Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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
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?
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.
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 configuration files are extremely powerful, and allow administrative types to do major tasks quickly and easily. Drop a newbie with no training in front of a blinking terminal prompt, however, and he's lost. Powerful, yes. Intuitive? Not a chance.
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.
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.
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.