Adobe Lightroom

3rdPlanetPhotography

Anyone have any idea what Adobe is going to charge for Lightroom on the full release?


*Update: The reason I'm asking is I'm looking for an alternative to ACDSee.

BenA2

kc7dji wrote:

Anyone have any idea what Adobe is going to charge for Lightroom on the full release?


*Update: The reason I'm asking is I'm looking for an alternative to ACDSee.

Amazon apparently "accidentally" leaked a price of around $200 on Friday. They also leaked a sale date of Jan 17 which coincides with a big Mac event, so seems highly likely.

3rdPlanetPhotography

Thanks BenA2,

Maybe I'll d/l this application and give it a try.... anything "big" about the program that you can tell me?

BenA2 wrote:

Amazon apparently "accidentally" leaked a price of around $200 on Friday. They also leaked a sale date of Jan 17 which coincides with a big Mac event, so seems highly likely.

Andy

kc7dji wrote:

Thanks BenA2,

Maybe I'll d/l this application and give it a try.... anything "big" about the program that you can tell me?

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47106

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=25682

BenA2

Download it!

kc7dji wrote:

Thanks BenA2,

Maybe I'll d/l this application and give it a try.... anything "big" about the program that you can tell me?

Andy posted a couple of links to other Lightroom discussion threads, but frankly, I wish there was a little bit more active Lightroom discussion here. The first thread compares Lightroom and Aperture. Well, I'm not a Mac user, so it's kind of irrelevant to us PC users. The second thread cuts off discussion at Beta 3, which was, in my opinion, quite unusable on the PC.

I've been using Beta 4 (and now Beta 4.1) for a few months now as my primary RAW converter. I love the workflow, overall concept, speed, and develop module features (now also included in ACR 4). The beta has six MAJOR shortcomings in my view:

1) Files can't be moved between folders
2) There are no red-eye removing and clone tools
3) Individual RAW conversions can't be saved
4) No color labeling of images
5) Sharpening and noise reduction are pathetic
6) Integration with Photoshop is weak

Adobe claims 1-4 will be addressed to everyone's satisfaction in the official release.

Adobe says not to expect anything from them on 5 (sharpening and noise reduction). But, some of us are hoping there will be some third-party integration that brings Neatimage and Noise Ninja plug-ins along to address this. Allusions have been made to this by Adobe and the third-parties, but no one is saying anything even close to officially. An SDK has not even been formally released for these things to be developed (at least officially).

As for Photoshop integration, I'm not sure if this is being worked on for the final release. The problems I have with is may just be personal.

Enough with the negative. I think Lightroom is fantastic and can't wait to start using the release version. The integration of the Library and Develop modules really works the way my brain works. It's so nice not to have to switch betwen Bridge and PS to finish an image. (OK, special images do require PS, but most large shoots do not). The look and feel of the user interface just works for me. While I want more control (which is coming) of my file storage locations, I love the way the Lightroom database gives you nearly instant access to your images and allows you to create collections and perform quick searches and sorts.

I'm not a pro, and so have fewer reservations about adopting Lightroom in its Beta form into my everyday workflow. I have a sense that on this forum, some tried Beta 3 and were disappointed. Others may have tried, and even liked Beta 4, but see adopting beta software into their professional workflow as too big of a risk. So, I'm hoping that once the release comes out, more people around here will start using and discussing it.

So, after all that babbling, I highly recommend you download the beta and give it a spin. If you're heavily invested in the RAW workflow, and have to process a lot of images, I think you'll like it. If nothing else, I'd be interesed in your thoughts.

ahbe

SmugMug Plug-in
I've been using Lightroom beta on my Mac since beta 1. I really like it. I tried Aperture, and while it is a very powerful program, it just never worked the way my brain works. Now, just receintly I found SmugMug, and intend to transition all my online photo needs from .Mac to SmugMug. The one thing I am really looking for is a export plug-in for Lightroom. I know it can be done, as there are Flickr plug-ins for Lightroom. We just need one for SmugMug. With v1.0 of Lightroom around the corner, hopefully someone will write a good export plug-in as well. There's already several export plug-ins for Aperture, why not Lightroom? I'll even donate $20 to the cause if it works well.

BenA2

ahbe wrote:

There's already several export plug-ins for Aperture, why not Lightroom? I'll even donate $20 to the cause if it works well.

I'm somewhat surprised that there are already Flkr plug-ins for Lightroom. I haven't heard of any plug-in development yet, because I thought the Lightroom software development kit (SDK) hadn't been released by Adobe yet.

One thing I'm confident of assuring you is that once a good group of smumuggers embrace Lightroom, one of the customization wizards around here is bound to come up with a smumug plug-in. You won't even have to pay for it (although, I'm sure they'd appreciate the $$).

3rdPlanetPhotography

I have now reviewed Lightroom for my own needs. Keep in mind my opinion is limited to my needs.

I think the Interface (GUI) is the absolute best I've seen for such an application. I've seen Aperature and it is great too but I've not used Aperature. I'm a PC person (so far) and I haven't used anything with MAC and the Adobe products though everyone tells me it's better

Here's my ranking: (1-10)

Interface = 10
User Friendly = 7
Manuverabilty = 7
Raw conversion = n/a (I don't use raw)
Speed = 8
Albums (shoots) = 9
Rankings/Keywords = 8
Configurable = 3
Overall Speed = 6 (2.8Ghz - 2Gb ram - WinXP - sucky video card)

Overall I think it's a pretty cool application. I love the look. I normally use ACDSee on the PC and I don't think that Lightroom is good enough to get me to switch. Lightroom is limited in features compared to ACDSee. That's overall features. The actual image control features is dominated by Lightroom. The second thing is ACDSee just reads directly from your folder structure and isn't shoot driven. I think I like the fact that in Lightroom you can setup by Shoot. I think they called it Shoot. All in all each of them have their strong points. On the $$ side Lightroom is going to be about $200 (so I've heard) and ACDSee is $40.

Anyone else want to chime in?

BenA2 wrote:

Andy posted a couple of links to other Lightroom discussion threads, but frankly, I wish there was a little bit more active Lightroom discussion here. The first thread compares Lightroom and Aperture. Well, I'm not a Mac user, so it's kind of irrelevant to us PC users. The second thread cuts off discussion at Beta 3, which was, in my opinion, quite unusable on the PC.

I've been using Beta 4 (and now Beta 4.1) for a few months now as my primary RAW converter. I love the workflow, overall concept, speed, and develop module features (now also included in ACR 4). The beta has six MAJOR shortcomings in my view:

1) Files can't be moved between folders
2) There are no red-eye removing and clone tools
3) Individual RAW conversions can't be saved
4) No color labeling of images
5) Sharpening and noise reduction are pathetic
6) Integration with Photoshop is weak

Adobe claims 1-4 will be addressed to everyone's satisfaction in the official release.

Adobe says not to expect anything from them on 5 (sharpening and noise reduction). But, some of us are hoping there will be some third-party integration that brings Neatimage and Noise Ninja plug-ins along to address this. Allusions have been made to this by Adobe and the third-parties, but no one is saying anything even close to officially. An SDK has not even been formally released for these things to be developed (at least officially).

As for Photoshop integration, I'm not sure if this is being worked on for the final release. The problems I have with is may just be personal.

Enough with the negative. I think Lightroom is fantastic and can't wait to start using the release version. The integration of the Library and Develop modules really works the way my brain works. It's so nice not to have to switch betwen Bridge and PS to finish an image. (OK, special images do require PS, but most large shoots do not). The look and feel of the user interface just works for me. While I want more control (which is coming) of my file storage locations, I love the way the Lightroom database gives you nearly instant access to your images and allows you to create collections and perform quick searches and sorts.

I'm not a pro, and so have fewer reservations about adopting Lightroom in its Beta form into my everyday workflow. I have a sense that on this forum, some tried Beta 3 and were disappointed. Others may have tried, and even liked Beta 4, but see adopting beta software into their professional workflow as too big of a risk. So, I'm hoping that once the release comes out, more people around here will start using and discussing it.

So, after all that babbling, I highly recommend you download the beta and give it a spin. If you're heavily invested in the RAW workflow, and have to process a lot of images, I think you'll like it. If nothing else, I'd be interesed in your thoughts.

BenA2

If you like the fact that Lightroom is shoot driven, then you may not like the release version in that respect. Adobe says it's going to a folder-driven structure in v1.0, so it's not clear that they'll still be supporting shoots.

On overall speed, Adobe also say the release version will be better optimized for speed than the Betas. There was a huge jump in speed from the Windows version of Beta 3 to Beta 4. If we see only half that same speed improvement from Beta 4 to v1.0, it's going to be blazing fast.

Yeah, if you don't actually need a RAW converter, and you're very comfortable with ACDSee, Lightroom doesn't seem like the best move for you at $160 more than ACDSee.

I appreciated hearing your thoughts.

wellman

BenA2 wrote:

Andy posted a couple of links to other Lightroom discussion threads, but frankly, I wish there was a little bit more active Lightroom discussion here. The first thread compares Lightroom and Aperture. Well, I'm not a Mac user, so it's kind of irrelevant to us PC users. The second thread cuts off discussion at Beta 3, which was, in my opinion, quite unusable on the PC.

I've been using Beta 4 (and now Beta 4.1) for a few months now as my primary RAW converter. I love the workflow, overall concept, speed, and develop module features (now also included in ACR 4). The beta has six MAJOR shortcomings in my view:

1) Files can't be moved between folders
2) There are no red-eye removing and clone tools
3) Individual RAW conversions can't be saved
4) No color labeling of images
5) Sharpening and noise reduction are pathetic
6) Integration with Photoshop is weak

Adobe claims 1-4 will be addressed to everyone's satisfaction in the official release.

Adobe says not to expect anything from them on 5 (sharpening and noise reduction). But, some of us are hoping there will be some third-party integration that brings Neatimage and Noise Ninja plug-ins along to address this. Allusions have been made to this by Adobe and the third-parties, but no one is saying anything even close to officially. An SDK has not even been formally released for these things to be developed (at least officially).

As for Photoshop integration, I'm not sure if this is being worked on for the final release. The problems I have with is may just be personal.

Enough with the negative. I think Lightroom is fantastic and can't wait to start using the release version. The integration of the Library and Develop modules really works the way my brain works. It's so nice not to have to switch betwen Bridge and PS to finish an image. (OK, special images do require PS, but most large shoots do not). The look and feel of the user interface just works for me. While I want more control (which is coming) of my file storage locations, I love the way the Lightroom database gives you nearly instant access to your images and allows you to create collections and perform quick searches and sorts.

I'm not a pro, and so have fewer reservations about adopting Lightroom in its Beta form into my everyday workflow. I have a sense that on this forum, some tried Beta 3 and were disappointed. Others may have tried, and even liked Beta 4, but see adopting beta software into their professional workflow as too big of a risk. So, I'm hoping that once the release comes out, more people around here will start using and discussing it.

So, after all that babbling, I highly recommend you download the beta and give it a spin. If you're heavily invested in the RAW workflow, and have to process a lot of images, I think you'll like it. If nothing else, I'd be interesed in your thoughts.

Ben,

I have also been using LR B4 as my primary photo tool since it was released. B3 was unusably slow, but B4 was a quantum leap forward. I'm completely sold on the app, and I'll be purchasing as soon as it's released.

With regard to third-party plug-ins, check out page two of this Adobe FAQ. I've heard rumors of Noise Ninja eagerly awaiting the release of the SDK such that they can get a LR plugin out. I'm guessing other vendors are feeling the same way. If there are others like me, there's a new market of serious amateurs who want powerful RAW development plus photo management who haven't bought into the PhotoShop club. I hope we see an improved sharpening algorithm - I'd actually love to see good old Smart Sharpen used.

One question for you... You mentioned you were satisfied with the speed of the app. What type of hardware are you running? Speed is my primary complaint with Lightroom B4. Export batching speed is OK; I'm referring to the speed of image and slider updates while working in the develop module. To me, it's just dog slow, and I'm hoping I won't have to buy a new PC just to support Lightroom. I'm running WinXP on a 2.8GHz P4 with 1GB RAM.

Glad to see there are other LR converts out there.:D
-Greg

BenA2

wellman wrote:

With regard to third-party plug-ins, check out page two of this Adobe FAQ. I've heard rumors of Noise Ninja eagerly awaiting the release of the SDK such that they can get a LR plugin out. I'm guessing other vendors are feeling the same way. If there are others like me, there's a new market of serious amateurs who want powerful RAW development plus photo management who haven't bought into the PhotoShop club. I hope we see an improved sharpening algorithm - I'd actually love to see good old Smart Sharpen used.

Like you, I'm also clinging to the hope that Noise Ninja will quickly turn-around a plug-in for LR. NN is my primary noise removal tool. As for sharpening, I'm not exactly sure what I want to see. I've learned to use USM in Photoshop as my main sharpening hammer and haven't used any of the third-party apps. Without channel control, though, USM has many limitations. So, I hope something like Smart Sharpen will work well for me.

wellman wrote:

One question for you... You mentioned you were satisfied with the speed of the app. What type of hardware are you running? Speed is my primary complaint with Lightroom B4. Export batching speed is OK; I'm referring to the speed of image and slider updates while working in the develop module. To me, it's just dog slow, and I'm hoping I won't have to buy a new PC just to support Lightroom. I'm running WinXP on a 2.8GHz P4 with 1GB RAM.

I'm running a TOSHIBA Tecra laptop with a 1.5 GHz Pentium M and 2.0 GB of RAM. My compliments to the speed of LR are directed more toward browsing speed (including simply moving from image to image and moving between develop and library modules) and database operations. I agree with you that the week point as far as speed is slider response, but I can't characterize the performance I experience as "dog slow". It is slower than I'd like it in Beta 4, and I'm hoping it will speed up in v1.0. But, to be honest with you, if it didn't get any faster, that would not be a show-stopper for me. Since I have a slower processor than you, the issue might be RAM. I'm sure my extra gig helps.

Pupator

Can someone help me understand what Lightroom can do at (estimated) $200 that Paint Shop Pro can't do? I've been using PSP for years and years and never cease to be amazed at their program, especially for the price.

wellman

BenA2 wrote:

I'm sure my extra gig helps.

I bet you're right. I've seen my pagefile usage run up over 1GB while working in LR (it normally stays around 300MB). Extra RAM is much cheaper than a new box!

wellman

Pupator wrote:

Can someone help me understand what Lightroom can do at (estimated) $200 that Paint Shop Pro can't do? I've been using PSP for years and years and never cease to be amazed at their program, especially for the price.

I'm not that familiar with PSP. Think of Lightroom as an Adobe RAW developer combined with a digital archive management interface. It's intended to be the one-stop-shop for developing and cataloging your photos. All the edits are non-destructive - i.e. your "history of commands" is stored alongside each image, and Lightroom shows you the effect on the RAW data without ever altering that RAW data. You can of course export JPGs, etc, but now that I use LR, the only JPGs I ever make are the ones I upload to SmugMug, and I then wipe them away.

Tanuki

I had assumed the main advantage to LR would be with Raw files and session shots, which doesn't apply to me. But I decided to test it anyway. I downloaded LR Beta 4 and imported 300 jpegs my wife brought back from her vacation. I straightened horizons, cropped, and adjusted color/tone, etc in RECORD TIME. Everything was non-destructive. All I had to do was export to a temporary folder and upload to Smugmug. It was simple, intuitive and FAST when compared to my normal workflow in PSE4. I'm hooked.

For those who are interested, here is a recent thread (just read the first post) on the Adobe Lab forums that gives some insight into what to expect in the next version. According the the post, they will probably be adding redeye tool and limited clone stamp / healing brush capabilities. It also sounds like they intend to add features like CMYK / LAB support and some local dodge / burn tools in future releases, but not the next release.

Mike

darwin

Bumping this topic because it deserves to be up there again.

I've pretty much been exclusively using LR over the last few days, and even been going back and re-doing photos in it. If you haven't tried it, it's like a 15MB download and its so easy to use.

I'll definitely be purchasing it when it comes out. All we need is a smugmug plugin and I'll be golden.

ockabewis

I am sooo impressed by Lightroom. I originally started with it the day it was released as Beta 3 for Windows and was very pleased albeit extremely frustrated at the same time with the sloooowwwwwness of the application. With the release of Beta 4, those issues were gone for me. I have never been able to process photos so quickly and easily and absolutely love how they modifications aren't done to the actual files. I have also tried it on my new Mac mini and was just as impressed with it there as well. I did give Aperture a shot, but after using Lightroom first, I wasn't as impressed with Aperture as I am with Lightroom.

I will definitely be purchasing Lightroom the day it comes out; which shouldn't be too far off based on this excerpt from http://photoshopnews.com/2007/01/02/on-the-road-to-toronto/

Well, the observant among you might be able to deduce that since we’re shooting our Lightroom 1.0 DVD, the release of Lightroom won’t be too far off (remember, Beta 4 is designed to cease Feb, 2007). The “observant” would probably be correct :~)

What I am very curious to see is how quickly plugins start turning up for it. I would love it if all of the plugins I have for PSE would be accessible from within Lightroom!

peterparker

I'll be glad to write a SmugMug plugin for Macintosh as soon as the SDK is available.

System

I ordered last night, so I'll post as soon as it gets here. Been running LR since beta 2 and really like it.

Terrence

I pre-ordered a couple of weeks ago and am waiting for Feb 18 for the release. I've been using since Beta 1 and have been liking it more and more with every release.

W.W. Webster

peterparker wrote:

I'll be glad to write a SmugMug plugin for Macintosh as soon as the SDK is available.

Peter

Thanks for committing to do this. I will look forward to it, and I know there will be very widespread interest across the SmugMug community.

cmason

Anyone purchased yet? Tried out the v1.0 release?

Dying to know if performance is where it should be...on Windows...

Pupator

cmason wrote:

Anyone purchased yet? Tried out the v1.0 release?

Dying to know if performance is where it should be...on Windows...

I'm using the release version on Vista. What kind of info are you looking for (ie. give me your normal workflow with an image and I can give you some time estimates).

cmason

Well in the last beta version, building thumbnails alone took it 20 mins of machine numbing time. once completed, it was fairly quick. However, selecting multiple images, scrolling thru long lists of folders and moving between collections caused it to seem to 'freeze' though the real issue is there was no indicator of it working...basically, it felt as if it were not ready for primetime, and not worth $200 yet.

Is it snappy as it should be?

Pupator

It'll be a few weeks before I get a good feel for how it handles volume. In the meantime, download the 30 day trial and give it a go yourself!

cmason

Pupator wrote:

It'll be a few weeks before I get a good feel for how it handles volume. In the meantime, download the 30 day trial and give it a go yourself!

Well. how bout that...not sure how I missed the trial. really hoping the offline management and DVD archiving work too, never managed to find a product that did that along with everything else

urbanaries

cmason wrote:

Well. how bout that...not sure how I missed the trial. really hoping the offline management and DVD archiving work too, never managed to find a product that did that along with everything else

thanks for the tip...downloaded today and looking forward to giving it a spin.

Also, for any of you academics out there the cost is $99...have to produce my university employee ID to get authorized, but well worth the $100 discount. Applies to higher ed staff, faculty and students. Let me know if you need a link.

lynne

LiquidAir

I downloaded 1.0 over the weekend.

Initial thoughts vs. Beta 4:

Beta 4 would often severely bog my machine down when I had many photos in the film strip. That problem seems to be gone. Searching and editing seem to be much faster now.

The new healing tool is very very cool. Essentially it is the same as the healing/clone tool in Photoshop, but the tool in Lightroom is not destructive. For each clone you can go back and edit the brush size, source location and destination location after the fact. I think it works better than Photoshop for reparing dust spots. However, I would not try to clone out anything large with it.

Shoots have been renamed Folders for the release. I am not certain that there is anything more to that than a name change.

The Export Dialog has changed some. You can now create named export settings.

You can now save multiple develop panel settings for the same picture.

You can now stack photos. This is a convenient way of condensing many similar shots in the film strip with the best one on top.

BenA2

Folders different than shoots

LiquidAir wrote:

Shoots have been renamed Folders for the release. I am not certain that there is anything more to that than a name change.

Careful. Folders are not the same thing as shoots. Folders actually directly reference files' locations on your drive(s). If you move a file from one folder to another, Lightroom will physically move the file on your disk, not just in its database. I'm finding this somewhat difficult to transition to.

Lightroom did not do a great job of converting my 4.1 database to v1.0. It named most of the folders by their full path name rather than sorting them into their directory hierarchy as they reside on my drive. I've found by trial and error, though, if I "reimport" those directories, Lightroom ultimately sorts them out and preserves the files settings. But, I haven't found any documentation of how this works.

For those reading this that have small 4.1 databases, I recomend starting in v1.0 from scratch for a clean folder tree. If, like me, you already had thousands of your images in the database, the transition is doable, but somewhat manual and time consuming to get the folder structure right. I'm still in the process myself and researching online to see if there is a smarter/faster way.

Outside of that issue, I'm loving v1.0 .

wellman

BenA2 wrote:

Careful. Folders are not the same thing as shoots. Folders actually directly reference files' locations on your drive(s). If you move a file from one folder to another, Lightroom will physically move the file on your disk, not just in its database. I'm finding this somewhat difficult to transition to.

Lightroom did not do a great job of converting my 4.1 database to v1.0. It named most of the folders by their full path name rather than sorting them into their directory hierarchy as they reside on my drive. I've found by trial and error, though, if I "reimport" those directories, Lightroom ultimately sorts them out and preserves the files settings. But, I haven't found any documentation of how this works.

For those reading this that have small 4.1 databases, I recomend starting in v1.0 from scratch for a clean folder tree. If, like me, you already had thousands of your images in the database, the transition is doable, but somewhat manual and time consuming to get the folder structure right. I'm still in the process myself and researching online to see if there is a smarter/faster way.

Outside of that issue, I'm loving v1.0 .

Thanks for the info, Ben. Keep your opinions coming. I have yet to download v1.0. How's the update speed / lagginess when you're working in the Develop module as compared to B4.1?
-Greg

W.W. Webster

BenA2 wrote:

For those reading this that have small 4.1 databases, I recomend starting in v1.0 from scratch for a clean folder tree. If, like me, you already had thousands of your images in the database, the transition is doable, but somewhat manual and time consuming to get the folder structure right.

On my Mac platform, the transition of nearly 15,000 images in 350 folders was successfully completed in just under 60 minutes, without problem.

BenA2 wrote:

Outside of that issue, I'm loving v1.0.

Me too! I'm now totally Portfolio and Aperture free, and haven't had any need to exit Lightroom for any part of my image management and post-production workflow.