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Lightroom 2.0
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Lightroom 2.0 has now been fully released.
Some nice new features in it, to improve workflow.
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/
http://www.lightroomqueen.com/lrq20whatsnew.php
Yeah, I emailed Adobe asking why the US version is half the price of buying in Ireland. I await a response.
I think, the more people who complain about the price, the better.
Here’s a place to leave comments about the Adobe Lightroom 2 price – http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/07/lightroom_2_is_here.html
Well, there’s always Phase One’s Capture One 4, which at €99.00 is rather more affordable and it’s an industry standard application used by some of the top professionals.
How do you rate it against Lightroom Thorsten? I’ve been looking at upgrading Lightroom 1.4 to 2.0 but at this price would you advise otherwise?
Alan
I’ve been using the trial version of Lightroom 2, to evaluate. I think it’s brilliant. The extra functions – dual monitor support, local adjustments, etc are all very good. Integration with Photoshop is also very much improved.
I know in the sport arena, Lightroom seems to be the application of choice, for quick editing, and captioning.
But, Adobe really need to look at their pricing strategy. I’ll probably buy the upgrade version when I visit the US shortly.
irishwonkafan wrote:
How do you rate it against Lightroom Thorsten? I’ve been looking at upgrading Lightroom 1.4 to 2.0 but at this price would you advise otherwise?
Alan
The honest answer is I don’t know. But if anyone that tells you Lightroom is better without having tried Capture One, they don’t know what they are talking about. I have never used Lightroom, apart from just recently downloaded the trial version which I am still playing around with. The one big thing that I have against Lightroom so far is the whole cataloguing system. I don’t trust it and I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t really work with offline images. I think it’s trying to be “all things to all men”. It does, however, seem to have a very intuitive user interface and I found it easy to use from the minute I installed it. But I would really need to look into it much more before I could give any definitive comparison against Capture One.
Capture One used to be the gold standard against which all other RAW converters were judged. However, I feel Phase One took the eye off the ball for a couple of years and got left behind big time, particularly when Aperture and Lightroom were released. Capture One 4 did bring a lot of improvements which I like.
I like to keep my Digital Asset Management separate from my processing and workflow and whilst I really haven’t given myself enough time with Lightroom just yet, I really can’t see myself spending that much money on getting it now. Between DPP and C1 and PS CS2 I feel I have all that I need for now.
Like most applications, Capture One is available as a trial version and I would suggest downloading it and trying it out. Version 4 is far more intuitive than 3.7 ever was, so it shouldn’t take too long to figure out how to use it and then you can make up your own mind as to whether it works for you or not. Workflow is such a personal thing that it’s not something I would blindly follow someone else’s advice on.
If you don’t want to download and install yet another trial version the videos under the “How it Works” tab at the link I posted above will give you a very good idea of its capabilities.
I would say that if you own a copy of Photoshop and are comfortable using it, you don’t need Lightroom. In Lightroom 1.x, there was pretty much nothing that you could do in Lightroom that you couldn’t do in Camera RAW, and you needed to go into Photoshop if you needed to make any local changes (dodging/burning etc.).
With Lightroom 2.0, the main feature benefit is the addition of local editing using a mask-painting tool. This is both good and bad – it’s good in that the edits you’re making are parametric instead of pixel-mangling – you’re still interpreting the RAW file instead of manipulating pixels directly. This is good for image quality.
However, the controls for the brush are not terribly user-friendly and it can be quite fiddly to use. That being said, with a little effort it would seem to be an adequate replacement to layer masking in Photoshop – especially if you’re not comfortable with Photoshop and/or don’t own it.
Another nice feature of Lightroom 2 is the graduated filter tool. At first, I thought it was a bit of a gimmick, but it’s actually pretty useful. It allows you to apply a software graduated ND to your RAW file. Obviously, this is only useful if you have retained detail in your highlights, but it is handy for normalizing the exposure of the sky without affecting the foreground.
Before the release of Lightroom 2, I used Photoshop/Camera RAW for my day-to-day workflow, but taught my students basic postprocessing in Photoshop (due to its lower price/higher accessibility). Now with Lightroom 2, I’m using it for my own workflow as I really like the new system of collections and smart collections. It’s allowing me to organize my images much better than I could before. I still bring images into Photoshop, but find I’m doing it less now than I used to.
I’ve not had a problem with the cataloguing system myself – it has worked as expected, and I’m careful to back it up regularly. I can’t speak it how well it works for offline images, as I don’t use it for that.
All this being said, if you are comfortable with Photoshop and are wondering if the spend for Lightroom is worth it, the cataloguing system is the only really specific functionality it has that Photoshop doesn’t. There are a few nice features in it (as described above), but there’s nothing in there that can’t be done in Photoshop itself.
I used Capture One 4.1 for my infra-red processing workflow (as until recently Camera RAW/Lightroom couldn’t handle the extreme white balance in infra-red images). I think it’s an excellent RAW converter, but I didn’t find it compelling enough to replace Camera RAW. That being said, if you find Camera RAW lacking, you may really enjoy Capture One, and it’s certainly worth getting the trial.
Cheers,
PeterThanks for the detailed reply Peter..and welcome back to PI.
I’ve got the trial version of Lightroom 2.0 at the moment and I’m impressed on several aspects including the easier keywording, the dual monitor support and the integration with PS. The localised touch-up I’m not that impressed with yet – it seems cumbersome but time will tell. It is expensive to upgrade for a few minor details but so far I’m impressed.
Capture One 4 is equally useful (another 30 day trial) but also some aspects seem illogical but the quality of the presented image from the first couple of attempts at it seem to be better than that presented in Lightroom. Obviously this is a reduced size and not print but as I say, early stages.Alan
I find LR very good for proofing and cataloging (I try to really use the keywording feature).
However, for the final versions, I still use Canon DPP and CS3.
LR2 seems slower to me than previous versions, and freezes (briefly) regularly.
FrankC wrote:
LR2 seems slower to me than previous versions, and freezes (briefly) regularly.
Check your Camera Raw Cache size. You may need to increase it. It’s a common enough issue, but when you increase the cache size, performance is greatly improved.
Thorsten wrote:
I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t really work with offline images.
Hi Thorsten, in what way do you mean that it doesn’t really work with offline images? Or how would you want (expect) it to work with them? Curious.
You can work with offline images in all (most) except editing them; so you can rate, label, pick, apply metadata, organise, even print if if you have the previews built. I can carry around my entire catalog of over 30,000 images on the laptop and call up any image on screen (that includes the offline images too – on my desktop at home or on an external drive also at home). Used this in fact a couple of months ago looking for a suitable image for someone in their office – search & keywords found it. Maybe you’re referring to actually editing the images? That’s about the only thing I can’t do with them – need to check about exporting.. What other applications do allow full editing of offline images?
Unal wrote:
where is the justice in this? Then they wonder why a lot of people are using cracked software :!:
No never, cracked software, would I ever lol
Have it a week or so now but can get a chance to get using it…… looks pretty good though
This months Digital Photographer magazine has a head-to-head comparison of Lightroom 2.0 and Capture One 4.0 which is worth a read, with Capture One 4.0 winning by a margin on the basis of image quality and value for money. Might be worth a read for anyone considering their options. Suffice it to say, I’ve not been impressed enough with Lightroom 2.0 to make me go out and spend a couple of hundred euro on yet another piece of software. For now I’ll stick to DPP or C1 for raw processing, PS CS2 for any additional work and MS Expression Media for cataloguing and DAM.
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