Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 (Win/Mac) [OLD VERSION] Reviews

• I lost over 40gb by switching to Lightroom

  
  By A2QNS95WGN35G9 on 2007-02-27
  Adobe Lightroom is amazing. I have been using it since the first beta, it just wasn't something I could switch to. At a studio I work at they have Capture One, which is an amazing piece of software, but I found it lacking when it comes to organizing "my" photos. I bought Apples Aperture when it came out, and it blew me away. Aperture has the loupe, (now found in bridge cs3), light table (Lightrooms new compare feature), which is amazing for setting up comps, if you like to do story work on your photos. Aperture has a rejection tag that you can use to reject photos to delete later (bad blur, or too many like shots), Lightroom now has this feature as well--you just press X, then when you are ready to rid yourself of those click the delete rejected photos button, if you rejected it accidentally press U, if you have a favorite pic just press P to "pick" it. Aperture has stacks, which if you shoot multiple exposures (hdr, pano, etc) they can be stacked up and you can choose a pick, Lightroom in version 1 now has this as well. The other big feature any other raw program needs to compete with Aperture for me is their collections. Its similar to a smart playlist in iTunes, you can sort by rating, keyword, what have you. Lightroom now has this as well, meaning you can pick your favorite waterfall photos from several years of shooting and put them in a logical folder, meaning no extra space to store your favorites. This feature, and rejection caused me to loose over 40gb by switching to Lightroom!
  
  While my review may seem as though Lightroom copied the best features from Aperture and improved upon them, for the most part that's true. The best part is they improved soo many other features. If you have used Aperture, or iPhoto, you know how big a joke their clone stamp tool is. Lightroom? Just as good as Photoshop! I'm constantly changing lens when I'm out in the field shooting. It is such a pain to have to go to Photoshop and save psds of all my work just to get rid of the dust. Now I don't have too. Lightrooms clone stamp feature is worth the price alone.
  
  Lightroom also has snapshots. You can make a sweet black and white, a fancy stylistic design, or whatever, and save these as snapshots, which are basically separate images, that only take up 24k and is store in that one raw file, opposed to 8-22mb depending on your camera. If snapshots are too complicated to mess with you can use "Virtual Copies" (my personal favorite), where you make a virtual copy of the photo, it stacks it behind the other photo. The big deal is this file is fake, it only takes up the 24k that any raw adjustment takes up inside of Lightroom. You can make multiple copies of the same photo, try different effects, and combine these. I cant tell you how many duplicate files I have on my machine, from multiple PSD's of the same image, to copied over raw files being afraid of messing something up.
  
  Another thing Lightroom excels at is speed. The interface is blazing, I can't believe how fast I can view my raw files. The shortcuts just make since, and everything works like a charm. I am truly in love with this program. Another "speed" aspect of Lightroom is when the canon 400d came out, I wanted to buy it as a backup, I did, and Lightroom was the first, and only raw program to support it for sometime. Aperture didn't support the camera until a couple months ago. I plan on buying the new canon Mark 3 for weddings, and this fact alone makes me want to have Lightroom.
  
  If all this isn't enough, you can create your favorite keywords and apply them as keyboard shortcuts, so if you have something you want to send to a stock photo agency, set a keyword up for that and press cmd+1 or whatever you setup your keywords as. Also I enjoy using bridges way of pressing 1-5 for ratings and 6-9 for colors. Aperture makes you press the + key to rate up however many times. It's not well thought out.
  
  For me Lightroom is a killer app. At 200 it is a steal. My nature photos usually require Photoshop to get rid of dust on my images. I then use Photoshop to do some color correction and sharpening. Now with Lightroom if I need Photoshop at all, it is for comp work, selective sharpening, and special effect work (lighting, vignettes, filters, adjustment layers, etc). I know a lot of people who shoot that never get dust on their lens at all, and this clone stamp might not seem like a big deal, but it is, you can clone plants to fill in gaps, get rid of blemishes, etc. Lightroom is a one stop shop. You can import your photos as DNG's, apply keywords and metadata, while you import. Then you can choose your favorites, go to the develop module, finish up your images, then print, or put it on the web. You can even customize the Lightroom logo on the top now to say "Your Studio" or whatever; it's really a fun app, I hope Lightroom sees some plugins soon to add even more functionality, but right now I am very satisfied, and I am very picky.
  
  5 Stars.
  
  

• It's about time...

  
  By AAJIGWE242MSN on 2007-02-23
  It feels like I've tried them all. Windows Digital Imaging Suite, Adobe Photoshop Elements and so on. They all had strengths and weaknesses. What one did well, the other failed at miserably (and visa versa). Along comes Photoshop Lightroom and it's like a ray of light in the darkness.
  
  I'll try to cover the highpoints:
  
  #1 Speed: While it's not as fast as RawShooter Premium (perhaps the best on the market but sadly gobbled up by Adobe) it handles RAW files like most other programs handle JPGs. Once it has cataloged the collection, thumbnails spring up reasonably quick. The program itself is snappy, with a fast load up and responsive controls.
  
  #2 Interface: In a word... "elegant". The interface feels professional and has innumerable settings to accomplish what you want. Heck, a simple hotkey and all the "clutter" is dimmed so you can focus on your image. hit again, and all the controls black out, leaving just your wonderful (or perhaps not-so-wonderful) photo
  
  #3 Power: The tool suite (to me) feels quite powerful. Elements (4) will never again find its way to my hard drive and Photoshop CS2 is on just as a backup for those hard-to-handle jobs. I really feel like I can do any image adjustment I might want without having to launch a 3rd party program. Granted, I haven't played with the "develop" as much as I'd like, so I'm not sure about tools like dodge, etc.
  
  #4 One program: I no longer have to open Digital Image Suite to catalog the files, then open them up in Photoshop Elements for editing and maybe launch Photoshop CS2 for the in-depth stuff. If I had to pick one program, this would be it. Would I pay the current retail for it? I don't know since it was a free upgrade for me (RawShooter Premium users get it free) and I already have a pretty significant investment in other image-editing software. If I was new to digital photo-editing and didn't have anything else? In a heartbeat. Will I buy 2.0 when it comes out and pay the upgrade price? Without doubt.
  
  I know every person is an individual, so my comments should be taken with a grain of salt. Will some people hate it? Probably. Will most love it?
  Without doubt. Is this the "Photoshop-killer" for the average person? I think so.
  
  So, bottom line: Lightroom is the merger of functionality, elegance and power I've been looking for for the past 2-3 years. I can finally put away the review sites and Google searches and trial downloads. Lightroom has a permanent spot on my computer. Heck, when I do my semi-annual OS reinstall, it may find its way to the HDD before MS Office does [though I gotta say I love Office 2007, but that's another review ;) ]
  
  
  (PS If you're not convinced, Adobe has a 30-day trial on their site you can download but if you're familiar with other programs, give yourself a day or two. The interface is different (but better once you learn it))
  
  Update: One month later and I still love this program. The cataloguing features are phenomenal. Tagging images on import is a breeze and the "look" of the library is "clean". I'm able to disply any of 20-30 different image attributes (such as shutter speed, ISO, meta tags, etc) in the "Library" or hide them with a simple hotkey. Response is still quite fast, even with over 1,000 images imported. It has also changed the way I manage my photos. Instead of importing all 14,000, I simply import the ones I want to work. I put the ones I like best in a separate collection then clear the other from the library (I save *every* picture taken, but I don't necessarily want to wade through them all). The ability to stack images by time-taken is wonderful. I can choose to group them within one second or one hour or one day. Absolutely wonderful. The more I use this program, the more I'm sure the going price of $200 is worth it. I strongly suggest you give the trial a whirl and then buy before 4/30 when it jumps to $300...
  
  

• Still a lot of rough edges

  
  By A1BDJK501QH72G on 2007-02-23
  I've been using Lightroom since its first beta, and overall I like it a lot. Its interface is pretty slow and unresponsive, but I've actually sat down and timed myself, and despite its sluggishness I still find myself accomplishing a great deal more in less time than I could have in the formerly holy trinity of Bridge, ACR and Photoshop. The highlight recovery, fill light and HSL adjustment sliders alone save me so much time it's not even funny.
  
  Suffice to say I'm very happy that it's finally been released as a commercial product, but in all honesty, I wish it would have had at least another five public beta revisions before this point. Many of the features they snuck into the GM which we beta users had never seen before are just plain awful--the implementation of "stacks" in particular--and could have benefited greatly from some user feedback. Other features still seem woefully incomplete. Pretty much every module after "Develop" in the topmost toolbar feels like an afterthought which nobody really wanted to dedicate any real time to; slideshows don't work at all for me, the web galleries are painfully simplistic and inflexible, and color management support in printing is just plain horrible (it can't even FIND any of my ICC profiles so the only choice I get is to let the printer do its own color management).
  
  I still like it much better than Aperture, but I really don't think Adobe should be charging money for it just yet. What's worse is that their online bug report form is broken, so there's no way for us early adopters to provide feedback anymore now that the public forum on the Adobe Labs site has been put to pasture. Get the demo and try it out before you plunk down $200 for it. It's still a little green for my tastes, but I do have high hopes for the future.
  
  

• Superstar potential: but not yet ready for prime time on Windows PC!

  
  By AJPH8OQSWKR7K on 2007-03-16
  Lightroom ver 1.0 has incredible potential for becoming THE workflow solution for digital photographers shooting in unprocessed RAW (digital negative) format; provided, that you are a MAC user. The interface truly is stunning, and many of the features are attractive indeed. Yet - notwithstanding claims for extensive field testing (most probably on a MAC) by 'real' photographers -- on a PC at least it still has those bugs, rough edges,and painfully evident oversights that would plague any late-release beta version for Win-XP. To be charged hundreds of bucks for the privilege of being one of the first consumer guinea pigs in the PC-format is just plain unconscionable. And the inevitably forthcoming patches and updates will prove a royal pain on my PC dialup connection.
  
  The concept of mass-processing RAW files, then picking, rating, flagging and organizing the 'keepers' is a perfectly sound approach to improving high-volume workflow. But execution of the concept on Win-XP at least, in plain words, is badly flawed. The LR file system and the XP system file system are NOT synchronized (as claimed), in fact, the PC installation has a warning diaog that - most inconveniently - you have to reimport images should you change a folder name in Explorer; the 'ReadMe' file spells even more uncertainty for Vista. And should you have difficulty installing LR, tough luck because you need a registration number to qualify for assistance,but you don't get that number till installation is completed -- truly a Catch-22 nightmare [in fairness, LR installed flawlessly on my Windows XP/SP2 machine].
  
  On the plus side, it's just a click to further refine a RAW image in Photoshop or Elements, then return to Lightroom. Conversely, the simplest album tasks such as renaming an image or moving a file to another folder are maddeningly inconvenient on a PC. A summary table of keyboard shortcuts (especially in an Adobe product) is nowhere to be found. The pdf 'User's Manual' (that requires printing) is far more detailed than the glossy enclosed 'Getting Started' guide. But even the overlaid module-specific shortcut summary is incomplete (witness lack of the [F6]-key toggling of the filmstrip) and can't be printed for quick reference.
  
  Since Lightroom fundamentally is a photo album in fancy drag, I would advice PC-owners to stick with Photoshop Bridge, or Elements' Organizer. Both Photoshop CS2/3 and Elements 5 use the same ACR RAW-file converter as Lightroom, similarly enabling batch processing of RAW files. Eventally, perhaps by version 2, Lightroom will be the grand productivity enhancer for PCs, as it is already for MAC users. For the time being, it just ain't ready yet for PC-users -- causing aggravation far more than the promised workflow speedup. In sum: version 1 is a (very) pricey beta version for Windows users -- it was released prematurely for the PC, with embarrassingly inadequate testing for productive use on the Windows OS.
  
  ADDENDUM: Like many readers, I was puzzled by the widely ranging reviews, with ratings all the way from 'Just what we were waiting for' to 'Utterly Worthless'. At last, after reading Martin Evening's LR book I realize the problem: LR must be working as hyped on the MAC -- but on the PC it still is a beta work-in-progress. One tip for PC users, whatever your computer skills, move that tumorous database file, hidden 5 levels deep in your system drive, to another drive, or at least to another partition. With just over 250 images, my database already has expanded to nearly 2.5GB! If you add weekly catalog backups of that same size, you'll have one monster of a mess on your hands, just begging for mishaps. Moreover, the catalog menu doesn't allow backing up on demand, but rather a complex hassle of resetting preferences, restarting, then resetting preferences. Worse yet, there aren't any provisions (other than testing database integrity) for optimizing the database or getting rid of the deadwood. LR may be great for MAC owners, but PC users better hold off till the next version.
  
  

• essential purchase for photographers

  
  By A8IQ0Q9QYR083 on 2007-03-06
  having seen aperture and been blown away was hungry to see what lightroom had to offer, and its a very impressive piece of software.
  i am amazed how much of my workflow i have moved from photoshop and bridge is now redundant.
  its very well designed software and really makes photoshop look dated, aperture looks a little but more shiny, but for me in terms of use both weigh in equally.
  its a joy to organise and manage vast collections of images, and works suprisingly well on older less powerful systems.
  tweaking images has never been easier, and the results are stunning, not only for raw files but great for revisiting some of the older images lurking in your archives, in fact some film scans which previously had required too much work to make into decent digital files, lightrooms subtle touch can really work wonders.
  i have rarely been so impressed with a new piece of software, a pleasure to use and a simple and powerful tool for a photographers digital darkroom.
  
  
• Not there yet.....
  By AHPW30XROR05F on 2007-10-03
  Overview of review:
  
  Pros:
  1. Pretty interface,
  2. Nice options to organize and rate photos
  
  Cons:
  1. Poor support for multiple monitors, does not span screens well,
  2. Printing required someone really special to get it right, I gave up,
  3. Vertical scroll required to reach required tools all the time,
  4. Poor interface, seems that a lot of time is wasted switching in out of library view...
  5. Slow rendering of large Raw files, needs to pre-build the thumbnails in the background to make it bearable,
  6. Uses a database to track modifications and rate photos making you tied to a single machine, never figured out how to move the db to another machine and not loose all the changes/from Laptop to primary workstation/ to portable workstation at photo sessions/to main file server for backup....hate re-doing same thing over again....don't you.
  
  Adobe in its classical style has created a comprehensive product in Lightroom that can do just about anything you want if you take the time to learn the product inside and out. Unfortunately, you will need to spend considerable amount of time on each photo to get the results you want. After spending several weeks working on just 1800 photos from one wedding and reception I was getting tired of the pretty interface and went looking for something better; especially when working with Raw files; lightroom was just too slow even on my heavy duty multiprocessor workstation with tons of Ram, dedicated storage and multiple monitors.
  
  I tried out Bibble and was pleasantly surprised; not only did they provide support for my new Canon 40D at the time it came out; their interface is dead simple and gave great results with just a couple clicks; wow, if only the guys at Adobe had some good interface people who could think out of there tried and true complex interface mentality; and provide a simple one that works. Don't get me wrong; they did give a simpler interface in Library mode; but the results are simply terrible using their auto tone; did they really try out this stuff on real pictures before they sell it? Also Bibble uses a file named the same as the photo with .bib extension to track the changes; you can copy the photos from one machine to another and open it and see the same changes you just made on the other machine; wow, someone was really thinking.
  
  Considering I have 20 years software development/QA background I can understand how hard it is for Adobe to shake off their old ways. I use to direct a group of Graphics artists who made a living because of the complexity of the Photoshop interface, so it has its advocates. The last two years doing freelance photo work on the side have made me test the market for a solution to the digital photo overload I am experiencing. Unfortunately, none of the big software companies are spending enough time on testing before they sell their products; guess that is what they think the customers are for. I think smaller companies produce more innovative products that lead the innovation; and Bibble is an example; I am sure the Adobe guys will get there eventually by following the others no doubt.
  
  Adobe does stand out for organizing the photos, but I find that for processing large numbers of photos with the least effort and getting great results; Bibble Pro has it beat hands down. Honestly, I would much rather be out taking photos then sitting in front of the computer working on them; fortunately now I don't have too. Thanks Bibble Pro.
  
  
  
• Groundbreaking
  By A36AJK777986NE on 2007-03-29
  I got this (using the trial, soon to purchase) because it allows non-destructive editing of JPGs as you can with RAW files. I have a DSLR that shoots RAW, but I also have a couple of quality P&S cameras that don't. Editing copied JPGs and preserving master copies gets old really fast, even in Photoshop CS2 which I own. As an organizational tool, LR is a breakthrough. I only have to keep *one* JPG photo - it's archival *and* can be diddled with, just like a RAW image.
  
  Editing in LR you can do a few things you can't in Photoshop - such as put your cursor on the image and drag it to change the saturation or hue for the precise color under the original click (and wherever it occurs in the rest of the image, natch). This is *so* much easier than moving sliders. It allowed me to erase the green cast of a fluorescent light in a few seconds - no experimenting. There is also a "vibrance" adjustment that adjusts the saturation of the image but weights the movement in favor of the under-saturated colors, not all colors equally. Brilliant! These features will probably become available in updates to Camera Raw and to PS, but if you have to choose, there's a big price difference.
  
  Rudy said that "Conversely, the most simple album tasks such as renaming an image or moving a file to another folder are maddeningly inconvenient." I think he is mistaken. Moving images is drag and drop (be sure you drag from the middle of the image, not the border) and file renaming is as simple as typing over the old name. (Multiple file renaming is available, but I haven't tried it yet.)
  
  LR will not do many things Photoshop does in the way of montages and even the clone stamp, which is much harder to use in LR. It won't do perspective cropping (but it does do level cropping to straighten horizons and so on). But, what it does it does really well, and again, for organizing photos, it kills Photoshop and Bridge. The bargain package for new users might just be LR and Photoshop Elements for under $300. (You can set up LR to work with *any* other photo editor, such as Paintshop Pro or whatever.) Need more than that? You are dangerously close to becoming a Pro.
  
  Four stars because it's release 1.0 and I hope will add features I need. Then it gets Five.
  
  
• A wonderful program with a few drawbacks
  By A2ARDVMUGDFED6 on 2007-03-23
  I purchased Lightroom a little under a month ago and absolutely love it.
  
  I've used Photoshop for several years for touching up images to make them just as I wanted, but with the placement of different settings it can be quite difficult to quickly go in and make multiple adjustments and boost the image quality.
  
  I'm an amateur photographer and wanted a way to enhance my images without going through this process one by one through my collection and Lightroom is the perfect program for that.
  
  The program uses different tabs which each offer a different area to work with.
  
  The Library tab allows you to view all of your image galleries for quick navigation and finding the images you need. Here you can "Tag" pictures with keywords to group them or quickly locate using the built in search box. Perfect for digital camera images which often use a generic IMG0001.JPG filename and allows you to stay organized.
  In this view you can also flag images as accepted or rejected and rate them using a 5 star scale - another useful feature for sorting.
  
  The Develop tab is the one you'll be using most - this is where you make the actual adjustments. Here you can adjust the temperate, white balance, saturation, exposure, black levels, fill light, vibrance, contrast, brightness, highlights, shadows, noise reduction, sharpness, luminance and a variety of other options via slider menus. All changes are reflected instantly in the program window so you can tell instantly if you like it or not. If you decide you dont, undo it or use the History command to go back and undo as many changes as you'd like.
  One of my favorite options here is the before/after view - you can view a side by side or split screen view of your original image and the one with the changes you've made.. Really useful and a feature I use almost every time.
  One of the nicest options though, is the ability to perform a series of actions to ALL images in a gallery. If you take several hundred convention photos (like I did) only to realize that they're a little too dark.. you can edit one of them and carry the changes over to as many photos as you'd like with just a few clicks.
  
  The Slideshow tab lets you create a custom slideshow and export it as a PDF (something I didnt know was possible with the format) - I havent used this function and probably won't for a while. I would've much preferred an "export to DVD" or video file option, and some more customization.
  
  The Print tab is pretty straightforward.
  
  The Web tab lets you optimize your images/galleries for the web - it goes as far as creating the actual HTML coding for the galleries and can even export flash galleries. This is a very nice option for those who don't have a lot of time or experience to create one yourself. It looks professional but the templates are limited and you'll see the same ones used by many people over the web -- if you're doing this professionally though, you probably already have your own templates though.
  
  
  
  The program is very nice and easy to work with. You'll quickly realize what each option does and when to use it (or when not to use it). You can make some very neat images with very little tweaking but there is a slight problem here..
  
  Lightroom uses the ProPhoto colorspace while most modern desktops are configured to use the sRGB colorspace.. Something I never bothered to get into because I just didn't feel that I needed to. The problem is that when you work in lightroom, you adjust the images by using what you see on screen. When you export the images though, they look completely different (either darker, less contrast, less vibrance or a number of other issues) when viewed in programs like Windows Photo Viewer.
  
  I re-adjusted all of my computer settings to match the ProPhoto settings and programs like Windows Photo Viewer still have the exact same problem. Only programs that use the selected colorspace will display properly. This was quite disappointing since it makes it "What you see is what you get.. as long as you use this program, this program or this program". If you plan to use Lightroom for your image galleries, this is fine (probably also works fine on professional photo viewers). For beginners who are looking for an easy way to enhance their snapshots, this can be a huge drawback.
  
  Another problem I had was with printing. I use an external photo printer (no connection to a PC and operates using memory cards) - this one had the same issues as the computer, not printing the images as they appeared in Lightroom.
  
  
  With that said, I do still highly recommend the program and the issues seem to mostly be with other programs not reading computers colorspace correctly.. However, I would have liked an option to change the Lightroom colorspace independently like you can in Photoshop (for us non-professionals).
  
  
  Lightroom also works with Photoshop and by right clicking an image you can export it to photoshop to make further changes.
  
  If you have photoshop, you can always use that for touching up images. Lightroom expands on that and allows you to touch up groups of images all at once rather than individually working with each image on its own. Because of this, I highly recommend it. I'm hoping some future upgrades to it will address some of my complaints.
  
  
• I'll probably love version 2.0
  By A2XLTUZCUZBIRZ on 2007-05-19
  I actually like this product even though I am only giving it a couple of stars. I shoot NEF plus JPG using my Nikon D200 and a Powershot G7. So I manipulate fairly large images: the NEF files average 14 - 16 megs each and most JPGs are 3 to 4 megs each. When importing, it takes forever and Lightroom (and everything else) just locks up.
  
  Here's what I like - effortless (almost) image adjustment (sharpening, cropping, highlight recovery, saturation, etc).
  
  But sometimes, this product just enrages me. It's like the developers minds all work a little differently from the rest of the world.
  
  Here's what I don't like 1) there is no file open dialog. If you want to work with the pictures in a known folder, you can't! You can find imported pictures by almost any attribute, but location isn't one of them. For those of us who have been using PCs for years, that just makes no sense. 2) It has totally mangled my Windows scanner and camera wizard. Now I have to manually copy files to my computer. Nothing I have tried has restored the scanner and camera viewer. 3) A few days ago I just gave up and said to myself, "I guess I'll just have to get used to importing pictures using Lightroom". I hooked up my camera and proceeded to import the pictures. Then I noticed that the CF card still had all the image files so I erased them. (Did they think I wanted to leave the pictures on my CF card forever?) Big mistake. Lightroom only cataloged the pictures and created thumbnails. When I went to manipulate the images, they were, of course, gone! I know what you're thinking, but I did NOT say import in place - Lightroom just assumed that.
  
  Bottom line: this is definitely a love/hate relationship. It does such a great job of manipulating images, but other aspects of this product are simply brain dead.
  
  
  
• Useless for Nikon raw (.NEF)
  By AG5YB9QXXQCGL on 2007-10-08
  I purchased this software soon after I acquired my Nikon D200. After importing my pictures into LR, the photos appeared dull and lifeless. I explored whether I was alone in my impression on the Adobe LightRoom Support Forum and found a plethora of posts documenting similar experiences. Adobe seems to have a lot of excuses which mostly blame Nikon.
  
  Bottom line is that LightRoom is dead in the water if you want to import and manage Nikon Raw (NEF) files. I went ahead and purchased Apple Aperture which I've found to be an awesome piece of work. Yes, it requires cutting edge hardware (MacIntel and lots of RAM), but if that is available it is an amazingly powerful program. It comes with a DVD training and tutorial disc which can put a user into expert status within an hour. Aperture- Five stars. LightRoom- Reject.
  
  
• Its quite nice but....
  By A2VWNZNFV8QCP0 on 2007-12-26
  I am sorry to rain on the parade of adulations for lightroom but..
  
  I have been trialing this software for 26days to date and i simply cannot (and yet also can) understand the hype and adulations this s/w has received to date..
  
  On the plus side..
  1. Its a gorgeous user interface
  2. It is a great library & catalog program
  3. Sorry, there isnt a 3..thats it.
  
  On the negative side..
  1. At best it is a so-so image EDITOR.. it recommends you go pay $600 for CS3 to do image editing?.. Luckily you can get Corel Paint shop Pro for $79 and launch it from Lightroom.
  2. Its claim to be "all you need" is as false as you get.. unless sending unedited images to the web is all you plan to do.
  
  I have canon equipment and so can use DPP for RAW conversion (free), zoombrowser (free) or Corel photo album @ $39 for organising then honestly is an extra $260 worth it?
  
  In summary,
  Look, i am sorry, but for $300 i would expect something more than Elements on steroids, and when you still need an external editor and an external print manager such as Qimage this fails way way short on value for money except for professionals with huge volumes of images.
  
  I am disappointed. I had hoped for a single solution (as claimed) to my workflow...yet i have gone back to using DPP for RAW light management, and i still have to use Paint shop pro for those 5-10% of images that need editing, so in essence lightroom has substituted a prettier interface than corel photo album for image management. For the hobbyist and serious amateur i feel this $299 is more of an ego trip rather than a necessary product.
  
  
  
• No Soft Proofing Feature
  By AYI0PMY3NHQGX on 2007-05-08
  The claim to fame purports to make this a one-stop processing shop for Photographers.
  
  Most photographers prefer to send their post-processed files to the lab. And if they really know their stuff, they are probably profiling their images to the lab printers. This is where LR fails miserably.
  
  To make my point, I will start off by explaining how RawShooter worked (RawShooter was purchased by Adobe and after major surgical procedure sold as Lightroom):
  
  For Rawshooter:
  1. Open the RAW file.
  2. Choose the profile of the printer I wish to use for the final output. This results in a significant color shift to the image as seen on the screen. After all, the benefit of the profile is to ensure that What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).
  3. Make changes to the image so that the final output is to your liking. (remember, the RAW files themselves are never modified. All you do is create offset points and save that data seperately)
  4. Export to JPG
  5. Send image to the lab with an assurance that WYSIWYG.
  
  With Lightroom:
  1. Open the RAW file
  2. No ability to choose a printer profile.
  3. Make changes to the image with no idea how the final output is going to look. (remember, the RAW files themselves are never modified. All you do is create offset points and save that data seperately)
  4. Export to JPG
  5. Send image to lab with the hope you like what you get (HYLWYG)
  
  So, LR cannot be a one-stop shop for processing and printing RAW files. Any one who understands the importance of printer profiles would demand a WYSIWYG image to which one can apply the changes.
  
  Rawshooter was much better at this.
  
  
  
  
• Buy this product at your own peril
  By ALM39G4B5Y8X2 on 2007-04-02
  This software does not come close to the once-upon-a =-time quality of Adobe products. it is shot full of bugs overall. Not only does it cause your Photoshop system to quit working, it affects your entire Mac operating System. Adobe knows this is true because they try to cover up with a several page discussion about how operating systems, not Lightroom, can cause problems. Their approach of blaming someone else is shameful. The design of the product is marginal; almost impossible to read the dark grey print on black backgrounds. It is slower than anything I have ever seen. I could go on and on but it only raises my blood pressure . I have spent the entire weekend fixing the computer programs broken by this "half done" system.. If you buy it, you will waste a lot of time like I did. The software is going back to Amazon tomorrow morning. Amazon, shame on you for selling such a poor product.
  
  
• Beautiful but unreliable
  By A11GO3ML2RADXW on 2007-07-14
  Lightroom is a beautiful well designed product, crafted for the way photographers work. Unfortunately, Adobe just released the 1.1 version w/o the same attention to quality that the original design implied. In upgrading to the new version, the program corrupted all the lightroom files on my main and backup hard drives rendering them useless. It then refused to be re-directed from the corrupted library and wouldn't even open. No matter how elegant the design, a program for managing photography files that instead destroys them is worse than useless. This is a wonderful product, that has been destroyed by a lack of attention to quality. Don't buy it, because you can't trust it.
  
  
• Photoshop for photographers!
  By A15G70V9OBTOVO on 2007-09-15
  They say, if Ansel Adams was around he'd be snapping away with a digital camera. Maybe so, but I doubt he would be adding type to his images or cutting, pasting and warping. What for? My point is that from the beginning, Photoshop has had very little to do with photography.
  
  So Adobe got together with some photographers and ended up with something that leaves the emphasis on taking and fine-tuning a great photo--not altering, retouching or salvaging a poor one (although it can do all that). And what a program it is! Fast, intuitive and surprisingly easy to use. Reasonably priced, too.
  
  Lightroom also adapts to different ways of working. If you take pictures the old fashioned way and spend a day making 3 or 4 really memorable images, no problem. Or, if you want to take hundreds of shots and edit, in the hope that a few will be good, Lightroom is even better for that.
  
  Really great software and such a pleasure to see Adobe "gets it".
  
  
• Adobe knows images!
  By AO5JCTNQGXR9Q on 2007-10-08
  Lightroom is great for professional digital photographers and Photoshop enthusiast, but if you're a hobbyist you may want to go a simpler and less expensive route.
  
  If you shoot in RAW the program can be a lot of fun and produce some very impressive work. RAW is "unprocessed" images before the camera processes the image. Lightroom allows you to do the processing and that is a huge benefit and give you complete control over your finial image output. RAW allows color adjustment, white balance and better image sharpening.
  
  I have been doing freelance web design for many years and the web templates that come with Lightroom are very professional if you do not know anything about web design and development. Also like many Adobe web products it comes with nice ftp software. It does a good job making nice web pages, but you still have to create your website, it isn't an html editor.
  
  The program has a slick interface with 5 tabs; Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print and Web. You import your images in Library mode, fine tune (play) with your images in Develop and use Slideshow or Print for you output and finally Web to load them up to your website. It does it all and it does it remarkably well.
  
  The biggest draw back to this program is that is doesn't come with a book, it is more a brochure. It you decide to purchase the product it would be a good idea to pick up a 3rd party book at the same time. Also you want to make sure you camera shoots in Raw, don't assume that you have a new camera and it does.
  
  So is the program a buy, a definite yes if you shoot in RAW format, but if you don't you may not get your value from this program.
  
  Keith Johnson
  Manager of the Seattle Flash User Group
  
  
  
• Amazing Software
  By A1T9YSDAYS097M on 2007-04-12
  Abobe hits one out of the park. I find Adobe software clunky and hard to use. While I understand that the more flexibility you want the more complex the program but Photoshop and InDesign have learning curves that are steeper than Mount Everest. I expected Lightroom to be the same - an excellent program with a huge learning curve. Well it is and it isn't which it why Lightroom is such a pleasure to use. I don't know what Adobe is thinking in creating this gem of a program but the team who designed it are collective geniuses. For they have taken a complex and sometimes frustrating chore and for lack of better words made it gentle and pleasing. The program makes spending time with your photographs actually enjoyable.
  
  Lightroom is fabulous from look and feel to functionality. The strength is not only in the photo management portion of the program but also in the strong photo developing functions that can turn an OK photo into an amazing one.
  
  If you do anything with photographs buy this program. You won't regret it.
  
  
• Not Ready For Prime Time.
  By A3UFNCOJIKIGSI on 2007-05-28
  I tested the beta of this program and it had/has great potential, but the production version 1.0 is buggier than the beta. I run an AMD x2 3800 processor with win xp operating system. I installed the tryout version of 1.0 and am not able to import my raw files off my cf card without the program coming to a complete stop and crashing. I have to actually reboot xp in order to fully shut the program down.
  
  This is a well known issue with primarily mac users on the adobe forums. I have yet to see adobe respond to this problem by implementing a patch/upgrade to such a serious issue. To those that state their is a workaround to this bug -- copy files to the hard drive then into Lightroom - this still does not work with my large raw files and Lightroom still crashes. This is also not acceptable as it is counter intuitive to a large part of the program being produced for those needing ease to import from their cameras and cards.
  
  The program has great potential, but I am not buying into this because adobe has a bad habit of charging expensive prices for upgrades. I will assume they will ignore the known bug and charge for the fix in version 2.0. I will wait to see if they get the program working fully with my raw files before I shell out any bucks. I like adobe's softeare programs, but their business model is beginning to wreak like ms'.
  
  
• Has Potential But:
  By A2MN382OBO89CM on 2007-06-16
  Great reviews influenced my purchase of Lightroom and indeed the software has great potential. First: A word of warning; check out the problems that people are having with this software ([...]). I wanted to use Lightroom with Elements 3. When I installed Lightroom, I couldn't get a decent print from either program (I was getting perfect prints before from Elements),now,to much magenta. I had to un-install all my Epson printer programs, re-install just the drivers, and download and update new ICC profiles from Epson, then had to re-install Elements as a repair. I can now get a decent print from Lightroom. When printing, be sure to use your profile for your paper and I use Rendering: Perceptual.
  
  
• Eh...
  By A12QNPCNDP440J on 2007-10-07
  First of all, if you KNOW you want to buy this, check academicsuperstore.com first (if you're a student/academic) to see if you can apply for the discount (it only cost me $98 there).
  
  That having been said, as a user of Photoshop CS, I wasn't too pleased with the program. I feel like the adjustments you can make in Lightroom seem elementary compared to the comprehensive array of instruments you can use in Photoshop. However, Lightroom doesn't claim to be as good as Photoshop, so I suppose I shouldn't berate it for this.
  
  The interface of Lightroom is beautiful in comparison to Photoshop...but I still haven't gotten used to the crazy "import" function. It seems very counterintuitive to me that you can import a file, heavily edit the file, and yet not have it on your computer. Perhaps I just need to spend more time with the program.
  
  I wouldn't recommend this to anyone with Photoshop. Photoshop is a beast! Lightroom seems more for the layperson who doesn't want to deal with the more complicated interface/controls of Photoshop.
  
  I'm not saying that there aren't people out there who wouldn't pledge their lives to this program. Perhaps you're one of those who will find this to be a great investment. That having been said, I would recommend against it. For $300, go buy yourself a version of Photoshop.
  
  
• More than Photo Lightbox
  By A5UU6I27F241K on 2007-04-17
  Working with Photoshop Lightroom
  
  First, I click on develop and then click on Basic sliders. Next, I use the sliders to send instructions to Photoshop Lightroom stored in my hard drive's Picture folder. The Metadata allows me to name my photo images. Lightroom does not change my flash card digital numbers.
  
  You can Heal photo spots and blemishes with Photoshop Lightroom. Check out the excellent help menu in Photoshop Lightroom. The Remove Spots tool lets you repair a selected area of a photo with a sample from another area. In the Develop module, select the Remove Spots tool from the Lightroom Toolbar.
  
  Using the Toolbar
  
  Clone: Applies the sampled area of the photo to the selected area.
  Heal: Match the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled area to the selected area. (Optional) In the Toolbar, drag the Spot Size slider to specify the size of the area affected by the Remove Spots tool.
  
  Keywords become my search engine for locating my edited photo images. My favorite Photoshop Lightroom keyboard shortcuts and Function Keys:
  
  B - Add to Quick Collection
  *D - Loupe view
  E - Jump to Library in Loupe View
  G - Grid View in Library module
  L - Cycles through Light Out modes
  *N - Remove spots
  R - Crop the overlays
  T - Hide/Show Toolbar
  V - Grayscale/Color
  Z - Zoom to 100%
  
  Control-Click Virtual Copy
  Function Keys F5 to F8 Various functions
  
  *The above missing Keyboard shortcuts letter functions.
  
  Excellent Instructions in Photoshop Lightroom
  
  Photoshop Lightroom is nondestructive editing of your photos. Your photographs are not changed by Photoshop Lightroom. Your photo changes are stored in metadata as a series of instructions. This saves your hard drive space because you do not have to save your edited photographs.
  
  Lightroom applies instructions to the original photo file. This allows you complete control over your photographs. Changes you make to your photo images are reversible.
  
  Pro Reaction
  
  The answer is Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 developed for professional photographers. This is the Adobe application that is quick and easy to use for editing your digital photographs. Now, you can create your own digital photo style and look.
  
  You have elegance and power in your hands when you use Lightroom application. The Photoshop Lightroom tool suite is powerful. You can use Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS2 for your difficult photo editing work.
  
  The fill colors in Photoshop Lightroom are white, light grays to dark gray and black. Lightroom's Library views are grid and loupe. You can use Lightroom's clone stamp features and make virtual copies of your photos.
  
  Con Reaction
  
  More fill color themes in the preference file would be a good addition since Photoshop Lightroom's interface is black. Different color theme interfaces in the preference file would be a good addition to Lightroom.
  
  Keyboard shortcuts is incomplete. The following are the missing letter functions: N - Remove spots, D - Loupe view, Control-Click Virtual Copy. There is no help menu's mention of Function Keys F5 to F8 for Photoshop Lightroom's various functions.
  
  Final Notes
  
  Photoshop Lightroom allows you to spend less time sorting and organizing images. You have more time to shoot and edit your digital photos.
  
  
  
• LOVE this
  By ANJEBGHPRZ6RO on 2007-03-23
  I love Lightroom. Been using it since Adobe had it free in Beta.
  I am a real amateur photographer. mostly of my kids and us up in mountains. Live in NYC so need to take pictures to remind us of the outdoors! :-)
  
  I use this on a Mac Mini Intel and a Windows XP machine. They are EXACT looking and functioning on either machines/OS. And what made this an even sweeter deal was I got it with the Special Introductory Price. $100 off.
  Worth the full price though.
  
  I use a Canon Rebel XT (will soon move up to a Canon 30d) and it has saved many a photo.
  
  A couple of suggestions to others like me.
  1: Get a Gray Card. I use a WhiBal (website is name plus dot com) Most digital SLR's have BAD auto white balance. And even if you set it to the light condition using the presets they can be off. A quick snapshot of the gray card and you can correct all the photos you shot in that light condition. If you do shot in jpg only, WhiBal comes with app that reads the gray card and the black and white stickers on the card to better color & white balance your jpg. But nothing beats Raw for corrections.
  
  2: Shot in RAW all the time. if you don't like the space it eats up get a larger card, there cheap nowadays. And if you are Hard drive space worried. Save the raw, make your corrections in light room, DxO &/or Photoshop and then export to jpg. Then delete the raw or better yet offload onto a DVD-R, dvd-r's are cheap like 10¢ a piece nowadays in bulk at Big Box Stores.
  
  3: Have a look at a software product called DxO [...]
  If you are not a pro at fixing barrel or pin cousion distortion or even noise this will do it automatically for you based on your lens and camera body. Man this is such a worth while piece of software.
  
  
• Covers most needs
  By A3VGPIDQFDVLG4 on 2007-06-19
  As one other reviewer commented, I've tried many of the other software packages out there, and they all have their highlights, but none was really satisfying my needs end-to-end. Lightroom differs. It truly provides me with an efficient workflow for my pictures, has an intuitive user interface, and enough feature power to cover 99% of my shots in a single tool. The edit functions are powerful enough that when you belong to the school that tries to get the photo right in the camera rather than in the digital dark room, you can make those small tweaks in Lightroom without having to go to another editor.
  
  Specific features I like: The non-destructive editing is great. Never have to worry about keeping extra copies of the original image. Just make the changes. Want to see later what was outside your crop area? No problem, it's still there a mouse click away. Want to test different versions of edition (e.g. color and b/w version, or low/high sat version)? No problem make a virtual copy, apply different edits, and then compare side by side. Seamless integration with Photoshop CS3. Click on edit in CS3, and Lightroom will create a .psd file from your preview image and automatically stack it with your raw image. Easy to switch back and forth.
  
  Concerns: Because of the non-destructive editing, Lightroom has to keep a DB around that is essential to the integrity of your photos. That makes it more fragile than other photo software. Make sure to backup your DB. I also export all the key shots as JPEG and keep both the original RAW and the JPEG just in case.
  
  
• Who lives for editing?
  By AJGWE1LY8SGXI on 2007-11-16
  I can't speak for everyone, but editing photos ranks pretty high on my list of things I wish I didn't have to do. Especially since I am a motosports photographer for a magazine and can have up to 3,000 images to shift through and cherry pick (which are always due 'NOW' or 'yesterday')
  
  
  Lightroom works great for me in that it allows me to quickly tag, delete, sort, and rank my photos. I can sort photos for different clients, quickly fix minor problems, watermark, and export to disk at lightning speeds. Like when I had shot a press intro, I had to distribute photos to 3 different magazines and they couldn't get the same images. I assigned each client a different color tag, and ranked photos either a "5" for an absolute perfect photo, or a "4" for a photo that needed some photoshop work (such as blurring logos, or license plates). Then I could sort the photos with 4-star ratings, import them into photoshop and export them back into lightroom when I was done.
  
  Though if I could change one thing, it would be the documentation. That little pamphlet-- what is that? You really need to learn Lightroom, how everything works, and how those features can work for you. Once you know those things, LR can really help your workflow. Toss the booklet, and do a search online for some video tutorials.
  
  A last little note... this program does not play nice with older PC's. At least, it's super slow and annoying to operate on my husband's 3-4 yr old PC that has limited space. It works quickly and beautifully on my Mac Pro, but it is up-to-date OS-wise and has plenty of free harddrive space and RAM. Something you may want to take into consideration.
  
  
• NEARLY perfect tool
  By AVC0E05SE9XJD on 2007-04-01
  This is a great software for Photographers looking for a faster way to manage and edit images. I gave it a four because I would hope that ADOBE would still find ways to improve this product. The functionality is superb, and for such a great program, it doesn't eat too much memory on your computer (I have a 4 year old PC with 768 MB of RAM). And because of this I'm shooting more pictures in RAW format and not worry about the time I spend in front of the computer.
  
  I'll definitely be buying the next upgrade.
  
  
• Not for everybody, but neither is photography.
  By A17BOTJK652XUH on 2007-04-02
  It is very easy to go wrong with this product. It is being brought out in a relatively simple form that you just know is going to grow. It is NOT photoshop or even photoshop like. It isn't what you use to fix a picture (though you sure can).
  
  Something has happened. Film is going away. People used to have to pay for film and for images that were anything from totally black to whiteout with maybe 1 good image out of 24?
  
  Now we preview and shoot freebies as digital. Lots and lots of pictures. Some of us shoot over 1000 images in one outing. Ohhhh, but it gets more hairy than that. Now digital cameras are taking images that are as good in print as film. And - if you use the original data from the camera (in raw form called RAW data) rather than an automatically interpreted shrunk (JPEG) version, you might even get paid money for what you take.
  
  But those unshrunk RAW files are big? Yes. So how do you zip through 1000 RAW data files and sort them into Aunty EM, Lion, Scare Crow, Oz... or make a slide show, or print certain ones or make contact sheets. and brighten 30 at a time or boost the contrast in this bunch - fast.
  
  Lightroom.
  
  
• Crash after crash
  By A2HC0K877ASSV2 on 2007-04-04
  In wandering around the web, I find I am not the only person to experience crash after crash upon importing (from Photoshop Elements 5). When importing, Lightroom "thinks" for a long time (that's fine, and they do warn you it can be slow), but then the program crashes before it gets even close to finishing the import.
  About the rest of the program? I don't know. Too frustrated just trying to get it up and running.
  
  
  
• Be Careful If you use PNG format
  By AOEQZLCRMEYXL on 2007-05-25
  As a MAC user I had two excellent software choices for my photo manager - Apple's excellent photo manager or Adobe's. I tried both demos, but was not careful enough (why later). I found the Apple product to be both more powerful and more complex, in contrast Lightroom was available at a lower price and has an easier to learn interface. Plus my having the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 pushed me towards Lightroom.
  
  On price I chose Lightroom. Ooops! It does not support PNG and my work has numerous photos moved to that format. So now, I must hope they add PNG support!
  
  
• If you need a nice efficient workflow this is it.
  By A2PZJYHC2342W on 2007-08-01
  Adobe Lightroom does exactly what I was looking for. Photo editing and organizing (keywords, ratings, renaming) this is a robust package.
  
  I currently use Photoshop CS2 and iPhoto. I never really like iPhotos method of organizing or trust it's editing capabilities. So I relied on Photoshop and then reimporting a copy of the image back into iPhoto. which all seemed like to many steps. Lightroom has changed my workflow and the way I work, eliminating 3 or 4 steps in the process.
  
  Pros:
  -Interface is beautiful to work in.
  -Simple switching view modes. (switch from G: Grid (thumbnails), E: Loupe (single image))
  -Menus Toggle (Tab)
  -Develop Mode D: Editing, Presets, Exposure, Curves, HSL, Crop, etc... This is the editing mode of Lightroom. Color edits only of the image. You need Photoshop to actually edit pixels, I.E. delete people from image and fill with background...etc.
  -Presets, think Actions in Photoshop, presaved and default image editing. Do a google search for free presets. there seem to be quite a few out there.
  -Copy Settings, once you edit an image, you can cut and paste those settings and apply them to another image or group of images. Very helpful.
  -Edit multiple images at once. grab like 50 images, brighten, white balance, etc. (simple things you can go into Develop mode with more than one image at a time, but again you can cut and paste edits.)
  -At any point you can "reset" edits to an image as the original is not actually edited until you export a file out. I have reset images from a month ago to their original.
  -Organizing there are two ways I have tried so far, 1) import directly from camera, create folders (in the finder) name folders, 2) import into finder, syncronize folders from Lightroom, new images will be updated in your Lightroom library as they exist in your finder folders. (this is awesome for me because I need to know exactly where they are and named)
  -Naming, while importing you can import as they are named by the camera, add dates to images, custom name (xxxxx-1234.jpg), add date, add sequence number... etc. again, I am an organization nut so this was a big plus for me.
  -Identity Plate, top left corner of the interface by default says, "Adobe Lightroom...." you can change this to a custom name, like John Smith Phothography, this is nice for presenting to clients.
  -Collections, quick folders created by drag and dropping images.
  
  Cons:
  -Could be faster, but I have about 30K images of all different sizes. Going from Grid to Loupe takes a few seconds for the image to redraw. I might need more ram.
  -No two monitor set up possible. The toggled menus slide out from left right and bottom and dissapear leaving a tiny arrow to indicate hiding. There is no way to drag and drop the menus to another location. This is find for one monitors as the menus hide rather quickly and i have gotten used to the quick keys, but I have two monitors and could use the extra space.
  
  besides all this, well I am sure there is more for me to learn but after the one month free trial I am happy I got this program, saved me many steps and feels like a smooth interface to show off images to clients and friends. Cheers.
  
  
• Almost Pointless
  By A1B8Y83O1ZTYCB on 2008-01-14
  If you're a professional photographer who needs to adjust multiple, similar photographs in terms of brightness, contrast, and hue- then this software is a gift from the gods.
  For anyone else- people who want to edit one-off photos you took of your family during the last holiday, this software is pretty much pointless and FAR over-priced.
  Thankfully we were smart enough to download the latest trial version from adobe before dropping hundreds of dollars on this dud. We stared at it for a while trying to figure out how to do a very simple edit and then gave up (BTW: I have 25 years in the IT industry and am pretty proficient with Photoshop).
  Instead, I found a demo of a Photoshop-like program pre-installed on our computer (which costs only $60 to register) and tried to perform the same operation on the same photo. It took about 90 seconds.
  
  Guess which one we'll be buying?
  
  Just before trying both demo programs, I had a chat with a pro photographer (whose name I'll withhold because any decent pro photographer would know who he is, immediately), and he did not have anything positive to say about lightroom, suggesting Photoshop instead.
  
  

• Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers,The (Voices That Matter)
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 Upgrade [OLD VERSION]
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 [OLD VERSION]
• The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Mac] [OLD VERSION]