And out of the darkness there came: Adobe Lightroom
Tags: adobe, beta, raw, conversion
Apple wowed digital photographers earlier in the year with its lightbox software, Aperture, but sub-par RAW conversion algorithms meant that few were persuaded to part with Photoshop. Now Adobe has counterstruck and released the second beta of Adobe Lightroom. We got our hands on the preview this weekend and put it through the thresher.
Lightroom is designed to replace the traditional studio lightbox: the stage where a film photographer checks their work for focus, composition, colour balance and a range of other fine details. Traditionally a film photographer would stare at prints on an illuminated box, using a loupe to magnify areas. Now that we're all switching to digital, there's no print to examine and physically organise, which is where Lightroom comes in.
The Lightroom interface is different from Aperture's. It's not as flashy, but makes more sense at first glance. If you're familiar with iPhoto, you'll be at home here. Lightroom is specifically designed to deal with RAW files -- the highest quality digital photo format in common use.
During our cursory tests, Lightroom seemed sluggish when browsing through photographs, but its RAW conversion method dramatically outclasses Aperture. It roughly matches the RAW conversion in Photoshop. For professional photographers, the only real option at this stage is to stick with Photoshop, or cope with the laggy ways of Lightroom -- hopefully this will be improved by the time Lightroom is ready for release. Aperture, though a great organisational tool, can't even compete at the moment because of its poor RAW conversion.
If you want to check out Adobe Lightroom for yourself, you can download the beta here. It's currently Mac-only, but a PC version is in development. -CS
- Share this article:
RELATED LINKS
Canon EOS 50D: 15-megapixel SLR packs epic specs
Nikon Coolpix P6000: Dripping with features
Pentax Optio M60 and E60: 10 megapixels for dummies
tony balooTue 21 February, 2006 8:18am
I've been using Lightroom Beta 2 for a couple of hours now, and it didn't hang. Mind you, I didn't try importing photos directly from a camera -- I just used existing libraries. Lightroom is worth using though, perhaps the answer is to manually transfer photos from your camera by drag and drop in the Finder, then import them into Lightroom. It's a cludge, but I'm guessing Adobe will fix this sort of thing in the final release. On the plus side, I love the 'direct positive' filter in 'Develop'.
Ask questions, share opinions and find answers in the CNET.co.uk forums
-
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX37
8.5 -
Monster Beats by Dr Dre headphones
7.7 -
Panasonic HDC-SD9
7.2 -
Samsung Omnia i900
7.9 -
Nokia 7310 Supernova
6.6 -
Vodafone 526
6.4 -
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pi 3540
7.5 -
Olympus E-420
7.5 -
Samsung i8510
8.9 -
Sony RDR-HXD995
7.5
AnonymousTue 21 February, 2006 2:30am
So far this is more alpha than beta. At present, it's hung up on my screen, after I tried to import some photos. The error message read "Importing photos from a camera may cause sluggish response" or some such, but instead the window hung... the Import button does not work, the Cancel button does not work, can't quit cuz that menu item is greyed out and there's no Force Quit command in the Dock. And when I click on Help, the response is, "At present there is no Help file." OK, so I'll reboot later but I don't see a reason to switch from PhotoShop.