It's A Binary World 2.0 » Adobe

Lightroom 2.0 – it just keeps getting better and better

Eric Mesa — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:25:47 +0000

The more I’ve been learning about Lightroom 2 (technically now at 2.3), the more I’ve been liking it! First of all, I learned that – thanks to new camera profiles (also available in the latest camera raw software) – I can get my photos to start from where Canon’s own RAW software would have started. I never realized it was a better choice than photoshop because I liked the photoshop workflow so much. But now that I’ve played with the camera profiles in Lightroom, I realize that I’ve been selling my images short.

Second, I’ve been reading The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 book and I’ve been learning quite a bit there. Most recently I learned something that will save me A LOT of time in my photography workflow. Lightroom has the DNG converter built in AND the ability to convert your RAW files and delete them. But, not only that – it will also delete the sidecar XMP files. So I can work on my files as soon as I transfter them from my memory card. Then I can let the DNG conversion go on overnight. Before I would first convert all of my photos, which might take an hour if it’d been a long shoot and THEN working on them. So sometimes I was converting as many as 60 photos which were destined to be automatically deleted once I saw they were crap. So once again, Lightroom changes my workflow for the better!

Share and Enjoy:

One more look at Adobe Lightroom (this time 2.3)

Eric Mesa — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:01:19 +0000

I just wanted to really elaborate on why I think Adobe Lightroom is a program any enthusiast to pro user should own. Although, as I related here, LR has grown on me, going through the photos I shot at my cousin’s wedding has really cemented my love for Adobe’s product. Here are my two favorite features. You may want to open up the images in a new tab at full size so you can follow along.

My number one favorite feature is the nested metadata sorting. This is really, really helpful. First of all, after getting back from a weekend of shooting, the ability to split up my photos by the day is very useful for removing clutter and somewhat improving memory usage since LR doesn’t need to have so many photos available to me. This was especially useful when I got back from a week in Hawaii. Then the ability to filter by camera is nice, although I usually separate my folders by camera on my file system. What’s really awesome is the ability to filter by lens. I am a member of a few flickr groups dedicated to the lens used to take the photo. They need to be tagged with the correct lens. So I can just click on the lens, control-A and tag it. Let me mention a few awesome things about this view as well. It’s really, really easy to add keywords as you can see on the right. With Bridge (at least CS 2 bridge) this requires selecting the files and then right-clicking and it’s just not as elegant, especially if the files have different keywords already. The ability to see the ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop at a glance is also very useful and saves time from having to scroll through the EXIF data. Finally, the ability to do rough edits on the exposure, tone, and white balance can be helpful for quick little fixes without launching the develop module.

Second feature I love is the comparison feature. (And survey view is tied for second as well!) I just love being able to load up two photos side by side and be able to zoom in and out and compare everything about them. For example, doing a quick comparison of these two cake photos shows me that the right photo is obviously the one to pick. The left has a dirty, blank wall behind it while the second has the curtains and nicer surroundings. Sure, you could just flip back and forth, but for a quick decision, nothing beats comparison mode. And there’s no substitube for comparing two photos at the exact same area if you zoom in. And survey mode can make it very easy for you to choose one photo from a series of nearly identical photos.

So, if you were wondering if Lightroom was useful if you have Photoshop, the answer is YES! They are complimentary tools and, depending upon your needs, you may not even need to go to Photoshop for most of your photos if they don’t need too much touching up.

Share and Enjoy:

Adobe Lightroom 2: Further Use

Eric Mesa — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:01:33 +0000

So I did a test and found that as long as I save the metadata to the file, Adobe Bridge (even with CS2) can correctly read the changes. So I decided to work in Lightroom to see if it was worth buying. I can say that I am really loving it! I’ve been able to adopt my usual RAW workflow with only some small changes. Now I can’t see how I could ever work without LR!! (It’s no wonder why Adobe gives a 30 day free trial!)

What do I like about LR? It IS still a bit slower than I’d like, but overall not too bad. I’m pretty sure I can make it work better if I tweak some settings. I find the metadata editing to be a lot easier and requiring a lot less clicks. I LOVE the side-by-side comparisons and survey mode. I don’t know how I lived without that. I also love the dimming of the lights. That REALLY helps me focus on the photo. At first, I thought it was just a gimmick. And the metadata filters make working with the photos a LOT easier!

Share and Enjoy: