Adobe Lightroom Beta Available for Windows
After what seems like the wait of the Century, Adobe have released the Beta 3 of Lightroom for Windows. This is especially significant because it has been available, as a beta, for Mac users for ages and it looks damn cool! After seeing what it could do in the tutorial videos on the Adobe website, I signed up immediately to be notified when the Windows version was available. I got my notification email last night...wahoo!!
It fills a big gap in my digital photographic kit, being mainly a workflow tool but also allowing considerable tweaking of the images themselves (mainly the typical curves for hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, shadows, etc.). Not being able to afford Photoshop, my image tweaking is limited to what Nikon PictureProject (the Nikon image tweaking tool they throw in at no extra cost when you buy a D50) allows, which is basically just cropping and some fairly rudimentary brightness/contrast adjustments. However, PictureProject is almost entirely lacking in the workflow side of things. It allows you to categorise your photos in "folders" and "collections" within those folders, which are purely logical structures, not physical on disk. There is no feature to rate photos or any of those other fairly basic workflow elements.
The other tool I use is Pixmatic RawShooter, which has recently been bought by Adobe anyway. RawShooter allows much better control over the image tweaking (shadows, contrast, tint, whitebalance, etc.) and has some basic photo rating (1-3 scale, trash & flagged) but not physical structuring (except what there already is on the filesystem), no cropping (which is really dumb as cropping is one of the most basic, fundamental image manipulation tools) and it only works on RAW files (which means if you're low on disk space and therefore shoot JPG, you cannot use it at all). RawShooter, however, is much nicer than PictureProject on the memory consumption and response times when tweaking & viewing RAW images.
But this blog entry isn't supposed to be about RawShooter & PictureProject, but rather Adobe Lightroom. I can't wait to install it and play (the installer has finished downloading now). I'll be interested to see how much Adobe are going to charge for Lightroom. I'll be really stuffed if I get hooked on it and, when the beta expires at the end of Jan 2007, find out they're selling it for around the same price as Photoshop CS2 (if that happens I think I'll cry, or maybe I'll sell a kidney so I can afford Lightroom & Photoshop; after all, isn't that why God gave me two kidneys?).
Here's a link to the beta, for those of you who are interested:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/
Anyway, I have no more time to waste typing this blog - I have to go play with Lightroom! (There goes my productivity for the day...maybe I should go home "sick".)
It fills a big gap in my digital photographic kit, being mainly a workflow tool but also allowing considerable tweaking of the images themselves (mainly the typical curves for hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, shadows, etc.). Not being able to afford Photoshop, my image tweaking is limited to what Nikon PictureProject (the Nikon image tweaking tool they throw in at no extra cost when you buy a D50) allows, which is basically just cropping and some fairly rudimentary brightness/contrast adjustments. However, PictureProject is almost entirely lacking in the workflow side of things. It allows you to categorise your photos in "folders" and "collections" within those folders, which are purely logical structures, not physical on disk. There is no feature to rate photos or any of those other fairly basic workflow elements.
The other tool I use is Pixmatic RawShooter, which has recently been bought by Adobe anyway. RawShooter allows much better control over the image tweaking (shadows, contrast, tint, whitebalance, etc.) and has some basic photo rating (1-3 scale, trash & flagged) but not physical structuring (except what there already is on the filesystem), no cropping (which is really dumb as cropping is one of the most basic, fundamental image manipulation tools) and it only works on RAW files (which means if you're low on disk space and therefore shoot JPG, you cannot use it at all). RawShooter, however, is much nicer than PictureProject on the memory consumption and response times when tweaking & viewing RAW images.
But this blog entry isn't supposed to be about RawShooter & PictureProject, but rather Adobe Lightroom. I can't wait to install it and play (the installer has finished downloading now). I'll be interested to see how much Adobe are going to charge for Lightroom. I'll be really stuffed if I get hooked on it and, when the beta expires at the end of Jan 2007, find out they're selling it for around the same price as Photoshop CS2 (if that happens I think I'll cry, or maybe I'll sell a kidney so I can afford Lightroom & Photoshop; after all, isn't that why God gave me two kidneys?).
Here's a link to the beta, for those of you who are interested:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/
Anyway, I have no more time to waste typing this blog - I have to go play with Lightroom! (There goes my productivity for the day...maybe I should go home "sick".)
posted by Mike Hodgson | 10:28
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