2. Say it's infeasible to have enough compute locally to do basic tasks

3. Force usage of centrally controlled, subscription-based cloud software.

4. Capitalism win???!

I have quite explicit and strong instructions (e.g. don't write massive comments, use existing functionality, etc.) in CLAUDE.md files which seem to get bypassed surprisingly quickly when doing real tasks. Yet if I tell it these things in a prompt during the task, it performs way better.

Result is I'm trying to resist adding more and more things to CLAUDE.md files which in some scenarios it does well but in other scenarios totally ignores and messes up.

When I want a commute to work/family/friends that isn't 2 hours: invalid desire

Hmmm

And the reasons people try to give... Just hilarious to evaluate from a high level. Oh, no we can't have good housing because supply and demand has determined what we have is optimal. Oh actually even if you did adjust supply and demand, it wouldn't fix the issue anyway, so don't try anything. Ah no you can't have more houses because then how will people commute?! Unsolvable! There aren't enough houses in a reasonable distance from urban centres? God well how about you just build a house in the outback where the supermarket is 200km away then! No we can't have more houses because then it will attract . But think of the children - how will they survive without a 10 acre backyard to play in??

It's so disgustingly painfully obvious to any reasonable person that we have no reason to have a housing crisis other than certain people collecting those fat stacks of cash, sweet cash.

I want: RAW input, light/tone controls, colour grading, detail controls, lens corrections, basic masking, nondestructive adjustments, library management, and a tone curve that doesn't look like dog shit.

I do NOT want: complex layered editing, paintbrushes, preset styling junk, complex geometric transformations, a million menus, video editing, etc.

The more features you add, the more you detract from the core workflow. And all these other editors have watered down their core workflow too much for me, sadly. Lightroom might be corporate junk but at least it does the basics well and mostly gets out of my way.

Capture One is a new name for though, I might give that a try. It looks pretty promising.

Which if it is, it better be damn good at it. Adobe may generally suck and Lightroom has many rough edges, but it has streamlined its workflow very well.

This is why I (photographer) haven't switched from Lightroom to an alternative. It's because all the alternatives are targetting different workflows or have a pretty half-assed RAW workflow. We don't need a photo workflow tacked on to something else, we need a proper good workflow made from scratch.