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Adobe Lightroom Beta Announced, Will Compete With Aperture
By Jeremy Schultz On 9th January 2006 @ 07:12 In Features, News | No Comments
Well, well, well—Adobe announces Lightroom, an application for importing, selecting and showcasing professional photography
Back in October, [1] Apple Computer announced [2] Aperture, an application for importing and viewing raw professional photography (my initial announcement is [3] here, my December review is [4] here). After working with the software, I wrote that Aperture wasn’t in a position to replace Photoshop and earned at best a mixed review.
Now [5] Adobe has responded with a beta of Lightroom, a new application designed to do exactly what Aperture does. Here is the info direct from [6] the labs.macromedia.com page it resides in:
Adobe® Lightroom™ Beta is the efficient new way for professional photographers to import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images. So you can spend less time sorting and refining photographs, and more time actually shooting them. Its clean, elegant interface literally steps out of the way and lets you quickly view and work with the images you shot today, as well as the thousands of images that you will shoot over the course of your career. Because no two photographers work alike, Adobe Lightroom adapts to your workflow, not the other way around.Lightroom Beta lets you view, zoom in, and compare photographs quickly and easily. Precise, photography-specific adjustments allow you to fine tune your images while maintaining the highest level of image quality from capture through output. And best of all, it runs on most commonly used computers, even notebook computers used on location. Initially available as a beta for Macintosh, Lightroom will later support both the Windows and Macintosh platforms.
Sounds intriguing! My first thought is, why didn’t Adobe include this with Bridge in the first place? But the release of Bridge was way back in May, and Lightroom isn’t expected to actually release until late 2006, so I guess it just wasn’t in the cards. But I do think that an application like Lightroom will eventually need a home in Creative Suite in order to be truly successful. Adobe’s Q4 data (my article on that recent announcement is [7] here) shows that the Creative Suite package has bolstered sales of software for creative professionals, and to leave Lightroom as a standalone application may stunt its growth.
I am downloading [8] the beta now; look for another article with my reactions and initial comparisons between Lightroom and Aperture.
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URL to article: http://designorati.com/articles/s1/features/537/adobe-lightroom-beta-announced-will-compete-with-aperture.php
URLs in this post:
[1] Apple Computer: http://www.apple.com/
[2] Aperture: http://www.apple.com/aperture/
[3] here: http://designorati.com/photoshop/2005/apples-aperture-released-will-compete-with
-photoshop-for-pro-photo-market/
[4] here: http://designorati.com/photoshop/2005/apples-aperture-reviewed-mighty-casey-has-
struck-out/
[5] Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/
[6] the labs.macromedia.com page it resides in: http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/
[7] here: http://designorati.com/graphic-design/2005/adobe-q4-fy2005-report-is-merry-and-b
right/
[8] the beta: http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_lightroom
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