cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Does anyone who owns this unit care to comment. I am considering its purchase but I have read many negative comments about build quality. Thanks in advance.

Dan Downie Loc: Rochester, NY

Never heard of it.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Now that they've updated the software several times, the Loupedeck is a very stable addition to editing photos in Lightroom. Build quality is excellent, and some feedback I have sent was incorporated into one of the software releases.

johntaylor333

I have one and like it quite a lot. The only downside is that the response in the image is not instant, but the speed of action is acceptable. Build quality is excellent.

Makes working on multiple pictures (usually 100's or 1000's at a time) in Lr much easier and faster after I have applied by standard workflow as a preset.

It occasionally goes on sale at B&H or Adorama. I paid $260.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Interesting.
Will have to read more on it.
https://loupedeck.com/

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Yikes!! Analogue dials vs the in software digital sliders we have in our software already.... what the??? Am I wrong... ??

brooklyn-camera I Loc: Brooklyn, NY

brooklyn-camera I Loc: Brooklyn, NY

https://www.adorama.com/loupeclghtrm.html Adorama

blackest Loc: Ireland

There are several alternatives to loupedeck, midi2lr, knobroom, pfixer. There is a fair range of hardware that you can use with the software, the best hardware controllers have endless rotary sliders have led feed back and motorised controls.

You don't actually need these to work with, knobs with max minimum and sliders with the same work fine, these are cc controllers buttons are note controllers note on / note off. pfixer is one of the best software options and links with lightroom via assistive technologies.

For hardware there are lots of options I have an maudio oxygen 25 which is fairly bulky but is easy to switch channels, I picked that up for €40 i also have an m-audio X-session Pro, i snapped that up on ebay for around €5 this is a dj controller which is designed for mixing 2 tracks 6 knobs per channel 2 sliders per channel (16cc controls + cross fade) and 10 buttons.

The software usually has a bank switching option. take pfixer for example lets say we have a knob cc18 by default its transmitting on channel 1 i can assign a button to switch banks to channel 2 it doesn't actually switch channels but pfixer instead of calling it 1-18 calls it 2-18 (once i have pressed my bank button it just treats all the controls as coming from channel 2. I could have knob 1-18 set to adjust exposure but 2-18 to adjust red hue and 3-18 to do something else.

mapping you tend to have the basic controls on 1 bank, hsl on another bank, tone curve is 4 sliders depending on how many knobs and sliders you have available will govern how you group your controls. it's a bit of a headache figuring out what control to assign to what initially.

Some controllers do not generate actual midi messages e.g there is a novation controller which has an intermediate piece of software which reads the controller and out puts a midi message. The oxygen 25 has a led display which is quite handy as it lets you switch channels and tells you what bank you are on e.g going to channel 1 to 2 to 3 (there are 16 midi channels but it would be mind bending to use all of them).

my cross fader actually runs two cc controllers 17 and 20 but one runs 1 - 127 the other 127 - 1 so i leave 1 unmapped (i use that one for exposure).

buttons can be used for bank changes, keyboard shortcuts and presets. You can use the controls for local adjustments but you might prefer a graphics tablet for painting masks and use the controller to adjust what the adjustment is going to do, dodging, burning, color temperature, ect.

There are lots and lots of possible things to control but in practice keeping it simple is best, stick with the basic controls mainly hsl tends to be mostly useful for black & white. The tone curve was interesting i found i made a curve looking like an integral sign curving a lot at the ends and pretty straight for most of the curve. I say I found because one of the best features of working with the midi controller is that you can work full screen with the image
although if you work with the full image things get quite laggy. So a good trick is to import your photos to an external drive and get lightroom to build a smart preview for each photo and then take the external drive off line. Then working full screen the changes are instant. You should find its pretty quick working in windowed mode but then you lose one of the advantages of using the controller.

with lightroom sliders you tend to have a "right" value, you pretty much can't help yourself from looking at the slider value. When you are looking at the image, and adjusting you are looking at the effect if you adjust the shadows your adjusting so it looks good. Same with the other controls.

However it is pretty easy to get lost on the controller, which is why its best to just bind your most used controls to the midi controller. It's quite easy to be going to adjust shadows and be on the wrong bank and say adjust grain size instead because you were in the wrong mode.

Personally i find its fairly good for basic adjustments, but then i'm exporting to affinity photo and using plugins such as the nik collection and here a far more useful tool is a basic graphics tablet. For retouching a basic model is fine. pressure sensitivity is all you need. Ctrl Alt and moving the stylus up and down or left to right adjust brush size and hardness. A wacom tablet let you put that shortcut on a pen button which is convenient but its just as easy to use your free hand to use the keyboard shortcuts.

There is an alternative to a hardware midi controller you can use an ipad as a virtual controller, you just us your fingers to adjust the on screen sliders i haven't really investigated this yet but it is possible to create your own mixer and naturally your panel will be reflecting the bank controls you are using.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Just been experimenting a little with midi designer xw on the ipad midi2lr and lightroom 6

basically the ipad running with midi designer xw connects via wifi to midi2lr on my mac and then lightrooms sliders are operated on the ipad.

with midi designer xw being free you have a default layout and certain cc controllers enabled.
you just clear the settings in midi2lr pick a slider give it a wiggle and unassigned pops up and you map it to a slider in lightroom.

the signal is bi directional operating the slider in lightroom moves the slider in midi designer xw and moving the slider in midi designer xw moves the slider in lightroom.

The full version is €5.49 about $6.
The full version will allow you to design your own controls, and hopefully label them. I like it, hardware motorised controllers can easily cost $1000
and this seems to be better than any cheap hardware controller. You can buy a loupedeck but you might find the virtual ipad controller just as good.