Lightroom... Am I missing something?

[veritus]

Ok, so I loaded the new Lightroom 1.1 a few days ago and have been playing with it. After using it for a couple of days I don't see a real benefit to it. I'm a long time PS user (started on PS 5.0) and currently have CS3. Is there any need for Lightroom if I have CS3? I thought I could use it for picture organization, filing and light edits, but it doesn't seem to be working that well. Maybe I'm just oblivious to some cool features or shortcuts that would make Lightroom a great compliment to CS3. Any input or suggestions would be appreciated. Hopefully I'm just being oblivious and there are some great features to Lightroom that will make my life easier.

-Chris

[RightAngle]

for me LR saves my butt as far as time goes. I am not a super fast in PS but I know my way around but with LR I can rip through 600 pictures in a few hours and get them all 90% of the way to perfect and then the ones that I need to really be amazing and beyond all reproof I can dump into PS and finish off with the actual editing and stuff.

I basically use LR to view all of the shots I take and decide what I do and don't want then organize them. From there its White Balance, Exposure, Etc. I can go through files extremely fast and have all my adjustments in one place really close to where I need them.

For me LR is much more useful than PS for what I do. I usually shoot a good amount of shots for an event and don't have time to open each one individually and fight menu structures to do the same adjustments to each. With all that said I'm not a PS genius like you lol.

[AndrewCCM]

Originally Posted by RightAngle

for me LR saves my butt as far as time goes. I am not a super fast in PS but I know my way around but with LR I can rip through 600 pictures in a few hours and get them all 90% of the way to perfect and then the ones that I need to really be amazing and beyond all reproof I can dump into PS and finish off with the actual editing and stuff.

I basically use LR to view all of the shots I take and decide what I do and don't want then organize them. From there its White Balance, Exposure, Etc. I can go through files extremely fast and have all my adjustments in one place really close to where I need them.

For me LR is much more useful than PS for what I do. I usually shoot a good amount of shots for an event and don't have time to open each one individually and fight menu structures to do the same adjustments to each. With all that said I'm not a PS genius like you lol.

I am pretty much with you.. I am not a PS genius...but I have used it for numerous years and pretty darn quick with it... I love LR 1.1... Now since the update, I am able to use it the way I have been wanting...

I also use many PRESETs that I have downloaded that make the general adjustments for exporting to JPG much quicker for me. After shooting a wedding, I do PS many shots, but not the majority. If the client is receiving files on DVD/CD as part of their package, I find that I can do a nice job on the majority in LR which is a time saver.

[billbunton]

I think 1.1 is at the point it's usable for DAM. Not as full-featured, overall, as IVMP, nor as fast. But it does have a couple nice features that IVMP lacks. They appear to have fixed the problem with loading a lot of keywords (I've now got the entire David Reichs controlled vocabulary, except for the IPTC codes, loaded with no real problem).

And it's not owned by Microsoft :-)

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by veritus

Ok, so I loaded the new Lightroom 1.1 a few days ago and have been playing with it. After using it for a couple of days I don't see a real benefit to it. I'm a long time PS user (started on PS 5.0) and currently have CS3. Is there any need for Lightroom if I have CS3? I thought I could use it for picture organization, filing and light edits, but it doesn't seem to be working that well. Maybe I'm just oblivious to some cool features or shortcuts that would make Lightroom a great compliment to CS3. Any input or suggestions would be appreciated. Hopefully I'm just being oblivious and there are some great features to Lightroom that will make my life easier.

-Chris

You're not the only one Chris. I can see how LR might be a boon to volume shooters who need to process a bunch of pictures without opening them in Photoshop (say, wedding shooters or photojournalists). For me though, I'm going to spend at least a few minutes in Photoshop with every keeper, sometimes quite a bit longer. I just don't see how Lightroom brings anything useful to the table for a CS3 user. Aside from the RAW convertor (which is also available from CS3), the editing capabilities of LR are pretty poor so it's in no way a substitute for Photoshop (at least not for my editing needs).

The catalog/keywording functionality is at best only marginally better than CS3 Bridge, and IMHO not worth the pain of dealing with the "database" paradigm which I strongly dislike. If one were to get really serious about DAM then I could maybe see the need for something more capable than CS3 Bridge; but there are other applications that would be better for that than Lightroom IMHO. And for me, Bridge's capabilities are sufficient when it comes to keywording.

As a QImage user, the print module holds no interest for me whatsoever, especially with the complaints I've heard about LR's implementation (lack of soft-proofing, inconsistencies in results compared to PS, etc - has any of this been fixed in 1.1?). Some might find the slideshow and web gallery modules useful, but I don't really need them, and if I did I would probably prefer to use a dedicated (and more full-featured) application.

Before CS3 was released, I'd say LR had some pretty compelling advantages over CS2 from a workflow standpoint and RAW conversion. But most of the shortcomings in CS2 that caused me to consider a separate application like LR have been addressed in CS3 so I'm just not interested anymore.

[MRCPix]

so for anyone who doesn't have CS3 lightroom is a great program. I love it and do90% of my work in there.

[jstpeter]

Most of you have said it...This tool is for those people processing a bunch of images. I have found it saves a ton of time in sifting through my sports photographs.

[AndrewCCM]

Originally Posted by jstpeter

Most of you have said it...This tool is for those people processing a bunch of images. I have found it saves a ton of time in sifting through my sports photographs.

Yep. It isn't a substitute for CS3.. But as Jeff stated as well.. For volume shooters, it is a quite nice addition to PS. I use it a lot for building Flash galleries for my clients as well. The DAM is getting better. I think it could be better...but I am using it for catalog manager for now. I tried Iview Media Pro on 2 different machines (one brand new) and the darn thing crashed on me all the time and hosed my catalogs... I will not be using that app any longer regardless of advantages. Probably just me, but seeing how it crashed on a brand new XP SP2 machine clean.. I have no confidence in iView any longer. Too much time and effort put into reimporting my 50,000 image catalog to deal with that mess. Sorry I digress.

[robert t]

I have not upgraded to CS3 yet and I have had some problems with LR1.0 and 1.1. Neither likes the Dell 5160 laptop. Runs a few times then crashes, re-install, same thing day after day. I do like the ability to quickly proof and apply some fast fixes with the presets. I agree that the print section is not very good. It would be nice if it had the same print options that are in PS.

[steckler]

One quick point/thought. I don't see how Adobe can continue to support both camera raw/ bridge AND lightroom. I'd guess that in the fairly near future ACR will go away or be minimized, bridge will change a little, and lightroom will become the defacto DAM for Adobe.

Remember that Lightroom was a response to two or three main factors, #1 competition for Aperture, a better DAM/GUI than Bridge, and a way for professionals to be able to do some things (color, exposure, etc) to their photos without getting the "that picture was photoshopped!" from an editor. Remember all the fallout from the recent war photos that were enhanced? There was the Reuters photog that got fired for adding smoke to Beruit, and the NY Times guy that got in trouble (fired?) for blending two photos together. The Beta versions of lightroom didn't even have red-eye removal, much less spot removal.

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by steckler

One quick point/thought. I don't see how Adobe can continue to support both camera raw/ bridge AND lightroom. I'd guess that in the fairly near future ACR will go away or be minimized, bridge will change a little, and lightroom will become the defacto DAM for Adobe.

I don't see this happening, a lot of users would be very upset at this especially since Lightroom is an additional charge. Under the hood both apps are using the same RAW engine, so it's not like they're maintaining separate RAW converters. As far as I can tell the main reason for the LR 1.1 release was to integrate the ACR 4.1 code (another reason to like Bridge/ACR - ACR can be updated more quickly and easily than the entire LR app).

Remember that Lightroom was a response to two or three main factors, #1 competition for Aperture, a better DAM/GUI than Bridge, and a way for professionals to be able to do some things (color, exposure, etc) to their photos without getting the "that picture was photoshopped!" from an editor. Remember all the fallout from the recent war photos that were enhanced? There was the Reuters photog that got fired for adding smoke to Beruit, and the NY Times guy that got in trouble (fired?) for blending two photos together. The Beta versions of lightroom didn't even have red-eye removal, much less spot removal.

I don't think doctored news photos are a compelling argument for LR's existence. You can just as easily make RAW conversion changes in Bridge without actually editing in Photoshop and get the same result. The editing capabilities of LR and Bridge/ACR are essentially the same.

[LadyShutterBug]

i *heart* lightroom. no opening and closing and saving of files (import them, go through them, export them). easy manipulation of WB and exposure. i can open an image and edit in photoshop if i need to.

lightroom probably saves me DAYS worth of work when i am processing wedding images.