Give Lightroom a Chance
October 10, 2006: In our last inteview, Scott Kelby said he really liked Adobe Lightroom. I would love a program that allows me to use and manipulate my raw files more quickly and easily, so I as very interested in what Scott had to say.
I just downloaded the beta, and am learning how to use the program. It’s not love at first sight - I find the program runs slowly on my 2.8 Ghz Pentium DualCore with 1 Gig of ram.
But there’s a lot to like here, and the workflow and program layout are pretty cool. Here’s what Adobe has to say about their latest version:
The Photoshop Lightroom beta is a new, exciting product built from the ground up for professional photographers. It is an efficient, powerful way to import, select, develop and showcase large volumes of digital images. It allows you to spend less time sorting and organizing images, so you have more time to actually shoot and perfect them. The Photoshop Lightroom beta program aims to get direct product feedback from the photography community, via the Adobe Labs web site, so that photographers will have an impact in what Adobe actually ships.
Since the beta is free, there’s no downside to downloading installing it if you’re interested in playing with a new toy. You can find it here, in both Mac and PC versions.
And we are going to try and get someone form Adobe on the show to tell us all about Lightroom. If you play with the program first, you might enjoy the interview more.
October 12th, 2006 at 12:11 am
“Since the beta is free, there’s no downside to downloading installing it if you’re interested in playing with a new toy”
Actually, there is a pretty big downside to it. Currently it is free but it won’t always be, and no one yet knows what the price is, so if you have all your files set up in Lightroom and have become tied to the workflow, when they announce the final release, if it is more expensive than you can afford or are willing to spend, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time re-creating your lightroom setups in another program.
I think it’s important that people are aware of that before they invest too much time with the software. By all means evaluate it, but remember it is only Beta and it will expire.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:04 am
Hey Thomas, I agree with you that it might not make sense to invest too much time with Lightroom as there is no pricing or even (I think) release date yet. That’s an excellent point.
But I also agree with me that there’s no particular downside to, as I put it, “playing with a new toy.” Give it a a half hour and see if what you think. It is cool technology, and I find the actual layout and program design very appealing.
Trying it out might also convince you to hold of on buying Aperature or another RAW viewing/editing program if you really love it.
One downside you didn’t mention - and I know this is true of Windows machines, not so sure about Macs - is installing any program always seems to leave your system running slower and buggier - and that the uninstall program never gets all the gunk out. That’s a good reason not to be too wild and crazy with trying out software.
October 12th, 2006 at 4:59 am
I’ve been using Lightroom for 3 months now on a windows machine and I love it! The modules make sense, the output is great and the workflow is fast. The initial import is definitely time consuming (Centrino Duo 1.83 MHz 2GB Ram), but fast after that.
The print module is awesome once you understand it and it goes to the Epson driver directly and remembers previous settings (again the first setup takes time).
BW conversion is also great and flexible once you understand it.
Remember this is a beta, but spend some time and it really makes sense.
October 12th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Scott Said:
“installing any program always seems to leave your system running slower and buggier”
Scott,
You are getting closer and closer every day to talking yourself into getting a Mac :)
BTW, I was at CompUSA last night and I played with the 24″ iMac …. What a great machine! I’d probably get one except that I already own an Apple cinema display so I can’t see spending $2000 for a machine like that when I already own a great display. I’ll be a getting a Mac Pro.
October 14th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Scott,
I’ve just used Beta 4 of Lightroom to process around 1400 photos taken during a two day soccer tournament. I’d been using Rawshooter Professional for the past year or so, but that product will not be updated any more due to Adobe buying the company(!) I therefore figured I’d better check out the new alternative. One positive for current Rawshooter owners is that Adobe has promised to give us all a license of Lightroom when it ships…so I got that goin’ for me;)
As others have said LR is not so snappy in terms of responsiveness…but I’m hoping that this has something to do with the beta status. Speed aside I like it. Many features are pretty intuative, but I could still use a good manual or tutorial. I’ve already got Scott Kelby’s upcoming LR book on my wish list!
Liking the show so keep up the good work!