Topic: Adobe Lightroom

[Ed Wenn]

How many of you are using/have used Adobe Lightroom for processing your scanned images (oh, OK, or images from your digital cameras)? Leon was talking about it at the weekend in relation to an article in AG magazine, so I downloaded it and gave it a whirl. First impressions are that it looks sexy and is probably good, but I can't see what it gives me over and above my tried and tested work flow in P'shop...esp given that you don't seem to be able to crop images and perform other similar functions from inside Lightroom, but have click on the "Edit in Photoshop" option at that point instead.

Thoughts?

[beck]

I am not all that familiar with Lightroom but I've pals who swear by it. There is an article in the FW blog by the Photo Attorney about Lightroom and its use of adding copyright information to your work.

http://www.photoattorney.com/2008/09/how-to-add-your-copyright-info-to-your.html

I have two versions of APE and use them for every single scan I do and can spend hours on one single image. I finally, well, pretty much, mastered both copies and couldn't possibly go with something else. It took me nearly 5 years alone to get this far with what I already have. While I only use the basic edition, minus any super great plug-ins such as neat frames and such, I have learned how to do just about anything and more or less improvise and feel pretty happy about the results. I would love to hack Paint Shop Pro like my sister did or some other level 25 crap...but that is like asking for a hole in the head.

[kuru]

I'm waiting for version 2 to arrive, but have used 1.4 for a while. You can crop quite nicely in 1.4, don't know if they've changed that functionality in 2. 1.4's crop tool is really nice, because you can select the aspect ratio you want, then move the selection around on the image to get the exact crop you want. My workflow tends to be use Lightroom for initial crop and tone and finish tweaking the tones in Pshop.

[Ed Wenn]

To put this in context I've used Lightroom for only about an hour in total. I didn't see a crop tool, but I can't see why they'd have taken it out of 2.0 (which I was using) if it was in 1.4 already. Must go and investigate.

[kuru]

To put this in context I've used Lightroom for only about an hour in total. I didn't see a crop tool, but I can't see why they'd have taken it out of 2.0 (which I was using) if it was in 1.4 already. Must go and investigate.

You have to be in the Develop mode and there is a little square selection type icon under the image. If you click on it, it should show the crop/straighten tools. I'm hoping version 2 shows up today.

[Francois]

I use Lightroom and must say it is quite a learning curve for me. The interface is quite simple. You must go to develop mode to crop-red eye-adjust images. What took me a while to figure out is related to the non destructive changes. Anything you do in Lightroom is stored in a database but never applied to your images. To get the effect you want, you must export the images in a format (like Jpeg). If your images are already in Jpeg, you must still export them to the Jpeg format. If you say to export to the same format, changes are not applied.

As for the changes done to version 2, there are a few usability improvement, but most importantly, they added a super easy to use and powerful dodge and burn tool.

I feel it's so good that, unless I need to remove a telephone pole from the images, I don't need to go out of Lightroom.

[kuru]

My copy of 2 finally arrived. They moved the crop tool and others under the Histogram.

[lauraburlton]

I use it daily for (cough) digital images but I don't really see what the usefulness for scans would be as i don't do bulk scanning, i usually only scan the ones I really want. I mostly use light room as an editing tool and I do color and exposure corrections on it. It is actually awesome for creating split toning effects and you can do some presets that are great too, but I don't really feel the need to do this to my film images. But for digital stuff it is invaluable and much more useful than bridge. But then again, it is a good way to store catelogs and the like as a quick reference. you can also put all kinds of metadata in, like tags and stuff, so I can see how it would be good for archiving. But as an editing tool, I still prefer photoshop.