I would love to be able to say that I've been using Adobe
Lightroom for many months, but I can't. Actually, at time of writing
this Preview I've had a copy for about 48 hours. That said, I've been
aware of Lightroom (codename Shadowland for those into
that sort of thing) for the best part of 12 months, and was
given access to a preview video in early December 2005. Over this period
I have participated in on-line focus groups, and like a few other
Photoshop CS2 and Bridge beta testers I was asked to provide
prioritised feature wish lists. Obviously at the time most of us had no
idea of the use to which the information would be put. I mention all of
this for a number of reasons, but not least of which is to dispel any
notion that Lightroom is Adobe's rushed alternative to
Aperture. As a matter of fact,
Lightroom has been an ongoing project at
Adobe for a long time (see the
Shadowland/Lightroom Development Story by Jeff Schewe). Furthermore, Lightroom is not a
pre-bound version of Bridge and Camera Raw. Lightroom
lacks many of the features required for efficient multi-format file
management found in Bridge, but on the plus side, it
provides the much sought after off-line storage feature that is
currently absent from Bridge. It also
includes a much more comprehensive array of colour and tone correction
tools than Camera Raw 3. Nevertheless, it is important that I
stress the point - Lightroom is unfinished; i.e. there are many
features still to be incorporated. The application described below is
actually much closer to late Alpha than early Beta. You're getting to
see it now because Adobe wanted its customers to see what the future
holds, and they want your feedback.
 12 June 2006
Adobe Lightroom Public Beta 3 has been released. This new version
contains a fair number of new and enhanced features, so I've written a
review article to cover the changes. The new Preview can be accessed
here
18 July 2006
Adobe Lightroom Public Beta 3 for Windows has been released.
Other than the omission (temporary) of the Web module Windows users
should find the feature set is broadly similar to that found in
Mac Beta 3.
However, I've also put together a short review specifically for Windows
users, which can be found here.
So what is Lightroom?
Lightroom is designed to provide digital photographers with an
efficient, powerful way to import, select, develop, export, print and
showcase large numbers of digital images. It allows photographers to
spend less time sorting and organising their images, thus giving them
more time to actually take and edit the images. It was designed
from the ground up using a high level scripting language. Since its
modular architecture is intended to allow greater flexibility than most
of the current alternatives it should allow additional features
(includes those from third parties) to be easily and quickly integrated.
When you first open Lightroom you'll be presented with a
dialog called "Five Rules". The first four rules give a quick
overview of the Lightroom workflow, the fifth I'll leave until
later. The workflow for this Beta is relatively simple to follow, comprising of
four steps: Library, Develop, Slideshow and
Print. Over the next couple of pages I'll briefly cover the key
points of each module.
Library
The Library is the location in which all
your folders and images are stored. It also contains a Search
facility, a method for creating Collections, plus areas for
Keyword and Caption input.
Library Module - Browsing in Grid
View
Using the special Import dialog you'll find that importing
either new or existing image libraries into Lightroom is fairly
straightforward. With Lightroom you have four import options:
leave the images where they are (i.e. reference them), move them to a
centrally managed library, copy them to the managed library, or convert
them to DNG on import to the managed Library.
The Import module also allows you to rename the images on import, but
only on into the managed library. Renaming of referenced
images is not yet supported. This highlights an important distinction between Lightroom and
Bridge - in Bridge you can easily rename an image or
images at any time whereas
Lightroom only allows you to rename the images as part of the
import/export process.
Unlike Aperture, Lightroom libraries are not
written into special packages or even the much criticised unitary
database. With Lightroom you can access your images via the
Finder in exactly the same way as you've always done. Actually, you
access the Finder from within Lightroom itself, which makes finding
files, images, templates very easy.
Images can be imported into self-contained libraries
called Shoots or placed in the main library. Whilst an image can
only ever be in one Shoot it's perfectly possible to have the same
image appearing in more than one Collection. Likewise,
Lightroom will not allow you to import the same image a second time.
If an image has somehow been corrupted or needs to be replaced for some
reason then you'll need to delete the original version and it's associated
index file. A really nice feature of Lightroom is the ability to
browse all of your images in one window (i.e. view your entire image
library). This is achieved by selecting the option Show Entire Library
from the Photo Library panel. Using Collections something similar
can be done in Bridge, but it's nowhere near as fast or smooth.
Importing images and building the series of preview
thumbnails associated with each image can take a long time in Lightroom, but this is a
temporary issue that Adobe hope to resolve some time in the near future.
Even so, Lightroom will generate high quality preview images
very quickly once an image or group of images is selected. Obviously a
higher priority is given to selected images, but Lightroom still works away in the background.
Compared to Bridge you should find that scrolling through the thumbnails
is very fast, likewise the speed at which the larger preview images
appear. As you browse through the library you can also Rate images,
place them into Collections, etc.
Library Module - Import Dialog
There are three viewing options in the Library module:
Grid (G), Compare (C), and Loupe (Z). The last two
should go a long way to satisfying some of the criticisms levelled at
Bridge. The following
screen-shot shows two similar images being compared in Compare View. Using the Compare
feature from the mouse or keyboard is straight forward enough, requiring
only that you select the images you wish to compare followed by clicking
the button or hitting the C key
Two-up Compare View in the
Library Module
The Library module also has a panel called Quick
Develop in which you can select an alternative White Balance
and/or development Preset. It also allows you to make fairly crude
adjustments to: Exposure, Brightness, Contrast and
Saturation.
Quick Develop in Library Module
The left and right pointing arrow buttons are used to
apply step changes (i.e. exposure increase/decrease is equivalent to EV
0.33 and the remainder +/- 10 units each time button is pressed), whilst the X button is used to reset the
control. The Auto button only applies to Exposure. Other than the
Histogram and the actual image there's no other feedback. I'm sure
that once users establish how the button controls actually work they'll
ignore Quick Development. In the meantime, readers of this site will have
the jump on them.
Off-line Storage Warning
Another bone of contention with many Bridge users is the
fact that it does not provide a means of locating or accessing images that
are stored off-line (i.e. a disk drive or DVD that's not currently
available on your computer). With Lightroom this issue has been
substantially addressed. As can be seen in the screen-shot shown above
Lightroom initially identifies such images by a yellow alert badge (
Beta 3 uses the "?" symbol -
Click here
for an explanation on how it can be used).
Furthermore, if you attempt to edit an off-line image a dialog appears to
tell you the last know location of the image along with an offer to locate
the image. Once you connect the disk drive or insert the relevant DVD
Lightroom very quickly locates the image, thus allowing you to begin
the process of editing the image. Whether this will meet the needs of
users with 100's of thousands of off-line images is another matter.
Contd. on page 2
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