Adobe Lightroom for Windows now available (Beta)

Marcel

Marcel

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Marcel
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Great news: Adobe® Lightroom™ beta* software 1.0 for Windows is now available. Download it today and discover an easier way to import, organize, edit, and showcase large volumes of digital images. Designed by photographers, for photographers, it's software that works the way you do. And with its new Windows compatibility, it's just waiting for you to try it.

Download HERE
 
lol You're the second person to say that (on the second forum!)..lol

Do I have a reputation for being a night owl then? :p

Anyway, has anyone tried this?
I had a play with it before, and my first impressions?
Sluggish.

I'm @ 2.4 gig with 1.5 gig of RAM, so maybe not the fastest of machines, but certainly not the slowest, and I found it sluggish...(kinda like Rawshooter when youre waiting that second or so for the image to update), like that but all over the software.

Didnt' like the 'feel' of it.....

Will have a proper play later.
 
Didnt' like the 'feel' of it.....
Click to expand...

Neither did I at all when I first started using it a few months ago. I couldn't get my head round why photo software from the makers of PS would be made to feel so alien.

If you persevere with it though you might just get to like it... alot. I do now.

It doesn't have anywhere near the funcion list of aperture but the core job of processing images could well be more flexible and easier to work with.
 
Looks good to me and performs fine and I am only using my 1.6 Celeron laptop. Clearly this is a beta and there is work to be done. Adobe are making a point of telling people that if they care to listen. The demo video's look good and I can see this is going to be a great product. Workflow is perfectly logical for how I usually work. It may different to the various permutations I am used to but who cares? As I have RSP then I get a free copy of v1.0 LMAO so I am happy. Very promising.
 
I downloaded it last night and absolutely love it.

My old workflow was Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw/CS2.
I was able to knock out half decent images in Lightroom alone.
Definitely a bonus if I want to process a large shoot and get the finished result in a hurry.

I could have done with it last weekend...pipped to the post at the picture desk of my local rag.

Don't forget this Beta version automatically expires in Jan 'o7!
 
Just a word of warning, I've just read that Michael Tapes has posted this :

Also no real work should be done in LR. The future conversions may look different, and the settings may not be transferable. Remember this is a "pre" beta.
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So don't do any serious work in it ;)
 
tried it, hated it. freakishly slow. and I'm runnign 2g ram, amd64 and all manner of not too shabby gear. in fact its possibly slower than an oap lying in bed after a hip-op...
layout is cluttered, menus crowd the image area and are obtrusive...I just don't like it. I know the mac version is meant to be significantly better but after the loss of RSP this is a hideous alternative.
 
Marcel said:
So don't do any serious work in it ;)
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Well the very worst that can happen is that you'd have to do the process again and if you're done when you do the out out then there's little reason not to use it for anything. I know that the only real way I can test it is to use in the real world.

The other thing about these packages, is that the are not at all aimed at the job of fine processing a frame or three at a go. I don't know what peoples uses are here but things like lightroom are aimed squarely at the photographer who needs to proccess hundreds of frames or more every day and get the best result possible in the shortest time. It's other very important function is to file and retrive shots with the minimun fuss.

Given the demands on software like this, I think it's a pretty good effort and beta 3 is a good improvement over version 2, so it's all going in the right direction.

I haven't played about with the windows release yet but even at a glance it's a cut down version of the Mac software. Hopefully you'll get all the other goodies in the future.
 
Nice application, I can see it being good once they've fixed the sloooooooow processing! I think it's because it's processing the whole image when you make a change rather than just the current view like RSP does.
 
My Findings so far:

Very nice tbh. I find it quite intuitive, although i have had to search around for how to do certain things. I think it makes the intitial sort through "keepies and binnies" quite easy, certainly a lot easier the CS2.
One thing against it is the speed. It is SLOOOOOOW. Im running an A64 3200 and 2gig of ram.
I find if you load your images into it, go away and make a brew and come back, it has buffered most stuff into memory and it is much snappier.

I tried Raw Shooter a while ago and couldnt get on with it. Maybe ill give that another shot.
 
Can someone give me a quick summary of what it actually DOES.

Is it RAW processing, or an image management thing like adobe album?

Thanks

Janice
 
Um, it's difficult to say Janice as I gave up pretty quickly because it was so slow on my machine.

I THINK it's for processing RAWs but it takes it a bit further than RSE/RSP by allowing you to do a bit more on the touch up side of things. I think it's designed to reduce the need to fire up CS2, only when you need to do some major work that requires layers or such.

This is all based on rumour and hearsay of course!

HTH, :)
 
The image editing is fairly basic from what i have seen. You could get away with using this alone for images that required little work as already said.
Basically you can manage saturation, exposure, brightness and colour tone etc etc, do cropping and all that funky stuff.

Its designed to tidy up your workflow and make organization and processing of your images easier.

For example you could fire up LR with all your shots from the last year set up as different "shoots". You can then expand each of these to work on individual images, compare images etc.

Go and test it, its the only way to know if it will be useful to you. Watch the demos on the site too, they really show off how much potential it has, albeit when they speed the Windows version up a bit ;)
 
I've been using it exclusively for over a week now and still loving it.

Speed is an issue which I'm sure will be sorted on the final release and maybe even later beta releases.

I've produced a few nice shots without having to open CS2 with it.
 
When it starts,, for the first time..... it asks if you want to copy all your photos into Lightroom.....or just make thumbnail link of the original.

Now, reading here that we shouldnt use our important files,,, what settings should we use? Copy all our photos in?
 
what settings should we use? Copy all our photos in?
Click to expand...

You might as well do the full import. All that means is that it will copy an existing photo library into it's own lightroom folder, none of the files will be changed at all, just the location on your hard drive.

The great thing about these programs is the totally non destructive way they work. Your raw files are not converted into TIFF/JPEG but lightroom saves your process settings against the raw file and applies them each time you look at or export the file. The other upside of this is that you can have multiple versions of any image without taking up any more space than the raw file.
 
Thank you, young man! ;)

Now I find Im having problems importing into the library all my photos that are in folders.
I want to import my folder called NEW which contains all the dated folders with the new raw files in, straight from the camera.
You can only select actual image files, not folders,.... which means me opening up about 80 folders to select the files in them.....ugh... I couldnt be bothered to do all that...has anyone got a workaround, or indeed read the instructions a bit better than me?!!!


TAKE ABSOLUTELY NO NOTICE OF ME...............IVE JUST FOUND A BUTTON CALLED "CHOOSE FOLDER"..... DUH!!!
 
Janice said:
Thank you, young man! ;)

Now I find Im having problems importing into the library all my photos that are in folders.
I want to import my folder called NEW which contains all the dated folders with the new raw files in, straight from the camera.
You can only select actual image files, not folders,.... which means me opening up about 80 folders to select the files in them.....ugh... I couldnt be bothered to do all that...has anyone got a workaround, or indeed read the instructions a bit better than me?!!!


TAKE ABSOLUTELY NO NOTICE OF ME...............IVE JUST FOUND A BUTTON CALLED "CHOOSE FOLDER"..... DUH!!!
Click to expand...

I didn't think the same thing, the first time I fired it up.

Oh no...and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar :nuts:

:bonk: honest guv
 
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