I recently popped an eight-gigabyte memory card into a 10 megapixel SLR and the frame counter jumped to more than 650 RAW images. With that much capacity, most of us can shoot all day. When the time comes to sort through all those images, however, we might start questioning the wisdom of taking so many. This is where Adobe Photoshop Lightroom can preserve our sanity.
Lightroom represents a new breed of software designed specifically for photographers. It has the elements for cataloguing, image editing and output preparation, but all take place within a common interface. There are entry-level packages that offer the same unified functionality, but Adobe is aiming this product at professional photographers. If you shoot prolifically and capture in RAW file format, Lightroom should be high on your short list whether you consider yourself a professional or not.
Lightroom divides your workflow into five stages that are clearly labelled on the top bar of the main screen. Hit any of the steps – Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print or Web and you are in that module. The modules use a common interface – the working area is in the centre, with adjustment or information panels to the left and right. Along the bottom is a filmstrip ribbon. As you select the various modules, the side panels that hold toolsets change to offer the types of adjustments and manipulations appropriate for that activity. It’s a nicely integrated interface because it reinforces the feeling that you are within the same image bank, regardless of what you are doing.
The Library module is where the main sorting, ranking and other cataloguing functions take place. Here you can access folders, EXIF camera data, rankings and keywords. There is a quick edit panel available here too, although for more extensive image processing you’d move to the Develop module.
Lightroom handles most common image types, but it excels at RAW image workflow. If you’ve worked with the Adobe Camera Raw utility that comes with recent versions of Photoshop, you’ll recognize Lightroom’s Develop module. The organization is similar and there is a common set of tools. However, Lightroom pushes the boundaries of RAW adjustments a lot further. A split-toning panel allows you to adjust hue and saturation for shadow and highlight areas independently, and the tone panel has sliders for highlight and shadow adjustment. As well, a Hue-Saturation-Luminance panel allows you to adjust the image along eight spectral segments: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple and Magenta. And if your images suffer from sensor dust or other spot defects, the Develop module even includes a spotting tool that you can choose to use either as a healing brush or a clone tool.
Three modules handle the most common types of image output: slideshow, print and web. The Slideshow module provides a basic method of presenting a series of images. The integration with Lightroom’s image database makes this process very straightforward and fast, as you can select a series of images either by sorting keywords or other parameters, or by creating an entirely new collection using the Quick Collection feature, and then simply make the slideshow – no exporting them or copying them to a different location, and no need to open a separate application. You can adjust slide and transition duration, add text titles and music, and include framing or background effects. The features in the slideshow module are fairly sparse compared to other packages designed specifically for presentations particularly in the number of transitions and other effects. Nevertheless, it’s more than enough to create a simple but elegant slide presentation.
The same benefits of integration are apparent in the Web module. Once you have a group of images, it is very easy to make a web-ready gallery. You can preview it in a web browser and then upload the collection to your website.
The Print module offers a series of templates – if you want to make a contact sheet, for example – as well as colour management and layout adjustment tools. There is also an identity plate toolset that allows you to put a text watermark or other label over your images.
I have been using the Bridge application that comes with Photoshop CS2 to catalogue my images, and moving to Lightroom was a smooth transition. The underlying technologies in Bridge plus Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom are similar, but Adobe says Bridge has features that make it useful for a broader range of activities – graphic arts, for example. Lightroom is for photographers specifically. Thus, for example, Lightroom’s catalogue can be built of both online and offline image collections, whereas Bridge works more like a file browser accessing only what is currently online (including connected external hard drives).
The common ground that brings the two together is the sidecar XMP file, which holds adjustments settings, keywords, etc.. Both Bridge and Lightroom understand the XMP file and if you choose to save adjustments to XMP in one, the other will be able to read those settings. There are a few more RAW adjustments available in Lightroom’s raw processing panel, but if those are written to the XMP file, Bridge will properly read them (although it will not be able to modify them).
This is one of the reasons why my transition from Bridge to Lightroom was so painless. I have several thousand images in my archive, which resides on an external USB hard drive. Using Bridge, I’d started cataloguing some of them with keywords, and when I created a new catalogue using Lightroom, those keyword tags were preserved, saving me from having to re-categorize those images.
Because Adobe ships both Mac (Universal) and Windows versions of Lightroom in the same box, I was able to test the software on both platforms, although the systems were nowhere near equal. The fastest machine in my stable right now is a one-generation old CoreDuo MacBook Pro with two gigabytes of RAM. (Apple claims the current Core2Duo machines are even faster.) Moving through the collection or sorting subgroups is very fast. Even on a single core Centrino notebook with one gigabyte of RAM running Windows XP, the experience is quite good, although the jerkiness and discontinuities in performance that comes from a single core processor is often evident.
Lightroom represents a new breed of software designed specifically for photographers. It has the elements for cataloguing, image editing and output preparation, but all take place within a common interface. There are entry-level packages that offer the same unified functionality, but Adobe is aiming this product at professional photographers. If you shoot prolifically and capture in RAW file format, Lightroom should be high on your short list whether you consider yourself a professional or not.
Lightroom divides your workflow into five stages that are clearly labelled on the top bar of the main screen. Hit any of the steps – Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print or Web and you are in that module. The modules use a common interface – the working area is in the centre, with adjustment or information panels to the left and right. Along the bottom is a filmstrip ribbon. As you select the various modules, the side panels that hold toolsets change to offer the types of adjustments and manipulations appropriate for that activity. It’s a nicely integrated interface because it reinforces the feeling that you are within the same image bank, regardless of what you are doing.
The Library module is where the main sorting, ranking and other cataloguing functions take place. Here you can access folders, EXIF camera data, rankings and keywords. There is a quick edit panel available here too, although for more extensive image processing you’d move to the Develop module.
Lightroom handles most common image types, but it excels at RAW image workflow. If you’ve worked with the Adobe Camera Raw utility that comes with recent versions of Photoshop, you’ll recognize Lightroom’s Develop module. The organization is similar and there is a common set of tools. However, Lightroom pushes the boundaries of RAW adjustments a lot further. A split-toning panel allows you to adjust hue and saturation for shadow and highlight areas independently, and the tone panel has sliders for highlight and shadow adjustment. As well, a Hue-Saturation-Luminance panel allows you to adjust the image along eight spectral segments: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple and Magenta. And if your images suffer from sensor dust or other spot defects, the Develop module even includes a spotting tool that you can choose to use either as a healing brush or a clone tool.
Three modules handle the most common types of image output: slideshow, print and web. The Slideshow module provides a basic method of presenting a series of images. The integration with Lightroom’s image database makes this process very straightforward and fast, as you can select a series of images either by sorting keywords or other parameters, or by creating an entirely new collection using the Quick Collection feature, and then simply make the slideshow – no exporting them or copying them to a different location, and no need to open a separate application. You can adjust slide and transition duration, add text titles and music, and include framing or background effects. The features in the slideshow module are fairly sparse compared to other packages designed specifically for presentations particularly in the number of transitions and other effects. Nevertheless, it’s more than enough to create a simple but elegant slide presentation.
The same benefits of integration are apparent in the Web module. Once you have a group of images, it is very easy to make a web-ready gallery. You can preview it in a web browser and then upload the collection to your website.
The Print module offers a series of templates – if you want to make a contact sheet, for example – as well as colour management and layout adjustment tools. There is also an identity plate toolset that allows you to put a text watermark or other label over your images.
I have been using the Bridge application that comes with Photoshop CS2 to catalogue my images, and moving to Lightroom was a smooth transition. The underlying technologies in Bridge plus Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom are similar, but Adobe says Bridge has features that make it useful for a broader range of activities – graphic arts, for example. Lightroom is for photographers specifically. Thus, for example, Lightroom’s catalogue can be built of both online and offline image collections, whereas Bridge works more like a file browser accessing only what is currently online (including connected external hard drives).
The common ground that brings the two together is the sidecar XMP file, which holds adjustments settings, keywords, etc.. Both Bridge and Lightroom understand the XMP file and if you choose to save adjustments to XMP in one, the other will be able to read those settings. There are a few more RAW adjustments available in Lightroom’s raw processing panel, but if those are written to the XMP file, Bridge will properly read them (although it will not be able to modify them).
This is one of the reasons why my transition from Bridge to Lightroom was so painless. I have several thousand images in my archive, which resides on an external USB hard drive. Using Bridge, I’d started cataloguing some of them with keywords, and when I created a new catalogue using Lightroom, those keyword tags were preserved, saving me from having to re-categorize those images.
Because Adobe ships both Mac (Universal) and Windows versions of Lightroom in the same box, I was able to test the software on both platforms, although the systems were nowhere near equal. The fastest machine in my stable right now is a one-generation old CoreDuo MacBook Pro with two gigabytes of RAM. (Apple claims the current Core2Duo machines are even faster.) Moving through the collection or sorting subgroups is very fast. Even on a single core Centrino notebook with one gigabyte of RAM running Windows XP, the experience is quite good, although the jerkiness and discontinuities in performance that comes from a single core processor is often evident.
Atom Feed (xml)
No comments:
Post a Comment