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Adobe Lightroom Review
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?"
Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?"
And it wasn't before?
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
Powerful, easy, expensive: Aperture = $499
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.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Public beta is only for MacOS X.
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 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?
Time is "expensive" for me, I try to live my life by time preference. I don't mind paying someone to do something better than I can, especially if the cost saves me time. I don't believe that time is money, the opposite is true: money is time. 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.
Anyone know of a decent site, as well as what the popular software is for the "doing it for income" photo editor?
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.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
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.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Only for OSX? Pity!
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
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 with a little bit of tweaking, and I'd be happy to pay someone to "soup up" some of my favorite shots. I've messed with it myself, but I just don't find the pictures getting better.
My consulting business spends a lot of money (still) on paper marketing (for our customers), and the quality of production of some of my print shops is amazing. On some occasions we've seen GITO (garbage in-treasure out). They don't offer any photo editing as a single item I could buy, and none of their editors wants to moonlight for me.
The download page says that a beta for Windows will be coming out.
Odds are, the Windows version is still just too buggy for a public release, beta or not.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
put the what in the where?
That's a bit optimistic for slashdotters, isn't it?
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.
Adobe certainly knows how to cater to its target audience. Consider this: Among those of us most likely to use this software, a significant 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 and beauty. Indeed, I for one look forward to integrating Adobe Lightroom into my photography workflow.
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/hour isn't worth getting out of bed for.
I'm not looking for professionals, I'm looking for students or pro-ams who want to make some money while having things to practice on.
That being said, if I have 500 photos a year I take that I'd like to have enhanced a little, $2500 for what is probably a 25-50 hours or so project isn't so bad.
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?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
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.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
While not necessarily what you're looking for, here's a cheap alternative: http://www.kodakgallery.com/KPTOverview.jsp?
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 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.
Lua the programming language
It's cool to see folks like adobe using nifty languages like Lua. I've never used Lua but have been intrigued by it.
Anyone know how Lua is used in Lightroom?
-c
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
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?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Why do you have an expensive dSLR for what are essentially grab-shots?
Here's another page that goes into the nitty-gritty a little more.
Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.
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 with wanting to pay someone to make things 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"? If it means I can be more productive doing something else with that time, and then I can come back and gain some joy out of seeing better pictures, I'm all for it.
> 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.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Odd that this is PPC code and not universal binary, what with Apple moving to Intel and all...
I was just trying to point out that OSX 10.4 is the only operating system this Beta will run on. I think that is a pity.
Is that considered inflamatory speech on Slashdot now? Did I miss the memo or something?
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Meh, I prefer Fireworks to do batch photo editing, and I'm still hoping for some great improvements on the next version...
Oh, wait...
Why do you have an expensive dSLR for what are essentially grab-shots?
Good question.
First, I like the ability to use multiple lenses. I carry 3 different lenses in my camera bag and actually use them (the zoom lens is awesome).
Second, I take pictures of customers' offices on occasion. When I do my consulting, I sometimes try to sell my customers on "value added" services such as desk organizing and the like (I have subcontractors that do all these jobs and I get a cut). I love to do before and after shots, so the higher resolution and customization features of a dSLR are beneficial.
Third, I love the quality of it. I've had 2 regular SLRs in a decade. I've had about 10 regular digital cameras, and the quality sucked -- sometimes they required tripods, sometimes they blurred backgrounds, I had no control.
Fourth, The d50 was a huge deal for me as my previous SLR is a Nikon as well -- compatible lenses and all.
That being said, for the $800 or so that the camera cost, it IS a deal. What does a good digital non-SLR camera cost? $400? $300? I'll keep this sucker at least 3-4 years, so it is probably cheaper for me in the long run, and I don't get frustrated over crappy shots (other than those that are my fault).
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 to enjoy serious photoshopping of images.... artistry I tell ya...
Three Squirrels
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.
No... If a professional photographer hires someone to assist in the process it's not a collaboration. Hiring someone to do the grunt work is common and accepted practice.
The concept of artist's assistant is nothing new. Many painters, photographers and writers and most, if not all filmmakers and sculptors have one or more people in their employ (usually students or budding artists), and they often have a "hands-on" role in the process. What they do not do is conceive the work; they're handymen who assist in its completion. This is not a collaboration, this is an artist using skilled labor to facilitate the process.
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?"
Worth1000 isn't bad either. Some seriously twisted individuals.
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.
www.IBuyMacs.com
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...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
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 most of us even think about upgrading.)
Sounds like a use for amazon's mechanical turk . 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 tricky in a case where the results may be difficult to measure, but it could work, especially if there is a rating system for quality of work.
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.
Aperture: superior interface/only on Macs.
Adobe: superior compatibility with Photoshop CS2 (or so I've read)/available for major platforms.
Thinkingman.com New Media
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 usually not to have a large number of clean photos- but instead to use photographs to create a single high quality image to be framed, or used in an advertisement- something of that nature.
If you do want to pay someone though, you're best bet would be probably to hit up a couple of forums (try deviantart or the fark forums). You might also be able to find some web designers who are handy with photoshop who might do it while business is slow.
If you pay someone to clean up your photos however, you will still need to spend some time. Most professionals will still send back proofs for you to review and expect some communication on the details of what you would like the final image to look like.
<shamless self advertisement>If you're interested- send me an email (miyako at g mail dot com) and I may be able to work out an arrangement with you while business is slow. My website is down right now but I can email you some example work if you'd like.</shameless self advertisement>
If you decide to give it a try yourself, photoshop is still the defacto standard for most photo editing work. If you do not want to fork over the money to buy photoshop then you may consider trying The GIMP, which is not quite up to the level of photoshop but is free and better than most of the "budget" photo editing software out there.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Why don't you just get it right when you snap the shutter instead giving yourself so much work in post?
One of the things that made film wonderful is that photographers had to get it right in camera. These days people get 'close' and clean it up in photoshop.
A stitch in time saves nine.
People that get it right in camera are professionals, people that get it right in post are not.
...
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?
You know what?
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.
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/
It is a collaboration, we just like to attach nametags to things (but not too many) and many artists don't like to share "their" works, so as long as you have people willing to collaborate without beeing aknowlaged this will continue.
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.
www.clarke.ca
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 without taking up a lot of space.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
If you don't already own a Mac, then it's a given that you aren't among the creative sorts of people who will best be able to make use of software like Aperture and Lightroom. Excluding Linux users, Windows users, and fratboys is, if anything, an asset to boast. In this case, I'd say Adobe is focusing its development resources on the appropriate demographic.
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.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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"-centric image editors like Photoshop, GIMP, etc. are not suitable, or do not even contain features relevant to RAW processing! (In Photoshop, RAW processing is supplied by Adobe Camera Raw, a separate plug-in).
These new apps are new because they only became necessary with the spread of cameras that dump raw sensor data into the card instead of pre-processing them into JPEGs using algorithms from the factory. RAW processing apps allow you to control the initial conversion to JPEG, nondestructively, well after the fact, a mission well beyond the scope of the old-line photo editors.
So please stop comparing Aperture, Lightroom, etc. to old apps or consumer toy apps like iPhoto. By claiming that traditional photo apps cover this ground already, you reveal a lack of research that's sufficient to disqualify you from this discussion.
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 on a full-featured tool like Photoshop, why not try something like Elements? You can learn the essentials of editing with a tool that automates most of the 'hard' parts. When you get the hang of it, you can try something a little more advanced.
Because DSLRs are better for grab shots - my Rebel XT switches on instantaneously, the autofocus is quick, and there is almost no shutter delay.
Try taking pictures of a bunch of playing kids - its almost no doable with a non-SLR digital camera.
$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 to do my edits in Picassa because it doesn't touch the original image and it makes it easy to undo and try different things. But to do really good color correction, etc, I need to use GIMP/Photoshop and it just gets annoying.
So anything out there that might give me more power like these tools but not cost me $499, or, ideally, be completely free
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
So this is why they bought Macromedia! Web development software is not one of Adobe's primary markets. Apple caught them off guard with Aperture, Macromedia's Lightroom now fills this gap. So theirs still hope Adobe will kill off Flash by replacing it with SVG!... or opening the Flash spec, like pdf's.
---
Sign my petition to get a native Flash player for FreeBSD!
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 making a photo better, but I'd rather not. I'm imagining people do it in 5-10 minutes who like doing it (and wouldn't mind the extra income). I want to find these people. I've asked on some photography forums, but the public ones seem cluttered with grandma not knowing how to copy images. I want the slashdot-for-photo-geeks forum.
I used to be in the video production business - I hated hearing "fix it in the edit" or "we'll just dub over it" or "can we erase the mic in shot?" Ugh. I definitely believe in GIGO -- I'm not starting with garbage.
After an hour of futzing around, I find some photos I like better. I assume there are experts who can do it quicker and with a better quality finished product.
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"?
Worth 1000 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. 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.
These "digital lightroom" applications are nothing new. Capture One has been around for years and is an awesome application.
http://www.phaseone.com/
photo.net perhaps? I don't know if they have a marketplace per se, but they probably have a sufficiently prosumer/photo-geek userbase to meet your search criteria and asking their forums might yield results.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Damn, someone asks for a unique service I am developing & the website is not ready yet, double damn.
Want to know where you can find college kids (or better yet, art school kids) who will tweak your images, at a reasonable per image cost?
Its called a "Photo Lab."
-or-
Alternatly, try craigslist, under gigs.
Just stay away from walmart and the like. Any real photolab is chock full o college kids on the way to becoming photograpers, learning the trade by doing.
-j
I couldn't find a crop tool either. As such, Lightroom was removed from my hard drive.
If time is so fucking expensive for you, dada21, then your time wasted on slashdot posting your 1504 "insightful" comments must have cost you Michael Dell's slalary two times over.
First for the "Off-topic" question. It's amazing how many people get caught up in the comparison of time spent doing one thing versus another thing. First of all you can't spend ALL of your time doing what you get paid most for. It just is not humanly possible. So some of the things that you do are a welcome change from the bore that would be your 9-5 or 8 - 7 or whatever. Next, in the area of learning a new skill, it's not fair to judge it only by the time it takes. You should also be factoring in the worth of the knowledge you gain as well as the value of being a more rounded individual.
Still, what you ask for is intriguing and first thing that came to mind is that you might want to check out www.flickr.com (popular photo sharing site). You can set up a limited account for free and can then create a special interest group and invite others to join. The idea is that the group would be for people who wished to compete by photoshopping the photos submitted to the group. Could be someone will bite.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
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.
Nice to see that the PC version is coming in the future but is Apple gaining ground or what? Dam them Ipods :)
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? A turd can be polished till it's shiny and bright but it will always be shit. I highly recommend fine tuning one's photography skills instead of "cleaning it up". I recommend joining Photosig http://www.photosig.com./ It's a site where you can upload your photos for the photography community to critique. Improve your photography skills by constructive criticism. Besides, most people enjoy editing their own work.
That's because you want to pay $5 to $20 per image... we get quite a bit more for our time than that.
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.
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 then another 12% on top of that.
I'm curious what makes you beleive there is a mystical force that prevents you from removing a file once imported into Aperture - I only have the master in the Aperture library, which is really just a special form of directory called a package.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The traditional photo apps do cover the same ground. They just do so for a different data format---RAW instead of an interpolated RGB space---and mostly do it with a workflow more tuned for working with single photos instead of one tuned for large batch jobs.
If you care about doing all your processing in RAW throughout your processing chain, yeah, you pretty much have to deal with a handful of tools that handle it. For workflow, though, power users have been doing batch processing in Photoshop for years. It has a relatively usable macro engine built in.
As for the benefits of RAW, it seems to me that you're either going to be hand-tweaking the conversion of RAW to RGB on a photo or you aren't, and there isn't a huge difference between doing that tweak while looking at the output of a batch job versus doing it on the original photo and then sending that single photo back through your batch processing. It's not quite as convenient, sure, but most people doing the sort of work where these apps are useful already have pretty heavy workflows built up based on existing tools, and those workflows work for them. Overcoming that level of inertia... I don't envy the Aperture/Lightroom teams.
As expected there is not a Linux version, but I did laugh, at least its not for all those plebby winblowz wannabes who somehow think their crappy operating system is good enough to be used by professionals
Nice to see Adobe addressing a proper platform first!
I've been using Aperture quite a bit since release and have just tried Lightroom.
Those that complain about Aperture should avoid Lightroom until they speed it up. Without Core Image on the same hardware it is NOT smooth. (I'm on a dual 2.3 G5 w/3G RAM and Radeon 9650.)
It is also such a knock-off of Aperture I'm suprised.
How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
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.
try photosig.com. when you go to the 'create account' page it looks like you have to pay or know a member, but if you scroll down you'll see that there's a public passcode.
my uncle's a photographer and used to host his stuff there -- maybe it's the 'slashdot-for-photo-geeks' you're looking for.
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,
Which sounds a lot like what the guy one step up was recommending.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
you may just need to learn a few photoshop methods that are effective AND quick, try Photoshop for Digital Photographers. fairly decent tricks that are common for a photographer just in your position.
The point is by getting better with all your tools you will end up with better photos in the end. Photoshop is an important tool, and once you get up to speed with the techniques you find relevant, you will find your shot selection will be expanded (as you know what you can later do with the image in photoshop)
--
You say this like having a Windows version is some sort of handicap. It's not.
If you are have a team developing a program for two different platforms and another team developing a similar application program for just one - which will take less time to develop all their aspects being equal?
Developing for multiple platforms means coding to be careful you can move to other platforms. It also means more testing, and a wider range of requirements as some aspects of interfacing to the OS are fairly different (as with printing, a major component of the application).
I made no indication which would have the larger market share, only which would be probably ahead in terms of stability and features - especially as noted in the large lead that Aperture has.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Honestly, I don't take that many digital photos, but when I do I just open up a free download called The Gimp. I've worked with photoshop, and I don't know how these new programs work, but I could never justify cuting $500 out of my buget to make a few photos look better when The Gimp has all I need.
I just checked it for 5min and you can rotate a picture. There are two rotate icons on the bottom of each thumbnail. rotate left and rotate right.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
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).
In Lightroom this is a menuitem -- it's under Effects -> Something Awful -> Sexual.
If you want it done right, have it done by professionals.
Calypso Imagingin Santa Clara does what you want, as does West Coast Imaging 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 and Charlie Cramer, in case you want to edit your own images and simply output them on printers like the LIghtjet, Chromira, or lage format Epson 76/9600 or K3 printers.
Take a look at the client lists of each company - they are the top tier for this kind of work and it shows. Frankly, most working photographers hardly have time to print their own work, and the best photographers simply don't have time to fool with images once they're made in camera.
The biggest mistakes most photographers make when trying to become professionals is the failure to let someone else take responsibility for printing those images (while you stay in the feedback loop, of course) and the refusal of "tight" artists to belly up and pay for that service.
In other words, If you have a day job to pay for your photography habit, and provided you have the requisite talent to succeed at your chosen niche of photography, it will be nearly impossible to become a full-time professional photographer until and unless you hire an employee to do all the work you don't have time for, or hire a company to print your images for you. (No picture makes a straight print.) Otherwise, you will spend your whole life in a darkroom or behind a monitor instead of making new images - which is the lifeblood of a photographer.
How do I know all this? I am a large format photographer who prints digitally. And I have worked with all the companies linked above, either as an employee or consultant. Most photographers never have enough time to actually, you know, photograph and have a life and make prints and do the billing - you have to give up a couple of those things to be able to do the others successfully. And most photographers can't even manage that!
They wont release it yet because Apple hasn't come up with any final Intel platforms to actually run it on yet.
"Final"? Have they decided to switch to another CPU *already*? Damn they're fast.
OK, I give up.. I've typed about 3 different rants, but none are polite enough to post.
:( sad, but true.
I'm embarrassed to call myself a Photoshop expert... I'm ashamed I have a degree in Web Development... I'm nauseated at the thought of talking one more IDIOT who doesn't know when to say "Hmm, I don't know."
/hattip adobe.
I'll summarize...
1. Don't think this is easy, thinks are never as easy as a professional makes them seem. We have put our lives into our professions and all we ask is respect for it.
2. Learn what you DON'T KNOW!!! Before you run off to earn a buck with Photoshop, learn what you don't know about the software so that you know what your limitations are! If you don't know colorspace, file formats, levels, curves, pathing, proper masking, how NOT to use filters to compensate for lack of artistic ability... If you have never calibrated your monitor or printers... If you don't understand how inks react to paper or how light is displayed on your monitor... If you don't know how to stop when you don't know something and find the proper way of doing things... then maybe you should sit back and read another book.
3. Don't think this is cheap work. I can promise you I would laugh your ass to the street if you thought I might retouch your images for $5. You can't even get a carwash for that! Hell, that's 2 cups of starbucks coffee! Remember, you get what you pay for. You pay for the $5 quick-wash, they make your car wet!
4. If you really have a love and passion for digital art (productive or creative) then take the time to learn it. Not just Photoshop, but any modern software. Just because you can afford it (or steal it from the internet) doesn't make you good. Take classes, join associations like NAPP (National Assoc. of Photoshop Professionals) and maybe take a class or two or intern for a while. Just please actually know what you're talking about before you claim you do! Please!?!
Lastly, forgive my bluntness, but I am more than fed up with the incompetence of my own industry. almost to the point where I want to start over and go learn another profession.
ON TOPIC: This is yet another powerful new tool that will help quite a few prof. photographers.
-Quixxilver- "Where am I going?
Dad was a photographer......he would spend days getting a single print just right. When computers became a serious option for professionas, he went digital. Producing a good pirnt takes time regardless of whether it is in a digital dark room, or room with reduced light. If you want quality work then you need to put effort into that work to make it of the quaility you require.
Need something done well, and do not have the time or expertise to do soemthing. Then expect and accept it is going to cost. Do not skimp and get some half assed person to do the job if you want that job done well.
If you want quality (particularly for a service) then it costs. If do not bothered about quality then hire someone who has never done it before, and pay them minimum wage. Decide what you want up front.
The work performed by someone doing it for the first time will need to be redone quicker than you may think, it may be less expensive and a better experince to get it done well the first time..
Yes we have limits (budgets, time, etc) but the reality is getting somone to do something well is going to take time and resorces; This is the current relality.
you lost me at "Brightness and Contrast"
;)
The first sign of someone who doesn't know what their doing in the digital photography realm is an adjustment of "brightness and contrast"!
On the note of "Take better photos"... I think you're right, but for the wrong reasons. I have a philosophy on that as well. I can use photoshop to do very minute changes where normaly a reflector can be almost imposible to use. I also use photoshop to clean up unsightly blemishes that a paying client want's nothing to do with. I can save time and money by doing my retouching, but the truth will always remain...
"Crap in = Crap out!" or "you can't make a silk purse out of a sows' ear!" The better the photography, the better the retouching. (not nessisarily less, but more efficient!)
lastly, if you're using iPhoto for your digital editing needs... then you're probably doing something wrong.
-Quixxilver- "Where am I going?
But even still.. WIth Adams photos, there are MANY things that could be done differently in a digital world. A perfect example would be the snow often found "blown out" in the landscapes. Even 'white' snow has color... the shadows provide texture. Adams often has solid white patches of snow. A variety of digital techniques could be used to improve many of Adam's shots. Mind you, I'm a fan, but I'm just arguing the benifits of digital imaging can improve even the best photographers work.
-Quixxilver- "Where am I going?
I know the feeling. I felt the same way when I dew up plans for a rocket launched kite... then found out during my development research that it was done in china hundreds of years ago. (don't remember the actual time frame, this was several years ago)
-Quixxilver- "Where am I going?
When working with film it's standard practice for a photographer to work with a printer (a man not a machine) to get the look on paper that he was going for.
Some of the best photographers had long and worthy collaborations with their printers.
Nobody seems to be mentioning the little guy in this discussion. I've been using RawShooter Premium for some months already, it has a lot of the features of both Aperture and Lightroom, and is reasonably priced.
The single biggest complaint of Aperture right now is that it has crappy RAW conversion quality. It's got great organizational ideas (Stacks, Versions, etc), but since it doesn't have a solid RAW converter (like Camera Raw), it can't really be used to its full potential.
Adobe has an immense lead on Apple here; they have a very mature RAW converter, backed by loads and loads of research. Features like Stacks and Versions can be copied easily by Adobe, but Apple will have a hard time with their own RAW converter's quality.
This means, Adobe screwing up aside, Lightroom will eventually, a few versions down the line, be much widely used than Aperture.
And of course, Lightroom is supposed to be eventually available for Windows...
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 then end of the year.
Finally, I was talking about application features and usability, not marketshare. Why is it you Windows people are so focused on marketshare alone? Adobe is smart to try and build an Aperture clone for all the Windows users pining for one. The real question is what both apps will look like by the end of the year and if Lightroom will really be as much of a feature-replacement as many people think it will be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I, for one, will be glad if this app does as the review seems to promise. Yes, I agree that digital photo editing isn't rocket science. But for the casual PC user, or someone who just wants to batch-edit a quantity of images, firing up an entire software suite can be a bit of a bore. An app that has something to offer to a wide user base, ranging from the technically-challenged to the self-proclaimed power user and beyond, will be a welcome addition to the common market.
Now, can we please have a similar app for video production?
Adobe can afford a larger team and still have a profitable product, so I suspect in the final equation having a Windows version will result faster development, not slower.
There you make the mistake of assuming a larger team will be faster. There is a core team size (I'd say seven to ten developers) beyond which you loose ground for every team member added.
We'll see in a year though - or perhaps even sooner, as I plan to check in at the ADobe booth at PMA to see what progress has been made. By then I imagine we'll have another Aperture update as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley