Adobe are known, admired and despised for the massive software bundle that is their Creative Suite. One of the bundle is Photoshop and this used to be the standard for Photo manipulation; and a right pain in the arse it was, and probably still is.
I vaguely recall working through a twenty hour training course. At the end of it I had forgotten the features taught in the early part of the course. A couple of weeks later and I had forgotten all of it. Problem is, what I wanted to do with a typical photo was a few simple tweaks; which were littered all over the place in Photoshop and in a non-intuitive jumble of options.
And then, five years ago, Adobe released Lightroom. Designed purely for photo cataloguing and processing, Lightroom was something even an idiot like Spike could get his brains around in a couple of hours. Photoshop might still be needed for some more advanced manipulation, but most of what you needed to do could be done in Lightroom. Plus, Photoshop can only manage one photo at a time; whereas my Lightroom catalogues currently hold more than 40,000 photos.
Five years on and we are now at version 3.6, and Lightroom is a comprehensive and elegant solution which I could not live without.
And today, Adobe announced Lightroom 4. As is their practice nowadays, the new version is released as a free beta so we can all play with it and give them feedback if we feel inclined. I have already spent an hour so with it and there are many refinements and some totally new modules including maps (search for a location on the map and then drop a bunch of photos onto it to have them geotagged). There is a rather feeble video editing module and a book making module which looks better than the usual book making software; but does require you to use a specified publisher who must be looking forward to massively increased sales.
If you have never used Lightroom before; this would be a good time to get familiar with a free version. If you already have it, then download version 4 and it will sit beside your current version. Download Lightroom 4 beta here. View some introductory videos here.
Comments 🔗
2012-01-10| Craig saysenough video games and photography - its windy, so finish swapping all that paper for some lumps of metal in a vault and come surfing again - its really good
2012-01-13| Grant saysHe’s right, you know…
2012-01-13| Spike saysHe is.