I've bought plenty of all sorts, and by all standards, this one is really cheap.

However, in this case, I think that the dials and such add nothing, and if anything, would slow down the workflow. It is much slower to turn a dial to move a slider from left to right, than just sliding it, or even more accurately, just typing in "25" or using your mouse to choose a preset.

If I were to seriously critique an objection, I would say that I think that for a device like this, dials need to be marked so that far left is 0 and far right is 100%, and it should be easy to look at the dial, and know that you're at 75%, or +3.5EV or +2 Vibrance or whatever. They should work like ring USM, and not like STM

But this paradigm would not work Lightroom, because from one photo to the next, the dials need to (automatically) be reset to different positions. So in order to make that happen, every dial would need to be motorized, and that would make it way too expensive for the target audience.

Well, there is a thing called motorised sliders. The dials are commonly rotary encoders and some of the better devices (the Loupedeck doesn't seem to be one of them) use LEDs to show you where on the scale you are. You can also see the sliders move in Lightroom.

With the MIDI2LR you should be able to have motorised sliders move when you use your mouse to change things in LR, but Loupedeck writes that "Unfortunately, Loupedeck cannot get feedback from Lightroom".

If you've got dials and sliders, you can modify more than one parameter at a time, such as contrast and exposure or blacks and shadow that are not really independent. Much faster than going back and forth between sliders with your mouse.

 

[Maiaibing]

If you've got dials and sliders, you can modify more than one parameter at a time, such as contrast and exposure or blacks and shadow that are not really independent. Much faster than going back and forth between sliders with your mouse.

LOL! Nice idea, but I'd like to see anyone perform this feat in a productive way.

 

[Chuck Alaimo]

I literally do it all the time...I'm using the pallette gear setup and with the dials is super easy and smooth to adjust 2 sliders at once. If you look at an image and immediately say, drop the whites and increase exposer - done, and with the dials you can really fine tune it.

If you've got dials and sliders, you can modify more than one parameter at a time, such as contrast and exposure or blacks and shadow that are not really independent. Much faster than going back and forth between sliders with your mouse.

LOL! Nice idea, but I'd like to see anyone perform this feat in a productive way.

 

[Canon Rumors Guy]

B&H sold a lot of these this week. I have now spoken to 3 photographers that purchased one from the original shipment a little while back and they all love it.

 

[Origin Studios]

Seems to be a lot of comments on here from people that haven't used it. Admittedly I've only had the Loupedeck for a few weeks but already it has fitted seamlessly into my workflow. It seriously speeds up a wedding cull & edit and even for a studio shoot the knobs and sliders are far better than using a mouse. The developer is also listening to the community and will be making software updates to allow for further customisation. (Well I guess time will tell on that).

For a pro this is a no brainer, I had been on the fence of using a midi controller for a while but this is better - albeit more expensive.

 

[Maiaibing]

I literally do it all the time...I'm using the pallette gear setup and with the dials is super easy and smooth to adjust 2 sliders at once. If you look at an image and immediately say, drop the whites and increase exposer - done, and with the dials you can really fine tune it.

If you've got dials and sliders, you can modify more than one parameter at a time, such as contrast and exposure or blacks and shadow that are not really independent. Much faster than going back and forth between sliders with your mouse.

LOL! Nice idea, but I'd like to see anyone perform this feat in a productive way.

Of course you can slide and turn two things at the same time - but not with a controlled output (unless with a known fixed amount - but then its much quicker and more precise to use a preset anyway). That's why I said in a "productive" way.

 

[-pekr-]

Seems to be a lot of comments on here from people that haven't used it. Admittedly I've only had the Loupedeck for a few weeks but already it has fitted seamlessly into my workflow. It seriously speeds up a wedding cull & edit and even for a studio shoot the knobs and sliders are far better than using a mouse. The developer is also listening to the community and will be making software updates to allow for further customisation. (Well I guess time will tell on that).

For a pro this is a no brainer, I had been on the fence of using a midi controller for a while but this is better - albeit more expensive.

I wonder if the SW driver, or whatever it takes to map to LR, can be customised, or simply if other app, if it would remap the kyboard shortcut layout, could be used too? We use on1 Photo apart from LR, so just curious

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I have serious carpal tunnel as well as a pinched nerve in my shoulder, so using a mouse can be very painful. My fingers have lost much of their feeling as well, so something better would be worth it. I've tried touch pads, amd several ergonomic mice to no avail. I still have several hundred photos unedited that I took in May because of the issue. Fortunately, I have another month to finish them. I have done the first 1500.

I agree with Keith, the arrangement of the controls looks unworkable, the sliders need to be easy to operate, and reaching over a knob seems like it would aggravate my carpal tunnel.

I looked at the Behringer X-Touch compact, it has motorized sliders, and Lightroom does give feedback to them, There are software solutions and LR plugins that implement the control. Its a bit more expensive, but looks to be much better laid out and much more functional.

It turns out that there are many nice options that have better sliders, rotary encoders, and seem to be ergonomically better. Prices are not that much higher. I'm not sure why I'd not prefer to buy one of the control decks and low cost or free software.

http://peltmade.com/lrplugins-control.html

http://iconproaudio.com/product/platform-m/

https://www.amazon.com/Behringer-X-TOUCH-COMPACT-BEHRINGER/dp/B015HBZVX2

https://www.amazon.com/Behringer-BCF2000-BEHRINGER-B-CONTROL-FADER/dp/B000CZ0RJ2

 

[Talys]

That behringer compact (the third one on your list) actually looks pretty cool, for a decent price.

 

[LDS]

I looked at the Behringer X-Touch compact, it has motorized sliders, and Lightroom does give feedback to them, There are software solutions and LR plugins that implement the control. Its a bit more expensive, but looks to be much better laid out and much more functional.

There's also this company that customize the X-Touch for LR - just its software is macOS only: http://www.pusherlabs.com/

The hardware customization is a simple mask for the controls, it just make the device a little more user-friendly. It does look better laid out ergonomically, albeit not designed for LR.

What worries me is if the MIDI controls have the required range for the LR controls. For example in some video I've seen that the rotation control of the device allowed only for 4° - LR allows for 45° correction with 0.01° of precision, it's a lot of "steps".

Controls in the basic panel allows for +/- 100, it's 201 steps (including the 0 position), while I see for example PusherLab setting MIDI controls in the 0-127 range, although I don't know if the allow for "decimal" values. [Update - it looks the MIDI messages use only integer values...]

It would be interesting, anyway, to see a well designed and fully functional hardware panel for LR.

 

[SecureGSM]

If I may.. trackballs can be very useful If an excessive joint movement is out of question for one or another reason. Your palm peacefully rests on it and all the scrolling done by your thumb.
Give it a try at your local computer shop.

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless-trackball-m570

I have serious carpal tunnel as well as a pinched nerve in my shoulder, so using a mouse can be very painful. My fingers have lost much of their feeling as well, so something better would be worth it. I've tried touch pads, amd several ergonomic mice to no avail. I still have several hundred photos unedited that I took in May because of the issue. Fortunately, I have another month to finish them. I have done the first 1500.