Lightroom Comments Rave!!!

[larry_moore]

After a little hesitation I am up and running with Lightroom.

 

If you do nothing else to help get your digital imagery to be better this is

the thing for this year.

 

Working with the files is amazing. It is so like the joy I used to feel in the

darkroom when you were able to look at the light on the paper and make your

adjustments and then see those test strips give up the options. Here it is a

few sliders and right on the screen there you have it dynamic, sensative and

georgeous options.

 

Makes me excited again about being a photographer.

 

Can see already how much easier this wedding season is going to be in terms of

post production. The edit function is great and being able to toggle through to

compare similiar images is wonderful.

 

Also being able to preview the complete range of monochrome options is

incredible.

 

Can't say enough in favor of it. The learning curve for people who have never

printed color is no doubt going to be high but for those of us who still

can "see " what is needed it is so great.

 

Give it a try Worth every penny!!

Brooke

[roxyandkaidotcom]

From what I've done in Lightroom so far, I love it, too. I haven't had a chance to really learn it

the way I know Photoshop, but I'm looking forward to using it more often. I second the

rave! :)

[leon_pryor]

Lightroom came out after I had committed to Aperture but it's an application I look at with interest. Especially since it's almost universally heralded as being much faster than Aperture. I'm at the point now were migrating would be a bit painful.

[roxyandkaidotcom]

Okay, I had some free time tonight to play with Lightroom again. I sat down and imported all

my son's birthday party pictures from yesterday. There were 113 total. It took me about 20

minutes to edit ALL OF THEM and export them into a folder and a backup folder. That ROCKS.

Lightroom is gonna be a Photoshop KILLER (funny that Adobe killed itself!)

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste1664880652]

Very much doubt it, it's extremely slow compared to bridge, especially at showing 100% views and you have to buy into the whole library thing. I worked with Lightroom for a month and the switched over to Bridge CS3, far faster, proper browser, all the same development tools and I can batch. I also love the magnifying glass for showing 100%, much easier to magnify an eye to check for sharpness than the whole picture.

[kari douma]

I too bought lightroom. While I like it, I don't LOVE it. I question whether it was worth it for me. It works fine, I got a few kinks out (thanks to some helpful folks here). But, now what? What can it do that I can't do in ACR? I am still using CS2, but will upgrade to CS3 soon, and I don't see an advantage to using Lightroom over CS3. I am still working with it, to get a better opinion.

[rtrace]

I'm on the same page with Ben. I tried Lightroom in Beta and in 1.0. For me, it's bloated, slow, and filled with way too many functions and pretty buttons. I also don't like the whole library/refernce thing and there are some issues with that. Since CS3 came out, I've been using that and have never been happier or more productive. I'm shooting 100% JPEG now, and with ACR4 and CS3 Bridge it's absolutely fantastic!

 

Bogdan

[valerie cook photography]

I love Lightroom! Bridge and Capture NX always bogs my computer down (yes, it's a slow old computer) - Lightroom doesn't! I like being able to see the NEF files before taking the time to convert them!!!

It's so easy to copy develop settings to multiple images. I am really enjoying it. I also really like the compare feature to see a view of the image before and after your edits. Let's me know that I am making progress!

~Val

[mikea]

So far I have put 7,500+ photos through Lightroom. While I love the program, I usually locks up on me once an hour. I go to task manager and see about 20 tasks that say Bezel. Does anyone else get this?

[kevin_dancey]

Any Canon user compared the default Lightroom CR2 conversion to Canon's DPP ? I love Lightroom but the colour conversion/white balance just does not look right. No amount of tinkering with the presets can match the output from DPP (have tried downloading some that claim to work but they do not) and even if it could be done I do not have the time. I have asked my clients which output is the most colour accurate for them and every time its DPP. This means I now have to make any WB/colour adjustments in DPP and export TIFF then import those into Lightroom. Hope Adobe fix it next release so I can take full advantage of Lightroom and save the extra time and disk space it takes at the moment.

 

Anyone else experience the same or can point to some setting I may be missing ? Have not had any luck finding a solution on Adobe or other forums.

[rtrace]

Kevin,

 

Take a close look at this thread and my reply:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00NCRD

 

Look at the threads I listed in my reply. The bottom line is that third party RAW converters do not have access to the all the metadata in a RAW file, since RAW files are proprietary formats. From all the tests I've done over the years, the camera manufactures' RAW converters (DPP for Canon for example) ALWAYS provide the best and most accurate colors. Third party RAW converters like Lightroom, ACR, C1 need to rely on some camera profiles that can be calibrated by the user. IMO however, calibrating is a real problem and very difficult. You can read the excellent book "Real World Camera RAW", but it's still very difficult. You may get a good calibration for daylight, where the colors look good, but then when you shoot in mixed lighting, etc. the colors will be off. And it's almost impossible to build infinite profiles for infinite lighting situations. All of this is common sense and not even up for debate. Some users however don't mind the colors from Lightroom/ACR or other third pary RAW converters. It's subjective, but obvious. Also, some may shoot in just a few lighting conditions or don't mind spending time to play with color correction and all sorts of buttons and sliders. I don't have that time. It's up to each person.

 

For me colors and quality are first. DPP and Nikon's Capture NX provide the best IMO for Canon and Nikon cameras. ACR/Lightroom have extremely good workflows (DPP and Capture NX suck pretty much in that aspect), but the colors they produce leave a lot to be desired.

 

Bogdan

[kevin_dancey]

Bogdan

 

Thankyou for those threads, somehow missed them during my searches, they reinforce the conclusion I had already came to. I always shot jpg before LR simply because I could not find any elegant workflow solution for RAW. I'm a great believer in getting it right in camera so I may go back to jpg as RAW does not offer me any significant advantages. If I do return to jpg I will continue to use LR with PS when needed.