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Software Graphics

Adobe Lightroom Review 181

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the photo-editing-for-the-common-man dept.
onethumb writes "Andy over at Digital Grin got his hands on a pre-release copy of Adobe's hot new app 'Lightroom' last week and has a nice review up. Adobe Lightroom, is designed to go head-to-head with Apple's own recently released Aperture. Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?"
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Adobe Lightroom Review More

Adobe Lightroom Review

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  • Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?"

    And it wasn't before?
    • Oh, it was easy enough to figure out how to do most things basic users would try to do...it was just a bit intimidating. Getting someone to use something isn't about making it easy as much as it's making it look like something they might be able to figure out.

    • Re:Dumb Question? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *

      Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?"

      And it wasn't before?

      I certainly didn't think so. I don't find Adobe Photoshop to the the least bit intuitive. The online help is fairly useless, unless I assume you already know what you are doing. I spent $600 buying this a couple years ago and still do most of my photo editing in other tools because they are a bit more obvious how to navigate. Photoshop may be a breeze once you've been trained on it.

      I've been a bit put off, too,

      • Re:Dumb Question? (Score:4, Funny)

        by gardyloo ( 512791 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:11PM (#14431280)
        Photoshop may be a breeze once you've been trained on it. [...] I tried to find a class at the local community college, but they went through a lot of spending cuts and that was one of the programs that was cropped.

              Now that's some powerful software -- it can crop itself!
        • Now that's some powerful software -- it can crop itself!

          Alas, not more powerful than the school's regents, who with the stroke of a pen or an 'Aye' can lay waste to an Arts department.

          all in favor of increasing the board's stipend say Aye!

      • Re:Dumb Question? (Score:3, Informative)

        by BushCheney08 ( 917605 )
        Try Adobe's Classroom In a Book series. You most likely won't find them at your local Borders, but order it from Amazon or Adobe directly. They cover almost all of the tools and their proper usage via workalong exercises. The books come with CDs of sample files, and the lessons walk you through manipulation of those files/images to achieve the end result. While they may not go in-depth into some of the more esoteric stuff, it gives you a good idea of what certain tools/functions are for, which you can then
        • Try Adobe's Classroom In a Book series.

          Thanks, I'll give it a try. I'm getting a higher-end digital camera to do some Astrophotography with and would like to be able to use PS for the work.

          • Something to keep in mind is that you may want to hunt down the appropriate version of the book to match your version of Photoshop. They sometimes move a few things around in the menus and toolbars, so if you're using a newer book with an older version of Photoshop, you may get stuck a few times. If you're a troubleshooter, you'll get through it eventually and also probably figure out why they moved the function/feature. I learned on version 6 using a book for version 4, so these sorts of things became clea
            • Something to keep in mind is that you may want to hunt down the appropriate version of the book to match your version of Photoshop.

              Already have it tagged, thanks. I'll doublecheck my version when I get home, though I believe it is 6.0

              • Re:Dumb Question? (Score:3, Informative)

                by ozmanjusri ( 601766 )
                The quickest way to learn Photoshop is to participate in competitions at sites which include forums. If you like an effect in an image, you can ask how things were done. http://photoshopcontest.com/ [photoshopcontest.com] is one with a strong forum section, while http://www.fark.com/ [fark.com] and http://www.worth1000.com/ [worth1000.com] have some pretty cool comps as well.

                Many of the experienced people in the competitions are generous about sharing tips and techniques. Some can be real pricks though, so develop a thick skin...
      • What can Photoshop do that PSP (ex-JASC, now Corel) can't? This is a genuine question. I've never bought or used Photoshop because the amount of use it would get just doesn't warrant the expenditure. But I use PSP from time to time to make posters; I found the learning process fairly painless and I don't see much missing from it.

        Is Photoshop a magnitude better or just slightly more powerful at certain things?
        • At least as of last time I looked:

          PSP has no colour management (it can actually silently screw up anything non sRGB)
          PSP can't do >8bit per channel

          For serious work those are frequently show stoppers. Those are just the first two limits I ran into.

          "Is PhotoShop a magnitude better ?"

          This is like saying "is [high end DSLR] a magnitude better than [cheap compact]" - the answer is that it all depends what you are trying to do. If you only care about megapixels, buy
          • Paint Shop Pro 10 (PSPX) now has color management features and can also do 16-bit per channel (with some limitations). It's no Photoshop but it's probably good enough for >90% of people.

            From its "What's New" file:

            Full support of 16-bit images allows professional photographers to work with their high-fidelity images without compromising quality. High-fidelity images, which use thousands of shades per color, are no longer subject to the 8-bit limit of 256 shades per color set by previous versions of the

      • Re:Dumb Question? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by shmlco ( 594907 )
        "I don't find Adobe Photoshop to the the least bit intuitive."

        It's not meant to be, or rather it is, but mostly it's not because you don't understand the paradigms on which it's based. It's a professional-level tool, designed for graphic arts professionals who're going to be trained in it's use and using it day-in and day-out. If all you want to do is fix the red-eye from your 3MP P&S, then use Elements or some other hand-holding piece of software.

        From a similar perspective, Linux command lines and

      • To tell you the truth... I dont think classes would be the way to go in order to learn photoshop... Its much more effective to do a trial and error approach and mess around with the tools until you get what you want. If you MUST be taught.. then i suggest attempting some of the 2,000,000+ free tutorials out there for photoshop, they really do help. And these are comprehensive.. most are step-by-step and provide images and settings to get the same results. Taking classes for photoshop seems a waste of mon
        • I used to post a lot to a community board over on Delphi Forums and the big thing then was signature art.

          Hundreds of women with nothing better to do (and a few guys) would sit around chopping up copyrighted artwork (for the most part) and putting usernames on them.
          Then came the effects, glitter, sparkling, gold, fades, weaving and glass ... you get the idea.

          Most of these people did a google for "glass text" or something similar and came back with tutorials up the wazoo for using a $600 softwa
    • Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?"
      And it wasn't before?

      In my office (where I'm one of the most-experienced Photoshop users), I refer to Adobe's attempts at user-friendliness as "Job Security." Nobody argues.

    • Re: This is not a "traditional" photo app! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here we go again, people asking why any of this new corporate software is necessary when we have Photoshop, Jasc, or GIMP.

      The reason this category is gaining traction is that this is not the same as the old-line photo editors. Aperture, Lightroom, etc. are more along the lines of Capture One, Camera Raw/Bridge, Bibble, and other pro-photoshoot-oriented batch RAW processing tools. For this particular purpose of quickly culling and processing entire shoots of RAW camera sensor data, the "single document"-cent
    • No, digital photography is NOT simple and painless. All the parts are there but the physical effort involved to view, tag, correct and edit 500 images after a day or weekend of shooting is enough to make you want to put it off but you can't because the backlog of unprocessed digital image files just backs up. Programs like this do NOT compete with Photoshop or Gimp. PS and Gimp are _editors_ These new programs are "workflow" organizers. They help you sort through a big stack of photos, find the best on

  • One more adjective (Score:2, Informative)

    by op12 ( 830015 )
    Powerful, easy, expensive: Aperture = $499
    • $499 is a bit steep and as an amateur that'd just like an easy way to manage my photos, it's so not worth it. I'm wondering, are there any open source equivalents to these programs. There's GIMP as an equivalent (arguably) to Photoshop, but there's a host of photo management apps coming out and I don't know of an OSS equivalent.

      Currently I use Picassa which is easy to use and good at keeping track of all my photos, but it doesn't have the most powerful selection of tools to do image correction. I prefer

  • requirements (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tibor the Hun ( 143056 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @05:56PM (#14431136)
    One thing that seems nice about Lightroom is that right now it only requires a 1GHz G4. Aperture on the other hand needs at least a powerbook 1.25 G4.

    • Mac-only for now (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Adobe certainly knows how to cater to its target audience [atspace.com]. Consider this: Among those of us most likely [atspace.com] to use this software [atspace.com], a significant [atspace.com] number would feel slighted if Adobe were to release it for Windows or Linux first. Just as importantly, we recognize that software designed first and foremost for Mac is likely to be of higher quality, with a more careful attention paid to elegance [atspace.com] and beauty [atspace.com]. Indeed, I for one look forward to integrating Adobe Lightroom into my photography workflow.

    • Sigh...misinformed submitter. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @07:02PM (#14431667)
      That's because Aperture is doing its layer processing in real-time using CoreImage and storing it in an SQLite database through CoreData.

      As for the submission:
      Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?

      It already was with apps like iPhoto (easy), Photoshop (powerful), and others. Aperture is geared toward professional photographers processing RAW format images. The submitter obviously has no idea what these apps are and what they're for--they're not supposed to be consumer-level photo-editing apps. They're professional photography pre-processing applications.
  • Aperture is awesome, and I assume Lightroom will be as well.

    I'm an amateur photographer (I just have a D50 right now as my first DSLR but was an SLR user for almost a decade beforehand). I love the new line of DSLRs, they are completely a step ahead of the SLRs for my needs and the quality is amazing. I've ruined a few rolls of film in the past, so I'm glad I'm much safer with the digital storage.

    My off-topic question that sort of remains on-topic is this: With all the cheap labor available online (from

    • Re:Where to get decent photo editing done [a bit O (Score:5, Funny)

      by Shimmer ( 3036 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:04PM (#14431208) Journal
      I think most photographers enjoy working on their own photos.

      If your time is so valuable, you could just hire a photographer to take the pictures for you and skip that chore as well.
      • You're right that a lot of photographers like working on their photos. For me, hobby photography came directly from the fact that I am on the move so much -- some days I'll be out and about for almost 14 hours! I see interesting things every day -- accidents, government workers slacking off, funny occurences, even saw a UFO once (I think it was a bird caught in the wind, it was just unidentifiable).

        I like taking the photos, and I think I've become pretty good at it. I think the photos would be better wit
        • When you say "soup up", you mean to:

          Correct the color

          Remove blemishes

          Correct contrast

          Crop, rotate, etc... the list is long. However, it does take a professional eye and a knowledge of how to "correct" the images via software to do it correctly.

          BTW, it's also a much easier job (souping up...) when the photograph is taken by a professional. They tend to get the original image much closer to intent. Not only does the image look better (closer to natural), but time to "soup up" is minimal.
    • does anyone know of good websites where I can upload my photographs and let others "compete" openly to making them look better?

      The resultant photo will then be a collaboration. What you were seeing through the viewfinder when you took it, and what they think it should look like.

      If that's ok with you, then go for it. But it won't be 'yours' any more.

      I'll be happy to pay up to $5 per photo

      If it takes an hour to d/l, analyze, process, and send back...well...$5/hour isn't worth getting out of bed for.

      • The resultant photo will then be a collaboration. What you were seeing through the viewfinder when you took it, and what they think it should look like.

        If that's ok with you, then go for it. But it won't be 'yours' any more.

        I repudiate copyright and ownership of thought and content anyway. Everything I write, code, photograph or paint is free for all to use (in the public domain). Yet I don't mind collaborating, in fact, I prefer it.

        If it takes an hour to d/l, analyze, process, and send back...well...$5/h
        • - But it won't be 'yours' any more.

          I meant 'yours' in the sense of what it was supposed to be. What the image is suppoed to represent. What you were thinking when you took the shot.

          Not 'yours' as in copyright or ownership.

          • An originalist :) You'd get along well with my home theater fanatics (we strive to make our home theaters look correct, not always great).

            Actually, I just like to capture the image for memory-sake, but I've been told by friends and family that I should do something with the better ones. I don't really like clutter -- my better half is the one with all her painting and stuff up on the walls. I guess I'd like to get the images looking even better -- I've seen what pros can do, so I don't see what's wrong w

            • How about this idea? (Score:4, Funny)

              by switcha ( 551514 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:48PM (#14431563)
              does anyone know of good websites where I can upload my photographs and let others "compete" openly to making them look better?
              ...
              I pay to have my lawn mowed. I pay to have my house cleaned. I pay to have my food prepared. I pay to get driven around (sometimes). Why not pay to have my photos "corrected" or "enhanced"?

              Why don't you pay someone to find the answer to your original question?

    • While not necessarily what you're looking for, here's a cheap alternative: http://www.kodakgallery.com/KPTOverview.jsp? [kodakgallery.com]

      Kodak's Perfect Touch usually does a good job of enhancing pictures, yet it's an automatic process and consequently cheap and always available. YMMV
    • > I'll be happy to pay up to $5 per photo (even $20 in some cases) to have them cleaned up as needed by semi-pros or even pros.

      I used to do print work like 10 years ago, and this was a common service at pre-press shops and the like.
    • My off-topic question that sort of remains on-topic is this: With all the cheap labor available online (from students, amateurs and those trying to build portfolios of work), does anyone know of good websites where I can upload my photographs and let others "compete" openly to making them look better?

      Really there's only one place [fark.com] to enjoy serious photoshopping of images.... artistry I tell ya...

    • Re:Where to get decent photo editing done [a bit O (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:35PM (#14431465) Homepage
      I'll be happy to pay up to $5 per photo (even $20 in some cases) to have them cleaned up as needed by semi-pros or even pros. I'm sure there is a market for such a thing, but I just can't find it.

      The solution to your problem: take better photos.

      Some of my favourite photos make it to the printer absolutely untouched from when they came out the camera. The most I ever need to do is make minor adjustments to brightness and contrast, perform some extra cropping or rotate the image slightly. I mainly use iPhoto simply for its organisational abilities - it's great for that.

      Get to know your camera. Take your time over shots. Just because you have umpteen gigabytes of memory cards and take ten thousand RAW-format photos a day doesn't make you a PROPAR PHOTOGRAFER. The best lens in the world won't correct for poor technique.

      If your photos need endless work in Photoshop or similar to make them worth looking at, then you're probably doing something wrong...
      • Ditto. I've had too many people tell me that they'll "fix" it in PS. Some comments I've read question why they need to learn lighting, as they'll just do that in PS too. The same feeling seems to be pervasive among some film makers as well. Rather than spend 5 mintues to fix a shot, they'll just shoot it, and then throw $100,000 at the digital effects department to clean it up.
      • The solution to your problem: take better photos.

        Actually, I am quite happy with my photos as-is. When I have the time to take them into a good digital editing suite, I end up preferring them as a little tweaking can make a more vibrant picture. I'm not talking about pictures with crushed saturation or any major problems.

        These packages from the topic are made for a reason. There are people out there who bought them for whatever reason -- I'd like to utilize these people.

        I can spend 15 minutes or an hour

      • Re:Where to get decent photo editing done [a bit O (Score:5, Insightful)

        by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @08:21PM (#14432133)
        The solution to your problem: take better photos.

        Not helpful at all.

        The solution to just about everything is to do it better.

        Some of my favourite photos make it to the printer absolutely untouched from when they came out the camera.

        Impossible. Every photo is processed. Whether you do it yourself, or let the various attributes of the in-camera software, printer driver settings, and printer characteristics do it for you.

        If your photos need endless work in Photoshop or similar to make them worth looking at, then you're probably doing something wrong...

        You are exaggerating what the OP said. He just wants someone to post-process his images.

        Why shouldn't someone post-process? Even you admit to doing it (although you didn't mention adjusting curves, which is common among pros, while "brightness and contrast" is basic and crude (by pro standards)). Take any photo. Any. Take Ansel Adams' top best most perfect photo ever. Odds are it can look even better if a skilled person were to process it, purposefully adjusting various attributes of the photo. Why accept a mediocre photo if it's capable of being a great photo? Why accept a great photo if it could be a superb photo?

        But your advice, just take perfect photos and you won't want to post-process, is not helpful at all. It implies dada21 is so incredibly stupid that he never thought that maybe it would be desirable to take better photos to begin with. An implication which is wholly unwarranted.

        • Re:Where to get decent photo editing done [a bit O (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cpuh0g ( 839926 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @10:21PM (#14432698)
          Take Ansel Adams' top best most perfect photo ever. Odds are it can look even better if a skilled person were to process it, purposefully adjusting various attributes of the photo.

          Someone already did this - Ansel Adams.

          Not only did Adams carefully compose his pictures and often wait many hours and days for exactly the right lighting, he was a master of the darkroom and creating perfect prints. I seriously doubt that many people are capable of taking his originals and making them look any better than he did.

          Digital post-processing is analagous to working in a darkroom processing your own prints - it takes skill and vision. Rarely do any pictures go right from the film (or raw file) to print without any sort of processing or adjustments.

        • Blockquoth the poster:

          But your advice, just take perfect photos and you won't want to post-process, is not helpful at all.

          On the radio station I web-listen to (KFOG out of San Francisco), someone's running an ad for high-quality photo printing. In it, there's a caricature of an "elite" French photographer (complete with cheesy accent) who says,

          People ask me, "Marco, how do you make the people you photograph appear so beautiful?" and I tell them, It is easy -- I only photograph beautiful people! Wrinkles,

    • My off-topic question that sort of remains on-topic is this: [...] does anyone know of good websites where I can upload my photographs and let others "compete" openly to making them look better?

      Sounds like a use for amazon's mechanical turk [amazon.com]. I'm betting some form of this labor-exchange over the internet is gonna be huge. (I mean aside from wipro et al.)

      The idea is you submit tasks and assign a bounty. People with skills for your task can then do the work and submit a response. You pay them. It's tri

    • Doing simple photo cleanup (e.g. cropping, redeye, hue, saturation, colorbalance, lightness levels, contrast, simple airbrushing, simple compositing) is a pretty mellow learning curve and doesn't take much time to do properly. Because of this most photographers do it themselves since it A: saves money and B: gives them more control over the final look of the image.
      There are people who clean up photos professionally, but those tend to be cases where there is extensive editing to be done and the goal is usu
    • You said that you don't have the time, but you may want to consider taking the time to learn how to do this yourself anyway.

      Sure, there are a whole bunch of people that could edit your photograph in a technically correct fashion, but, from an artistic standpoint, how are they going to have any idea what you were thinking when you took the picture? You took the picture for a reason - you had something in mind when you took the picture - otherwise why would you have bothered?

      If you are worried about taking o

    • Worth 1000 [worth1000.com] has what you're looking for.

      It's famous for it's high quality photoshop contests, but you can also sponsor a corporate contest: http://www.worth1000.com/popup.asp?faq=265 [worth1000.com]. You'd upload your photos, set the prize price, and then let the competition begin. If you look around the site, you'll see that there's a lot of talent.
    • If you want it done right, have it done by professionals.

      Calypso Imaging [calypsoinc.com]in Santa Clara does what you want, as does West Coast Imaging [westcoastimaging.com] in Oakhurst.

      Both are studios that employ long-time professional photographers who apply their knowledge of photography and digital printing to make the best prints possible from your photographs. Calypso also offers workshops taught by people like Bill Atkinson [natureimages.com] and Charlie Cramer [charlescramer.com], in case you want to edit your own images and simply output them on printers like the LIghtjet, C

  • professional tools (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BushCheney08 ( 917605 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:03PM (#14431201)
    Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?

    Both tools are very clearly aimed (and labeled as such) at the professional market. Pros will always have a need for more in depth features than a typical consumer or home user. With the ability to properly use those tools comes a need to understand them (aka, a learning curve). So, to answer your questions: yes on the powerful part, no on the easy part.
    • The other things professionals need more than amateurs is work flow. The ability to consistently and quickly process high-resolution images, typically in camera raw formats, and keep an original digital negative. They're also more concerned with modest light, contrast etc. adjustments, having usually framed the picture properly beforehand. Most consumer cameras produce jpegs, and most consumers shoot jpegs even when the camera can do raw because it's a waste of memory and time. They are more interested in c
  • Only for OSX? Pity!

  • Lightroom really lean on features (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:09PM (#14431254)
    Yes, I know it's an Alpha-Beta (non-feature complete Beta) but it's missing a lot of stuff you'd expect even from a first draft at this kind of app:

    * No PSD support for external editing of files (16-bit TIFF)

    * No "Copy Image" (much less Versions or Stacks as Aperture has them).

    * No Crop or Rotate

    It does have some nice features. The printing and slideshow part are well done. The Lightroom take on Levels is rather interetsing and I think easier for people who do not use Photoshop much to use.

    However Aperture at this point has a serious lead out of the gate, that combined with the Lightroom team also having to try and support a Windows build eventually may let Apple not only keep but increase the lead.

    Also I have to say I am concerned with the caching strategy in Lightroom - every image has a same-size JPG created along with decreasing half sizes images as well. That can take up a lot of space. And the editing information for any given image seems to only be stored in the central database, not in sidecar files alongside the image. Thankfully they do back up this database automatically.

    Some people will be happy to be able to use images in-place in directories. However as there is no support for conepts like versions or stacks people may be less happy when those harder-to-map kinds of things make it in the program and start making the life of a directory more complicated.

    One good thing is that the competiton between Apple and Adobe in this space should yield a pretty solid application over time. I just hope Adobe is in this for the long run, and the release (currently planned around the end of 2006 according to the FAQ) has a pretty solid product.

    • Also I have to say I am concerned with the caching strategy in Lightroom - every image has a same-size JPG created along with decreasing half sizes images as well. That can take up a lot of space.

      This is called a mipmap [wikipedia.org], and it's not as bad as you'd think. A mipmap representation occupies only a third more space than just the original image.

      • From a user "Ian Wood" on another forum (DPReview):

        For reference (going by creation dates), the 65MB TIFF resulted in six preview files: 16KB, 48KB, 156KB, 532KB, 1,8MB and 5.9MB

        5.9MB + 1.8MB + a bit more is around 8MB, or around 12% storage increase. To me it seems overkill if an image is very large to hold this data on disc.

        Aperture stores a large thumbnails at a maximum size of 1024x680 (for a 2:3 ration image) and some progressivly smaller ones from there, which gives you quick and large previews witho

    • Wha? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tacokill ( 531275 )
      Ok, I don't understand about 3/4 of what you wrote. But I do know what cropping and rotating is.

      It is unforgivable if those two features are not available. Jesus christ...it's 2005. They might as well rename it "MS Paint" if there is no cropping.

    • "Lightroom - every image has a same-size JPG created along with decreasing half sizes images as well. That can take up a lot of space."

      Then you should be even more concerned with Aperture, as there you have to import the entire image into its database.

      • Then you should be even more concerned with Aperture, as there you have to import the entire image into its database.

        With Aperture, I have the oriignal master (in the database), and versions that take up no space beyond the image cache that is (as noted) a maximum of 1024x680.

        With Lightroom, I have the original master (either in a directory or in your own file) and as noted an image cache that takes up about 12% of the space. Now if you want another "version" that's another image - double the size - and th
      • The image isn't stored in a database, it's stored on disk in it's original form, just in a directory structure of Aperture's choosing. Aperture is actually VERY efficient with disk space -- it keeps your original image and a few XML files describing what was done to it to produce any number of versions. So you can have an original and six derivative images and it will take up the same space as the original plus a couple of K.
    • However Aperture at this point has a serious lead out of the gate, that combined with the Lightroom team also having to try and support a Windows build eventually may let Apple not only keep but increase the lead.

      Excuse me? The fact that there will be a Windows version means Lightroom will pretty much TOAST Aperture as long as Apple has NO DECENT LAPTOPS. Sure, that may change, but as it stands now, a top of the range (1.67/2GB) Powerbook will not run Aperture well and even Photoshop on it trembles at the s
      • Excuse me? The fact that there will be a Windows version means Lightroom will pretty much TOAST Aperture as long as Apple has NO DECENT LAPTOPS. Sure, that may change

        May? That's the whole point of the Intel switch. Even if there are no pro Intel laptops by the end of today, there will be before the end of the year.

        Remember that the Adobe software is not even due to ship before the end of this year - and if you've used it you'd realize that is VERY optimistic. The clock on this doesn't even start until th
  • I've been using Xara, and I'm still anxiously awaiting the GPL release. If you just want a simple photo editor with great features like red-eye reduction and a simple user interface, I'd suggest trying it out.
    Like I said, they've announced that the whole suite is going GPL so it should end-up in most distros very quickly; but it's not released yet.

  • Adobe's Mighty Fall? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mpapet ( 761907 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:13PM (#14431293) Homepage
    Having worked with Adobe corporate before, It's my opinion that there isn't anyone there that can remember doing much of anything risky beyond going to a new restaurant for lunch.

    InDesign was created to take Quark Express down and Photoshop Elements was to prevent companies like ACDSystems from getting a foothold.

    The idea is to store, organize and evaluate quickly with reasonable color accuracy. Editing comes later. Does anyone else think it has so many editing features because they're built into a code base they are reusing?

    I doubt a legitimate threat to them exists in any of their markets. Could they be classified as a monopoly?
  • Andy over at Digital Grin got his hands on a pre-release copy of Adobe's hot new app 'Lightroom' last week

    FYI, that's not exactly a difficult feat. Adobe's been giving it away for free to the public on their website. [macromedia.com]

  • Lua! (Score:2)

    by cmason ( 53054 )
    From the about box:
    Lua the programming language

    It's cool to see folks like adobe using nifty languages like Lua [lua.org]. I've never used Lua but have been intrigued by it.

    Anyone know how Lua is used in Lightroom?

    -c

  • Another (p)review (Score:5, Informative)

    by FreeBSDbigot ( 162899 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:23PM (#14431369)
    Here's [luminous-landscape.com] another page that goes into the nitty-gritty a little more.
  • Odd that this is PPC code and not universal binary, what with Apple moving to Intel and all...
    • They wont release it yet because Apple hasn't come up with any final Intel platforms to actually run it on yet. Things may change at the last minute, etc. Right now they want something out for people to try and play with so they dont go and blow their wad on Aperature. Which happens to be their only competition right now, which is also probably why you haven't seen a Windows version. (Though, they claim they are putting extra work in for Vista, but we all know it'll be years and two service packs before mo
    • what.. with all of the legit X86-OSX users in the world!
    • Apple has specifically asked developers to not release builds with Intel code in them, until there is actual shipping Intel hardware.

      From a development perspective, for Xcode apps, it is a single checkbox. Testing, obviously, is a bit more work. But if Adobe has Intel developer Macs (a fair bet), they may already be doing these builds internally.
      • Apple has specifically asked developers to not release builds with Intel code in them, until there is actual shipping Intel hardware.

        Here's [sourceforge.net] two! [codingmonkeys.de] ;-)

        Although I suppose they're both things more likely to be used by developers with the appropriate Intel development hardware to run them on - I guess Apple's edict is more of a strong guideline than a definitive rule. It would be silly to bloat downloads of consumer software and add confusion for 99.99+% of the market, anyway, I imagine.
        • There's very little bloat, though. Making a dual-platform binary would probably add 1 or 2 MB to a 10 MB executable, and nobody (well, except someone who REALLY knew what they were looking for), could tell whether it was single-platform or dual-platform by looking at the binary. There's a small note in "Get Info" but that's it.

  • I prefer... (Score:3, Funny)

    by cyrax256 ( 845338 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:29PM (#14431418) Homepage

    Meh, I prefer Fireworks to do batch photo editing, and I'm still hoping for some great improvements on the next version...


    Oh, wait...

  • Finally getting easy? (Score:3, Funny)

    by know1 ( 854868 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:34PM (#14431450)
    It's been easy ever since i've known it. without any instruction whatsoever, within 10 minutes of my first go on photoshop (and bear in mind i was VERY drunk and *ahem* something else) i had managed to manipulate a picture to make it look like my mate was sucking some bloke off (with a really cheesy grin on his face and those grinning teeth hooked over the tip of the offending member).
    if that's not easy i don't know what is. if i can do it drunk and stoned first time, i'm sure joe six-pack can do it in half an hour. another good area where things keep getting easier is music production, where programs such as reason mean i know someone (drummer in one of my bands) managed to finish a whole song in reason, while on the same day asking me the brain exploding question of "where is the shift key?"
  • I have been using for a month and its incredble. I think of all the applications I have used for photo editing this one is the simplest for beginners but has icredible features for advanced users. It requires a pretty decent box but besides that its works and works well.
  • Aperture: superior interface/only on Macs.
    Adobe: superior compatibility with Photoshop CS2 (or so I've read)/available for major platforms.
  • What ever happend to jasc's paint shop pro ? i remember it being pretty good in the past ?

    Julien. http://free.hostdepartment.com/8/81fortune/ [hostdepartment.com]
    • Paintshop Pro is still very good, and still has a relatively faithful following. unfortunately, its niche (better than iphoto, cheaper than photoshop) has grown crowded (photoshop elements, GIMP, etc), so its name gets mentioned less, and, barring innovation, its days are probably numbered (Corel buying Jasc is unlikely to help).

  • Really a Macromedia app? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aclarke ( 307017 ) <spam@claPLANCKrke.ca minus physicist> on Monday January 09, 2006 @06:59PM (#14431640) Homepage
    It's also worth noting that this might be a Macromedia application, rather than an Adobe one. It's hosted on Macromedia.com (http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom [macromedia.com]) and requires a Macromedia login rather than an Adobe login to download the beta.

    I have absolutely zero inside knowledge of this, but it would be interesting to know how much inside knowledge Macromedia had of Apple's Aperture, how much input Adobe actually had in the Lightroom product, and what impact, if any, Lightroom had on Adobe's decision to purchase Macromedia.

    Or maybe Adobe just thought Macromedia's site was better for hosting betas.

  • Beta? Or stable pre-alpha rushed out the door? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by podperson ( 592944 ) on Monday January 09, 2006 @07:27PM (#14431818) Homepage
    Here's a program from Macromedia...sorry Adobe that is Mac only when Macromedia and Adobe have both been going PC-first for some time now (and both have dropped support for programs that started out as Mac-only, such as Premiere and Authorware) and it's developed in Cocoa.

    Is this perhaps some engineer's hobby project that is being rushed to market in response to Aperture as a placeholder while they figure out what to do?

    After all, would Adobe seriously ship a product with such poor Photoshop integration?

    Just watching the demo the "we have lots of features to add" comment gets bandied about so often it's not funny. How is this a "beta"?
    • Me thinks that you hit the nail on the head. More to the point, I would argue that Aperture is, architecturally anyway, way ahead of Lightroom. If Apple continues to develop Aperture and adds a plugin architecture, I suspect that it will remain the high end application of choice for studio work, where the realtime features are extremely valuble and Apple will sell lots of hardware, which is what they want to do anyway.
  • Nice to see that the PC version is coming in the future but is Apple gaining ground or what? Dam them Ipods :)
  • is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?

    Digital photo editing is as hard as it ever was: you still need to understand color, composition, etc.

    It just seems like things are getting easier because Photoshop's UI sucked so badly that it got in the way. Finally, Adobe may (!) be getting around to designing less stupid UIs than they have in the past.

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