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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Lightroom
Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 4:22 PM on 03.19.07 |
| ->> Has anyone tried the full Lightroom program? I have it (for Mac) and love it. I wanted to make sure I grabbed it at $199 so I made the purchase early. As with any program there are things to get used to but after a few days of extensive use I'm becoming quite comfortable with the flow and for my work it is a great program. I'd be interested to hear other opinions and from those of you that have tried both Lightroom and Aperture, what do you think and how do they compare? |
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Steven Mullensky, Photographer
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Port Townsend | WA. | USA | Posted: 5:58 PM on 03.19.07 |
->> Is it possible to e-mail from within the application?
I can do that with Aperture but resisted Lighroom for that reason. |
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Michael Clark, Photographer
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Santa Fe | NM | USA | Posted: 6:41 PM on 03.19.07 |
->> Jim -
Hello. I did an extensive Aperture vs. Lightroom comparison for the Inside Lightroom blog I contribute to - I'm sure you'd find it interesting. And in tandem with that comparison the Inside Aperture blog site did a comparison as well.
You can check out my comparison here:
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/03/05/lightroom-vs-aperture.html
Lightroom is an amazing program and it seems to bring photography back to overworked digital photographer. I love it.
Cheers, Michael
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www.michaelclarkphoto.com |
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Jeffery Patch, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Huntington Beach | CA | USA | Posted: 8:26 PM on 03.19.07 |
->> Michael,
I've been following the blog. Great work.
I have Lightroom and like it a lot but find it too slow for sports work. PhotoMechanic + Photoshop does the job for me in that regard but I like it for my smaller shoots. |
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 11:02 PM on 03.19.07 |
->> Jeffrey,
I'm surprised to hear you refer to sports when stating that Lightroom is too slow. That's exactly what I use it for and it has cut my editing time in half from before when I used Photoshop. I'm curious as to what in Lightroom slows down your work rather than speed it up. |
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 11:22 PM on 03.19.07 |
->> Michael,
Thanks for the link. It made for good reading. I too love Lightroom for so many reasons. Interestingly enough your article mentioned what I consider the only drawback so far to Lightroom and that is the sharpening limitations. I would have preferred the ability to work more with sharpen within Lightroom because it seems to be the only thing I need Photoshop for except the obvious masking projects. I'm also very pleased with how quickly I was able to familiarize myself with Lightroom. I think the program is very intuitive with a great work flow. Adobe has done a great job and I enjoy using Lightroom very much. Thanks again for the link. |
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Michael Clark, Photographer
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Santa Fe | NM | USA | Posted: 2:13 AM on 03.20.07 |
->> Jim -
Glad to hear that the link was useful. I too have found lightroom to cut my workflow time in half or even more - especially for shooting sports - though I don't shoot the normal sports most folks here at sportsshooter shoot. I specialize in adventure sports and usually have tons of similars so the editing part of Lightroom is spectacular and a huge time saver for me.
Someone commented on Lightroom not being fast enough for them in the comparison and I can only offer the following advice from my personal experience:
1 - check to see that you have at least 50% of your hard drive space on your computer available. If you are working with less than 25% unused that can slow down all applications especially Lightroom. And of course a fast computer also helps a lot.
2 - make sure that you Render the 1:1 previews after importing images into Lightroom. It doesn't happen auotmatically and this will greatly speed up everything in lightroom. This is a little known key point to a fast workflow in Lightroom and I suspect the major cause of many folks finding Lightroom slow.
3 - I've used Lightroom with a Nikon D2x (12 MP) and a Canon 1Ds (16 MP ) so unless you are using a MF 39 MP back file size shouldn't matter too much.
4 - if you have your lightroom Libray/cache on an external hard drive (USB or Firewire) this can massively (i.e. BIG TIME) slow down everything. Put the cache on a faster drive with a SATA connection if need be or better yet leave it on the computers internal drive.
Just thought I would toss that info out there for you Jeffery as it might be helpful. I have a friend who shoots a lot of very big corporate gigs and he needs previews built super fast and used Photo Mechanic. Once he figured out the above key steps he now uses Lightroom instead of PM. It all just depends on what you need to do.
Hope this helps... |
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Jeffery Patch, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Huntington Beach | CA | USA | Posted: 3:44 PM on 03.20.07 |
->> Thanks for the tips Michael. I was aware of some of them, but not all.
Don't get me wrong, I think lightroom is GREAT, just not 100% applicable to my work. Yet.
Generating the 1:1 previews does make it much, much faster when flipping through images but I have to wait for it to generate them. Maybe if you have Lightroom do this when pulling the images off your card it will be faster (since it should be able to do that in the background while waiting for images to copy) but so far I've only used files that were already on the hard drive so I can't say for sure.
Also, I don't like that it has to generate the previews. It takes a lot of hard drive space. Afaik PM manages to display the image on your screen (granted it's not 1:1) with little to no delay between images and it only takes a split second to zoom in to the image at 1:1 to check detail.
The last thing that I had trouble with in Lightroom was sorting tagged/locked photos. When I get a definite keeper I lock it on my camera. PM can import only those files I tag, or sort them if they are in a folder with untagged files. Maybe Lightroom can do this. If so, I bet Michael knows :)
Again, lightroom is very cool and will keep getting better. But right now it's just not there for for deadline work. |
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Brian Shirk, Photographer
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McCall | ID | US | Posted: 6:09 PM on 03.20.07 |
->> I guess I'm in the minority... Lightroom was completely unusable for me - especially for simple tasks such as sorting - I would sort a few hundred photos and suddenly everything I'd done would revert back to the state it was when I started. It was very slow downloading from cards (5-6 times slower than PM or Aperture)...
The last beta was great - it crashed every once in a while, which is to be expected - but I could do batch auto-exposure and other things like that, and I would've gladly paid twice what Aperture was worth to keep the beta; but it's now expired and so I had to go for aperture.
People keep telling me I was doing something wrong (and give me a complicated explanation why), but when I rank a photo, it should stay ranked until I change it... When I click the auto-exposure button and have multiple photos selected, it should run auto-exposure on all of them so I don't have to do it manually. The beta did this great; the final version didn't.
I know it's the minority opinion, but it needs to be stated. |
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Frank Casimiro, Photographer
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Houston/Sugar Land | TX | USA | Posted: 7:00 PM on 03.20.07 |
->> Hmmmm Brian....
I don't know how you tried performing auto exposure on multiple files or what platform you were on but on the Microsoft platform - applying auto exposure when multiple files are selected works like a charm.
As far as the sort order goes, are you sure you didn't select a different sorting method inadvertently after the fact?
I think the "Targeted Adjustment Tools" rock! They sure make fast work of applying curves or color specific tone adjustments a breeze.
I don't think it's an absolute mature product yet, but I feel it's a very worthwhile release of a new program for the photographers toolbox. I look forward to it's continued development, improvements, and additions. |
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Michael Clark, Photographer
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Santa Fe | NM | USA | Posted: 9:05 PM on 03.20.07 |
->> Jeffery -
Hello. I agree with you - there are lots of little things that I would change. It ain't perfect and you do have to wait a while for importing and rendering the 1:1 previews - and it does create a huge memory synch with the cache. I suppose all of that is just the price of admission. But it is a small price for me to save hours in the editing phase.
I hope that in version 2.0 or even a 1.10 that the 1:1 previews can be rendered on import but for now they are not. Still compared to my old workflow it is faster than waiting for actions to run on 200 images when they are processed out of ACR. Exporting with Lightroom is wicked fast.
I do mostly magazine and corporate work so the deadlines aren't quite as tight as what you deal with.
On the locked photos issue - I don't know if Lightroom can do that. I never lock images in camera as I never trust how they look on the back of the camera - and I don't really look at them on the back of the camera that much - just the histogram.
Also, I tend not to use Lightroom as a browser for sorting or that stuff beyond the editing phase - I use bridge or something else for that after the fact.
And interms of speed - nothing beats photo mechanic that I've ver seen. but the 1:1 previews in Lightroom are much more accurate than those in PM in my experience. We are just lucky to have so many options these days.
I've noticed a lot of folks really get confusd with the ranking tool bar and filter menu in the filmstrip just below it - Adobe needs to move the filter back to the left panel so folks don't erase all of the settings they have just made - I have had several folks call for help after doing this....
Anyway, for a 1.0 product - it is amazing. As computers get faster and people get used to the new software it is sure to be incredible. and yes, those "Targeted Adjustment Tools" are awesome! I just love the way it gets back to working with an image and not sliders. |
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Joshua Brown, Photographer
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Leonard Spoden, Photographer
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Vienna | VA | USA | Posted: 9:39 PM on 03.20.07 |
| ->> I really like the workflow concept of LR and some of the controls for Tone/Hue/Saturation are very nice. But between the poor RAW converter of LR, and the limited number of controls vs. Photoshop I find myself using Photo Mechanic, Capture One, and Photoshop most of the time. They are the best of breed at what they do. LR does a mediocre job but it does it within one package. Hopefully within a few years LR will mature in all three areas. |
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 11:42 PM on 03.20.07 |
->> "I don't like that it has to generate the previews. It takes a lot of hard drive space"
Jeffrey - I think that's the key here. From what I understand, both Lightroom and Aperature are RAM hogs and require plenty of HD space to work efficiently. With that in mind I made sure my new mac was ready to handle the tasks. I have a Mac Pro with 2 gigs of RAM and a 250 gig HD and since its new its also pretty clear. This computer is a real performer and its primary purpose for me is to handle my photography needs and that it does. Nothing in Lightroom seems too slow when I use it. I hear Aperture is an even bigger RAM hog than Lightroom. As for sports, once you get enough RAM and HD space to handle the program I think you'll change your overall evaluation of it. It saves a tremendous amount of time in my workflow and much of it is in sports and I only seeing it getting better and better with updates over time. |
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 11:50 PM on 03.20.07 |
->> "But between the poor RAW converter of LR, and the limited number of controls vs. Photoshop"
Leonard,
Can you elaborate on that because I definitely disagree. I've used Photoshop for fifteen years and I'm loving Lightroom after two weeks of use. Photoshop is a great program for so many reasons but Lightroom takes the relevant aspects of PS and puts them all in Lightroom and most are on one screen. Importing, editing and saving images in Lightroom takes me less than half the time than it did in PS. Everything is at your fingertips. As for importing the RAW files, it is smooth and fast when you give LR the space and RAM it requires.
I think the program is amazing and so easy to use. I just don't see the basis for your comments. Just my opinion but a firm one. I highly recommend LR to all who have the machine to run it properly. |
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 1:01 AM on 03.21.07 |
| ->> After looking this forum over and giving a couple of responses earlier I went into Lightroom to do some editing. There is one thing I'd like to ask Lightroom users. I seem to have everything for editing that I need in the Library mode except for a crop tool. Is there any way to get the crop tool to show up in Library so I don't have to switch to the Develop mode every time I want to crop (which is often)? |
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Neil Turner, Photographer
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London | UK | United Kingdom | Posted: 3:37 AM on 03.21.07 |
->> From reading this thread it's very clear to me that the tools for the job are different for every photographer. Who you are, what you shoot, where you edit and who the images are for all make big differences to which workflow you use.
Lightroom could work for me, and I have tried it out through the public beta and now with a licensed copy. I am still struggling to work out whether I'm just stuck in my ways (Photo mechanic + Photoshop) or whether Lightroom genuinely offers me no advantages for MY workflow. I also dislike the interface but, again, that could just be because it's different from what I'm used to seeing on my screens.
The bottom line here is that as long as your workflow doesn't harm images, allows you to perform the elements that are needed then it really doesn't matter. The fact that there is now genuine competition in this bit of the photoraphy market place will mean that software developers will continue to improve and innovate. |
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Bob Ford, Photographer
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Lehighton | Pa | USA | Posted: 8:26 AM on 03.21.07 |
| ->> Jim, If you're in the library and just press the "r" key it will automatically take you to the develop screen with the crop tool activated. I hope this helps, it really sped things up for me. |
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 2:27 PM on 03.21.07 |
| ->> Thanks Bob. Indeed that is a huge help and a great timesaver. I guess the one last logical follow-up question is what is the shortcut key to get back into Library after I crop? After that I should be all set. Thanks again! |
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Frank Casimiro, Photographer
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Houston/Sugar Land | TX | USA | Posted: 2:44 PM on 03.21.07 |
->> Jim....
You can press the "G" key to return to the thumbnail view in the library. |
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Frank Casimiro, Photographer
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 2:55 PM on 03.21.07 |
| ->> Thank you Frank - very helpful |
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Chuong Doan, Photographer
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Kansas City | MO | USA | Posted: 4:31 PM on 03.21.07 |
->> G= GRID.
E= Evaluate, C=Compare, D=Develop,
and R= cRRRRRRROP. I know, its horrible but thats how I remember it.
If its running slow on your machine, you need to upgrade to one of these:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6547 |
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Greg Ferguson, Photographer
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Scottsdale | Az | USA | Posted: 5:35 PM on 03.21.07 |
->> Neil said, "Lightroom could work for me, and I have tried it out through the public beta and now with a licensed copy. I am still struggling to work out whether I'm just stuck in my ways (Photo mechanic + Photoshop) or whether Lightroom genuinely offers me no advantages for MY workflow."
I've been LR since the beta started too, and use the same combination for most of my workflow (PM -> PS). I have some issues with both PM and PS but they aren't big enough to make me switch to something else.
To me, LR covers a large part of my work flow, but misses the very beginning (ingesting) and the very end (editing images for final output). I think that's where Adobe wanted to position LR because for the advanced amateur it's just right. They don't need PM or PS, but something combining the overall strengths of the programs.
Also, I haven't tried throwing a huge number of files at it, but I wonder how it'll handle several years worth of shooting with keywords and such. The demands on the drive and computer will increase as the built-in database grows with added images. I like that Photo Mechanic relies on the images on the drive for its display instead of rendered previews in a database.
As far as the interface goes, I think LightRoom is great. I developed for the Macintosh for years and found LR to be very intuitive, much more so than Photo Mechanic or Photoshop. |
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Frank Casimiro, Photographer
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Houston/Sugar Land | TX | USA | Posted: 6:37 PM on 03.21.07 |
->> -snip- Chuong Doan wrote: G= GRID, E= Evaluate, C=Compare, D=Develop, and R= cRRRRRRROP. I know, its horrible but thats how I remember it. -snip-
Makes sense to me, but where in the heck did the shortcut key "N" for Survey Mode come from? |
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Jim Leary, Photographer
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Staten Island | NY | USA | Posted: 7:02 PM on 03.21.07 |
->> "I think that's where Adobe wanted to position LR because for the advanced amateur it's just right."
I don't agree that Adobe had amateur or advanced amateur in mind when they made Lightroom. They did extensive research and used the input of an endless list of "professional" photographers to finalize the product. The initial description on their website spells it out quite clearly...
"New Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software is the professional photographer's essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens."
I'm interested in knowing how exactly LR is lacking in that it "misses the very beginning (ingesting) and the very end (editing images for final output)"
How does LR miss those two steps in the process? Where does it fail to "ingest" images and output not only exists but is one of it's key features whether your output is photo quality images, web or slideshow. So where does it miss the objectives? I don't see it. |
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Jim Comeau, Student/Intern, Photographer
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San Diego | CA | USA | Posted: 5:05 AM on 03.31.07 |
| ->> Is there a way to stipulate how much memory Lightroom can use like you can with Photoshop? I have 2GB of memory but Lightroom is only using 350mb for browsing a gig and a half of photos. Seems a little low and that could possibly be remedied by an increase in memory allocation. |
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Thomas Hobbs, Photographer
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Tallahassee | FL | USA | Posted: 1:49 PM on 04.02.07 |
| ->> How do you use Lightroom and noise software like Noise Ninja? Do you process all the photos and then run a batch in CS2 afterwards? Or does it integrate somehow? |
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Andrew Sullivan, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Kissimmee | FL | USA | Posted: 5:49 AM on 04.03.07 |
->> Thomas,
LR features noise reduction and color fringing correction in program that works well on my D2H files.
Andrew Sullivan
www.picandrew.com |
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