Speaker 1: I just got back from Adobe's offices in San Francisco where I got the exclusive first look at Lightroom and a few other apps on the Apple Vision Pro. A couple days after Apple announced the Apple Vision Pro. Adobe released four apps that use it the most interesting is the Lightroom tool for editing and cataloging photos, but they also released the Fresco Sketching app, an app for using Behance, which is their social network and portfolio publishing site, and the Firefly [00:00:30] generative AI service. So you can use all of those apps. Now on Apple Vision Pro. I spent the most time using Lightroom. I'm a photographer myself, and I've been using Lightroom for many, many years since it first arrived, and I have to say I was impressed. So yeah, this is very high resolution. I'm appreciating the patented Apple technology that only shows at high res where I'm looking.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it looks like from where you guys are, but wherever I point my eyes, it's pretty high res. The Apple Vision Pro interface does [00:01:00] a really good job of handling most of the sort of interactions you would ordinarily do by touching an iPad screen or using a mouse on a laptop. Yeah, the icons kind of fuzz up a little bit when I move my head around, but they don't move around too badly. I did have some troubles with the Apple Vision Pro eye tracking, where I would be looking at a button and trying to tap my fingers together to click the button and it just wouldn't register. But I suspect that better calibration [00:01:30] and better hardware ultimately will fix that. That didn't happen all the time. It was a distraction a few times when it did happen. Overall, I think the Apple Vision Pro interface is really impressive, and I have to say it was really impressive In Lightroom. This is a grid view that you get. You can see all your photos, you can open up different folders. I use the standard Apple Vision Pro interface where I look at what I want to deal with, and then I tap my fingers together to actually open it, and you can scroll, [00:02:00] pinch and drag to scroll through things. It's pretty intuitive. I hadn't done this until about 20 minutes ago, and I find it no trouble at all.
Speaker 1: Lightroom lets you edit a lot of photos with sliders. You grab a little knob and you make it brighter or darker. You increase the vibrance or saturation the contrast, and it's very easy. You just look at a little spot where that slider is, pinch your fingers together, slide your hand back and forth, and it makes the adjustments within just a few minutes, I could do about everything I do in the regular [00:02:30] version of Lightroom on the Apple Vision Pro version, almost all of the features are there and pretty easy to use. So if you're familiar with Lightroom, then you're already going to be able to use the Apple Vision Pro version of this app. Okay, so now I'm going to do something. I do an awful lot in Lightroom, which is to apply linear gradient. So I just look at the gradient tool, then I look at the plus sign in the lower right, and then I select linear gradients. That's going to let me fool with the sky, so I just reach up, drag down to where I want
Speaker 2: It to. [00:03:00] We'll go about that high. That looks good. Then I'm going to fool with the light a little bit, take down the exposure, and then I might go to the effects panel and do a little hazing, not that much, something like that, and then look at done tap my fingers. Then it's done. And if I want to
Speaker 1: See what that looks like before
Speaker 2: And after, I can compare it by holding my fingers together for a couple seconds, which chose before, after. So that's pretty nice.
Speaker 1: [00:03:30] It wasn't quite as fast as using the regular version of Lightroom. Part of the problem is that the eye tracking is a little bit slower than clicking with a mouse or tapping on a screen, but mostly everything worked just fine. One of the important things to realize about the Apple Vision Pro version of Lightroom is that it is based on the Lightroom desktop app. This is the easier to use, more accessible version of Lightroom that Adobe released a few years ago. However, a lot of photo enthusiasts use Lightroom [00:04:00] Classic, which is a different beast, and if you are a Lightroom classic user, you're probably going to have some problems using the Apple Vision Pro version of Lightroom.
Speaker 1: My suspicion right now about the Apple Vision Pro is that it's not going to be a device that everybody needs. It's not going to replace your laptop or replace your smartphone, but it could be something that a lot of people use like AirPods or smartwatches. And in order for that to succeed, it has to be useful for a pretty large population, not everybody, [00:04:30] but a large population. And the thing that I think is most interesting and compelling about the Apple Vision Pro is the idea of a private workspace in a public area like an airplane or an airport. When I was on a recent transcontinental airplane trip, I wanted to edit a whole bunch of photos, but I could only open my laptop about this bar because the screen right in front of me. It would've been a perfect time to have an Apple Vision Pro.
Speaker 1: I could have had all my photos arrayed around me in a virtual world, done all my editing. It doesn't matter how far the [00:05:00] seat in front of me is leaned back, I'd have access to my photos and I could do a lot of work and be productive. Would I buy an Apple Vision Pro to use Lightroom? Not yet. I was impressed with the screen quality and I was impressed with the controls, but for me, at least, even though I do a lot of photo editing, the utility still isn't good enough that I would use it to replace my laptop. But is it good enough to actually work? Yes, if you, especially like using an Apple Vision Pro for watching movies or doing [00:05:30] word processing or other things you might be doing with it, this just adds to the value of the device. Having Lightroom is not going to push you over the edge, but I do see it as a validation that this is a really credible computing platform. So I was pretty impressed with how well Adobe was able to bring Lightroom to the Apple Vision Pro. Let me know what you think and like, and subscribe.
