8.8

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom has arrived on both PC and Mac which is a must have application for the amateur and professional photographer. Photoshop Lightroom was created in consultation with professional photographers from around the globe in order to give the user access to over 150 camera raw formats and employing a variety of effects onto the image without tampering the original image. The program also supports a variety of different image formats from popular formats such as JPEG and TIFF.
 

Features (Import)

• Robust tools to handle large shoots
  Speedily process high-volume shoots by automatically importing images whenever media cards or cameras are connected to your computer. Then automatically rename files, organize folders, and make nondestructive adjustments as images are imported.

• Import/export presets
  Streamline the importing and exporting of your files by saving your frequently used settings in stored presets, which you can recall and apply when needed.

• Automatic conversion to DNG
  If desired, automatically convert your images from proprietary file formats to the publicly available Digital Negative (DNG) format as they are imported, or easily export photographs from your Library in DNG format.

In its essence, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom transforms your PC or Mac into a professional photo lab which gives the user access to a plethora of photographic utilities that allow you to enhance, create and display your images. The beauty of Lightroom is that Adobe have made this software package extremely easy to use and to quote Adobe, it's almost as simply as 1 (Import), 2 (Manage), 3 (Develop) and 4 (Present).

The installation of the application was a breeze and it simply auto-installed on our PC machine with minimal prompting. Once the application was installed, we were greeted to an extremely easy to user interface that will suit a wide variety of different levels of experience. The interface itself is divided into four easy to navigate panes with the central pane used as your workspace. As with most Adobe products, Lightroom is also quite customisable, ensuring enhanced productivity.

Features (Manage)

• Multiple viewing options
  Quickly find and select your best shots with flexible display options like the Grid view for groups of thumbnails, the Loupe view for zeroing in on fine detail in a single image, or the Compare view for displaying two or more images side by side.

• Flexible organization of images
  Bring order to voluminous image libraries by grouping your photographs in stored collections. Create collections for different tasks or subjects, and group similar images within a collection to organize them further.

• Manual thumbnail reordering
  Put your images in the order that you need them for any particular task by selecting any number of photographs in your Library — continuous or not — and then simply dragging them to a new location on the Grid.
  Video tutorial

• Organize and compare your photos (SWF, 8:04 mins)
  Keep your photo library organized. Lightroom makes sorting your photos a snap with preset and custom filters.

• Easy file renaming
  Make your photographs easier to find and keep in sensible order using the Lightroom renaming feature. Simply set naming rules, and Lightroom automatically renames your images as they're imported.

• Single or group metadata stamping
  Organize and annotate your images by adding metadata to a single photo or to groups of selected images. Save metadata sets as presets, which you can apply with one click.

• Image versions without duplication
  Create as many alternate versions of an image as you desire without overloading your hard drive. Then, switch between versions with a single click.

• IPTC/EXIF/XMP metadata support
  Read, add, or edit a comprehensive set of metadata entries, including IPTC, EXIF, and XMP data.

• Metadata stamping on output
  Stamp crucial metadata — such as copyright notification, captions, and keywords — on print jobs or exported images so you can search on it later.

• Keyword synchronization
  Make keywords consistent even if you're using Lightroom on two different computers by importing and exporting keyword sets to external, transferable files.

• Offline image management
  Work with your image library in Lightroom even when some or all of the actual photo files are stored on offline media.

• Easy Library backup to CD/DVD
  Help ensure the safety and preservation of your photographs by backing them up to CD or DVD using simple built-in tools.

• Simple keywording
  Easily organize your photographs and make them searchable with keywords that make sense to you. Assign keywords to a single image or groups of selected images — just type and apply.

I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised that Lightroom automatically detected all our media devices on our PC which included our Nikon DSLR. The program also handles a large myriad of files without any issues whatsoever. The program itself contains a very in-depth catalog system which easily allows you to view all your images and with a simply click of the mouse, you can bring the image up instantly and start performing your modifications.

The real selling feature behind Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is that the software is non-destructive to your original images. Adobe have cleverly designed this program to alter instruction sets, rather than pixels which also gives the user access to real-time changes which also supports batch-editing. The virtual copy aspect of Lightroom uses very little hard drive space as many professional photographers know how big some RAW images can be which is all controlled with Lightroom.

Features (Develop)

• Easy-to-use white balance, exposure, and contrast controls
  Quickly perfect white balance, exposure, and tone curves in your images, including camera raw files, with familiar slider controls, or enter numeric values for the most precise adjustments.

• Simple yet powerful tone curve editor
  Precisely control the tonality and contrast of your images by individually targeting highlights, midtones, and shadows using sliders and visual controls.

• Integration with Adobe Photoshop
  Instantly send any number of images to Adobe Photoshop (sold separately) for advanced editing, and see the changes you've made reflected in the Lightroom Library when you're done.

• Advanced hue, saturation, and luminance editing
  Enhance color saturation and remove color casts in your images with individual control over six color ranges each for hue, saturation, and luminance.

• Nondestructive editing
  Enjoy robust support for more than 140 camera raw formats, and experiment with confidence. Adjustments you make to images in Lightroom won't alter the original data, whether you're working on a JPEG, TIFF, DNG, or camera raw file.

• Fast zooming
  Check sharpness, noise, or small details with nearly instant zooming — a simple keyboard command or mouse click toggles between 100% magnification and a full-image view. Smoothly navigate highly magnified areas using the Hand tool in the photo preview pane.

• Convenient before/after comparison mode
  View a side-by-side display of your original picture and a duplicate that shows the effects of your edits as you make them, or display the before and after states in a split view of the image. Toggle either view between portrait and landscape modes, and even see images in "lights out" view.

• Finely tuned black-and-white conversions
  Convert color images to black-and-white with precision. Familiar sliders allow you to control the contrast and detail based on the colors in the original photograph.

• Synchronized adjustments across multiple images

• Edit large numbers of images faster by creating presets that you can apply to 4many photographs at once, or edit one image and then synchronize your adjustments to other photos you select.

• Explicit history tracking
  Retrace your adjustments to any image — the History panel tracks them automatically as you edit — and instantly return to any state of the photo that you choose.

• Dust buster
  Erase dust spots from an image with a single click.

• Easy-to-use crop and straighten tools
  Crop and straighten your photographs in a snap.

• Red-eye removal
  Quickly eliminate red eye when it occurs in your flash photos.

If you are pleased with the end result or results, the software can then save the image into a variety of image file formats and quality levels. History never repeats but Lightroom will allow the user to literally view almost all the changes made to their photos. The history file of Lightroom is also quite detailed, displaying clearly the changes the user has made to the image.

The library aspect of Lightroom is definitely a great catalog program and with the inclusion of metadata tags, it is extremely easy to organise and view your images without getting lost in a myriad of folders. Other tags you can attach to your photos include flags, ratings and even colour codes.

This powerful photo software package also comes with a targeted adjustment tool that allows the user to adjust certain areas of the images such as as contrast and saturation levels which is extremely easy to use.

Features (Present)

• Fast, high-quality printing
  Quickly and visually format high-quality prints, whether working with one photo or 100, on one page or many. Recall your favorite layouts with saved presets and enjoy speedy output, even of large files.

• Live preview of HTML or Flash based web galleries
  Create HTML or Adobe Flash® based web galleries for online presentation with little effort and no programming, and preview the results in Lightroom before you publish them to your site.

• Single-click web publishing
  Save your web server information in Lightroom as an FTP preset, and then publish your Flash or HTML galleries with a single click. There's no more need for a separate FTP client application in your imaging workflow.
  Video tutorial

• Sophisticated slide shows
  Use the simple controls in Lightroom to create and play elegant slide shows, and include background music from your digital music library, including iTunes.

• Signature stamps
  Stamp your slide shows, web galleries, and printed output with your studio or business logo for an added professional touch.

Another impressive feature of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is that any changes you make to a particular image, these can then be applied to other images which is quite a handy tool for photographers.

As mentioned, Photoshop can support a variety of photographic file types such as JPEG, TIFF, Photoshop, Digital Negative and of course RAW which the most powerful file type for photographers and even of some of the larger RAW files we had, Lightroom was quite fast at opening and editing the image.

In conclusion, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is an extremely powerful photographic software package that is recommended to all professional and amateur photographers who do not wish to get too heavily involved in programs such as Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is definitely a powerful program that comes at an extremely affordable cost.