Adobe Lightroom Beta

[GeneW]

In case you haven't seen this, Adobe has released a free beta of Lightroom for Windows. It was previously available only for Macs.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/?trackingid=IFQK

I've only tried it on one photo but rather liked what I saw, initially. It's simpler and more intuitive than Photoshop and geared exclusively to photo editing. I'll need to play with it for awhile to get the feel of it. Here's a shot I converted to B&W and toned with Lightroom.

Gene

 

[rbiemer]

Gene,
Thanks for the heads up! I'm not going to download it just yet--I'm getting ready to get a new computer--don't really have the room to spare on my hard drive now. So I book marked the page so I can try it in a month or so.
Rob

 

[Socke]

Just downloaded it to my Dell 8200 notebook, Pentium 4 Mobile 2GHz, 1024MB RAM, Nvidia 440 with 32MB, 30GB Harddisk, 1600x1200 15" display.

Importing some 125 files via 11MBit/s Wireless Lan from my fileserver feels faster than with ACDSee 8 Pro.

Compared to Rawshooter Premium it shows all pictures, not only the RAW files.
Adjustments on RAW files are pretty fast, near real time, on my notebook.

All in all I'm impressed so far, I have to play with it some time.

Especialy the developer funktion has more options than I had now. A grayscale mixer with not just red, yellow, green but cyan, blue and magenta added.
Split Toning for highlights and shaddows for hue and saturation.
Six color HSL color Tuning for Hue, Ssaturation and Luminance.
Detail sharpening, smoothing and noise redeuction, there I miss seperated luminance and color noise correction.
Lens Corrections for fringing Red/Cyan and Blue/Yellow as well as Vignetting .
Camera Calibration for shadow tint, red, green and blue hue and saturation.

 

[dcsang]

Just a warning for those who have a great deal of RAW photos (because that's really what Lightroom is used for - RAW processing) - you may run into some sluggish behaviour unless you have a VERY recent processor and a whack of RAM (i.e. 2GB + ).

I've been using Lightroom for the past month on my MacBook and it's running nicely (although it REALLY pushes the 2.0GHZ Intel Core Duo processor to max) but I've read recent threads on another forum that complain about slow/sluggish behaviour on Windows systems.

Cheers
Dave

 

[BJ Bignell]

From the description on the site, they're really pushing the idea of enhancing your workflow over the idea of image processing. From those who have used it, how does it compare for image processing to GIMP and Photoshop?

And, is there anyone here who can compare it to Apple's Aperture package?

 

[dcsang]

From the description on the site, they're really pushing the idea of enhancing your workflow over the idea of image processing. From those who have used it, how does it compare for image processing to GIMP and Photoshop?

And, is there anyone here who can compare it to Apple's Aperture package?

Can't speak to GIMP or Aperture but as to Photoshop - it's better than Photoshop alone - it is, in my opinion, a more "natural" workflow (for the lack of a better word). I've used Capture One, Raw Shooter and just Photoshop and I think that the workflow out of Lightroom is far better than all of these. It refreshes files faster (again, this is just my opinion) than photoshop alone - the "default" adjustments to RAW files are more natural looking than those from Raw Shooter or Capture 1 and seem to mimic the defaults out of ACR but are better than ACR.

If you don't have a huge amount of images you may not experience a huge improvement but if you do, I think Lightroom will be "the bomb" once the full release drops later this year.

Dave

 

[BJ Bignell]

If you don't have a huge amount of images you may not experience a huge improvement but if you do, I think Lightroom will be "the bomb" once the full release drops later this year.

I'm guessing that it will be the "bomb", because it'll cause my wallet to explode! Professional software like that is always so expensive...

 

[dcsang]

I'm guessing that it will be the "bomb", because it'll cause my wallet to explode! Professional software like that is always so expensive...

Actually.. if they keep it "in line" with other RAW converters it should come in around $300 USD tops.. a lot less than the stand alone version of Photoshop.

Dave

 

[GeneW]

I noticed some sluggishness at times, and I run a pretty fast machine, but that's to be expected in any beta. It's full of debug code and non-optimized routines. When it goes 'gold' the debug code is stripped and the code optimized.

I'll need to play with it a bit longer. I think the workflow sequences are intuitive but I'm so used to Photoshop CS2 at this point, I'm not sure where the fine-tuning controls are or how to use them in Lightroom.

I like beta's. By the time it bombs, I'll at least have a good sense of whether or not it goes on my wish list for purchase.

Gene

 

[Oh Two]

Okay, I finally gave Lightroom a shake. It's pretty good but more inconvenient for renaming and copying than Nattawork's Photogrid (I think it's overkill). It is far faster loading the images than Photogrid but doesn't rely on caching either. I suppose one can't have it both ways. Photogrid is cheap (I think $15) but has none of the manipulative options or export to print or web options either (but one can export to Photshop). It is great at sorting and makes a good rudimentary slide show.

Subcollections (subsorts) in Lightroom are easily managed but can't be saved or exported in toto to another folder as easily as Photogrid can. Lightroom is great for printing and makes a rudimentary web page.

Lightroom is faster than iPhoto (at caching) but not as fast as Picture Arena ($20). Picture Arena also has the same export incoveniences, but does have nearly the same image manipulations that it will batch process. I tried the white point presets of both but I doubt that I will use them much as I prefer to do that manually. However, Picture Arena will NOT batch process RAW.

If Lightroom is more than $20 I won't buy it. I still shoot a lot of film.

Here come the flames!: I think RAW is a waste of time, therefore, so is Lightroom. When digital cameras finally went to jpeg it was a Godsend, why retreat to the bad old days? Lightroom and RAW are for the nervous fidgety type A personalities who can't keep their hands still and always overcook their steaks and eggs.

 

[Nachkebia]

I will use it for librery managment, but will still edit my single raw files in Nikon capture

 

[kaiyen]

Skipping a few posts...I've used lightroom on the mac along with aperture for a few weeks now, and am about to install the windows beta.

Neither is designed to replace Photoshop. There are some advanced things that you simply need PS for, no question. Both lightroom and aperture are digital workflow tools more than anything else. That's a very important distinction.

allan

 

[dcsang]

Here come the flames!: I think RAW is a waste of time, therefore, so is Lightroom. When digital cameras finally went to jpeg it was a Godsend, why retreat to the bad old days? Lightroom and RAW are for the nervous fidgety type A personalities who can't keep their hands still and always overcook their steaks and eggs.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH !!!!

Oh man.. that was brilliant..

Still laughing,
Dave

 

[GeneW]

Here come the flames!: I think RAW is a waste of time, therefore, so is Lightroom. When digital cameras finally went to jpeg it was a Godsend, why retreat to the bad old days? Lightroom and RAW are for the nervous fidgety type A personalities who can't keep their hands still and always overcook their steaks and eggs.

Now wait a minute

Some of us A types cook our steaks and eggs to perfection! Not to mention our stir frys and our perfect al-dente pastas and superbly brewed coffee. Sheesh, that's what makes us A types

You're happy with JPG only, fine. But mediocrity doesn't appeal to all of us

Gene

 

[Trius]

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH !!!!

Oh man.. that was brilliant..

Still laughing,
Dave

LOL... but I consider JPG to be overcooking. Give me a high end gas range with minute control, not a microwave with only a few settings. I want to seduce the meat into sublime completion, not rush to the final ....

Edit: Oops! Didn't see Gene's reply. We're a team!

 

[dcsang]

LOL... but I consider JPG to be overcooking. Give me a high end gas range with minute control, not a microwave with only a few settings. I want to seduce the meat into sublime completion, not rush to the final ....

Edit: Oops! Didn't see Gene's reply. We're a team!

*wipes tears from eyes and recomposes himself*

Whew.. oh man.. that was one seriously long laugh....

Ok.. now.... wrt RAW vs JPEG - to each his own but, imnsho, during many a wedding shoot - when one is capturing the moment and not paying attention to things like, oh, battery power on one's flash unit (since the flash is being used because even at ISO 3200 you can only get 1/15 at F1.2), and inevitably the flash fades away... RAW allows you to save files that are 2 stops under; easily and painlessly. Images and moments are captured and saved rather than being trashed because even though the moment would have been caught with JPEG; the image would have been too underexposed to be useful.

Dave

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Just downloaded it to my Dell 8200 notebook, Pentium 4 Mobile 2GHz, 1024MB RAM, Nvidia 440 with 32MB, 30GB Harddisk, 1600x1200 15" display.

You missed the RPMs, contrast ratio, and GPS coordinates

Yeah, I got the e-mail from Adobe last night. Haven't installed it yet (still scanning some rolls from two months ago, and a few from a photowalk sbug and I took this Sunday --he is in town for a few more hours).

Looking forward to it, if the reviews are any indication.

 

[jlw]

From the description on the site, they're really pushing the idea of enhancing your workflow over the idea of image processing. From those who have used it, how does it compare for image processing to GIMP and Photoshop?

Lightroom isn't simply a raw converter or an image processing application. The idea of it is to be a tool to MANAGE libraries of raw images -- so that you don't have to open and resave an image in another format in order to do basic corrections, make prints, generate a web page, etc. The idea is that the raw file is all you'll need to archive in your image library -- you don't have to generate JPEGs for cataloging, Photoshop files for printing, etc., unless you need to do retouching or some other specialized function.

That means it's closer in concept to Apple's Aperture image-management application than it is to the GIMP or Photoshop or whatever. About the closest equivalent I can think of among familiar products is the Adobe Camera Raw converter when combined with the Adobe Bridge viewing application. Bridge lets you view large numbers of raw files and then invoke Camera Raw to set cropping, rotation, and basic exposure adjustments -- basically everything you need to do to select, screen and proof a shoot. These adjustments are stored as "metadata," either in the file itself for formats that support it (such as DNG) or as an .xmp "sidecar" file for formats that don't support metadata (such as Epson .ERF files.) Because the adjustments exist only in the metadata, they don't alter the contents of the actual camera-original file, so you can go back and change your cropping, exposure, or curve adjustments any time in the future without data loss.

The main differences between Lightroom (or Aperture) and Bridge are that Bridge doesn't provide any way to manage multiple batches of photos, and it doesn't have any support for printing or web-page generation; you have to go into Photoshop to do those things. Lightroom (and Aperture) have tools for organizing your entire body of work into "shoots;" assigning keywords to them and grouping them into collections; selecting and organizing images from them; and printing proof images or generating web pages or emailable "slide shows" from the selected images so that clients can review your take.

One caveat that's all too familiar to Mac users of the beta, but which will be new for the Windows users: even though Lightroom comes from Adobe, its development was started at Macromedia BEFORE Adobe bought them out. The biggest consequence of this is that it isn't compatible with Adobe Camera Raw. That means that if you've invested a lot of time in Bridge setting cropping and exposure adjustments on your raw files, those adjustments will NOT carry over into Lightroom -- you'll have to go back and redo everything again.

Also, while Bridge lets you invoke Adobe Camera Raw to open a raw image in Photoshop, retouch it, and then resave it again, Lightroom can't do that -- if you use its "Edit in Photoshop" function, your raw file gets saved out as a 16-bit TIFF (no, not even a PSD!) that you then have to save separately after editing. This kind of defeats the concept of only needing to archive one file (the raw file.)

I'm not complaining -- the idea of managing raw file libraries directly is a great one, and probably the way the way the industry is going to go for high-volume users. And I'm sure Adobe will smooth over some of the rough edges before this becomes a retail release product. Until then, though, don't forget that they're calling it a "beta" for a reason!

 

[rich815]

I downloaded and fooled with it some. Not bad but I still prefer PS. I guess I'm just too used to PS using it since 4.0.

 

[JeffGreene]

A Plus for Rawshooter Premium Owners

A Plus for Rawshooter Premium Owners

All owners of of Rawshooter Premium (pre July 2006) will automatically be grandfathered into ownership of Lightroom 1.0. The Digital Imaging Poobah at Adobe posted the following for disgruntled owners of Rawshooter Premium which was discontinued following Adobe's acquisition. See the post below copied from the Pixmantec User Forums.

"As the head of product management for professional digital imaging at Adobe, let me give my apologies for not having provided more information to date on the acquisition. We have not communicated as well as we should have. I can assure you, however, that many of us at Adobe have been reading all of your concerns here and in other forums over the past two weeks, and we have also had many conversations with Michael Tapes to get his feedback. We are working hard to resolve issues and put the right plans in place for Pixmantec customers. We are still hammering out details on some things, however, so I'm afraid that I can't provide all of the answers that you might like just yet. What I can say is the following:

Whether any of you ever purchase another product from Adobe, you are now all Adobe customers in our eyes, and your satisfaction matters to us just as much as any other customer. We can't expect you to be happy about the fact that we're discontinuing the RawShooter products. What we can do, however, is make this transition as painless as possible. That means keeping this forum going as long as it's needed, providing an easy transition (both in cost and in workflow) to other products, and listening to all of your product concerns and requests.

Let me also state emphatically that the goal of this acquisition is not about taking another raw converter off the market. Our goal at Adobe is providing the best possible photography solutions, and we recognized the ability of the Pixmantec team to help us do that. The discontinuation of RawShooter is just an unfortunate byproduct of that decision. While you may not feel today that this decision was the best thing for Pixmantec customers, our goal is that one or two years from now, as you enjoy the fruits of this partnership, you do feel that way.

Thanks for your passion and your patience, and please stay tuned...

- Kevin Connor "

The upgrade information can be found here.