if you've tried all the rest, would you say Lightroom is the best?

m8o

Ok, maybe not "all of the rest" but at least some of them?! Also implied is that you have tried Lightroom for your RAW workflow; please don't 'blast' or 'praise' it on just hearsay if you haven't.

However, if you haven't tried it but you have been through a few other photo processing apps and came upon something that makes you very happy, please feel free to share that too (but mention whether you've used Lightroom or not).

I ask because I'm new to all this. I was using the software that came with the Pentax K10D and I was thinking "what's with all this conversion app talk... why would anyone need anything more?" ... using mainly only manual histogram balancing of it (not having ever used anything else). I then d/l'ed the Lightroom trial. After a few hundered conversions, a whole new world has opened before me! ... and might I say I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on my conversions now too however, sadly. I'll never make it through the remaining 2500 or so images from Tanzania!

Thanx much for any that decide to play. :bow

k2butter

I can not get my photos to export properly from LR, but other than that I LOVE It... love it.. it is the best that I have used.....I will figure out what I am doing wrong (Picked up some books this weekend to try to get a better understanding of the tech side of photography)....

I have used a bunch of different software, but all sort of limited me on what I could do....my first was what came with my first digital camera (kodak)... then I used picassa for a while, before buying Photoshop Elements. I had Elements for about 3 months before I did a thing, mostly because I didn't get it, until I had a friend help me out a bit... I tend to try to play around with software to try and figure it out...

LR to me is magical. It makes my pictures look more professional (I am not a pro)... not even a "shooter"... but LR makes me look that way... I will always use both LR and Elements. So my recommendation is to have both. In PSE you can remove things from the background, blur, I like to remove blemishes in PSE, but LR does that pretty nice too (for minor)... I am sure there are a whole bunch of reasons to have both...

m8o

Thank you for your thoughts.
:help Not sure what's not working in export for you, but what I do to export is (using windows) :
a) Change to Library View of a Collection (not Folder).
b) Click Ctrl+A and select all -- alternatively for sleective export go to the bottom and click on a free area to deselect all then select whatever I want to export
c) right click on any selected image and the pop-up menu shows. I'm assuming on Mac you'd press the mac button + click but don't know for sure.
d) from the pop-up menu select 'Export'.
e) I then have everything set pretty stock
(I do wish I could change the size of the watermark font.)

Ah, also, I use Collections and always export from that. I import folders and put all the RAWs into a new Collection for that set of images. I then remove losers from the collection, and thus just export the keepers. If you process a pic in the 'Folders' view, when you hit backspace, it asks to delete from disk or just the collection. When you hit backspace from the Collection view, it just removes if from the collection but keeps it on disk.

Sorry if your issue is something more complex or a customization you want but don't have, and it's not just getting export working at all.

photocat

LR has become an essential part of my workflow. I have used LR from the first beta version, have grown through all the beta's. I still find it too slow, but am hoping that a next release will adequately tackle speed.

I love it, it gives me far better control over exposure and contrast. I do try though to get the pics as good as possible in camera, as I want to do as least post processing as possible.

I shoot with a nikon D200, a nikon D70 and a little canon S70, used nikon software, which I find useless again for speed. I tried aperture, but was not pleased as it thought that my laptop G4 and iMacG5 were not good enough to work it.

For me it will never be anything else anymore then LR and photoshop CS. The better the shot is in camera, the less you have to fiddle afterwards...

claudermilk

I think it depends largely on your needs. I have tried LR and personally hate it. I'm sticking with the separate apps for each stage, as IMHO they each do a far better job than the LR module.

The apps available depend upon your OS of choice. Some of mine are XP only, so my choices are of little use to a Mac user.

m8o

claudermilk, I'm WinTel so please do tell...

I recently heard high praise of LightZone from a LightRoom user so am thinking of giving that a try...

claudermilk

OK, I'll be happy to give some freed advertising.

I prefer to use Breezebrowser for my initial culling & rating, and their Downloader Pro utility for card downloads.

For RAW conversion I use Bibble Pro, once I get some more time I intend to explore LighZone in depth. I did look at a previous version on an older PC and liked it, but didn't quite wrap my head around some of what they were doing--now I get what's going on.

For image management, I use IMatch. It's actually become my central app to which all the rest are connected. Through the scripting engine (a VB6 clone, very powerful) I've integrated BB Pro's ratings, and can generate work queues for Bibble. I can also uploade to my SM account, and create a category tree telling me what images are on the SM site and where they reside.

For in-depth pixel editing and printing I am still on PS CS. I plan to eventaully add QImage for the printing part.

So in effect, I've gathered what to me are best-in-breed apps to fulfill each of the functions that LR performs, and IMHO I have much more robust tools at each stage. I did start the process before LR was even announced and was largely done when the betas were released; I did give it a shot though, and found it lacking in comparison to what I had already built.

m8o

Awesome details. I love glueing great apps together with a powerful central app too. I appreciate the in-depth info and will look into each in time.

-steve

Hindsight

I've used Aperture and Lightroom and prefer Lightroom. My workflow is pretty simple and straightforward.

I import my images with the LR interface, do my first round of culling using the "x" key to mark them as rejects and then remove them.

Then I go through and flag images with stars and do retouching in the develop module.

If I need to I sort using exif data, by date or whatever and organize them into collections.

Then within each collection I take the 3 or greater stars images and make child collections.

I then export the child collections and upload them to SMugMug, well actually to Exposure manager and to SM as I'm using both at the moment until I decide which I like better.

The develop module in LR covers all my basics, but for any pixel level stuff I use PS CS3. (noise reduction done in CS3 using neat image pro, for one) For instance, when a customer purchases I use proof delay and add my © signature to each sold photo in CS3 (send to CS3 from LR) and re-export it from LR and then replace the gallery shot.

LR is a tad slow but Aperture's interface isn't friendly in certain areas and it's no speed demon either even with a nice video card on a G5 with 4GB RAM, namely it's missing vibrance and clarity and curves. Same things can be done but it's not as straightforward. LR is the best imo, all around to do everything I need. I also like the presets in LR. Very nice for B&W or duotone, vignetting, etc.

I do all my watermarking in my online galleries, both of them have excellent built in WM generation.

El Kiwi

I like Lightroom but after discovering the magic of LAB I can't live without it. I'm on a Mac, so luckily I managed to switch to the excellent RAW developer. I'm still looking for a good DAM replacement for Lightroom, but I haven't had a chance to try many yet. Apart from the lack of LAB Lightroom did almost everything I wanted, with a LAB addition I'd only have to open every 20th photo in PS I think.

Cheers,
Colin

claudermilk

Take a look at iView. I tested the PC version & liked it almost enough to choose over IMatch.

El Kiwi

The problem with iView from my point of view is that it was recently purchased by Microsoft, so the Mac version is likely to become a second-class citizen.