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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Adobe® Photoshop Lightroom™ Beta 4 NOW AVAILABLE
Drew Buchanan, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Fort Walton Beach | FL | USA | Posted: 11:59 AM on 09.25.06 |
->> http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/
"This is the first release to reveal the full name we are giving to the product, as Lightroom takes its place as the newest member of the Photoshop family of digital imaging and photography software." |
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Drew Buchanan, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Fort Walton Beach | FL | USA | Posted: 3:57 PM on 09.25.06 |
->> ...Beta 4 is much improved over the previous versions, including more features and greater stability. I'm beginning to switch over to Photoshop Lightroom instead of Photoshop 7, CS, etc. The efficiency is much greater when working on deadline and you can easily browse, edit, print, save for web, and view slideshows all in the same program.
...If you haven't tried it out download it now! |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | US | Posted: 4:26 PM on 09.25.06 |
->> (I'm not knocking this product, and yes I've tried it) but it's not even in the same league as Camerabits PhotoMechanic when it comes to real deadline work. Surely you don't print, save for web, and view slideshows on deadline assignments do you?
However, it is beta and currently no cost (a good marketing tool to get users hooked)...and the interface is nice and slick.
Have fun. Make pictures.
Delane |
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Ian L. Sitren, Photographer
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Palm Springs | CA | USA | Posted: 4:33 PM on 09.25.06 |
| ->> Agreed, Adobe doesn't get it, not even close to getting the concept of having to go though hundreds and hundreds of RAW images and getting them edited and out. |
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Drew Buchanan, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Fort Walton Beach | FL | USA | Posted: 4:44 PM on 09.25.06 |
->> I'm cheap...
Delane, it's just my opinion. I know a lot of people who prefer photomechanic, and I know people who are starting to like lightroom more, like me. It's just a matter of how you like to work.
Ian, I NEVER shoot raw, so I don't have to worry about that.
I just like that fact that you can do all this "stuff" in one easily managed program...but that's just me.
...and it's free to download...for now...you can't beat that. |
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Dave Pawlak, Photographer
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Soquel | Ca | USA | Posted: 9:53 PM on 09.25.06 |
| ->> Lightroom is nice and Beta 4 is definitely way ahead of the Beta 3; however, I still think Photomechanic is better having only used it three times. Photomechanic was faster, easier to use, and allowed me to edit my images superfast - plus the FTP feature it has is a great kicker. Adobe may need to get to Beta 6 or 7 before it has people really liking it. |
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Jeremy Drey, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Reading | PA | USA | Posted: 11:47 PM on 09.25.06 |
->> So I had passed on all the previous beta's of Lightroom, mostly because my previous dinosaur of a ti-powerbook couldn't handle it. With the post of this forum I decided to check it out.
EXTREMELY dissapointed. Work everyday with photomechanic at the paper and if I'm having trouble with that will go to bridge, or regretfully to nikon view just look through the shoot. Lightroom was extremely confusing to actually load images into the program. And when I did finally figure out how to bring a folder in, I was lucky that I read all the options before unnecessarily duplicating my images on the HD.
Lots of options were very nice, but the screen seemed cluttered and difficult to manage all the small buttons during the "develop" process. And slideshows and web galleries are nice if thats what your audience is, but the majority of us need to send files not print them on the spot.
To make a long rant short, I dont' this product lends itself to deadline work at all, and seems like a high tech gadget for the serious hobbyist to be playing around with or the finer art photographers to adjust minute colors.
Way too much flashiness for not really giving me what I need. |
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Bob Croslin, Photographer
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St. Petersburg | FL | USA | Posted: 12:18 AM on 09.26.06 |
->> Gotta agree - I've been holding out to see what Lightroom would shape up to be and I'm just not that impressed. My fear is that Adobe will discontinue Bridge for Lightroom. Bridge is easy to use and isn't bloated like Lightroom. I can copy and paste raw settings over hundreds of files. It does exactly what I need it to do and nothing more - just the way I like it.
Apple anounced an updated version of Aperture today and it still doesn't support ANY medium format digital backs. It took me the last hour to figure that out. It does support my Canon point-and-shoot though. Terrific.
With that said, I'll be paying for the upgrade to the latest version of Photo Mechanic tomorrow. Keep up the good work guys! |
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Ramses Moya, Photographer
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Toronto | ON | Canada | Posted: 8:50 AM on 09.26.06 |
| ->> Yeah - its weird that Apple has not supported medium format digital backs... But remember that they add that support not through their apps - but from their OS. Which means that they could add support without an update to Apeture. |
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Kevin Sperl, Photographer
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Laconia | nh | USA | Posted: 9:50 AM on 09.26.06 |
| ->> For those that had Beta 3 and then installed Beta 4; Does the install preserve/convert the Beta 3 database??? |
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Drew Buchanan, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Fort Walton Beach | FL | USA | Posted: 6:38 PM on 09.26.06 |
->> Kevin,
Upgrading to beta 4 from beta 3 doesn't delete or get rid of anything. The upgrade backs-up all the photos for you to use when the upgrade has been installed. |
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Franz Ellers, Assistant, Photographer
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Pacific Palisades | CA | USA | Posted: 3:14 AM on 09.27.06 |
->> Beta 3 made my PC crawl, thats not saying much as it's only a AMD 64 3400+ with 1.75gigs of slightly mismatched RAM but, on the Dual 2.7 G5 with 4.5 gigs when it wasn't tripping an automatic sleep it worked pretty well. I used it for a friends wedding we shot in Santa Barbara I had about 900 D2x Raw's went throught them, adjusted the ones that need it Proccesed them to jpeg and uploaded them to printroom.com. Except for the G5 consistantly shutting down I think the workflow is pretty good when you start to get used to it.
I really can't wait for programs such as this to develop, the idea of having a single file in one place but as a part of many collections is one I like. As well as the ease of import, keywording etc. but that of course can be done better for now with other programs. |
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Michael Troutman, Photographer
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Carmel | CA | USA | Posted: 1:31 AM on 10.26.06 |
| ->> I'm bumping this thread back to the top because I noticed a lot of talk about Beta 4 over the weekend at the ALMS race and at least two pros were swearing up and down it has the best workflow *by far* of any program out there. One utility for browsing, editing, viewing and posting; what a concept. A prediction was made that within a year most pros will be using Lightroom instead of CS2 for deadline work. Whether it eclipses Photomechanic is another question. So I've finally downloaded the program, bumped this thread and will let you know what I think in a few days. Would be interested to hear more feedback from others currently using/testing Lightroom. |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 1:53 AM on 10.26.06 |
->> Photomechanic and Lightroom have some overlap in functions, but if you compare the features, you'll see that Lightroom includes a lot of the functionality we'd use Photoshop for once we start prepping images for printing, which PhotoMechanic doesn't cover. I consider Lightroom a lightweight Photoshop with a much more streamlined keyword entry system than PS.
Where PM is designed for people on a deadline, LR seems to be for people who need to go beyond the deadline and deliver printed output or a more finished product than what PM can do by itself. To achieve what LR offers with PM, you have to throw in Photoshop. For a lot of people, not needing Photoshop to get a job done, or not needing it on their laptop, will be a big win.
Right now Lightroom is slower than it will be when it finally ships, because there's a lot of debugging code running under the covers. Once it ships, and especially once it's been out there in a released form for a year, then I expect it to run a lot faster. Remember, PhotoMechanic has been around for several years, while Lightroom hasn't.
As far as being intuitive to use, I had no problem getting started with Lightroom. I told my wife that Lightroom Beta 1 seemed to be anticipating my workflow, and that was months ago, and it's even more intuitive to me now that they've tweaked the interface in the latest Beta.
The big advantage that Lightroom has, is the experience of the people behind it. While they're starting late, they know what they're doing, and they've been doing it a lot longer than anyone in the image processing market. There's an awful lot to be said for that expertise and the man-years of code they have to draw on. |
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Chris Peterson, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Columbia Falls | MT | USA | Posted: 10:58 AM on 10.26.06 |
->> Suggestion for ad campaign: Buy Lightroom! It's like Photoshop, but slower!
Yikes.
This product didn't get any better, |
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Darren Whitley, Photographer
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Maryville | MO | USA | Posted: 12:21 PM on 10.26.06 |
->> ALR is hard to use by comparison to using PM to send images over to ACR. Less is more and ACR keeps things boiled down pretty well with many options shuffled away until you need them.
Hopefully, there's a marriage of Bridge/ACR/ALM coming that will be better than any of them are on their own.
I spent several hours working images last night that I could have done much faster just using Photoshop. So for me, I will probably not be using it much until they make the workflow more precise.
And why would you change Photoshop tool short cut keys in ALM? C should be Crop, not Compare mode! |
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Primoz Jeroncic, Photographer
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Kranj | SI | Slovenia | Posted: 2:13 PM on 10.26.06 |
->> I don't think you can actually compare Lightroom to PM. Not by speed and not by functionality either. PM is probably fastest program around, but it's very limited to stuff it was designed for. I don't have any problems with this, and I'm extremly happy PM user.
On the other side Lightroom looks a lot more then just software which is meant for selecting, captioning and transmiting photos. I addmit I didn't try it much yet, but I don't think, it can come close to PM speed... at least for my use. I don't have all that much of problems switching from PM (selecting and captioning) to Photoshop (basic editing) and back to PM for transmitting. So therefore I see Lightroom more as program which can handle raw files (I don't shoot in raw all that much), and maybe for editing, even though it's so much different then PS, that it will/would be pain to get used to it all over again. And at least on first sight, workflow in Lightroom is not all that nice for my taste. But I guess that's because I'm used to different workflow at moment. |
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Darren Whitley, Photographer
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Maryville | MO | USA | Posted: 2:53 PM on 10.26.06 |
->> Primoz said: So therefore I see Lightroom more as program which can handle raw files (I don't shoot in raw all that much),
Oh, but wait! You can use Lightroom to edit your Jpeg files too and that's where ACR drops the ball. And editing them in ALR doesn't necessarily damage your original JPEG file so long as you chose to export it elsewhere.
Still though, I couldn't fix my image as quickly as ACR allows. ACR+RAW files is faster than futzing around in ALR with JPEGs. I shoot RAW so I can fix my images quickly and batch save them. There's little else I need to do to them after that. |
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Stephen Scharf, Photographer
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Castro Valley | CA | USA | Posted: 1:24 AM on 10.27.06 |
->> Lightroom was never intended to be, and IS NOT, designed to compete with Photomechanic as an image culling solution for deadline press. If you think otherwise, you should read the history of development of Lightroom by Jeff Schewe (http://photoshopnews.com/2006/01/09/the-shadowlandlightroom-development-sto.../).
It's project scope was to be focused around a streamlined workflow for RAW files, and to be a rapid workflow/RAW image editing and Web/Print/Slideshow solution for professional photographers working with very large nos. of *RAW* images. It was clear that while ACR works well for converting single RAW images, it and Adobe Bridge does not have the throughput capabilities for the preparation of very large numbers of RAW files. Lightroom was designed with this in mind, and accomplishes this task very effectively.
I'm one of the pros that Mike Troutman refers to above that was using Lightroom for my work at the ALMS races at Laguna Seca this weekend past, and I can assure you that it made a significant difference in my ability to process images to show to clients, the PR-Media Mgr. at the track, or to export and burn a CD for use by the track. While Photomechanic is very fast at viewing, selecting and organizing images for upload with IPTC metadata to FTP sites, it's image editing capabilitiies (e.g. tonal adjustments, highlight recovery, color temp setting, etc.) are non-existent. With Lightroom, I could rapidly review, sort, and organize images from a shoot into a collection, perform a set of image edits on one of those (e.g. highlight recovery using the brilliant Recovery tool, add fiil using the Fill tool, quickly set color temperature, and the sync this set of edits to all the other images in the set. Moreover, the ability to perform non-destructive soft crops as well as rapid gray scale conversion is very powerful.
That said, I find Lightroom to be a significant development in my ability to get my work done at events, a vast improvement over using PM or BreezeBrowser and then Photoshop serially, and having to write actions to get PS to output appropriately edited, sharpened, and sized images for my "customers". For those of you that have tried it a little bit and come to the conclusion that it's not what you thought it would be, I would encourage you to spend some really working with this program, it's paradigm is very different from anything you've been used, and takes time to get the sense of. But once you do, I think many pro photographers will find it an invaluable solution for their needs. |
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Michael Troutman, Photographer
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Carmel | CA | USA | Posted: 2:22 AM on 10.27.06 |
| ->> No question about it, Stephen was flying through his selections and edits, and still had time for a cool slideshow or two. Everyone here should download and try Lightroom. Killer app. |
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