Lachlan Grant24 July 2006, 9:50 AM
Ask any PC dabbler. They inevitably want Windows, Office and 'Adobe Photoshop because they have a digital camera'. WTF?! Don't get me wrong, Photoshop is a fantastic power-tool, but dude, it's like, $1100, and you wouldn't want to pirate software right? Adobe has answered our prayers with Lightroom.
Ask any PC dabbler. They inevitably want Windows, Office and “Adobe Photoshop because they have a digital camera”. WTF?!?! Don’t get me wrong, Photoshop is a fantastic power-tool for playing with photography, but for importing, collating and retouching your digital photos, it’s overkill.
Surely a proper image collection management tool would be much simpler. And as if my mind is directly plugged into that of Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, I arrived at work this morning to find beta 3 release of Adobe Lightroom for Windows had hit the net.
If Adobe Photoshop is designed for the image guru, then Lightroom is designed perfectly for the photographer. This cool tool comes with a simple, dark user interface (think Kai’s Power Tools) so it's easier to focus on the image you're working on, rather than a clutter of panels and toolbars fighting for space on your desktop.
A quick spin about its features and benefits reveals that it’s not just for the novice, but includes many tools for refining and editing images, which pros will appreciate too.
It easily imports the images into its library, catalogues and tags them, then displays them in a neat filmstrip down the bottom, grid view, zoomed view, or loupe view… and pretty much any other view you’ll need.
From the Library view, a handy Quick Develop panel lets you adjust exposure, brightness, contrast and saturation amongst other things, with the aid of a histogram.
Swapping to Develop mode shows a much more detailed set of editing panels and tools to play with.
Slideshow mode lets you create slideshow animation (currently only exports to PDF) with text, ratings and metadata; and Print mode features a detailed set of panels for printing your photos.
For those who just can’t do without Photoshop, a click of a button throws you into Photoshop with your selected image so you can feel right at home.
The beta for Mac has been out for public download for quite some time, however the new beta release also has a download for Windows. You can check them both out here.
