Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
A Pretty Picture
a kusaridoi at the Eigenji Temple (永源寺), in Shiga Japan
Rob Cole used to be one of the more prolific engineers creating plugins for Adobe Lightroom, until two years ago when he seemed to have fallen off the face of the Internet. His web site vanished, taking with it his valuable trove of solutions for photographers, and at the same time, his active participation in online forums stopped.
For the past two years no one in this facet of his life knew what had happened, but I've finally learned today that Rob passed away unexpectedly in January 2015.
This situation brings to mind “On the Permanence of One’s Online (and Offline) Presence” from seven years ago, but in this case the online presence disappeared at the same time he did. Judging by the various messages from his users that I've received since Rob disappeared, I know his work had helped a lot of people. For what it's worth, I've reached out to his family to see whether they'd like to find a way to make it available again, if they even have access to it.
Anyway, since his disappearance was so unsettling, I'm posting this to provide some closure to those that knew him online. Rest in peace, Rob, and condolences to your family.
Rest in Peace Rob. Thank you for confirming what I (and others) had concluded. Rob Cole was always gracious and very helpful (as are you). Rob’s ‘Otto Toner’ plug-in is testament to his approach to helping users extend LR’s capabilities. It sits waiting to meet a revived requirement to auto-tone the cropped images content e.g. scans which have borders irrelevant to quick exposure adjustment.
London UK
Thanks for posting, Jeff. Rob and I shared a lot of emails way back when he was developing his framework for plugins. Have you considered reviving any of his work? I can’t find it (because his site is now gone) but I recall his license was wide open – use it and derive from it all you want.
I have his last version of the ExifMeta plugin and it’d be nice to polish it up.
Boston, USA
We miss him. Hope, he died peacefully.
Königswinter, Germany
I read in a post on the Adobe Lightroom help forums some months ago that he was killed in a boating accident in 2015. I’d also been wondering what had happened to him, as I only came to LR plugin development in the past year and found numerous links to resources he’d created which were all broken. I’d suspected he’d passed away. Shortly after I saw the post, it seemed a moderator had removed it (perhaps as an unsubstantiated rumor, I don”t know). Anyway, it is sad that he’s gone and his work, too.
If (some of his) work really was released with an unrestrictive license and people still have the latest versions of his framework, etc, maybe someone could put it on Github and we could work to build and extend it. That would be a good place for it, since Github is less likely to fall off the face of the earth than an individual’s website and it provides a great platform for collaborative work.
Thanks much for posting this. Rob was a great contributor to the Lightroom community, and he has been missed greatly these past two years.
Rest in Peace Rob!
It makes me very sad to read this post. The last two years I always hoped Rob will return like a phoenix and go on with his great work.
I used and still use a lot of his very useful plugins – to name just a few: ExifMeta, FolderCollection, FileRenamer or the Scripts interface. All these great plugins helped me to solve problems with LR that I could not solve otherwise. I am still very thankful for Rob’s great work.
I am lucky that I had the chance to exchange a few e-mails with Rob and followed a lot of this discussions on the LR forum.
Goodbye Rob, we will remember you!
@Jeffrey, fyi: I took myself the freedom to link to this page at Adobe’s LR SDK forum. I hope this was in your sense.
I support your efforts took reach out took his family to resurrect his work. It may be a long haul
, as I’ve seen others & myself try it. But it’s worth it for worthwhile work.
Rob’s website with his shared code and general Lightroom plug-in experiences & tips have been invaluable in the development of the plug-ins I’ve produced. Very sad news. Thanks for everything you did for the community, Rob.
Thanks for closing this mystery. He will definitely be missed. I have a bunch of the plugins downloaded if anybody wants to host a central repository.
Hi, Bryn. I was about to upload one of Rob’s plugins to GitHub. If you want to message me, I’d be happy to take what you have and add it to the mix. I’m dave at dave burns photo dot com (no spaces of course).
Cheers,
db
Rest in peace Rob.
Finally I now know what has happened to Rob, it is sad to read.
I have been using Rob’s great plugins for years and there where very good, especially his ISO Detailer plugin. I have been looking for new download resources for months, after a new Windows and Lightroom install I lost the master files.
Would love to see a re-make of his great work.
I wasn’t aware of this post until now. As part of an effort to resurrect his tools, I opened a GitHub organization over https://github.com/orgs/RobColeLr/, coincidentally shortly before this post was published.
For anyone interested in collecting his work, feel free to collaborate there.
Kolen, a couple of others have also captured some Rob’s plugins, and they may have more recent versions than you:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/9318520#9318520
https://forums.adobe.com/message/9477017#9477017
https://forums.adobe.com/message/9662000#9662000
Perhaps you could contact them via the LR forum and merge your efforts.
Finally. At leasts the news is confirmed. Too sad. Rest in peace Rob. – sorry it is a bit late.
I am long time user of Rob’s TreeSync Publisher plug, and it helps me A LOT. I downloaded from the original website years ago, and then somehow the website vanished, and people were asking where did Rob go? Hope nothing bad happened with him…
Anyway if anyone want to continue to develop the treesync publisher, you are welcome contacting me and perhaps I can send out the package (v11). Currently it is all right although some minor bugs, but it is handy in my work flow.
Leon
I didn’t know this. Sad news. Rob had an influence on me getting my job done with apps and photos. Thank you Rob, rest in peace.
I’m like Leon. Regular user of rc Treesync and just sent it on to Dave Burns for Github. I’ve gotten used to the way it works but worried it’ll break with a new version of LR like rc_File Renamer did with LR7. Has anyone else switched from Rob’s plugin to Jeffrey’s using Mirror collections? Any tips/warnings. Debating how to publish my 2018 collections to HD…
Hi, all. I’m still trying to get TreeSync from Seb but in the meantime, I have just pushed 4 more Rob Cole plugins to GitHub: KeywordConsolidator, OddJobs, OpenInWhatever, and ScrewAutoSync. They are here: https://github.com/DaveBurns?tab=repositories.
db
Just to let people know (sorry so late) that Dave updated treesync. It needed one more fix for a later LR update after that and that’s the latest fork on Github – seems to be working. Amazing tools and still chugging away with them seven years after he passed away. I love JF’s mirror – but my original hierarchy was set up with Rob’s and I can’t make it work with my naming convention using JF’s tool. And it’s been so long I’ve forgotten what I was even struggling with.