{"id":385,"date":"2007-02-19T18:50:55","date_gmt":"2007-02-19T09:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-02-19\/385"},"modified":"2007-06-30T19:50:44","modified_gmt":"2007-06-30T10:50:44","slug":"lightroom-10-is-out-is-it-done-enough-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-02-19\/385","title":{"rendered":"Lightroom 1.0 is out; is it done enough for you?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
<\/a>Adobe Lightroom 1.0,<\/span> Develop Module in Action<\/span><\/div>\n\n

Adobe Lightroom Version 1.0<\/span> was made public today, in line with the\nschedule previously\nannounced<\/a>. I eagerly<\/span> downloaded and installed 30-day-free\nevaluation copies<\/a>, one for my Mac, and one for my Windows box... (my\nLinux box is still Lightroom-free, unfortunately).<\/p>\n\n

One nice thing about Lightroom is that the licence is for two computers,\nso you can buy one copy and use on both your Mac laptop and Windows desktop\n(for example, which is what I'm doing).<\/p>\n\n

Over half a million people registered to try the free betas last year,\nand with the advances between October's “Beta 4.1” and today's “1.0”, I'm sure that<\/span> many people will be extremely pleased.<\/p>\n\n

Dichotomy of Functionality<\/h2>\n\n

Lightroom's feature set is a dichotomy. In one sense<\/span>, it has so many\nfeatures that I certainly<\/span> can't claim to know even most of them, much less\nall. It has five<\/span> main modules, with the main two being Library<\/b> and\nDevelop<\/b> (used for sorting, filtering, touching up, and “developing”\nimages — adjusting exposure, color, etc.). I spend<\/span> 99% of my\nLightroom time in these modules, but it also has Slideshow<\/b>,\nPrint<\/b>, and Web<\/b> modules (for making slideshow presentations,\nfor printing, and for making web-based flash\/html galleries). I've used the\nPrint module occasionally (it's much nicer than Photoshop's), but only\nsuperficially. I've not really done anything but play with the other two\nmodules.<\/p>\n\n

So, I spend<\/span> 99% of my time in Library and Develop, and they are\nexceptionally wonderful<\/i> for working with images (JPG, raw, Tiff,\nPSD... doesn't matter). Whether I'm spending a lot<\/span> of quality time on one\nimage, or plowing through 500 new shots from one of Anthony's preschool\nevents, Lightroom just seems right<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n

Nevertheless, as much as I know about these two modules (and as much as\nI get<\/span> out of them, which is the important point), and despite having used\none build of 1.0 or another for a month<\/span> and a half,<\/span> I know enough<\/span> to know\nthat there's still much more I don't<\/span> know.<\/p>\n\n

I certainly have a lot to look forward to as I spend<\/span> more time with\nLightroom.<\/p>\n\n

On the other side of the dichotomy, Lightroom is a “Version 1<\/span>” product,\nwhich has, like all Version 1<\/span> products, an immature feature set.\nLightroom's is remarkably<\/i> mature for its age, but people expecting\nPhotoshop-like detail will be sorely disappointed.<\/p>\n\n \n\n

Let's consider Photoshop for a moment: Photoshop 1.0<\/span> was released 16\nyears<\/i> ago this month, and is currently in beta for Version 10<\/span>\n(that's a ten<\/b>, not a one<\/span>-point-oh without the point). That's a\nlot<\/i> of development behind it, yet, it still doesn't do some of the\nmost simple things I want<\/span> to do when editing images. This is perhaps more\nof a reflection<\/span> on me and my habits\/wants than it is on Photoshop, but the\npoint is that with as many people as there are on earth, try as you might,\nyou can't please everyone.<\/p>\n\n

Back to Lightroom, there are some areas where it is clearly lacking, and\nno one is more aware of this than the engineers at Adobe. In software<\/span> development, the question is never “is this done?” because software is\nnever done any more than Photoshop was “done” at, say, its Version 5,<\/span> or\nMicrosoft was “done” with Windows at its version 98. The question<\/span> for\nreleases is “is this good enough<\/i>?” — good enough to be a\nusable<\/span> product, worth its cost to the user.<\/p>\n\n

Had Adobe waited for Lightroom to be done, it would never be released,\nso clearly, the question now for the potential user is “is Lightroom done\nenough for me<\/i>?” If you tried the public betas and wished for\ndust-spot removal, you'll be happy to find it there, along with a clone<\/span>\ntool to boot. But if you<\/span> tried the public beta and bemoaned the poor\nsharpening and noise-reduction controls, you'll be only a bit<\/span> encouraged to\nfind that although NR has been split to separate Luminance and Color\ncontrols, it still falls woefully short of, say, what Noise Ninja<\/a> does in\nPhotoshop.<\/p>\n\n

Some people will point to missing features that are important to them\nand cry loudly that Lightroom is horrible, that without such-and-such a\nfeature<\/span> it is nothing more than a toy,<\/span> etc. I'm writing<\/span> this post on the\nday Lightroom 1.0<\/span> is released as a preemptive<\/span> strike against such\ngeneralizations, because so long as a potential<\/span> buyer knows what they're\ngetting, Lightroom is what it is, and it's up to each user to decide\nwhether it's worth it to them. I know of<\/span> some professional photographers\nwho use Lightroom every day as part of their job, and I know<\/span> of others who\ndon't use it because it's missing something they require. To each their<\/span>\nown.<\/p>\n\n

If you have a digital camera and wonder whether Lightroom might be\nuseful for you<\/i> (and you have a Mac<\/span> or a Windows<\/span> computer), why not\ntry it for the free month Adobe allows, and decide for yourself?<\/p>\n\n

By the way, the strawberries so nicely arranged are Fumie's work, from\nthe mini and somewhat impromptu party<\/a> we had a month<\/span>\nago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adobe Lightroom Version 1.0 was made public today, in line with the schedule previously announced. I eagerly downloaded and installed 30-day-free evaluation copies, one for my Mac, and one for my Windows box... (my Linux box is still Lightroom-free, unfortunately).<\/p>

One nice thing about Lightroom is that the licence is for two computers, so you can buy one copy and use on both your Mac laptop and Windows desktop (for example, which is what I'm doing).<\/p>

Over half a million people registered to try the free betas last year, and with the advances between October's \"Beta 4.1\" and today's \"1.0\", [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}