Software designed to make you feel stupid

Adobe LightRoom

The first time I tried to use Adobe LightRoom to edit metadata was frustrating to say the least. First I had to figure out how to import the image (why? the image was right there on my desktop!!), then I had to find the metadata panel (which is quite a challenge since it had scrolled down and out of view in one of the panes to the right). I didn't find this panel at first, so the "Metadata" menu entry drew my attention. Sounds good. That's what I want, right? However, this menu seems to deal only with a group of metadata presets, which complicated things since I just wanted to change a single picture. Oh well. Forge ahead. Editing the metadata presets seemed like the right thing to do. When I was done editing LR forced me to save the presets with a new name, which I didn't want to do, but I didn't have any choice, so I did it anyway. Then, the next obvious step was "Save Metadata to File", which didn't work. Darn. Presumably it didn't work because I needed to somehow select the presets that I had just saved, but how? I could see no entry in the menus to set the current metadata presets. At this point I seem to remember taking a time out and coming back to the problem another day. Eventually I was able to somehow change the presets and write my changes to the file, but right now for the life of me I can't figure out how I did this (I have LR open now and I'm trying to reproduce what I did). Oh wait. There it is. Right-click on the image and select the presets from the "Metadata Presets" menu item (the good ol' hidden menu to the rescue). No, wait. That didn't work. Try a splat-S for good luck. Hooray! Success! Finally.

Capture One

Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Capture One and tried to edit some metadata in an EIP (Capture One Enhanced Image Package RAW image). From my experience with LR, I guessed I would first have to figure out how to import the image. So I did this, which was confusing enough, but then for the life of me I couldn't see how to select the image once I had imported it. You would think it would be displayed somewhere in the library of images, but no. I couldn't find it. Finally after some searching on the hard disk I found it nested deep below a "Capture One" directory in my "Pictures" folder. OK, cool. Select the image in the browser pane from that location on the disk. At least the metadata pane is not hidden, so I click on an IPTC entry and try to change it. Nothing. Can't enter any text. Darn. Time to RTFM. The FM says that I must 1) import the image. Good. Done. Let's proceed. Then 2) click on the IPTC entry. Good. Done. What next? 3) Type in new value. Darn. Bummer. Tried that. The keyboard focus never changed. The nice picture in the FM shows a highlighted text entry field. Can't make that happen. Clicking a thousand times still doesn't bring it up. Try going back and re-importing different images to different locations. Now I have copies of images scattered across my hard disk and I still can't change any metadata. After about an hour of searching through the menus, clicking all the various tiny icons in the interface, and RTFM-ing, I finally give up. It just isn't worth it. I have to watch my blood pressure.

Sweet Irony

...and people complain about the ExifTool command line interface.