Does LR4 need to go on a diet?

[dreed]

The Windows download of Lightroom 3.5 was about 223MB for both 32bit and 64bit versions.

The Windows download of Lightroom 4 beta is a 411MB .zip file for only the 64bit version.

So I factor that in as LR4 is 4 times the size of LR3.5.

What was that new feature list again?

[howardm]

I noticed that too but will reserve judgement until Final is released. 

At this point, I'm sure the code is not optimized and it may have a bunch of debug code or symbols in it that would cause the bloat.

[Fips]

I don't care about 200MB more or less. After all, that's just about 12 raw files from my camera.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Do you have the numbers for LR3 Beta? It might have been a good bit larger than the final optimized version. I won't panic until I see the size of the production version of LR4.

Eric

[Jeff Magidson]

Who cares about the size of the application DL? I do care about the efficiency/speed of running the program and there is no direct correlation.

[natas]

It's a beta build so I would expect it to have more debugging info built in. All this stuff is usually striped on final builds.

[Richowens]

Refigure......LR4 was only 1% zipped.  424 megs opened.

[barryfitzgerald]

For those who have been into pc's for some time there is an element of "lean and mean" or rather efficient code.
I fear LR has probably gone a bit beyond what I'd like it to do (into areas less important) thus has grown in size.

The install size isn't a massive concern, however the running performance of LR has never been as optimal as it IMO should have been

[Kirk Gittings]

The install size isn't a massive concern, however the running performance of LR has never been as optimal as it IMO should have been

Absolutely.

[feppe]

Featuritis causes bloat - and we can only blame ourselves for that, with all the endless feature requests on this very board.

[howardm]

there is the old saying 'all applications will expand until they have email functionality' (or some paraphrase close to that).

I keep on reading these feature requests and people are not going to be happy until LR becomes Photoshop (or at least just the parts we tend to use).  Ain't gonna happen.  LR is NOT PS.

I suspect a chunk of the performance problem also lies w/ the choice of implementation language (Lua).

[schitti]

I fully agree. On the other hand I dont see why Lightroom should support Blurb and GPS information. There are much better ways. InDesign from Adobe is a powerfull tool and supports Blurb's PDF to Book procedure. Geosetter is a powerfull tool to handle GPS informations and is free. I do not see what path Adobe is following with Lightroom 4. A bit of everything ? In addition it will not work under Windows XP. Frankly speeeking, I'm not impressed.

[kikashi]

Geosetter is a powerfull tool to handle GPS informations and is free.

Doesn't work on Macs, though; and the Mac market, fortunately for many of us, is within Adobe's contemplation, even if not yours.

Jeremy

[stamper]

You can't please all of the people all of the time. To make LR more attractive they have to add features. They won't take any out for sure so it will become more bloated as more versions are created. I agree that some want it to be akin to PS but not at the same price? If you have a computer with good specs it isn't a problem but I fear some have older computers that can't run it efficiently?

[schitti]

How true ! I'm using now Lightroom 3.x and what impressed me most is the fast workflow from camera to disk and the nice developing module good enough for most of the pictures. Camera Raw and PS is used for the more advanced stuff. Adding more and more moduls is not going to be any help for me and fortunately I have no need to change and can save the cost for upgrading.

[Alan Goldhammer]

How true ! I'm using now Lightroom 3.x and what impressed me most is the fast workflow from camera to disk and the nice developing module good enough for most of the pictures. Camera Raw and PS is used for the more advanced stuff. Adding more and more moduls is not going to be any help for me and fortunately I have no need to change and can save the cost for upgrading.

Too bad we can't have a series of check boxes for which modules we might want installed.   I don't have any interest in video processing.

[jalcocer]

The difference in size may be due to the increase in features, the % of compression for the file or even maybe the fact that's still a beta.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Too bad we can't have a series of check boxes for which modules we might want installed.   I don't have any interest in video processing.

I agree.
But I can well imagine at some future date that there will be a whole set of Lightroom programs, such as LR Basic, LR Video, LR Web, LR Interior Design, etc., that can all be purchased together as "LightRoom Suite."

Eric

[Rhossydd]

Use what you need and don't worry about what you don't need.

I think we should worry about feature bloat.
Adding unwanted features can slow the whole program down, make it unnecessarily more complex to use and that it can restrict it's usefulness(eg not being able to use LR4 on XP because of the video features).

[jalcocer]

I'm not so crazy about the basic video editing, although to be able to color correct the video is a nice thing, but for video editing I guess a lot of us go to another software, the geolocation that's a good one.