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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?"
Powerful, easy, expensive: Aperture = $499
Public beta is only for MacOS X.
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, by the lack of books which actually teach you, run you through some comprehensive exercises so you then can figure out your best approach and tools to use.
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
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.
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 use to research them further. Also, once you learn the toolbar for one Adobe app, you can generally get around in the others, since the tools and palettes are similar across the board.
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Here's another page that goes into the nitty-gritty a little more.
Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.
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"
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."
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.
They're not in the current beta, but will be in a future one...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
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.
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Lightroom was not developed at Macromedia. It was created by Mark Hamburg, one of the main guys behind Photoshop. It just happens that Macromedia's servers were a good place to host the beta, that's all.
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 the compact and get similar res for a fraction of the price. If you don't _need_ the features of the DSLR, why pay for them - but if you do, then don't buy something that is lacking.
PSP is cheap, easy to learn and great for simpler image editing. If you don't need more, then don't waste your money on PhotoShop - it won't be a magnitude better for you.
On the other hand, if you need to go beyond its limits, you don't waste your time with PSP.
I have temporarily removed PSP from machines before now when doing image work - because it was too tempting to use it to make a quick edit on an image, forgetting that it will screw up the colours (when the images are 300M+, you don't make lots of copies to go back to either).
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/ is one with a strong forum section, while http://www.fark.com/ and http://www.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...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It has nothing to do with Macromedia, Lightroom was developed at Adobe by Mark Hamburg, principle architect of Photoshop.
From its "What's New" file:
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
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
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!