What Do You Really Think of Lightroom?
August 22, 2006Adobe Lightroom is a free trial beta of the new RAW processor/file management application from Adobe. It looks great. There is no question as to how cool it looks. And you can customize to your heart’s content. But it’s like a great looking car that only comes in automatic. Well, that’s my take initially, anyway. I like how it looks so much that I sometimes forsake my old friend Adobe Camera RAW. ACR is lacking a suave interface, to be sure, but there sure is a lot you can do there, and it makes sense the way it’s layout out. And when you get right down to it, do you need a pretty interface or do you need logical workflow and arrangement of features. An example: in ACR, the color mode/resolution/file size data is right up front when you process an image. It’s the first thing you see. That makes sense to me. If you want to keep it, print it big, save it small… whatever, you’ll know at this stage, or at least it seems to me you would. Now in Lightroom, you have to wait until you export the image to access all this data. Seems like putting your socks on over your shoes. I also like the dual noise reducing filters in ACR as opposed to the all-in-one correction in Lightroom. My feeling is that pros will sacrifice good looks for function every time. Is that what Adobe’s doing with Lightroom?
I’d really like to hear your comments!
Have had lightroom since it’s bata release and purchesed it when it became available ….
Love the program, disligke the interface to photoshop..
very slow importing pictures, hope it improves with time. I am now starting to use it for all my photo work and have version 1.2 loaded.
al
I prefer stick also
I started using lightroom 3 six weeks ago and it has dramatically increased my workflow. I found it very easy to learn and to navigate. But I often forget that it will default my backups to the pictures folder on my Mac and it’s keeps the files of the last set I named in the default. Even though I’m aware of it, I often forget and in my hast to import my photos forget to change these things. I would love a prompt that appears as a little reminder to change these things during the import process. But on the same note I need to be more mindful of this.
As for editing the little spots, I prefer Photoshop’s tools rather the the spot remover in lightroom. Having used Photoshop since version 4 and having so much control in that program I find Lightroom lacking in this. I would love to see Photoshop cloning tool with it’s brush options incorporated into Lightroom so I can minimize the need to toggle through programs as often.