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Adobe Lightroom 2
Adobe Lightroom MSRP: $299
$99 Upgrade Mac & PC
PURCHASE: From XtremeCamera Amazon Store For $274.99

Note* Want to get the most out of this review? Before you begin reading go to adobe.com and download the trial version of Lightroom. Import a few dozen photos (to do a quick import just use the file menu and choose one of the various import methods. Don’t worry about how you’re getting the photos in there; just get them in there). Once you have the photos imported, put on some nice music, sit by yourself and just play with the application. Explore it, Braille it. Don’t worry about learning anything, just explore. Do that for an hour or more, then shut the application down and continue reading this review. Trust me, if you do that, this review will not only make more sense, it will allow you to start using Lightroom effectively as soon as your finished reading.

Synopsis: Whether you are an amateur photographer or a money-making pro, Adobe Lightroom 2 is, by far, the best solution for a solid, organized, fast and efficient workflow. From managing a modest collection of photographs for the casual point and shooter, to larger collections of advanced amateurs, or the extensive collections of long-time photographers with tens of thousands of photographs, Adobe Lightroom 2 makes managing, editing, and exporting photographs a real joy. Finally, a tool designed for a photographer that actually delivers is here. Because of size constraints I’ve created a gallery of some screenshots of Adobe Lightroom 2, click HERE to see the galleries.

It’s A Digital World For Photographers Too

It’s not just the avid computer user that has gone digital, photographers have made the leap as well. There is no getting around the fact that digital photography has supplanted film-based photography in virtually every area of the field, and for quote a while. Digital has been the de facto format for the vast majority of photographers for most of this decade. With the advent of entry-level dSLR’s delivering the quality of photographs that are equal to, or surpass that of 35mm film-based photography for less than $1000, it just doesn’t make sense anymore to shoot with film.

Contrast, tonal range, and all the rest of the issues that had many film photographers lambasting the digital format in years past are now non-issues, and most of those holdouts that were doing the lambasting are now happy and excited digital shooters. Digital Photography is the present, and the future, making the digital camera and personal computers forever joined at the hip. Digital reins supreme and its high time for a true digital darkroom like Adobe Lightroom 2 .

This Digital Darkroom, however, has been slow to realize its full potential. Many digital photographers have long depended on a wide variety of software for importing, correcting, and exporting their digital images. While new and better technologies in digital cameras are fast in coming, the same could not be said for the software needed to manage all those digital photographs being made by true digital photographers. I am happy to report that the day has finally arrived with the release of Adobe Lightroom 2 .

While I was a user of Adobe Lightroom since its initial release I found version 1.0 through 1.1.4 to be a bit tiresome to use because for me, it wasn’t intuitive enough. I am a Mac user, after all, and any application that I use must be easy to get around. It did the job well, don’t get me wrong, but tweaks to the GUI were needed before I would feel comfortable enough. With Adobe Lightroom 2 not only did we get a revamped, easier to use GUI, we got some very cool new features as well. (More on that later)

About this specific review, after using this new version of Adobe Lightroom it occurred to me that in order to write a comprehensive review it would wind up being at least as large as a book. There are so many features, so many ways to use the software to improve your workflow, improve your photos, and improve your attitude about photography-specific software. So, in order to write enough to give you a good idea about what this application is without forcing you to read a book-length review, I’ve skipped many great features. When you download the trial version you’ll get a hands-on personal experience that will be far more effective than this review.

Installation Is A Breeze

As a Mac user my observations in this review of Adobe Lightroom will be from the viewpoint of a Mac user. I’ve been assured from a PC using friend that the PC experience is just about 100% identical to the Mac, but I imagine installation ‘may’ vary a bit.

Because I had an earlier version of Lightroom installed on my Mac, the installation was really an upgrade to version 2. After sliding in the installation disk and clicking the install (setup) icon, Lightroom recognized my installation of Lightroom v1.1.4 and asked me if I wanted to upgrade the catalogs or start a new one, a version 2 catalog. I opted for upgrading my current catalog and all went smoothly. I’m not exactly sure why someone would want to start a new catalog and leave the old one there, but who knows, maybe there’s a reason.

Setting Up Lightroom

As I do with every application I install, after launching the application for the first time I go immediately to the Preferences. This is important, especially for Adobe products, since the way you do things may vary quite a bit from other users. I also enjoy tailoring the application to the way I like to work, and with Adobe products and its detailed, extensive, and highly customizable preferences, spending a few minutes with the preference pane is time well spent.

Starting out with the first of six preference panes, ‘General’, you can set certain ways in the which Lightroom behaves, from the simple, showing the Splash screen upon launch for instance, to setting Sounds, to which catalog to load on start up, and so on. At the bottom of the General pane you click on “Go To Catalog Settings”. There you can choose the location of catalogs, file handling, such as the size of standard view photos and preview quality. You also set up how and when your photos will be backed up. Trust me here; if you are not backing up your photos to at least two locations you are risking the loss of all your work with the certainty of an unfortunate accident.

The Metadata preference pane is terrific for collecting ‘suggestions’ (new to v2), for metadata entries from previous imports and edits, and enables automatically writing changes into XMP. You an also instruct Lightroom 2 to write date or time changes into your RAW files.

The next Pane is Presets. Adobe has added three Restore Presets buttons for Local Adjustments, Color Labels and Library Filters, a handy feature indeed, that will hasten your workflow in an important area by resetting all your edits should you go overboard.

Next up is Importing. Import determines if you want Lightroom to import photos when a memory card is detected and how to treat RAW+JPEG images, (the best setting to use if you have large memory cards). You can choose to have RAW+JPEG photos handled as separate photos or as a single photo. It also enables the creation of DNG images from RAW files on import, should you need or want it.

If you need an external editor, the next choice is aptly named ‘External Editing”. There are many options to choose from here, so look at these carefully and make your choices based on how you want to work. If you use Photoshop you can set your images to open in Photoshop for edits you cannot make in Lightroom.

File handling preferences includes a section to select the Camera Raw Cache settings, so whether you have a ton of disk space and RAM or barely enough of either, you can adjust Lightroom to fit your environment.

The last pane is “Interface”, which allows you set customize the look and the behavior of Lightroom itself. I actually prefer the default settings. I think Adobe GUI designers are top notch. From panel font size to dim level to overlay texture, there is much you can do to make Lightroom look and behave the way you want it to, if you want something other than the default interface.

After setting up the preferences you’re ready to begin to adopt Lightroom as your Photographic Workflow application. There are 5 major areas to Lightroom, each with its own reason for being and purpose to your workflow.

The Final Five (a nod to BSG fans)

Adobe Lightroom is divided into 5 separate modules. The first two are about importing and editing, the last three are about exporting the final photos. When you first launch and use the application, and each time thereafter when you import new photo sessions, you work your way through the five modules. Each module features a set of tools specific to the module on both the left and right sideboxes that will extend the length of your display. You can adjust the size of the Lightroom workspace by dragging the lower right corner, in case you don’t want your entire display devoted to the application.

Getting Around

Moving from photo to photo couldn’t be easier. Each of your photos in the catalog you created during the import stage appear in a thumbnail ‘filmstrip’ at the bottom of your screen, and moving through the photos is as easy as tapping your arrow keys. As you click on a particular photo a larger version (which you set the size for in the preferences) appear in the middle. There are a variety of Key Commands you can easily learn since they are labeled in the pull down menus at the top. It won’t take long to adopt some basic commands that will speed up your workflow even more.

Library Module

The first module is where it all begins. This is where you import your photos, and there are plenty of import options to choose from. On the left panel you’ll see the various photo ‘sources’; hard drives, folders, your camera’s flash card, etc, plus a cool Navigator box at the top of the left side. In order to see just how cool this navigator box is you’ll just have to download the trial. But trust me, it’s cool, and handy to boot.

Smart Collections is a new feature to version 2, you can populate Smart Collections by basing your choices on the criteria you define when you create them. Smart Collections has been an amazing feature for myself, I find I use it quite often.

At the very bottom of the panel, but above the filmstrip thumbnails, is the Import and Export buttons.

Library Filter Bar

Adobe has built a new Library Filter bar above the main panel that is much more powerful than a simple Find feature. The Filter Bar has five options: Text, Attribute, Metadata, None (that selects all) and a Custom Filter popup. For example, if you choose ‘Text” in the Filter Bar you can find any and all photos by any word(s) you choose by searching the metadata.

On the right side of the Library module you’ll see a variety of tools, starting with the photos histogram. Right below the histogram is the Quick Develop settings that I have found to be an indispensible tool. I absolutely love the ability to adjust the tones with Tone Control, increase or decrease my Exposure, sharpen my photos with Clarity, and adjust my saturation with Vibrance controls. They work wonderfully for quick adjustments and are offered in the Library module as a way to do some quick tweaks without getting into the finer controls in the Develop module. I use this tool more than any other in Lightroom because it allows me to make quick little tweaks after examining the photo in the middle pane, or through the loupe control. If you can get the shot right in-camera these quick tools might be all your need to use, but when the shoot was difficult or your results less than you expected, moving into the Develop module can save some poor photos you might otherwise discard.

The Keywording section has Keyword Tags, tag display and a text entry section as well as the Keyword Set section. In between them it adds a Keyword Suggestions section. Lightroom 2 will automatically suggest keywords based on what’s already in your catalog and the time the image was captured.

There’s also a Keyword List where you can filter the selection based on a keyword by clicking on the keyword in the list, or entering it in a text box. The Filter bar will immediately display the keyword filter and the selected images will be displayed in the middle panel. When you begin to adopt Lightroom has your exclusive workflow tool it won’t take long to realize that good metadata entries are vital to an efficient workflow.

The Metadata section even includes GPS data with a simple click box that will open your web browser and show you the location of the image at Google maps. I kid you not, I’ve done it. It’s amazing. Not every dSLR offers GPS, I am very fortunate to shoot with a Nikon D3, which does offer GPS, and being able to find the location where I shot a particular photo with Lightroom and Google Maps seems so futuristic, yet we’re there.

Before I move on to the next module I’d like to point out that in the Library module there are some miscellaneous items that are definitely worth mentioning. Lightroom 2 supports dual displays, which you can control in the library module. Just click the small box with the number 2 in it and you’ll instantly have both your displays using Lightroom. This also might be a good point in the review to mention that for Mac users Lightroom 2 is completely 64-bit aware, which means that nearly every Intel-based Mac running OS X Leopard will see Lightroom blaze along faster than any other application you own.

Develop Module

This is where the real work begins, and the tools in this module are incredibly powerful. In Library you imported, tagged, made collections, made quick edits, and so forth. In Develop mode you get really involved with serious editing. This is the module in Lightroom that makes using an external editor like Photoshop a non-issue. If you intend for the imported photographs to be exported as photographs and not a photo illustration, Develop module is all you’ll need. Don’t misunderstand me, despite Lightroom’s ability to import a variety of file formats, including PSD files (Photoshop file format that includes layers), and apply the tools to these file formats, I am a firm believer that Lightroom is a photographers tool and was designed from the ground up to be a photographers tool. To me, there is no need for external editors when you are dealing with ‘photos in, photos out’ type of work. I may use Photoshop for more drastic manipulation, and when I do I move away from ‘photograph’ to ‘photo illustration’. For the sake of this review I’m attempting to keep this focused on the ‘photos in, photos out’ philosophy. As you begin to use the edit tools keep in mind that Lightroom uses a non-destructive method of applying edits, so whatever you do as far as edits go you won’t affect the original file. This alone gives you the confidence to work on your files as much as you want.

The Edit Toolbar

Below the Histogram in the right panel you’ll see the Crop Overlay, Spot Removal, and Red-Eye Correction tools. The Healing and Clone as well as the Spot Removal tools include an option to change the opacity, allowing for even better and finer edits. When you click on one of the tool panels a list of extensive options drops down. Click again to hide the panel when you are done with it. While this keeps all your tools at your fingertips it also hides them in a way as to not overwhelm you. As you edit your photos you can go through the tools methodically, or only where you need to go.

Tools such as Adjusting Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Clarity (Sharpness) are available with much more accurate tools than the ‘quick’ method in Library mode, which will allow you to correct your original in-camera photo so well that even the worst photos in the shooting session have a chance to become useful, and potentially gives you the opportunity to offer your clients more, and better, proofs that you might otherwise have using another application.

Here’s one of the best features of the Develop module; after you’ve exhausted your edits and are finally satisfied with the results you can save everything you’ve done as a Preset and apply the very same modifications to any batch of photos. If you’re like me and you shoot many slight variations of the same subject, under the same conditions, being able to apply the exact edits all at once is a dream come true. It pays to spend as much time as you like tweaking your photograph so that you can save it as a Preset and use it again and again.

ADOBE LIGHTROOM 2 REVIEW GALLERIES

END OF PART ONE