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An update to make Lightroom 1.2 fully compatible with Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 should be available mid-November, Adobe has announced.

The company says photographers can continue using the photo management software in Leopard without too much issue, but stressed that the current version of Lightroom 1.2 is not fully compatible with Apple's new operating system.

Adobe recommends that users refer to a list of known compatibility issues published on Adobe's Lightroom Journal Web site before deciding whether to use the current version of Lightroom with Leopard. It also issued this warning:

(Credit: Apple)

"The interaction between Leopard's Time Machine and Lightroom's catalog files is unknown at this time. Running Time Machine backup or restore operations while Lightroom is in use is not recommended until more information can be obtained," Tom Hogarty, Adobe Lightroom Project Manager, said in a statement.

Most of the Lightroom/Leopard compatibility problems involve visual issues with the interface rather than functionality. For example, users may have to open and close left-side panels to get the Develop module to display properly. Other glitches are more serious, such as the Print module not loading at all for some Leopard users.

Adobe stated previously that its Creative Suite 3 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks are safe for continued use in Leopard.

While not directly related to the use of Adobe Lightroom, photographers commonly dealing with frequent backups and file sharing should also be aware that Leopard's Time Machine will not support AirPort Extreme's AirPort Disk. This is the feature that allows users to plug an external hard drive into AirPort Extreme and share its files over a secure network.

Adobe added some significant features this week with Photoshop Lightroom 1.1, but some people are having trouble upgrading from version 1.0.

Adobe is trying to figure out the causes for problems some have had moving their database of photos and editing changes from 1.0 to 1.1. "We're very concerned about database upgrade issues," said Adobe's Mark Hamburg on the company's Lightroom forum.

Hamburg's advice includes running Lightroom database integrity checks often; if your computer crashes, don't delete the "journal" file that records database changes; and don't open Lightroom's database with other tools. (Lightroom uses the open-source SQLite database software.)

The Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 update will be available from Adobe Systems' Web site later this week, but the company inadvertently released it for a short period Monday night.

"During the course of delivery testing, the update was publicly available through the Adobe.com store for a short period of time this evening," Lightroom Product Manager Tom Hogarty said in a forum posting Monday night. "The update has been removed from the Adobe.com store and will be reposted, once all of the testing has been completed internally."

Meanwhile, one forum poster who said he found the Lightroom 1.1 User's Guide on Adobe's site posted the list of what's new in Lightroom 1.1.

Some of the features, such as the clarity adjustment and better sharpening, were expected. Other features include better abilities to add, remove and update folders; improved noise reduction options; expanded Digital Negative (DNG) file-exporting options; and better organization of editing, printing and exporting presets.

(Via ProPhoto Home)

I didn't fully appreciate how much Adobe Photoshop Lightroom changed how I deal with digital photos until I tried the latest version of the regular Photoshop software, CS3.

I shoot raw images almost all the time, and I wanted to try out the new features of Adobe Camera Raw 4.1 that's available only to Photoshop CS3 users. I like its new "clarity" adjustment, and appreciate more control over sharpening, but trying those tools out felt like a trip back to the stone age.

Adobe Lightroom

(Credit: Adobe)

Lightroom isn't perfect, and it doesn't replace regular Photoshop. But it shows the future of photo editing, and in my case, Lightroom unexpectedly swooped in to take over almost all of my photo-related tasks.

Why shoot raw?
Here's a little background on raw images for those of you who aren't converts yet. They're taken directly from higher-end camera image sensors with no in-camera processing. That lets the photographer use all the bit depth of the original data for finer tonal gradations; better correct exposure problems; sidestep sometimes overaggressive or misguided noise reduction; and adjust white balance for incandescent light, shade or bright sunlight.

So raw images are great, right? Overall, yes, in my opinion, but there are serious drawbacks. The biggest is that you have to hand-adjust each raw image to make them into JPEGs to send to your pals, and that takes a lot of time. And I already spend too much of my day staring at a screen.

This is where Lightroom steps in. Its "develop" module has relatively quick and convenient tools for fast conversion of your raw images. It's based on the same engine used in Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) converter, so many of the controls are familiar, but Lightroom presents them much more ably in a single strip to the right of the photo you're editing. Infrequently used options can be collapsed to stay out of the way.

In my case, probably the single biggest improvement over ACR is that a single click on the image will zoom it to 100 percent, and another click will zoom it back. When editing photos, I do this a lot. The second biggest improvement is the keyboard shortcuts that rapidly move me through Lightroom's options.

Much more than an editor
I wanted Lightroom for converting my raw images, but I ended up using it for much more. I import my photos into Lightroom's library, compare similar shots and delete the duds, tag the rest with appropriate metadata, then label the ones I want to export for my JPEG archive.

I sift through my collections using metadata--not just my own tags, but also EXIF data such as the lens I used. When I upload images to Web sites such as Flickr, the captions and tags and titles I added in Lightroom show up automatically. I give impromptu slideshows to friends and family. On the infrequent occasions when I'm printing rather than e-mailing photos, I use Lightroom. The main feature I don't touch is Lightroom's ability to create HTML or Flash photo galleries that can be uploaded to a Web site.

Lightroom has made raw image editing simple and fast enough that I can envision a future in which it will become much more mainstream. Likely that will be because software will be able to automatically convert raw images better than cameras can. Based on that forecast, I've begun recommending to friends that they shoot raw as well as JPEG for photos they care about. Even if all they use today are the JPEGs, the higher-quality raw images will likely will be nearly as convenient to handle in the future.

OK, enough with the warm and fuzzies. Having used Lightroom for a few months now, my expectations have been reset. Here's my gripe list:

Gripe list
• It's somewhat slow. I don't have the latest computer, and processing raw files is a complicated chore, so I'm willing to cut Adobe some slack, but I find myself waiting a lot. The worst is waiting for the 100 percent zoom view images to load.

• A workaround for the 100 percent view problem is to have Lightroom build 1:1 previews in advance. That takes awhile, so I usually start it, go away, then come back later. It would be nice if Lightroom had an option to create the 1:1 previews upon import. And even when 1:1 previews have been generated, it still often takes a long time to display them--15 seconds for me when I timed it a few days ago. Perhaps this is a memory-caching issue. Perhaps I need a PC with dual quad-core processors and 8GB of memory. Perhaps I need a big pay raise.

• The noise-reduction and sharpening tools are feeble compared with my preferred tools, Photoshop's smart sharpen and reduce noise filters. In fact, those two filters are the main reason I still use Photoshop. Adobe is goosing at least the sharpening options with Lightroom 1.1, but I doubt either tool will match Photoshop, perhaps because of the difficulties of nondestructive editing.

• I'd like keyboard shortcuts to move to different development sliders, such as exposure, vibrance and sharpening.

• Clicking the "auto" button to have Lightroom make its best guess about correct exposure and tonality often produces a glaringly overexposed skin tones. This seems to be the case mostly with pictures I've taken indoors; auto tone works pretty well for outdoor shots.

• Why is it when I hit tab to move from one noise-reduction field to the next, Lightroom moves me to the exposure adjustment field?

• If I've labeled an image with a color, then change it back to neutral, it improperly appears at the top of the heap when I filter by color.

• It chokes with too many images. When I load up a few hundred shots from a weekend trip, I often get out of memory errors, even with a system with 3GB of RAM. These are usually fixed by quitting and restarting, but it's still a drag, and I imagine they'd be even more annoying for a pro who's shooting thousands of frames. I also fear my library of images is too big. But if I split it up, say, into increments of three months, then the nifty ability to filter by metadata is impaired.

• Lightroom leaves original images intact, which is good, storing modifications in a separate database. But Photoshop's ACR can't read that database. An alternative is to store the edits in extra XMP sidecar files that reside in the same folder as the original, but I worry about problems keeping the sidecars and the originals cheek by jowl. Perhaps I should move my files to DNG (Adobe's Digital Negative) format, which records modifications in the file itself. Happily, Lightroom can convert your raw files into DNG upon import.

• I'm on the fence about hierarchical metadata. At first blush, having subtags for "pelicans" and "warblers" as children of the "birds" tag makes sense; filtering on "birds" will catch all of them, but filtering on "warblers" will be more precise. But it's a slippery slope once you're forced to grapple with a hierarchy of mutually exclusive tags. I don't take a lot of lizard or snake pictures, but should I make them subtags of the "reptile" tag? But then should "reptiles" be subordinate to "animals"? I'm leaning against the hierarchy; the bird example above can be avoided by tagging an image with both "birds" and "warblers."

• Some of the metadata interface is ugly. After I create a new subtag that's a child of a top-level tag, the interface pops back up to the top of the metadata list. But if I just created it, it's logical to assume that the next thing I'll want to do is apply it. Instead, I have to scroll back through the list to find it again. Also annoying: if I want to drag a tag to make it a subtag, but the new parent doesn't appear on the list, the display doesn't autoscroll, so I have to drop the tag, scroll a page, pick it up, and repeat. With hundreds of tags, this is highly tedious.

• It's not unreasonable that version 1.0 can't handle multiple monitors or lacks a mechanism to plug in third-party tools, but I sure hope version 2.0 will.

Version 1.1 should be here any week now. I expect it'll fix some of the minor issues, and I hope it will improve performance. In any event, though, I'm already sold.

Mamiya, along with competitors such as Pentax and Hasselblad, is working to bring the digital revolution to the higher-end, medium-format camera industry. On Friday, the company plans to announce a $9,999 technology bundle for a 22-megapixel camera.

Mamiya's ZD Back and 645AFD II camera

(Credit: Mamiya)

The bundle includes Mamiya's 645AFD II camera, the 22-megapixel ZD Back and the 80mm f/2.8 AF lens, which is equivalent to a 50mm lens in terms of field of view of a more ordinary 35mm camera.

Medium-format cameras often use separate interchangeable "backs" that in the old days housed film but now house an image sensor. The new Mamiya ZD Back alone costs $6,999, and purchased that way or with the camera bundle it includes a copy of Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom software for raw image processing. It can shoot 1.5 frames per second, uses a 14-bit sensor that generates 12-bit images, and supports Compact Flash and SD cards.

Shelling out $10,000 for a camera may sound like a lot, but that's a notch cheaper than digital Hasselblad models that cost north of $30,000. These babies are geared for serious pros.

The ZD Back uses a CCD (charge-coupled device) image sensor measuring 48mm by 36mm. That's twice the size of an ordinary 35mm film frame, but considerably smaller than the 60mm-by-45mm film size 645AFD II can also accept.

Adobe plans this week to update Photoshop's plug-in for importing and editing raw images from higher-end digital cameras, adding support for several new digital SLR cameras and improving noise-reduction and sharpening tools. Raw images are taken directly from a camera's image sensor without any in-camera processing, preserving more detail but requiring processing by a person into a more portable format such as JPEG; raw support is typically only available on higher-end cameras.

Adobe Photoshop CS3

(Credit: Adobe)

But the new version 4.1 of the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in tool works only with Photoshop CS3, the San Jose, Calif.-based company's brand-new version of the image-editing software. Those with the earlier CS2 version must use version 3.7, said Tom Hogarty, Photoshop Lightroom product manager, or upgrade to the newer version of Photoshop.

And though the company announced Monday the plug-in was available on the company's Web site immediately, it said on Tuesday there was a "slight delay" and that the software would arrive by the end of the week.

Among the newer cameras the new raw plug-in supports are the Canon EOS-1D Mark III, Fuji FinePix S5 Pro, Nikon D40x, Olympus E-410, Olympus SP-550 UZ and the Sigma SD14.

In addition, the upgrade supports many higher-end medium- and large-format camera backs from Phase One: the H 20, H 25, P 20, P 21, P 25, P 30 and P 45.

Adobe said it would support the new camera and camera backs in an update of Adobe Lightroom due in the "near future."

Adobe would prefer to replace the scads of raw camera formats with its own Digital Negative specification, called DNG. Pentax's newer high-end K10D SLR supports DNG, and Adobe offers free software that can convert raw files it supports into DNG files.