Adobe Lightroom for Windows

[iambaxter]

Check out the Adobe site for the beta version of Lightroom for windows. The

download for a trial version is free. Have been playing with it for a couple

of days now, and think I will stick to CS2.

[john_stafford2]

Did you find it is very slow? I did. Must be something about my platform.

[errol young]

I've just looked at it and I am not sure what it is for. I like the idea of creating albums via linking the files but since disk space is cheap, I can just copy the files. PS does any corrections that it does with more flexability. It just seems to not have a useful place in my workfolw.

[phil_duff]

I installed Lightroom for Windows on my XP Home system (with latest updates) and it wouldn't start. Crashed each time. Uninstalled it. Maybe when more of the bugs are worked out I'll try again.

[tom_swanson]

I'm forced to look at it since Adobe bought Pixmantec and that will be the end of RSP. (Which isn't a problem now but I see a camera upgrade in my future.)

 

It has a lot of the features I wanted in RSP. Lets you organize and do conversions. If you typically do not do much with your pictures after conversion (and with apps like RSP and Capture One I typically do not need CS2 much) then it is a nice tool.

 

Looks like it will take you from organization to print. Pretty interesting. I don't like ACR, however. So it might not be for me. I like the idea, tho.

[don_e]

"Did you find it is very slow? I did. Must be something about my platform."

 

I have it installed on a not very fast (an old Dell Optiplex 240) Home XP box with a gig of ram. It is not very fast, but it is a beta, folks. Optimization is for later. It installed and runs well. At the moment it is running fine with two other big applications up.

 

For me, the interface is far superior to Raw Shooter's which I could not get along with at all, but others love it.

 

I am not an Adobe fan, but LR gets an "Ok by me", fwiw.

 

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Don E

[vatovec]

I think it is fantastic! The first photographic program for PC.

 

It is very slow indeed even with 2gigs of ram on my rather old Athlon.

But a powerfull tool, good B&W conversion, tone curve control, organizer, slide show and print compatibility, even split toning!

 

I think when they solve the slowness problem it will be great.

[bill_fouche]

Here are my thoughts:

 

The program is, without a doubt, capable of producing some excellent and very smooth images.

 

I like the gray-scale options.

 

I like the hue-luminance-saturation sliders devoted to each of the color families - much better for fine-tuning than Photoshop's "selective color" and "hue/saturation" tools.

 

I like the way sharpening and noise-removal are integrated into what you see on screen from the beginning and that changes to these occur in "real time." Yet the noise/sharpening changes are "non-destructive" to the data. As the program becomes less sluggish, that could be quite nice.

 

I would expect that pros - especially those who do studio work and carefully control their lighting from the get-go - might eventually like this program quite a bit. As it is, I must use masks to selectively "light" my subject after the fact. Lightroom only makes global adjustments. It cannot be more than an early step in my workflow, and I expect many people will find it too cumbersome (and too expensive) to be used in that fashion.

 

I do not understand why the program does not allow me to directly change the tone curve. I keep finding myself using the eydropper tool to see where on the tone-curve a certain part of my image is, but the curve display won't show me that. So I have to guess which of the sliders to adjust. Plus I really want the ability to manipulate a particular part of the curve myself. Often the slider doesn't do exactly what I need.

 

Adobe's propaganda tries to present this as an advance in technology, suggesting that their sliders are super-sophisticated and do much more than a simple tone curve maneuver. Maybe. But I fiddle and I fiddle and I fiddle with them. And I often cannot get any slider change to accomplish what I could do in 5 seconds by placing a couple of dots on the curve.

 

The names on some of the toning sliders make no sense to me. "Shadow compression" for example. I would expect that by moving it to the right it would increase the amount of shadow compression. Nope. Moving that slider to the right opens up the shadows more.

 

I agree that the program's sluggishness is to be expected for now. I don't hold that agaisnt it.

 

Note that the software warns users that the Lightroom sidecar file is not "yet" compatible with the ACR version. I hope people will notice this and keep their Lightroom files carefully segregated.

[pjmeade]

I installed it and have opened it once. I need to spend a bit of time looking at it to draw any firm conclusions. But I doo like the slideshow, which is a little smoother than Bridge, I think.

 

Pete

[paul_sokal___dallas__tx]

I'm running it on Pentium D940 with 4GB Ram and speed is not an issue. It definitely seems to have more capabilities as a RAW editor than ACR. For some reason bridge does not display my D200 files as anything but a thumbnail in spite of having all the latest updates, making it impossible to review and rate the images in Bridge. Library in Lightroom displays the D200 files without problems. So far I'm liking it.

[images_in_light_north_west]

Very slow on my machine with 2gig of ram,I like the interface a lot all the way to printing, but should have the capability of manualy adjusting the curve and then using the sliders to fine tune it. I think Adobe is on the right track, but really this should all be posted on the Adobe forum so they can see the feedback and tweek the software accordingly. And they need a plug in for Noise Ninja

[don_e]

"I think when they solve the slowness problem it will be great."

 

I'd guess that's why they bought Pixmantic and employ RS developers, to optimize the code. RS speed is notable.

 

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Don E

[tom_swanson]

RSP's speed really lets you sort through your images. Lightroom will need some serious performance enhancements to match that.

[vincent_j_m]

Wow! I tried out lightroom over the weekend, and wow! The thing eats up 99% CPU if I try to do anything with my images, such as view it at 100%, and memory shoots up to 380-450megs. Even on my P4 3GHz machine with a gig of RAM it crawls. I think I'll stick to Capture one for now, till they come up with something better, like say, something that can actually be used in real time without having to go on a coffee break between the time it's "working" between two images.

[jka]

I guess I am in the minority because I like it. I do agree it is sluggish, but no more so than the Bridge in CS2. When working with RAW files, I don't see any advantage over the Bridge and ACR. Where I think it shines is in it's ability to work quickly and efficiently with JPG's. It is much easier to Crop and Straighten. It also seems just as easy to make the curve adjustments. I further like the fact that you can adjust exposure and white balance after the fact, just like a RAW file in ACR. As a matter of fact, I am going to carefully consider shooting more JPG's. Yesterday, I processed about 650 jpg images. While I didn't check it with a stopwatch, it did seem faster than ACR. When making adjustments in Photoshop, it always seems like you have to go through several drop down images, check the layers palette and all of the opening and closing commands. I also think the User Interface is much improved. IMHO

 

john