Camera Labs

Well, I got a Quad Core system with 4Gb ram and a GeForce 8600GT (replaced it with my 8800GTS for the weekend though) to test and as I was going to download the photoshop trial to see how well it handled the RAW images compared to my dual core, I noticed Adobe Lightroom.

I knew it was there, just never took the time to download the trial and use it.

So downloaded it, and opened up some stuff with it, and WOW, the interface is amazing! I have used aperture and it was pretty good to, but its a mac app, so its expected to look good, most of the time the PC versions of these apps are more function over form, but Adobe has hit it on the head this time, and the interface is amazing. Simple as it may seem, the greatest thing about it, FULL SCREEN EDITING with BRIGHTNESS CONTROLS - Now that is great. It aids when you really just need to be drawn into the one application and the lighting controls let you get a good idea of the colour and brightness of your photo against the black rather than the interface, or even a toned down interface.

The application is really simple to use, and has a great amount of control over the images, and even has a built in section for creating a slide show or exporting a HTML / Flash page to the web.

Firstly, importing photos is great, plug the camera card in, lightroom pops up, do I want to import, yes I do, goes and copies the photos to the computer, and puts them in a pre-made Lightroom Folder and puts them there, another great thing is that as each photo is added it is free to edit or as lightroom calls it "develop" which is great rather than opening them in photoshop one by one, or even with the RAW selector part of photoshop.

The "develop" part of lightroom has plenty options for most things, and if there is something that you really need photoshop for, it has an "edit in photoshop" feature allowing you to open the file up in photoshop, and any changes made in photoshop are dynamically saved and updated in Lightroom as you are editing.

The "Slideshow", "Print", and "Web" parts of the process are also really good as depending on what you want to do with your photos, lightroom optimizes them for it. The web part also makes pre-made or custom-made HTML or Flash templates for exporting your photos to your webserver for people to view. Not really looked at the "Slideshow" and "Print" sections yet, but I'm sure they will be pretty sweet.

Anyway, does anyone here use lightroom? I am seriously thinking of buying it.

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

Downloaded the 30 day trial a couple of days ago not really tried it out yet.

It's my birthday in 9 days time and 'er indoors has promised me something from "Adobe" as she does childminding for a couple that work for "Microsoft" and the husband is very friendly with the UK Head of Adobe so might be able to get something a bit cheaper, it also depends on how cheap as to what I get she probably will be able to afford Lightroom but who knows.... might even be CS2/3

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Roy
EOS 350D, 40D + BG-E2N, EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM, 430 EX Speedlite




My Fotopic

Hi Daniel, nice review. I really must try Lightroom out sometime.

Moderator Phil Lee is a fan:

http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=362

Gordon

Also forgot to mention.... I am attending a workshop on Lightroom at the end of the month so should be a little wiser then... roflmao

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Roy
EOS 350D, 40D + BG-E2N, EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM, 430 EX Speedlite




My Fotopic

Nice one Defiant. Where about is this workshop and who runs it - if its near I might go if its cheap enough.

Gordon you should Seems to be on par if not better than Apple's Aperture, although they do have a load of similarities, but then again so do a lot of Cameras

I'm sorry the review is a little short though, I am kinda tired, and I have homework to do for Period 3 (like 11:25am) for English so I though I better get to sleep asap! I'll do a more in-depth review (probably over 800-1000 words) at some point in the next 2 weeks (2 weeks of holidays starting next monday!!!) and i'll be sure to post it.

The Quad Core goes back tomorrow, so its back to my overclocked Dual Core, hopefully it won't be much slower, as it was perfectly smooth on the Quad.

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

Hi Daniel, do some speed tests if you can before it goes back - be interesting to compare it to your dual core and see if Lightroom can exploit all 4 cores... it may only do so on certain filters though...

I'm really happy with Lightroom too. All the "output" features of Lightroom eg. slideshow and print are quite useful and interesting to play around with.

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Graham
Flickr

I've also used Lightroom a lot but just to be awkward I have to say I wasn't impressed. I quite like the interface but as soon as real editing is required then PS is the only solution. If I could have the control of PS with the UI of LR I'd be happy. Until then my tried and trusted method of combining ACDSee Pro with CS3 will do me well.

Zorro.

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http://zorrofox4.deviantart.com/



Various lenses, SB800 & Manfrotto 190 with 460MG head

I really like Lightroom. I see it as a photo developing tool rather than a photo editing tool. I don't like editing photos, I just want them to look their best as I took them. Lightroom does exactly this. It is so quick and easy to use and I love the persistent history for all photos.

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Nikon D80, Nikkor lenses: 35mm f1.8 G AF-S DX, 50mm f/1.8 AF D, 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX, 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED AF-S VR, SB800 flash
My photos on SmugMug

Would really like to see you there.... but as the workshop is in Bracknell in Southeast Berkshire I think would be a bit too far for you to come (Fife to Berkshire got to be in excess of 400 miles) but I will let you know how I get on, the 1st session is Tuesday 30th of this month.

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Roy
EOS 350D, 40D + BG-E2N, EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM, 430 EX Speedlite




My Fotopic

boo! There is never anything good in Scotland! Stupid ruralness lol - first lan cafe I found was in the capital Edinburgh, and there was only 1!!! And our 8Mb connections suck, 50kbps UP WTF IS THAT! 24Mb SDSL kthxbai.

Yeah, do let us know how you get on

Gordon - Do you have any batch processes or automated processes (adobe has a file format for them, kind of like plugins) that you have in mind? I'll look for common batch/automated processes at some point during the week for both LightRoom and Photoshop CS3.

On a side note - The Quad Core system is eating up Crysis Beta! (Yes i got it!!!) over 25fps @ 1680x1050 Settings all at "high" (VHigh is locked) and 4xAA. Beta is amazing so i'll be playing that for the rest of the night now

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

Hi Daniel, back in my dark and distant past I popped into Telford College on the way into Edinburgh a few times to use their Macs and DTP software. That was back in the day when owning such a setup was seriously expensive, and I wanted to try it all out. Maybe they do courses on things like Lightroom now?

As for testing, just try performing some filters while running Task Manager to see which ones tax all cores, then try timing them on a big image so they take more than a few seconds. Free rotations can also take their time...

Maybe we should create a test image and script so people can benchmark their own setups!