Lightroom Experiences?

[abrewer]

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Anyone else playing with LR for Windows?

 

I downloaded about ten days ago when others here began spreading the news that it was available. It took about a week to figure out how to operate it, reading and re-reading the materials I found on the web and watching the movies...but now I really like this software.

 

The real breakthrough is the "Basic" and the "Tone" drop-down areas in the "Develop" module. By white balancing first and fixing black and white (using the saturation warnings "shadow" and "highlight" beneath the histogram right top as my guides), then adjusting "Brightness" and "Contrast", the curves I am finding are pretty close to what I would have pulled myself--only they are much much smoother and fine-tuning them with "Compliance" makes for a level of accuracy I could never get in PSCS or my hot-rodded PSE3 with a "Curves" plug-in.

 

For me it's been operating pretty quickly on my Dell Inspiron 1100 running Windows XP that's about five years old. The couple of prints I've made in the quick mode look really good too! LR has been transferring the files to PSE3 using the "Ctrl E" command quite satisfactorily also.

 

One little trick I discovered by myself in the "Develop" module is the before/after screen--side by side, or an image "Split-Screen" continuation view that's unedited on one side (you can choose) and displaying the edits on the other! Cool!

 

Word is we get to play for free until the end of January 2007. So far, it's been fun and (IMO) my images look better than ever!

 

Thanks.

 

Allan

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[erl]

I have been dipping my toe in the waters of LR as well as using RSE. Was about to plunge my dollars on RSP based on my experience with RSE when it was removed from the market (presumably) by Adobe. At this point, I would prefer RSP to LR for the simplicity combined with functionality of RS, but it seems I will have no choice but to either go with LR when it eventually matures, or stick with RSE.

 

Am I being naieve about LR at this stage or is it overly complicated to navigate for simple basic requirements?

 

Cheers,

Erl

[andybarton]

What's RSE?

[erl]

Andy,

 

Sorry about the overly short acronym. I thought if I know it, everyone does!

 

RSE = Raw Shoote Elements. Also, RSP = Raw shooter professional.

 

Both excellent apps. (Applications) .

 

Unfortunately, my copy of RSP is only a demo (bloody good), but will expire after 15 days and it is no longer possible to pay for the licence, so it will die. Thanks Adobe. LR (lightRoom) had better end up being bloody good, is all I can say.

 

Cheers,

Erl

[dhsimmonds]

No, I think you are right, LR is defineitely not "user friendly" in the same way that RSE & RSP is. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to purchase RSP heavily discounted as an existing RSE user, just before RSP was launched. I am annoyed that it will not now ever be up-dated as it is by far the best Raw conversion program I have used. LR does a good job once you can navigate through the modules..........and I keep loosing libraries and as for re-naming them!!

 

However there are many good things about LR,especially if you personally annotate the exif data for instance. The browser is also good but all in all, come back RSP all is forgiven! Cheers, Dave

[wda]

Thank you Allan, very helpful.

 

David

[fotografr]

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Thanks, Allan. You have persuaded me to spend more time with LR. I hve it on one of my computers and have messed with it a bit, but had decided I prefer CS2 primarily because of the ability to batch correct and batch save & rename large numbers of images in one step. Maybe LR can do this as well. I'll look into it a bit more.

[biglouis]

So far I've found Lightroom to be a major improvement over Camera RAW save one aspect which may be down to user error.

 

I thought that processing a RAW image was supposed to be non-destructive, i.e. you can go back to the original RAW image. I have not found a way to do that yet. I've found that after processing an image I am stuck with the final result. I thought there would be someway to undo all and go back to the original. If anyone can give me an idea as to what I am doing wrong I would be grateful

 

LouisB

[lesh]

Allan,

 

Thanks for posting your impressions, and congratulations for detailing a 'real life' example of how one might use Lightroom's Develop module. Some of the professional reviews I've read have just been showing the result of the moving this or that slider control to the extreme. Easy to do, but not very practical.

 

I think it's more interesting to see some practical examples of what adjustements to the many slider controls can do, to help fix/improve images with specific problems. Maybe there are a number of 'cook books' under production. In time no doubt, custom presets may be almost as available as PS Actions.

 

In the meantime - hope you'll share more of your findings.

 

Les

[abrewer]

You're welcome David!

 

Brent, you are going to love the "Synchronize" button. Simply select, using Ctl-Click, all the images you want to match to the one you have open working on. Then hit "Synchronize" and you can paste the settings to all of them with one click. You also have the option of choosing NOT to paste certain settings (say for example, you want to paste the white balance and saturation and curves to all the selects, but not the sharpening). Batching like always, but adjustable control of what you apply. Try it!

 

And thank you for commenting Les! Please post some of your own techniques to this thread when you're able!

 

Allan

[rob_rob]

Hi, biglouis,

 

There's very simple way to do that (at least on a Mac, but I presume that the Windows version is the same in that respect). In the 'Develop' module, look for a 'Reset' button at the bottom right of the window. When you click on it, all previous settings go back to the default and you can start with a clean slate.

[biglouis]

Rob

 

Thanks a lot! I knew it had to be user error. If there was a manual for the product I guess you could have said it was a RTFM error!

 

Regards

 

Louis

[mwilliamsphotography]

Waaaay to slow. I'll look at it again when they optimize all the functions. I have to wade through 500 RAW image for every wedding and it's a donkey compared to a racehorse when compared to Bridge and ACR.

[lesh]

One of the great benefits is that Lightroom doesn't need the latest machinery. I can run it on a slightly modified six year old Powerbook Pismo (G4 550mhz upgrade), and a newer G4 iMac where it does run faster. Point is that both are getting long in the tooth, but Lightroom runs adequately.

Every module within has some nice features, but I confess that since I use an old version of Photoshop, some of the things I think are cool may already be contained in CS2. File management capabilities are good (well they suit me anyway). The abiilty to import files and duplicate to a back-up location will be useful once I get a new backup drive.

The slideshow and print modules are improvements on my earlier routines and you can easily create a 'flash' slideshow for the web, if you're into that.

As Allan has mentioned, there are tone and white balance presets in addition to a manual wb. The custom adjustments you can make are endless. A history tab enables you to revert to any earler stage of adjustment - you can also reset to the original.

Also very nice to instantly see different before and after views - as shown in the example below the result of manually adjusting WB. For the moment it's a free beta version - so the only thing to lose by trying it out is your time.