Comments on: Adobe hopes Lightroom intercepts photo trends

Lightroom 2.0 is better at editing just a portion of an image, and it plays more nicely with Photoshop. More broadly, it's designed for digital-era photography challenges.

[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.