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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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Here's another page that goes into the nitty-gritty a little more.
Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.
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
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'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.
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"
...
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?
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
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.
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"?
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
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 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.
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.
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
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!