Adobe hopes Lightroom intercepts photo trends

With Adobe Systems' release of version 2 of its Photoshop Lightroom on Monday night, the company no doubt hopes customers will be drawn by a number of new features in the software for sorting, cataloging, and editing photos.

But the company believes an external factor will also help the software: the booming sales of high-end SLR cameras. These high-end models are helping usher in many of digital photography's biggest changes, and Adobe is trying to intercept the trend with Lightroom.

From 2007 to 2008, digital SLR shipments increased a dramatic 41 percent to 7.5 million units, according to market researcher IDC. And though plenty of those cameras went to gadget-happy doctors or to snapshooters who won't exploit the cameras' full features, plenty of others went to the photography enthusiasts at whom Lightroom is aimed.

Lightroom 2.0 is geared for editing flexible but complicated 'raw' images taken directly from higher-end cameras' image sensors. (Click image to enlarge.)

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

"Prices are coming down, so more people with entry-level SLRs are experimenting," said Tom Hogarty, the Adobe senior product manager in charge of Lightroom. "If you pick up the camera for the sake of creating an artistic thing and not just recording a family event, you've really taken the plunge into serious photography. Anyone at that level is an ideal Lightroom customer."

One significant feature common to SLRs is the ability to shoot "raw" photos--the images taken directly from the image sensors without the camera baking in its own assumptions about what's right. Raw images offer more editing flexibility than JPEG, so it's better for aficionados who need to correct underexposure or an orange color casts. But raw images require processing into more standard, universal formats for sharing--thus software such as Lightroom, Apple's Aperture, Phase One's Capture One, and others.

Lightroom 2.0 has a revamped interface and several new features, most notably a much broader ability to edit selected portions of an image. And it's got a surprise that wasn't in the beta version: exposure gradients that can help with the classic photography problem of showing both a dark foreground and a brilliant sunset. (See the full feature list below.)

The new version costs $299 new or $99 as an upgrade.

What is this Lightroom thing anyway?
Lightroom occupies a new niche in Adobe software's history. Its interface, built from scratch, hints at things to come to the broader world of Photoshop and photo editing overall. Unlike Adobe's earlier products, it's designed for the new crop of photos challenges, when people come back from a vacation or a photo shoot with hundreds of images.

Many folks are happy just copying their pictures off their cameras, but for enthusiasts, there are other challenges. Besides editing photos, they must weed out the duds, edit and organize the keepers, label them with where they were taken and who's in them, and print or upload them to photo-sharing sites. With no negatives anymore, they might want to leave the originals digital files intact. And later, they often have to dig them out of the archives.

Adobe has a large, successful franchise with its regular Photoshop software. It now comes in the ordinary CS3 version, a higher-cost CS3 Extended version, a lighter-weight Elements version, and the free online Express version. Lightroom doesn't fit neatly into this lineage, though. It's both more and less than regular Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom features a task-oriented interface. Shown here is the 'Library' view for sorting, tagging, and organizing photos. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Less because it's specialized for photos: it can't handle Photoshop tasks such as carefully removing a distracting background, compositing multiple shots together, overlaying text, or applying dramatic special effects.

More because its interface encompasses more tasks: Photoshop CS3 and its ilk let people edit images one at a time, but Lightroom handles the digital photos a batch at a time. Photographers can apply editing changes made to one image to other similar shots, label photos with tags such as shoot locations and copyright notices, print groups of photos or export them for use on the Web.

Some of that extra utility is a natural extension of handling photos. But it's also something of a power grab. Lightroom wants to be the center of your digital photography universe, stepping into roles that the operating system or utilities might offer.

Getting along with Photoshop CS3
So is any of the power grab aimed at regular Photoshop?

Not really, though Lightroom 2's ability to edit selected areas of photos does reduce reliance on Photoshop.

"There are some things in Lightroom 2 that delve into what Photoshop has been used for in the past, such as dodging, burning, and gradients," Hogarty said. Photoshop's approach dates from the film days when photographers would process only the best couple images from a photo shoot, and that approach is still important today, Hogarty said: "Photoshop excels at doing the detail work for high-value images."

Adobe is taking a page from the Lightroom specialization playbook for Photoshop by trying to make it more customizable to specific users and tasks. But in contrast with Lightroom, company is trying to do so without sacrificing the software's general-purpose nature, said John Nack, senior product manager for Photoshop.

"We want to make it possible to be everything you want and nothing you don't," Nack said. "One of the tough things has been dealing with the enormous breadth of Photoshop. We end up presenting same interface to architects as a Web designers as radiologists as prepress folks."

To achieve that goal, Photoshop's interface will become more open-ended and even programmable, he said.

"You'll see some of the things we've learned about Lightroom--making things browsable and less modal--come into Photoshop," Nack said. In other words, it'll be easier to shift Photoshop from one task to another.

Lightroom 2's single biggest change is the ability to selectively edit portions of photos, such as this shadowy area that's been lightened. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

With a "Configurator" application that should be released by Adobe Labs within a month or two of release the next version of Photoshop, Adobe will let users create and share their own Photoshop control panels written in Adobe's Flash programming language, Nack added. "Our goal is to make it possible for expert users to reconfigure the environment on a task-by-task basis and share those workspaces with other people. You don't have to write code. You can knock together an interface and make it sharable."

Lightroom 2.0 features
More graceful handoffs between Photoshop and Lightroom arrive with the new Lightroom. It can use Photoshop CS3's panorama tool to stitch multiple shots together into a single image and its high-dynamic range tool to merge photos taken at a variety of exposures into a single image. And Photoshop can import raw files from Lightroom as a more flexible "smart object" whose properties can be edited with the raw-image dialog box.

Another significant change is better external relations. A new metadata API (application programming interface) will let other software interact with the data Lightroom attaches to files, which means for example that a Flickr uploading application could tag images in Lightroom's database with a custom field indicating the file has been stored at the photo-sharing site.

For now, though, that extra metadata is stored only in Lightroom's catalogs, not in the XMP files that accompany raw images for purposes of storing metadata or in Adobe Systems' Digital Negative (DNG) format intended to standardize raw formats, Hogarty said.

"The next step is to write to XMP," Hogarty said. "I think that's an absolute requirement."

Among other new features:

• Raw photos, though more flexible, often are tamer than the high-contrast, rich-color JPEGs mainstream digital camera users are used to seeing on the computer or camera LCD. So Adobe added profiles that can apply various styles.

"It's for every single person who picks up a digital SLR, takes the leap into raw space, and questions the default interpretation from various raw converters because it doesn't match what was on the back of the camera--less saturated, more neutral, or with less contrast," Hogarty said.

• People with dual monitors now can use both, with the second monitor speeding file navigation, image comparison, and some other tasks.

• It's got a new interface designed to make it easier to sift through files on the basis of metadata such as the camera or lens used to take the picture, keywords, and dates.

• Image-sharpening technology licensed from PhotoKit automatically applies appropriate sharpening settings during printing according to the photo's size, the printer's resolution, and other factors.

• Smart Collections automatically assemble groups of photos, such as those rated with five stars and labeled with the tag "bicycle."

• Lightroom 2.0 supports 64-bit Windows Vista and Mac OS X, letting people employ more than 4GB of memory for the application. That's useful for handling large images such as panoramas, for moving back and forth among many images, and for handling large image catalogs, Hogarty said.

[anomalator]

I Hope one of the improvements in LR 2.0 is the print management. For some reason Adobe decided to make the print management in LR totally different then in PS, so consequently a photo printed with PS will come out just like I want, but the same photo will look horrible when printed with LR. Why? Other then the printing problems I think Lightroom is a great product.

[iPhotographer]

I started with Lightroom 1.5 and after 6 months swapped to Aperture 2 when it came out. Oh what a difference, and it would seem Lightroom 2 isn't much better.
Lightroom has a stuffy, claustrophobic and unintuitive interface. Much of the GUI is very dark rather than a nice neutral which can cause colour bias if looked at for extended periods. It's as if Adobe aimed to make all the various controls the emphasis of the program and the image comes second place. Even zooming is difficult. It just doesn't feel like your working with photographs, but rather working the software.
Aperture feels lighter, more neutral and intuitive. Sleeker and it works with a couple of my favourite photoshop plug-ins. It feels like I am working with photographs against, using a scope and making adjustments full screen, not in a little window. Like I'm back in the darkroom again.

[moav]

I second iphotographers comments. I have been playing with the 2.0 on Lightroom for a couple months and something was amiss. I finally went out and upgraded to 2.0 (actually 2.1.1) for aperture the other day and decided to go ahead and delete Lightroom once and for all. I am really excited about the growing plug-in library for Aperture 2 and have used 1/2 dozen or so . But what really sets it aside for Lightroom is scripting I love Apertures scripting. It makes the simplest of tasks such a breeze, that's the entire point of software development to make your life a little easier and a bit more fun.

[sderf]

Boy It doesn't like Lightroom is as great as Adobe thinks according to these comments.
Thanks folks
sderf

[Nordlor]

I am one of those enthusiast that Lightroom is targeting and they have hit the mark. I upgraded from a digital point and shoot to a digital SLR. And went from shooting JPEGs to RAW. I was a satisfied Photoshop Elements user but with quality and quantity of photos growing, its limitations were exposed. I tried Lightroom as trial and fell in love with it. The workflow is great, I can make non-destructive edits and the exporting of files for other uses is a breeze. Lightroom has changed the way I think about photography.

[elguevon1]

Too bad Aperture is ONLY FOR THE MAC!!!!!

[gright]

In the article it states that in photoshop cs3 you can not batch edit photographs. This is not correct. I use photoshop cs2 and you can batch edit in any manner you like. Ofcouse photoshop is powerful software with much flexibility which requires commitment to learning it to get the most out of it.

Would like to add Corel Paint Shop Pro to the mix... this is a fine product and handles a majority of the tasks that PhotoShop and Lightroom handle. I do realize that this product is aimed at the more of a hobbyist audience, but, it is quite usable and intuitive.

[mwalshaw]

If I want to edit the master file then thats my decision, not the software's. I wont use any program that takes that process away. Lightroom, Aperture, Iris all work from an image library which doesnt allow masterfile change - all you end up with is vastly bloated storage systems full of various copies and image info files. No thanks.

I'll stick with Nikon Transfer, NX View and NX Capture 2. For clone/heal or specialist mods its CS3.

[Shankland]

Actually, Lightroom does let you save metadata to the original raw file if you enable that. Personally, I use DNG, which by virtue of its nonstandard nature more gracefully accommodates metadata. You still get your big old Lightroom database, though. I agree that XMP sidecar files are a nightmare.

[tbcass]

Light Room will have to get a lot cheaper before there's "A Lightroom In Every Room" as my email notice said. My preference is Helicon Filter which is similar and less than $50.

[tbcass]

Light Room will have to get a lot cheaper before there's "A Lightroom In Every Room" as my email notice said. My preference is Helicon Filter which is similar (and better IMO) and less than $50.

[c.bicknelli]

I think not....Bibble Labs and GIMP

[TreesofMyTime]

Now that we have MOST of the "ringers" for other products out of the way, maybe we can see what the rest of us think. I use both CS3 and Lightroom1,?. I had downloaded the beta version of 2 but did not do much with it because it had advised keeping the catalogs separate.

Lightroom is a useful program to me for large batches and easy backup protection. I am a Mac user and I looked at Aperture a long time ago. Like Iphoto, I HATE the way Aperture takes over file structure. OH, I purchased Lightroom 2.0 last night.

[tptme]

I'm a LR user on a PC so I've never been able to use Aperture. I find LR easy to use and easy to learn to use. I don't find it claustrophobic. I don't feel the controls take the emphasis away from the images. For instance, you can use the Targeted Adjustment Tool on the image and watch in real time the changes you make.
While the side panels are two toned as you can see in the article. The background area around the image can be adjusted from white to three different shades of gray to black.

The complaint about the master file doesn't make sense to me. Why would you want to make changes to it? A copy sure but the original image? LR creates Previews that allow changes to be made without touching the original image. While the Previews created take up space it's alot less than a PSD,TIFF,or JPEG with multiple adjustment layers plus a final flattened copy. Also you can create multiple Virtual copies of an image such as a Sepia, B&W, and split tone. None will take up space until you export a final version JPEG,TIFF or PSD.
Both programs allow you to quickly and easily review alot of images to separate the wheat from the chaff. If the look and feel of Aperture makes it easier for you great. I have alot of reasons to be happy with LR.

Also there never was a Lightroom 1.5. It only went to 1.4.1.

[kyle5434]

I started off using RawShooter Premium on Windows, which was a great version 1.0 RAW developer cooked up by some former CaptureOne guys. Adobe obviously felt somewhat jealous and/or intimidated by RawShooter, because just as I was looking forward to version 2.0 of the product Adobe purchased them, abandoned the RawShooter product, and rolled the RawShooter features and technology into the first release of Lightroom. Since Lightroom for Windows wasn't going to be out for a while, I took advantage of a cross-grade discount and moved to Bibble Pro, which I've been really happy with. I've since moved to Linux as my primary OS, and it's even more of a bonus that Bibble makes a native Linux version as well. With features like integrated Noise Ninja, PTLens correction, and an existing plugin architecture, it's a pretty nice product.

Bibble version 5 has been in the works for a while now, and the previews look downright awesome. So for those who can extricate themselves from sheep mode and not blindly follow the herd, there's a pretty compelling RAW workflow life to be found outside of Lightroom and Aperture.