Friday, June 29, 2007

Lightroom to the Rescue!

All hail the new champion of photographic postprocessing!

The newest addition to Adobe's legendary software lineup is a solid step in the right direction for photogs in need of a rapid route to finished images they can submit, publish or just email to family and friends.

Along with an intuitive interface, Lightroom borrows some of Photoshop's brains and adds some good old fashioned organization to this laborious process. Open your latest batch of imagery in the Library for intial inspection and culling, jump to Develop to get the postprocessing done, then decide on Slideshow, Print or Web for output to publishers, websites, wedding clients and the like.

The emergence of indie Preset writers is a strong indication of Lightroom's popularity - much more so than most other apps of this kind. I have a decent collection of these freebies already and like some of the effects a lot.

Check out a few I created in just minutes:














This is a favorite for adding character to somewhat ordinary images.












This is an image that I subjected to a number of custom Presets...












And another image subjected to color and contrast effects.














This image is one of a series of 36 parts images - my first opp to see Lightroom's organizational and processing advantages. An hour or so later, I had them adjusted, cropped, renamed and burned on CD for the client. I especially like the Export As Previous selection for making consistently sized images a snap.

With Adobe's horsepower in creating a new chapter in the Photoshop saga, this direction bodes well for the future of photographer-specific tools. Already releasing their first update, the Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ 1.1 update includes these enhancements:
• Flexible image management for multi-computer workflows
• Improved Noise Reduction and Sharpening technology
• Compatibility with Microsoft® Windows® Vista™
• New camera support

Lightroom is the beginning of the end for softwares lacking a clear, step-by-step interface. Their 'rooms' interface is a refreshing change toward speed and convenience and brining the many tools into a more familiar mindset. While it is a far cry from Photoshop's plug-in dynasty of creativity, Lightroom offers an approach to productivity that Photoshop never attained to. Whatever their relationship turns into, these softwares have solidified Adobe's reign over image management and manipulation all over again. Hail the new champion - again!

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