Gadgetell Quick Review: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
What is it?
Lightroom 2 is a program for Windows and Mac OS X designed to help organize, streamline, and develop your photos. It costs $99 for the upgrade from Lightroom 1 or $299 for first time buyers.
Pros:
Easy to use thanks to clean and organized interface.
Imports all of your files using your preexisting directory structure.
Works with a wide variety of file formats.
Cons:
Does not allow pixel editing. Requires another program for that task.
Initial use can be frustrating and can cause loss of work.
Does it hit the mark?
Yes. Lightroom 2 definitely lived up to all of my expectations. It’s easy to see that this program would be extremely popular with anyone working in the art or ad industry, or someone who does batch work with photos. The program allows for very controlled editing and is remarkably easy to use.
My first thoughts:
Installation was a breeze. Pop the disk in and just let it go. It only took about 2 minutes to complete on my computer. As soon as it finished installing, it asked if I would like to open the program and began to import all of my files over into the catalog quickly and cleanly.
Using Lightroom 2:
I really liked the fact that Lightroom is organized on so many levels. You see your shots in a regular “panel” across the screen. You also see the “tree” drop down menu off to the right, listing all of your folders and sub-folders. Then, what I find really great, they have a filmstrip of thumbnails across the bottom of the screen that you can also quickly scroll through for easy access to a shot you’re searching for.
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Images can be seen on the main portion of the screen, as well as thumbnails. This is showing a catalog of 26 shots just imported. You can notice the “Import” button clearly shown on the bottom left.
Importing Images
Lightroom 2 supports many of the popular formats out there. Not just JPEG, TIFF, and PSD, but, also RAW files. It is extremely easy to import your images into Lightroom. This also went very quickly. I tried importing pictures from different folders twice.
The first time I imported 26 pictures from a subfolder on my system and it was completed in seconds. The second time I imported about 170 from a subfolder and it only took about 30 seconds. I thought that was pretty impressive.
What’s great about this program is that so many of the basic functions and tasks can be completed just by looking around. I didn’t have to go in and read any kind of help tutorials to do the basics at all. It’s really pretty self-explanatory.
Keyword tagging
Once you’ve imported photos, you are able to use the metadata and keyword tagging system so you can find them again very easily. All you have to do to tag a photo is click on it, type in whatever keywords you want to assign to it, and you’re done.
I also liked that once it realized I often used a certain keyword along with another keyword, it began offering it up as the number one next suggestion. For example, if I often used the keywords “architecture,” and “buildings,” it might then know to offer up the word “stone” next, since I had often used that with the other two words.
Developing your shots
When “developing” images using Lightroom, it really does make it next to impossible to ruin a shot. It has built in tools that help prevent this. There is an “auto” correct button you can use and there are also arrows for each of the different settings such as color, tone, etc., so that you just adjust parameters a small piece at a time.
Lightroom saves the original so you don’t accidentally ruin it if you should happen to make a mistake in the photo you are adjusting. There seems to be much less margin for error in the “adjustment” stage in Lightroom as there sometimes is when playing around in Photoshop.
When doing “developing,” you open the shot you are going to be working on. You can choose the specific area you are only going to be “developing” which is one nice change. The local adjustment brush allows painting to be done to just a specific area.
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You can see where you go in the toolbar to select the adjustment brush to begin the development process
Other Fun stuff
Another neat tool in Lightroom is a tool with some auto presets where you select to have the program automatically alter your photo to look filtered differently. Some examples are the standard grayscale and B&W then they also offer up choices like aged, antique, zoomed and more. Below is a shot I took showing the photo before any filters are applied, and then the same photo after I applied the “aged” look preset.
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Another nifty little thing Lightroom 2 offers is the fact that you can work and save for the web. It has it all right there for you with lots of presets. It really couldn’t be much easier than this. Lightroom also makes it super easy to open up files in Photoshop to edit them.
Simply go to “Photo,” then “Edit in” and it will offer you any choices that you have on your system to edit photos, nice and easy. It even let me edit a screenshot I took of Lightroom 2 that I then saved in a catalog and imported over. See? This is showing a shot imported over to PS from Lightroom 2, they are made to work in conjunction easily with each other.
Click for a larger image.
Final Thoughts:
After using Lightroom 2, I could definitely see where this would be an excellent organizational tool. It’s great for mass editing, and keeping track of photos. I think it is something that would definitely be an asset for anyone working in the publishing business in any way, or someone that does any type of portrait work even.
I had no problems at all with it crashing or slowing down my system, even while running Vista on a machine not quite equipped for Vista. The only item I’d wish for to make it perfect is the addition of pixel-editing capabilities. (I know, I’m dreaming. One day, one day.)
Gadgetell Rating:
4/5
Download Free Trial: Adobe Lightroom 2 Free Trial
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