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DPChallenge Forums >> Hardware and Software >> Lightroom Users!
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 09/02/2007 10:39:08 PM · #1
Greetings Good People!

I was trying to get a beat on Adobe's Lightroom. I've read a few reviews but always seek the advice of my fellow DPCers in formulating my opinions on digital media software.

So... if you use Lightroom, what do you use it for? If you have PS as well, do you use both and/or do you prefer one over the other? Are they mutually exclusive or are there features you use one for instead of the other?

If there are other comments you have about Lightroom, please do share.

Thanks in advance!
 09/02/2007 10:53:59 PM · #2
I have both Lightroom and PS/CS3. I use both, for very different reasons.

First ... I take tons of pictures. And I need to be able to quickly pick out and process the best. Second, I don't like to spend any time editing proofs before an image is purchased.

So, I use LR for two reasons: 1) to quickly scan through the pictures and pick out the best, and 2) to quickly adjust and process those photos into "proofs" that are high enough quality to show to the customer, without spending any time editing them in Photoshop.

As an example, here is a wedding from two weeks ago.

These were taken around 2pm-3pm in the afternoon. By 5:30 I was at the reception with a slide show of these images running! (the slide show also was showing the wedding breakfast from earlier that morning, as well as both the engagement and bridals that I had shot weeks earlier)

Photoshop has not yet come into play. So all of the images you see there are simply processed by LR. I'll begin photoshoping images as soon as the orders start coming in.

09/02/2007 11:23:47 PM · #3
I use both. Lightroom for anything getting printed. Lightroom exported to CS2 for little tiny pictures to edit and upload to DPC.
 09/02/2007 11:26:57 PM · #4
I use it much for the same reasons David does, for getting good photos out fast. I don't do the slideshow thing, but I use it to proof (final) images. If I'm not doing any retouching, a photo may never see Photoshop at all.
 09/03/2007 01:17:18 AM · #5
I use both, but find myself using Lightroom more and more, and PS somewhat less. LR is far more convenient when sorting and rating photos, and being non-destructive, you can make virtual copies of an image and test-drive different edits for side-by-side comparison -- all without wasting any disk-space. That being said, LR's sharpening isn't as good as PS, and it doesn't have anything like PS's Shadows/Highlights adjustment. And of course it doesn't really allow much spot-editing, but that's by design (otherwise they'd be eating too much into their PS market). Also, I've used LR's website building & uploading tool when showing proofs to a customer, it's extremely easy to use.
 09/03/2007 03:55:07 PM · #6
Interesting. No one here uses Adobe Bridge to scan thru pix and then edit them in PS? This is what I do. Is LR a faster course?
 09/03/2007 04:16:24 PM · #7
Originally posted by Rooster:
Interesting. No one here uses Adobe Bridge to scan thru pix and then edit them in PS? This is what I do. Is LR a faster course?


I do that with bridge/CS but again, generally only for stuff ending up here. Anything else isn't going to require editing beyond what lighroom offers (white balance, curves and sharpening) so there's no need to fire up PS.
 09/03/2007 04:24:27 PM · #8
I used Bridge with my Mark III while waiting for Adobe to update LR to support the Mark III raw image files. So I can now speak from experience (prior to that, I had never used bridge).

I must say that I still much prefer LR. Bridge's ability to display a lot of pictures and quickly maneuver around them is faster than LR's (I'm hoping LR will catch up with Bridge on that front). But the moment you start changing the photos, adjusting white balance, etc, you have to keep popping in and out of ACR. And it's the huge Bridge-to-ACR-and-back delay that slows bridge way down.

So if you have single images to deal with... Bridge is fine. If you have to quickly get through hundreds of wedding pictures ... LR is totally the way to go.

And while LR is still only on version 1.1, I do hope that they'll speed up the UI even more to match Bridge. That would be the ideal solution.


09/03/2007 04:35:23 PM · #9
I love lightroom and use it everytime i upload photos now.
It's brilliant.
My only niggle however is when i take shots in b/w mode in-camera, when i import the RAWs into lightroom shows the original colour version, whereas i would prefer it to keep the b/w settings.
Unless there is a way to change that other than to take RAW+jpg setting in-camera.
09/03/2007 04:37:30 PM · #10
is there an easy way of doing noise reduction using lightroom on the mac?

my a100 is more noisey then most cameras, not generally a problem as it looks more like film grain then the noise i used to get with my canon 350d, but i've started putting some stuff onto micro stock sites and they're not too happy with the nice effect built into my camera ;)

but as far as lightroom as a whole goes, i'm loving it, fast way of doing loads of stuff.

Message edited by author 2007-09-03 16:39:18.
 09/03/2007 05:07:24 PM · #11
Originally posted by Ben:
My only niggle however is when i take shots in b/w mode in-camera, when i import the RAWs into lightroom shows the original colour version, whereas i would prefer it to keep the b/w settings.


It's worse than that, really.... (or better, depending on your point of view)

The images that you see in LR are created by LR's interpretation of the raw data. You never even see your camera's version of the image. So if you set a specific "style" in camera (color, b/w, contrast, sharpening, whatever), that style is thrown away upon importing into LR.

I suppose that's all well and good. LR is camera-agnostic. It doesn't treat a Canon any different from a Nikon. So any attempt at showing a particular "style" would probably be an approximation, at best. Unless Adobe gets in bed with each camera manufacturer and gets them to provide the details on how to process their images.

Still, it would be nice if you could get it to show the original embedded thumbnail for comparison.

09/03/2007 05:11:10 PM · #12
Originally posted by richard42:
is there an easy way of doing noise reduction using lightroom on the mac?


LR just has the basic Luminance and Color noise reduction (under "Detail" in the "Develop" module), which seems to work the same as ACR module in Photoshop's Bridge. Nowhere nearly as good as the noise reduction in Noise Ninja or Neatimage, but it's better than nothing.
 09/03/2007 05:18:46 PM · #13
Originally posted by dwterry:
..
The images that you see in LR are created by LR's interpretation of the raw data. You never even see your camera's version of the image. So if you set a specific "style" in camera (color, b/w, contrast, sharpening, whatever), that style is thrown away upon importing into LR.



This is is where I have biggest issue with LR. I set my camera how I want to see my images but then I have redo settings on the PC

Originally posted by dwterry:

..
Still, it would be nice if you could get it to show the original embedded thumbnail for comparison.


It shows it for a half a second or so then it goes into LR version of the image. It is so painfull to see image I want to see and then see completely different variation of it. I think it does that if you don't generate fullsize preview during import.

Nick
 09/03/2007 05:28:04 PM · #14
Originally posted by Nikolai1024:
This is is where I have biggest issue with LR. I set my camera how I want to see my images but then I have redo settings on the PC


It worked the same way with RawShooter...

I guess I'm so used to the raw workflow now that I don't even miss it. I don't even bother trying to get the right settings in camera except when I'm shooting sports (always in jpeg mode for sports). Even white balance ... I'll set it when I remember, otherwise, I figure I'm just going to change it anyway because the in-camera setting is mostly just a guess unless I have a gray card with me.


09/03/2007 06:24:03 PM · #15
Great info guys. Still on the fence about installing yet another editing program. May have to tho to check things out and compare them.

Much thanks and appreciation!
 09/03/2007 06:34:56 PM · #16
Originally posted by Nikolai1024:
This is is where I have biggest issue with LR. I set my camera how I want to see my images but then I have redo settings on the PC


jpeg fine may be your friend here.


09/03/2007 06:42:09 PM · #17
Originally posted by Matthew:
Originally posted by Nikolai1024:
This is is where I have biggest issue with LR. I set my camera how I want to see my images but then I have redo settings on the PC


jpeg fine may be your friend here.


I shoot mostly in jpeg exactly because of that. Once in a lifetime shots.. RAW.
 09/03/2007 06:52:00 PM · #18
How do you predict when that "once in a lifetime shot" will present itself? :-)

I started shooting raw a couple of years ago. Forced myself to do it on every single shot. That way I made myself learn the work flow and process for handling raw files. So my cameras are all set to raw all the time (except, as I said, when shooting sports). So birthday pictures, candid shots of family members, flower shots, landscapes, quick and dirty images, everything is shot in raw. And LR is fast enough at converting that there just isn't really a downside.

09/03/2007 09:03:14 PM · #19
I am amazed you guys have LR running in anything acceptable timeframe???? It's still a pig with lip stick on my machine :-/ It's too slow to do anything useful.... Control stall when sliding them... takes forever to get stuff imported and the workflow is pretty bad.

Message edited by author 2007-09-03 21:04:05.
 09/03/2007 09:08:07 PM · #20
Originally posted by robs:
I am amazed you guys have LR running in anything acceptable timeframe???? It's still a pig with lip stick on my machine :-/ It's too slow to do anything useful.... Control stall when sliding them... takes forever to get stuff imported and the workflow is pretty bad.

If you're running it on a pre-Intel Mac, then I feel your pain. It was truly too slow. But now that I'm using MacBook Pro, it's lightning fast!
 09/03/2007 09:11:36 PM · #21
Originally posted by magnus:
Originally posted by robs:
I am amazed you guys have LR running in anything acceptable timeframe???? It's still a pig with lip stick on my machine :-/ It's too slow to do anything useful.... Control stall when sliding them... takes forever to get stuff imported and the workflow is pretty bad.

If you're running it on a pre-Intel Mac, then I feel your pain. It was truly too slow. But now that I'm using MacBook Pro, it's lightning fast!


Older PCs have a rough time with it too. My current machine just balks at it. Once it's up & running it responds in an almost-acceptable manner, except if I start exporting in the background, then things can slow to a crawl.
Bearing in mind, this is a four-year-old machine with only 1 gig of ram, and it's never had a fresh OS install since day one. It's overdue for an overhaul.
 09/03/2007 09:16:03 PM · #22
Two things help out a lot:

1) Plenty of memory. LR is still a memory hog and the moment your machine starts hitting the swap file, all bets are off!

2) Core 2 Duo processor. LR manages to do several things at once. It can keep two cores busy. So with LR, having two cores is definitely more efficient than one.
 09/03/2007 09:21:11 PM · #23
I am doing the same as many before me say.... I use both BUT I find myself using LR more and more, hardly do anything in PS anymore... It has actually made my life so much easier for the reason they mentioned, you can so quickly browse through the pictures to have a look at them and decide which ones you really like and which one you don´t like ... :o)
 09/03/2007 09:59:00 PM · #24
I have a question more about the functionality of LR... The photos that you edit in LR do not get changed on the hard drive.. Is there any way you can have the photos update on the hard drive? I am talking about primarily jpeg images because RAW you would have to export anyway to get any use for them.

Thanks!
 09/03/2007 10:06:05 PM · #25
I hated... no, despised Lightroom Beta and swore I'd never use it again after about 6 months of trial. But......I went ahead and got LR 1.0 after quite a few pro buds swore by it... gotta say HUGE IMPROVEMENT! It works so much faster now than it did before, not so clunky, not so time consuming. I use it to save from card into date/named folder, quick edit anything that can be done in a few clicks, sort the keepers & toss the garbage, copy the keepers into a seperate folder (which has always been my habit), name the saved ones something that makes sense AND add keywords for stock upload or sorting later........ all in one pass through the images. To hell with going through them 10 times before your done. I pull the ones I really want to work on into PS and save one more version. Workflow done. :)


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