Lightroom

Posted Sat Feb 24, 2007 in

Dark LeavesI didn’t write this at 0800 this morning. No, it’s 0500 now and I’ve been up for an hour. I woke early, was intellectually active, so I rose, at least for awhile. We’ll see whether I return to my mat or not.

Adobe just released Lightroom. I’ve been watching development of the beta for the last year. I confess, though, that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to really learn how the program works. Nonetheless, I believe I’m approaching the limits of what I can expect from Apple’s consumer product, iPhoto. I have about 10,000 images in my digital collection and iPhoto is beginning to flag with so many images in its database.

A partial solution was iPhoto Library Manager, which I bought a couple of years ago. It’s a small tool (I like small tools) that allows multiple iPhoto libraries to exist and provides an interface for the user to switch between libraries.

It does not, however, provide quick access to an album stored in a library not currently loaded. The process requires a switch of library and an iPhoto restart. It’s not really bad, but interrupts workflow.

So, last night I downloaded a evaluation version of Lightroom and I’m in the process of migrating some of my images to that tool. Unlike Photoshop, Lightroom is targeted specifically at photographers and provides, at least to my amateur eyes, a suite of tools that are less complex to bring to bear.

So, I’m going to use my 30-day evaluation period to see what the program can do. If it’s better than iPhoto for my needs, then I’ll pop for a copy. If not, then I’ll continue to use Photoshop for serious editing and iPhoto as a database.

I made the image above a few years ago. We were with friends at the old Whistling Dixie BBQ joint. After a pleasant evening with friends and good food, I noticed the strong backlight on our way out. I had my carry-camera with me (at the time an Olympus consumer unit), so I found an angle I liked and made the image. I used Lightroom to convert to grayscale and resize the image. I also adjusted the contrast slightly. I like the result.

I’ll report back with my opinions in a couple of weeks.